Well, we begin the new week on the podcast going into a deep theological question, but hang with us for a moment. The question is this, if God has two wills, a will of decree and a will of desire, does God ever decree something to happen that he does not desire to have happen?

And if so, wouldn't he have a divided mind? Now before you skip this episode, give us a chance to explain more about it because it's a sharp question from a listener named Ethan. Pastor John, hello and thank you for taking my question. When reading through and discussing the themes at the outset of Desiring God, your book, along with does God desire all to be saved, a perplexing theological question comes to mind.

If God indeed has two wills, one of desire and one of decree, which are both biblically affirmed, how then does his will of decree overrule, in a sense, his will of desire? If God's sovereignty is the foundation of his happiness, as in chapter one of your book Desiring God says, then it seems as if the two wills idea is somewhat insufficient in addressing texts such as 1 Timothy 2, 3-4.

In other words, if God's sovereignty is the foundation of his happiness, how is it possible for his will of decree to act independent of his will of desire? Well let me see if I can help the listeners get into the discussion here, because this is probably landing on them with "huh?" Ethan is referring to an article I wrote, "Are There Two Wills in God?" And what I was trying to do is show that sometimes the Bible treats the will of God as his absolute sovereign decree by which he plans everything and sees to it that everything he plans comes to pass.

And sometimes the Bible treats the will of God as something that he commands, but which in fact does not always come to pass. Let me give an example. In the Ten Commandments, it is clear that God commands, "Thou shalt not murder." So it's right to say God's will is that human beings not murder each other.

And yet we know from Acts 4, verse 27-28, that Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentile soldiers and the peoples of Israel on Good Friday did, quote—this is what the Bible says—they did whatever your hand, God, and your plan—that is, your will—had predestined to take place. Now what's that?

Well, namely, they murdered Jesus. So in another sense, it was God's will that his Son die at the hands of murderous, sinning people. God willed the murder of his Son. It's written through the Old Testament. It's written in the New Testament. The death of Jesus at the hand of sinning murderers was the will of God.

So even though the Ten Commandments says, "Thou shalt not murder." So when I speak of two wills in God, I'm simply describing what I find in Scripture. And of course, hundreds of theologians before me in the centuries of church history have seen the same thing, and I'm simply using the language that has been developed to describe these two wills.

We can call them the will of command and the will of decree—that would be one way. Or we could call them the revealed will of God and the sovereign will of God. These terms simply refer to the fact that sometimes the will of God—the phrase "will of God"—refers to the sovereign plan of God that always comes to pass, and sometimes the phrase "will of God" refers to what he commands, which does not always come to pass.

Now, Ethan is simply making explicit the fact that sometimes the Bible talks about God desiring something that in fact he does not decree to happen. For example, he refers to 1 Timothy 2.4. This is a very famous text. God desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

And yet, just a few chapters later in 2 Timothy 2.24 and 25, Paul says this, "The Lord's servant should be correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them to repent, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will." So if we put those two texts together, 1 Timothy 2.4 and 2 Timothy 2.25, what we see is that on the one hand, God desires all people to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved, and on the other hand, he may or may not grant them to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved.

And of course, this is not the only passage where we're told that all human beings are dead and helpless in their trespasses and sins, and only God can deliver them. So Ethan asks two questions that he's troubled about. One, does God's will of decree overrule, in a sense, his will of desire?

And two, he asks, if God's sovereignty is the foundation of his happiness, how is it possible for his will of decree to act independent of his will of desire? Now, the answer to the first question is this. It's not helpful to speak of God's will of decree overruling his desire, because that implies a conflict or tension in God.

And to be sure, the view that I am describing has been mocked as a kind of divine schizophrenia. I think it's better to say that God's sovereign will or his will of decree incorporates—not overrules—incorporates, includes his desires, even the ones that do not result in action. He wills this, just like he wills what does come to pass.

We are always prone to drag God down to the level of our own experience, since we can only imagine ourselves being continually frustrated in such a situation. But in the mysterious infiniteness of God's complexity, that's not the case. He's not frustrated. I'm not sure what Ethan's second question means.

Here it is again. If God's sovereignty is the foundation of his happiness, how is it possible for his will of decree to act independent of his will of desire? My response is, these two wills are not—never are—independent. In the one unified, perfect counsel of God's wisdom, it is wise to God—it is wise—that we both desire something to happen, and will it not to happen.

Both of those exist harmoniously, not independently, perfect integration, perfect harmony in God's mysterious, perfect, infinitely complex counsel. There's no idea here of independence of one will from the other. So let me close with just an example, because Scripture here is so much more important than my effort to put it together.

One more verse that to me is provocative and pastorally incredibly helpful. It's Lamentations 3.32 and 33. Jeremiah is talking, and he's describing the sufferings of Jerusalem under siege, horrible suffering. And this is what he says, "Though the Lord cause grief," so mark that, "Though the Lord cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love." And here's the amazing statement, verse 33, "For he does not afflict us from his heart, or grieve the children of men." In other words, God is causing the grief, and it is not coming from his heart.

Very, very interesting. God decrees that certain things happen, which in some sense are not from his heart, that is, not his desire, which is a picture of the same divine dynamics as 1 Timothy 2.4. He desires all to be saved, even though no one deserves to be saved, and yet in his freedom and wisdom he does not decree for all to be saved.

The sovereign will of God and the will of God's command, the decree and the desire, are in perfect harmony in the high counsels of God. Neither is independent, neither is overruled. This is just part of the mystery of what it means to be a sovereign and a loving God.

That is a fascinating passage indeed. Again, that was Lamentations 3:32-33, if you want to look that up. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for rooting your understanding of God's sovereignty back time and time and time again into the text of Scripture. So helpful. There's no other way we can speak on these things with any authority at all apart from Scripture.

So thank you for your model. And thank you for listening and thank you for struggling along to make sense of this question. I hope the answer was helpful. You may need to listen to this episode a couple of times, and there's never any shame in that. So thank you for listening and making this podcast a part of your week.

Three times a week we publish and you can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive. Even reach us by email with a question of your own all through our online home at DesiringGod.org. Well, for a lot of us, Pastor John, you are a model and a very compelling example of a man who prays daily and who prays corporately in his local church.

So how do you structure your prayer life and how have you done it over the years? That's the question on the docket for you next time we meet on Wednesday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, Pastor John, and I will see you then. Bye. Page 2 of 2 Page 2 of 2