1 Timothy 2:3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
To want is to desire. One author puts it this way, "There is a distinction between God’s desire and his eternal saving purpose, which must transcend his desires." God desires that all should come to repentance, but his saving purpose overrides that desire as it sees the judgment of sin against his holiness as a divine requirement.
The above verse from 1 Timothy is a classic text used to defend God against Calvin. Calvin realized through his scriptural studies that God had a chosen remnant. He realized that without that group, there would be no one saved. He had read and studied Paul's letter to the Roman church and saw the plan in chapter nine.
God must follow his divine plan without vacillation. To have that remnant of redeemed, he, not we, had to act. We could not choose him because we were dead in sin. In his action, he decided to rescue some so to fulfill scripture.
He wants all to come to repentance, but he knows what is in man's heart. Could God have chosen all? Of course, but he didn't. Why didn't he?
Paul anticipated this question when he responded thus in Romans 9:19-39
19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?" 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? 22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As he says in Hosea: "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people; and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one," 26 and, "In the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called 'children of the living God.'" 27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. 28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality." 29 It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."
So there you have it. God desires all to be saved but man's heart is irreparably beyond redemption unless he steps in and brings life-giving salvation. The question to you is this. Do you accept God's salvation, or do you want to spit in his face? Your response may reveal your destiny.
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