2 Peter 3.8–9
v 8–9 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
In the immediacy of a new anticipation, man has expectations of slowness in keeping a promise. This is just as meaningful for the individual as for the collective whole, when that whole is includes those who are newly coming into the understanding of the great hope which is for them by revelation, and those who by revelation have been encouraged through the passing days and years by the anointing of the Spirit who seals man for a hope that calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people (Revelations 13.10,14.12). Patient endurance (Revelation 1.9) is the contribution that man provides in participation of God’s sanctification. By patient endurance the believer is doubly faithful, both a faith in the movement of circumcision and regeneration worked by the miracle of God in man, and faith in the duration and objective of this being established by the perfect will and plans of God. By patient endurance the believer is doubly obedient, both obedient to the calls to participation in the moment by the prompting of the Spirit, illuminating for the mind and heart of man the good works that God had established for him to walk in, and obedient in the eager anticipation of the not yet revealed duration he shall be commanded to wait for the revelation in full of what he can see only in part now.
Patient endurance is to understand greater and greater the will and Authority of God, and to live more fully, freely, and forcefully in the life granted by Christ under the Authority of God. It is both to obey, and to conform one’s will and desire to that of God through greater relationship and dynamic with him, and by greater drawing upon the fellowship by which the riches of his glory and goodness and provided to his saints. As such, our inchoate patient endurance is motivated by the revelation that God is patient with us individually, from which the scope of our understanding and appreciation of God’s love expands ever outward. His patience in that of not wanting anyone to perish, of a love which can not be surpassed and to which no further depth of magnitude could be provided. His enduring patience is not limited or bounded by a matter of time, effort, or sacrifice, for freely and abundantly of these things he provides. Were we in concern that such would be a limit, it would mean his will and his purposes are constrained by the finitude of man, and our hope would not be in the eternal and Almighty working the miracle for us.
On the contrary, God’s Grace is only bounded by the demands of what he has freely chosen by his will: that everyone he redeems would come to repentance. Is it not that God’s Grace has no limitations in fulfillment completely of his promises, for Jesus Christ shall lose none of all those God has given, but raise them up at the last day (John 6.39)? But yet this hope is only to those God has given, and as such only extends on those who are under the promise, who accordingly confess and repent only by faith received from God in the only complete salvation freely offered only by Jesus Christ. So while God’s patience is such that there is not anyone who needs to perish, the hope of this promise of patience is only directed to those who come to repentance that they may depend on Jesus Christ for salvation and in Jesus Christ find eternal life. Simultaneously patient and convicting, gracious and demanding, loving and vengeful is the Name of God revealed in the Son Jesus Christ so that we do not forget this one thing, this critically important thing both for the preservation of the saint’s relationship with God, but for the brothers and sisters to exhort and build each other in the glory of God, in this preaching and building up in the Word of God.
