If God Desires All to Be Saved, Why Aren’t They?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Good Friday everyone, literally Good Friday.
00:00:07.000 | It's Good Friday on the calendar, a day set apart for serious joy.
00:00:11.000 | Set apart for us to dwell on the death of our Savior Jesus Christ.
00:00:15.000 | This holiday is no funeral.
00:00:18.000 | It's a celebration. It's that odd celebration of ours and the main song of eternity.
00:00:23.000 | That eternal song about the unparalleled beauty and worth of the reigning Lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain.
00:00:32.000 | Today's episode is not Good Friday focused per se, but perhaps we'll get into the majesty and the mystery of the cross in God's design of it.
00:00:43.000 | The question I think leads us there. We'll see.
00:00:46.000 | It's from a listener named Tim. "Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:50.000 | 1 Timothy 2 verses 3 to 4 says that God desires all men to be saved.
00:00:55.000 | He desires that end, that all would be saved.
00:01:00.000 | But not all men are saved.
00:01:03.000 | Does that mean, number one, God will not do what he wants to do?
00:01:09.000 | Or number two, that God cannot do what he wants to do?
00:01:14.000 | It has to be one of these two options, right?"
00:01:18.000 | No, because what the Bible shows over and over again is that there are, in many cases, two wants.
00:01:29.000 | W-A-N-T-S. Two wants, two wills in God, not just one.
00:01:36.000 | So it's not accurate to say that God will not do what he wants to do, since in choosing to do what he does not want to do, he's doing, in another sense, what he does want to do.
00:01:55.000 | Complicated sentence, but just hit replay.
00:01:58.000 | It would be superficial to jump to the conclusion that God is schizophrenic or double-minded or perpetually frustrated, because there are ways in the infinite complexity of God's mind and heart.
00:02:18.000 | There are ways that he experiences his multiple desires, his layers of desires or wants or wills, in perfect harmony, each expressing some aspect of his nature in proper unity with other aspects.
00:02:38.000 | So let me illustrate what I mean when I say the Bible repeatedly points to these different levels or ways of wanting or willing in God.
00:02:51.000 | For example, now in 1 Timothy 2.4, the text that Tim is asking about, Paul says, "God desires," now that word is "thelae" in the Greek, which means "wills" or "desires."
00:03:04.000 | "Wills all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, but he does not save all."
00:03:11.000 | Now, why not?
00:03:13.000 | Everybody has to face this, not just certain groups.
00:03:16.000 | Everyone who believes, as all Christians do, in the wisdom and power and goodness of God would say that the answer is some other will or some other desire or commitment of God takes precedence over the desire for all to be saved.
00:03:40.000 | I think everybody would say that.
00:03:43.000 | One group, sometimes called Arminians, says it's because God is more committed to our free will, our ultimate self-determination, than he is to saving all.
00:04:00.000 | The desire to preserve human self-determination takes precedence over the desire for all to be saved.
00:04:10.000 | That would be the way an Arminian would describe it.
00:04:14.000 | The other group, sometimes called Calvinists, says that God is more committed to glorifying his own free and sovereign grace than he is to saving all.
00:04:28.000 | Now, I think this second answer is right, and one of the reasons I do is because of what 2 Timothy 2, 25 and 26 say.
00:04:42.000 | There, Paul says that we should exhort sinners with patience and gentleness and "God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth," which is a phrase from back in 1 Timothy 2, 4.
00:05:03.000 | In other words, the reason some people believe and some do not believe is not because they have ultimate self-determination, but because God may or may not grant them to repent and believe.
00:05:23.000 | It's a gift of sovereign grace.
00:05:26.000 | So, God wills that all be saved, but in another sense, he does not will that all be saved.
00:05:38.000 | One of these inclinations is a real expression of compassion, and the other is a real expression of sovereign wisdom and the freedom of grace.
00:05:51.000 | Now, I'm going to come back to that with an illustration from history that might make it a little more intelligible, but let's keep giving illustrations of this idea of multiple layers of willing or desiring in God.
00:06:06.000 | Here's another example.
00:06:08.000 | He commands, "Thou shalt not murder," in Exodus 20, 13.
00:06:14.000 | So, his will is that people not murder.
00:06:19.000 | That's God's will.
00:06:21.000 | But Acts 4:27 says that "Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, in murdering Jesus," they all teamed up and murdered him, "did whatever God's hand and God's plan had predestined to take place."
00:06:44.000 | So, God planned the death of his son at the hands of murderous, wicked men.
00:06:52.000 | Our salvation hangs on this reality.
00:06:56.000 | This is at the center of the gospel.
00:06:59.000 | This issue of God's sovereignty over sinful men is at the center of the gospel, not some marginal theological dispute.
00:07:07.000 | So, God's will that his son be murdered took precedence over his will that people not murder.
00:07:17.000 | Bible students for centuries have seen this and have called these two wills by various names like "will of command" and "will of decree," or another set of phrases is "moral will" and "sovereign will."
00:07:36.000 | Here's a third example of these two layers or levels or kinds of willing in God.
00:07:44.000 | "Thou shalt not lie," Exodus 20, 16.
00:07:48.000 | So, God's will is that people tell the truth and not be misled, not think false thoughts, and not deceive others.
00:07:57.000 | Yet, in 2 Thessalonians 2, 10, it says, "People refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
00:08:05.000 | Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
00:08:21.000 | So, they believe what is false, they speak what is false, they think what is false, and Paul says, "God sent this delusion as a punishment."
00:08:35.000 | So, God's will that people believe the truth and speak the truth is subordinated, in their case, to God's other will, which is manifest in his sending them further into deception.
00:08:52.000 | Here's another example.
00:08:55.000 | In Ezekiel 33, 11, God says, "I do not have pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way."
00:09:08.000 | And yet, God often, in the Bible, justly takes the life of the wicked.
00:09:16.000 | Isaiah 11, 4, "He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked."
00:09:26.000 | So, he does not have pleasure in the death of the wicked, that is, he does not desire it.
00:09:33.000 | Nevertheless, he brings that death about.
00:09:38.000 | "I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal. There is none that can deliver out of my hand."
00:09:45.000 | Deuteronomy 32, 39.
00:09:48.000 | One more example of these two wills in God, and this example may take us most explicitly into God's soul.
00:09:59.000 | At least, I have found for myself and for many people that Lamentations 3, verses 32 and 33 are really illuminating concerning the nature of God and how his willing works.
00:10:16.000 | Here's what it says.
00:10:18.000 | "Though he cause grief, though God 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."
00:10:37.000 | Now, this is really amazing.
00:10:40.000 | God does cause grief.
00:10:43.000 | God does afflict the children of men.
00:10:47.000 | But then it adds, "not from his heart."
00:10:52.000 | That's a very literal and good translation.
00:10:56.000 | Now, what are we to make of that?
00:10:58.000 | He wills to do it, but he does not will to do it from his heart.
00:11:06.000 | So, you can see why I say that the Bible over and over points to the mind and heart of God as complex.
00:11:17.000 | Willing one thing, willing also that this other will not be put into action.
00:11:25.000 | And this is not owing, as it would be, say, in our case, this is not owing to external forces.
00:11:32.000 | Nobody's twisting God's arm.
00:11:35.000 | All of the wisdom and all of the moral realities that form God's choices come from within God himself.
00:11:44.000 | Here's an analogy that I said I would give to help perhaps make this a little more intelligible.
00:11:50.000 | This comes from the life of George Washington.
00:11:54.000 | Chief Justice John Marshall wrote A Life of Washington and tells the story that there was a certain Major Andre who had committed treason and put the new American Republic at risk.
00:12:12.000 | And George Washington signed Andre's death warrant.
00:12:17.000 | So, he's about to be executed.
00:12:20.000 | And John Marshall comments in his biography, "Perhaps on no occasion of his life did the Commander in Chief obey with more reluctance the stern mandates of duty and policy."
00:12:38.000 | So, two wills were operating in Washington, compassion and justice.
00:12:46.000 | One commentator on Washington's decision said, "Washington's volition to sign the death warrant of Andre did not arise from the fact that his compassion was slight or feigned, unreal,
00:13:05.000 | but from the fact that it was rationally counterpoised by a complex of superior judgments of wisdom, duty, patriotism, and moral indignation."
00:13:24.000 | Then he adds, "The pity was real but was restrained by superior elements of motive."
00:13:35.000 | So, Washington had official and bodily power to discharge the criminal, but he had no sanctions in his own wisdom and justice to do it.
00:13:50.000 | Similarly, I would say the absence of a volition in God to save does not necessarily imply the absence of compassion.
00:14:01.000 | It's real.
00:14:03.000 | That willing in God, that desiring in God is real.
00:14:07.000 | The fact that there are two wills in God points to a profound but complex unity in revealing aspects of God's nature that are both true and both real.
00:14:23.000 | In our own experience, we may feel them as conflicting or as frustrating, but I think it would be rash to say that God experiences his compassion and the justice of his wrath that way.
00:14:40.000 | They are harmonious in God, and he reveals them both to us so that we can get some true glimpse of what God is really like.
00:14:53.000 | Amen. Thank you, Pastor John.
00:14:55.000 | We're going to break for the weekend now, my favorite weekend of the year.
00:15:00.000 | Have a wonderful, Christ-centered Good Friday today, and we pray that your Easter Sunday is a day full of rich worship with God's people.
00:15:11.000 | We'll see you Monday.
00:15:13.000 | [END]
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