1. The ways God wills
1.1. Naming the ways God will
1.1.1. sovereign will” and “moral will
1.1.2. “efficient will” and “permissive will
1.1.3. secret will” and “re- vealed will,
1.1.4. will of decree” and “will of command
1.1.5. decretive will” and “preceptive will
1.1.6. voluntas signi (will of sign)” and “voluntas beneplaciti (will of good pleasure)
1.2. Criticism of the two wills in God
1.2.1. Clark Pinnock
1.2.1.1. the exceedingly para- doxical notion of two divine wills regarding salvation.
1.2.2. Randall G. Basinger
1.2.2.1. if God has decreed all events, then it must be that things cannot and should not be any different from what they are.”10 In other words, he rejects the notion that God could decree that a thing be one way and yet teach that we should act to make it another way. He says that it is too hard “to coherently conceive of a God in which this distinction really exists.
1.2.3. Fritz Guy
1.2.3.1. the revelation of God in Christ has brought about a “paradigm shift” in the way we should think about the love of God—namely, as “more funda mental than, and prior to, justice and power.” This shift, he says, makes it possible to think about the “will of God” as “delighting more than deciding.” God’s will is not his sovereign purpose that he infallibly establishes, but rather “the desire of the lover for the beloved.” The will of God is his general intention and longing, not his effective purpose. Guy goes so far as to say, “Apart from a predestinarian presupposition, it becomes apparent that God’s ‘will’ is always to be understood in terms of intention and desire [as opposed to efficacious, sovereign purpose]
1.2.4. Jonathan Edwards
1.2.4.1. The Arminians ridicule the distinc- tion between the secret and revealed will of God, or, more properly expressed, the distinction between the decree and the law of God; because we say he may decree one thing, and command another. And so, they argue, we hold a contrariety in God, as if one will of his contradicted another.”
2. The Perplexing Text
2.1. texts most commonly cited to show that God’s will is for all people to be saved and none to be lost.
2.1.1. 1 Timothy 2:1–4, Paul says that the reason we should pray for kings and all in high positions is that this may bring about a quiet and peaceable life that “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.”
2.1.1.1. careful interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 would lead us to believe that God’s desire for all people to be saved does not refer to every individual person in the world, but rather to all sorts of people, since “all people” in verse 1 may well mean groups such as “kings and all who are in high positions” (v. 2)
2.1.2. 2 Peter 3:8–9, the apostle says that the delay of the second coming of Christ is owing to the fact that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day: “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.”
2.1.2.1. It is also possible that the “you” in 2 Peter 3:9 (“the Lord is . . . patient to- ward you, not wishing that any should perish”) refers not to every person in the world but to professing Christians,
2.1.3. Ezekiel 18:23 and 32, the Lord speaks about his heart for the perishing: “Have I any pleasure2 in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? . . . I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.”
2.1.4. Matthew 23:37, Jesus says: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
3. The Sovereignty of God
3.1. God is sovereign over calamities
3.1.1. Amos 3:6: Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
3.1.2. Isaiah 45:6–7: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things”;
3.1.3. Lamentations 3:37–38: “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?
3.2. Peter’s Two Ways of Seeing God’s Will
3.2.1. On one hand, it is something to be pursued and lived up to: “This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people” (1 Pet. 2:15). “Live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God” (4:2).
3.2.2. On the other hand, the will of God is not his moral instruction, but the state of affairs that he sovereignly brings about. “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (3:17). “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (4:19).
3.3. God’s Will as Moral Standards and Sovereign Control
3.3.1. Scriptures lead us again and again to affirm that God’s will is some- times spoken of as an expression of his moral standards for human behavior and sometimes as an expression of his sovereign control even over acts that are contrary to that standard.
3.3.2. This means that the distinction between terms such as “will of decree” and “will of command,” or “sovereign will” and “moral will,” is not an artificial distinction demanded by Reformed theology. The terms are an effort to describe the whole of biblical revelation. They are an effort to say yes to all of the Bible and not silence any of it. They are a way to say yes to the universal, saving will of Ezekiel 18:23 and Matthew 23:37, and yes to the individual, unconditional election of Romans 9:6–23
4. What Keeps God from Saving Whom He Desires to Save?
4.1. 2 possibilities of the fact that God desires something that in fact does not happen
4.1.1. there is a power in the universe greater than God’s, which is frustrating him by overruling what he desires.
4.1.1.1. Neither the Reformed nor the Arminians affirm this.
4.1.2. God wills not to save all, even though he “desires” that all be saved, because there is something else that he wills or desires more, which would be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all.
4.1.2.1. This is the solution that Reformed, affirm along with Arminians. In other words, both the Reformed and the Arminians affirm two wills in God when they ponder deeply over 1 Timothy 2:4
4.1.2.2. Both can say that God wills for all to be saved. And when queried why all are not saved, both the Reformed and the Arminians answer the same: because God is committed to something even more valuable than saving all.
4.1.2.3. The difference between the Reformed and the Arminians lies not in whether there are two wills in God, but in what they say this higher commitment is.
4.1.2.3.1. Arminians give is that human self-determination and the possible resulting love relationship with God are more valu- able than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious grace.
4.1.2.3.2. Reformed give is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and mercy (Rom. 9:22–23) and the humbling of man so that he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Cor. 1:29).
4.2. God Sees the World through Two Lenses
4.2.1. Edwards says that the infinite complex- ity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses.
4.2.1.1. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself, and he is angered and grieved. “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God” (Ezek. 18:32). “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths. . . . And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:29–30).
4.2.1.2. when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to every- thing leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts, he does delight in (Ps. 115:3).
4.3. God’s Wisdom Is His Highest Counselor
4.3.1. When God took counsel with himself as to whether he should save all people, he consulted not only the truth of what he sees when looking through the narrow lens, but also the larger truth of what he sees through the wide-angle lens of his all-knowing wisdom
4.3.2. The result of this consultation with his own infinite wisdom was that God deemed it wise and good to elect unconditionally some to salvation and not others.
4.3.3. This raises another form of the question we have been wrestling with. Is the free offer of salvation to everyone genuine? Is it made with a sincere heart? Does it come from real compassion? Is the willing that none perish a bona fide willing of love?
4.4. George Washington and the Sincerity of God’s Saving Will
5. The Aim
5.1. to show from Scripture that the simultaneous existence of God’s will for all people to be saved and his will to choose some people for salvation unconditionally before creation1 is not a sign of divine schizophrenia or exegeti- cal confusion.
5.2. to show that uncondi- tional election therefore does not contradict biblical expressions of God’s compassion for all people and does not rule out sin- cere offers of salvation to all who are lost among the peoples of the world.
6. Illustration of two wills in God
6.1. 1. The Death of Christ
6.1.1. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a morally evil act inspired immediately by Satan (Luke 22:3).
6.1.1.1. Yet, in Acts 2:23, Peter says, “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” The betrayal was sin, and it involved the instrumentality of Satan, but it was part of God’s ordained plan.
6.1.1.1.1. That is, there is a sense in which God willed the delivering up of his Son, even though Judas’s act was sin.
6.1.2. Herod’s contempt for Jesus (Luke 23:11), the Jews’ cry, “Crucify, crucify him!” (v. 21), Pilate’s spineless expediency (v. 24), and the Gentile soldiers’ mockery (v. 36) were also sinful attitudes and deeds.
6.1.2.1. Yet in Acts 4:27–28, Luke expresses his understanding of the sovereignty of God in these acts by recording the prayer of the Jerusalem saints: Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pon tius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
6.1.2.1.1. Herod, the Jewish crowds, Pilate, and the soldiers lifted their hands to rebel against the Most High, only to find that their re- bellion was, in fact, unwitting (sinful) service in the inscrutable designs of God.
6.1.3. we know it was not the “will of God” that Judas, Herod, the Jewish crowds, Pilate, and the Gentile soldiers dis- obeyed the moral law of God by sinning in delivering Jesus up to be crucified. But we also know that it was the will of God that this should come to pass.
6.2. 2. The War against the Lamb
6.2.1. And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and hand- ing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled. (Rev. 17:16–17)
6.2.1.1. Waging war against the Lamb is sin, and sin is contrary to the will of God. Nevertheless, the angel says (literally), “God has put it into their [the ten kings’] hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled” (v. 17). Therefore, God wills (in one sense) to influence the hearts of the ten kings so that they will do what is against his will (in another sense).
6.3. 3. The Hardening work of God
6.3.1. the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart
6.3.2. the conquest of the cities of Canaan was owing to God’s willing that the kings of the land resist Joshua rather than make peace with him. “Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the people of Is- rael except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be de- stroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses” (Josh. 11:18–20).
6.3.3. Romans 11:7–8, Paul speaks of Israel’s failure to obtain the righteousness and salvation it desired: “Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.’” Even though it is the command of God that his people see, hear, and respond in faith (Isa. 42:18),
6.3.3.1. The Explanation
6.3.3.1.1. Romans 11:25–26: “Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the full- ness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved.”
6.3.3.1.2. The fact that the hardening has an appointed end—“until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in”—shows that it is part of God’s plan rather than a merely contingent event outside God’s purpose.
6.3.3.1.3. The point of Romans 11:31, therefore, is that God’s hard- ening of Israel is not an end in itself, but is part of a saving pur- pose that will embrace all the nations. But in the short run, we have to say that God wills a condition (hardness of heart) that he commands people to strive against (“Do not harden your hearts,” Heb. 3:8, 15; 4:7).
6.3.4. In Mark 4:11–12 he says to his disciples, “To you has been given the secret of the king- dom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’” Here again God wills that a condition prevail that he regards as blameworthy. His will is that people turn and be forgiven (Mark 1:15), but he acts to restrict the fulfillment of that will.
6.4. 4. God’s Right to Restrain Evil and His Will Not To
6.4.1. Genesis 20. Abraham is sojourning in Gerar and tells King Abimelech that Sarah is his sister. So Abimelech takes her as part of his harem. But God is displeased and warns Abimelech in a dream that she is married to Abraham. Abimelech protests to God that he took her in his integrity. And God says, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her” (v. 6).
6.4.1.1. What is apparent here is that God has the right and the power to restrain the sins of secular rulers. When he does, it is his will to do it. And when he does not, it is his will not to. That is to say, sometimes God wills that their sins be restrained and sometimes he wills that they increase more than if he restrained them.10
6.5. 5. Does God Delight in the Punishment of the Wicked?
6.5.1. We are faced with the inescapable biblical fact that in some sense God does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18) and in some sense he does (Deut. 28:63; 1 Sam. 2:25).
7. The Extensive Sovereign Will of God
7.1. God is sovereign over Calamities
7.1.1. Amos 3:6: Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?
7.1.2. Isa- iah 45:6–7: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things”
7.1.3. Lamentations 3:37–38: “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?”
7.2. Peter’s Two Ways of Seeing God’s Will
7.2.1. it is something to be pursued and lived up to:
7.2.1.1. This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people” (1 Pet. 2:15).
7.2.1.2. Live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God” (4:2).
7.2.2. the state of affairs that he sovereignly brings about.
7.2.2.1. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (3:17).
7.2.2.2. Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (4:19).
7.3. Another examples
7.3.1. If the Lord wills
7.3.1.1. Paul expresses himself like this with regard to his travel plans. On taking leave of the saints in Ephe- sus, he says, “I will return to you if God wills” (Acts 18:21).
7.3.1.2. to the Corinthians he writes, “I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills” (1 Cor. 4:19).
7.3.1.3. I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits” (16:7).
7.3.1.4. The writer to the Hebrews says that he intends to leave elemen- tary things behind and press on to maturity. But then he pauses and adds, “And this we will do if God permits” (Heb. 6:3).
7.3.1.4.1. This is remarkable, since it is hard to imagine one even thinking that God might not permit such a thing unless one has a remarkably high view of the sovereign prerogatives of God.
7.3.1.5. James warns against the pride of presumption in speaking of the simplest plans in life without a due submission to the over- arching sovereignty of God over the day’s agenda.
7.3.1.5.1. Man’s plans might be interrupted by God’s decision to take the life he gave. Instead of saying, “‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ . . . you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13–15).
7.3.2. Teaching from OT
7.3.2.1. The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Prov. 16:1).
7.3.2.2. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (v. 9).
7.3.2.3. The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (v. 33).
7.3.2.4. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (19:21).
7.3.2.5. I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23).
7.3.2.6. Remember the for- mer things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring 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’” (Isa. 46:9–10; cf. 43:13).
7.3.2.7. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:35).
7.3.2.8. I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).
7.3.2.9. Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3).
7.4. The purpose of God’s sovereignty
7.4.1. some- times spoken of as an expression of his moral standards for human behavior
7.4.2. sometimes as an expression of his sovereign control even over acts that are contrary to that standard.