This past Sunday as a congregation we studied Ephesians 1:3-6. Paul writes to the Ephesians:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
In this passage it is evident that before the foundation of the world God chose those who would be holy and blameless before him. In other words, God chose those whom he would save and sanctify before time even began. In a similar vein, Paul says that God predestined us for adoption as sons. This means before we were even born, God predetermined that our destiny would be one of son or daughter of the Father. Just like adoptive parents set their love and affection on the child they will soon adopt, before that child ever knows his parents, so too God set his love and affection on his elect, before the foundation of the earth. The reason God chose us and adopted us is not based on anything in us or any decision we may one day make, but solely according to the purpose of his will for the praise of His glorious grace!
On Sunday morning (October 8) we spent time thinking about the many questions that often cloud the doctrine of election and predestination. What about God’s divine foreknowledge? What about my choice to follow Jesus? What about those God has not chosen? The intention of this article is not to recap any of those questions. If you missed Sunday’s sermon where we delved into those questions, I would encourage you to listen to the sermon first before reading the rest of this article. You can listen to it at the link below or on our church app.
The purpose of this post is to answer one more big question that often surrounds election and predestination, which we did not have time to address on Sunday. And that question is this:
What about the verse that says God desires ALL to be saved?
1 Timothy 2:4 says,
“(God) who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
This verse would seem to contradict God’s sovereign election. How can God who clearly desires all to be saved only elect some to be saved?
To begin with, this verse is very often taken out of context to argue against God’s sovereign election. Right before Paul says God desires all people be saved, he also says this in verses 1-3 of the same chapter:
“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior…”
In 1 Timothy Paul instructs Timothy about how the church is to behave when they gather together (1 Tim. 3:15). One of the first things he says, after his opening chapter, is that the church should pray for all people. This does not mean the church needs to pray for every single person on the planet. Paul explains what he means by “all people” in the very next verse. By all people he means all kinds of people, even “kings, and all who are in high positions…” The early church was not very optimistic about the salvation of rulers and authorities. They had some pretty raw experiences with some pretty horrendous leaders—Emperor Nero being the most obvious example.
We can certainly relate to this experience today. It is hard to be very optimistic about the conversion of many of our current political leaders, but nonetheless Paul wanted the early church, and us, to pray for kings and all in high positions. That is what precedes 1 Timothy 2:4:
“This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
God desires all types of people to come to a saving knowledge of the truth, even kings and those in authority.
Paul has just used the term “all people” to refer to those types of people the church would least expect to be saved, namely, kings and those in authority. He is not referring to every single person. In the same way, verse 4 cannot be referring to every single individual person, but rather to every type of person. God desires all types of people to come to a saving knowledge of the truth, even kings and those in authority. That is the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:4—not all people as in every single person, but all kinds of people, even kings and those in authority.
However, there are more texts similar to 1 Timothy 2:4 in which the context does not seem to indicate all types of people, but rather, every single person. 2 Peter 3:9 is the most common verse cited to argue that God cannot elect only some since he desires all to repent,
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
The context of 2 Peter 3 is the return of Christ at the end of the age. No doubt many people in the first century felt as though Jesus was taking an awfully long time to return. Peter assures them the reason for this is because God does not wish “that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
I believe the plain meaning of this text—and its surrounding context—teaches that God truly does desire every single person to reach repentance.
What we see in Ephesians 1:3-6 (regarding God’s sovereign election) and in 2 Peter 3:9 (regarding God’s desire for all to repent) are two different aspects of God’s will on display. In order to understand what 2 Peter 3:9 means, we have to understand a fuller picture of how God reveals his will to us throughout the entire Bible.
What we see throughout the Bible, from beginning to end, is that God’s will has two dimensions: God has both (1) a sovereign will, sometimes called his “will of decree,” and (2) a revealed will.
God’s Sovereign Will of Decree
God’s sovereign will of decree is everything God has ordained to come to pass.
Isaiah 46:10 says:
“(God declares) the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…”
Ephesians 1:11 says, “(God) works all things according to the counsel of his will…”
God’s will of decree means every single thing that ever has happened or will happen, God ordained it to happen. RC Sproul famously said, “if there is one rogue molecule, God is not sovereign.” From the biggest events in world history to the smallest molecules in the universe, God ordains and directs all of it for his own purposes.
Now you have to keep in mind, God’s sovereign will on earth works within a cursed world. God is sovereign over evil, but evil did not originate with God (James 1:13). Suffering and evil happen because we live in a Genesis 3 cursed world, cursed because of our sin. As believers, we have the assurance, that even in this cursed world, in which God is sovereign over everything, “God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love God, and for those who are called according to his purposes” (Rom. 8:28). We know that “though He cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men” (Lamentations 3:32-33).
God’s will of decree means every single thing that ever has happened or will happen, God ordained it to happen.
We know even as God ordains the good and the evil, as Job tells his wife in Job 2:10, because of Christ, the worst thing that could ever happen to us has already happened to us—two thousand years ago Jesus bore the punishment for our sin on the cross. We know that even on our worst day we are doing better than we deserve.
The 1689 2nd London Confession of Faith summarizes well this idea of God’s sovereign will of decree:
“God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein…”
God’s Revealed Will
God’s revealed will is much simpler to comprehend than God’s sovereign will of decree. God’s revealed will is everything that God has revealed to us in Scripture. The 10 Commandments are an example of the revealed will of God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, are further examples of the revealed will of God. Your sanctification, that you be conformed to the image of Christ, is also an example of the revealed will of God (1 Thess. 4:3).
Everything God has instructed, commanded, or clearly revealed in His Word is the revealed will of God.
Throughout the Bible, we often see aspects of God’s revealed will and God’s sovereign will of decree within the same event or circumstance.
For example, in the story of Joseph, in Genesis 37-50, it is God’s revealed will that Joseph’s brothers are to love Joseph as they love themselves. That is clearly what God desires for the 12 sons of Jacob, that they all love one another with brotherly affection and outdo one another in showing honor (Rom. 12:10). Clearly, they do not obey the revealed will of God. They dishonor their brother, they hate him, sell him into slavery, and lie about it. However, at the end of Joseph’s story, when Joseph rises to power, rescues his family, and reveals himself to his brothers, forgiving them, we learn that all of this is part of God’s sovereign will of decree.
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).
It was not God’s desire and revealed will for Joseph’s brothers to act the way they did, but it was His sovereign will for everything to happen exactly as it did.
There are many more examples of this in the Bible, but perhaps the most important one is in the crucifixion of Jesus. It was certainly not the revealed will of God for the Pharisees and Romans to crucify the Lord of Glory. In the act of Christ’s crucifixion these wicked men disobey and rebel against the revealed will of God. However, when Peter describes the crucifixion of Jesus, he tells his audience, in Acts 2:23, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
This was the sovereign will of God’s decree from before the foundation of the earth, that Jesus would be crucified.
Peter makes it abundantly clear that Jesus was delivered to death because of the definite plan of God. This was the sovereign will of God’s decree from before the foundation of the earth, that Jesus would be crucified. But the murder of Christ—the mocking, dishonoring, and shaming that the Pharisees and Roman soldiers commit—all go against the revealed will of God in the Scriptures. They murdered, though God commanded us otherwise; they dishonored, though God commanded us to honor one another; they reviled, though God commanded us to build one another up in love.
The Answer to 2 Peter 3:9
So what does all of this have to do with our original question regarding 2 Peter 3:9?
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
This verse is not describing God’s sovereign will of decree, but is rather describing God’s revealed will. God in His Word desires that every person repent of their sins and believe in Christ. We know this is his revealed will because it is what he has commanded.
“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent…” (Acts 17:30)
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…” (Acts 16:31).
Over and over again in the New Testament there is a command that every single person should believe in Christ and repent of their sins. This is the heart of God; this is his desire; this is his revealed will.
However, this is not God’s sovereign will of decree. If it were so, then every person would be saved—and we know that is not the case. God’s sovereign will of decree is that before the foundation of the earth, he predestined those who would be his adopted sons and daughters.
God’s sovereign will of decree is that some would receive his grace in election to the praise of his glorious grace, while others would receive his wrath in condemnation to the praise of his glorious justice. But who is and who is not God’s elect is not God’s revealed will. His revealed will and desire is for all to reach repentance and this is why our response to God’s sovereign election is to preach the Gospel to all people in all nations.
“The secret things belong to the Lord…” Who is and who is not God’s elect belongs to the Lord and the Lord alone, we should not for a moment even begin to speculate. “… but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deut. 29:29).
What has been revealed to us? God desires all to reach repentance. Thus, we too, as Christ’s church, desire for all to reach repentance, and we must preach the Gospel to all, with the full expectation that every single person we proclaim the Gospel to may, upon repentance and faith in Jesus, be forever saved from their sins. All to the praise of His glorious grace!
Pastor Jordan
