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Transcript 345A
God Wishes for None to Perish? [2 Pet 3:9]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I was calling in with regard to a question on predestination. The Bible says that God wishes for none to perish.
HC: That's Second Peter 3.
CALLER: It seems that a loving God would not create beings just to destroy them. That doesn't seem very loving. And also, John 3:16. It would seem that God only loved part of the world and not all of it. I'll take my answer over the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you. Good night.
The question is really raised, Is God really fair? Is He really a loving God? Aren't we somehow in error on this doctrine of predestination? How can that accord with the idea of a loving God?
You see, the problem is that we do not understand the holiness of God. We do not really know what it means to be a perfectly righteous God. We're all tainted by sin. Even after we're saved we still have a body that lusts after sin. We're very much at home with sin. Sin is not that big a problem, basically, to mankind, is it? It's everywhere. Everywhere we look we see sin.
But we begin to sense that sin must be something really terrible, when we realize that the punishment for sin is to spend an eternity in hell. That's not a very short time, you know. That's a pretty terrible thing. And when we read the language of what hell is, as the Bible speaks of it as a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and a place where there's eternal torment, and a place of eternal burning and outer darkness, and so on, we begin to sense that, my, oh my, if God is perfectly just (and certainly He is, because He is holy God), sin must be terrible, to require that kind of terrible punishment. This begins to give us a tiny little insight into the holiness of God.
Now let's look at the human race. And it seems like we have to think about this from time to time. And I'm glad that we can, because we lose sight of these facts. God creates a beautiful world for mankind. This earth was perfect. God saw everything, that it was very good. There was no sin, there was no curse, there was no blemish of any kind upon this earth. And as the crown of God's creation He puts man here, to rule over this creation, to have dominion over it, to be fruitful and multiply, and be a people that would serve God perfectly and live with Him, and have fellowship with Him.
What more could God do? What greater privilege could man have? But mankind, beginning with Adam and Eve, and continuing right down to the last baby that's born on the face of this earth, of their own volition rebels against his Creator God, denies his Creator God, and goes his own way. Rather he begins to serve the creature, or the creation, as we read in Romans 1, rather than the Creator God. It's an open affront. it's repudiation of the God who created us. Certainly God ought to stamp us out. He ought to throw us all into hell. what terrible insolence! What terrible rebellion! What terrible arrogance, that we turn against the Creator God in this fashion, when He has put us in this beautiful world in which to live.
We don't deserve any blessing from God. We don't deserve any mercy from God, when we consider what we have done in rebelling against Him. And bear in mind, we're not animals. We're not non-thinking individuals. We're created in the image of God. We're created with a natural sensitivity to worship God. We know there's a God in Heaven. We within our hearts have a sensitivity to God's justice. We know intuitively that it's wrong to murder and to steal and to lie, and so on. And yet in spite of this we go our own unholy way. God ought to stamp us out.
Then on top of that, to make matters much much worse, God comes with His gracious offer of salvation. Now this offer of salvation is not an idle kind of a thing. If anyone is going to be saved through the Lord Jesus Christ, it is required that Christ would have paid for his sins, that Christ would have endured the wrath of God, so that God's perfect justice could be taken care of.
And so this is a tremendous, tremendous offer of grace that God is giving to the world, that whosoever believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ should not perish but could have everlasting life. And again the Bible tells us that because of the nature of our rebellion against God there's not one of us that would respond to that Gospel. We hate God as Creator, we're in rebellion against Him as Creator, and under no circumstance are we going to want to be redeemed by Him. We like what we are. We like our sin. We're going to take our own chances with eternity. We're going to go our own way.
Could mankind, created in the image of God, affront God any more? Could they be any more rebellious? Can't you see that there isn't the slightest reason why God ought to save any one of us? Don't you ever think that God is unjust in that He lets anyone go to hell. We all deserve to go to hell. Our sins cry out to God's holy Heaven for the way we regard God.
But Christ said, "I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." It was God's intention from before He ever created the universe that He's going to have a people of Himself. And so God decided just whom He was to save.
Now the fact that He would save one person, does that mean that He was ungracious to the rest of the human race? No, not a bit. The rest of the human race had an opportunity to be saved, but they didn't want to be saved. The fact that the one who was saved had to be drawn by God, had to be irresistibly drawn by God so that his mind was enlightened and his will was surrendered to God, that didn't change anything. This person didn't deserve to be saved, but God said, "I want you. I'm going to save you." That did not mean that the rest were left with any sense of injustice in any way, because they didn't want to be saved.
Now the fact that God has saved a large number of people (a small percentage in comparison with those who are still going to hell, but nevertheless in total a substantial number of people), that is grace magnified over and over again. Why would God do this? Why did I deserve to be saved? Never! I didn't deserve it at all. Why am I saved? I didn't deserve it. It's all God's grace.
That is the message of salvation. We don't have to think for a moment that the fact that some are not elect is injustice on God's part. Read Romans 9, where that very question is raised, Is there injustice on God's part? And the answer comes right back, By no means! God has a right to have mercy upon whom He will have mercy.
Now in Second Peter 2:3 we read that God does not wish that any should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth. We also read in the Gospel of Luke that Christ wept over Jerusalem. And in another place it says that He declared of Jerusalem, "How oft I would have gathered you as a hen would gather her chicks, and ye would not.
We must remember that it is not a pleasant idea to God that man must go to hell. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, the Bible declares. That is not a pleasant idea to God. God loves His creation, and mankind is part of His creation. But you must remember that God's justice demands that the penalty for our sins be paid, that mankind goes to hell.
It' s like the judge who has the criminal in front of him who is guilty of a crime. And the law declares that this man must go to jail for the rest of his days. The judge has no pleasure at all in sending that person to jail for the rest of his life. I am sure that that must be a traumatic experience for a judge. But the law demands that this person has to go to jail. And if this judge is going to be faithful to the law, if he is going to be a righteous judge, then he must send that person to jail. Now that is exactly a picture of God's holy justice. The wages of sin must be paid. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
God wept over Jerusalem because He knew that they were coming under God's judgment because of their sins. He is the Creator of these people. And to see His creation in open rebellion and under the judgment of God is a painful experience for God. But God's holiness and His justice demands that they must pay the penalty.
Now why is it that He didn't save everybody? I don't know. That's God's sovereign good pleasure that He didn't save everyone. We do read in Romans 9 that even the wrath of men shall praise Him. We can't understand the whole picture. We only know this, that God says "Make your calling and election sure." We only know this, that God says that "Whosoever cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." Actually, after we're saved, and we try to find out why we came to Him, we'll discover that it was because God drew us.
Now in Second Peter 3, which says that He does not wish that any should perish but that all should come to Him, He of course is particularly talking there about the elect, those whom He had planned to save. The context is that of the patience of God in the face of the continued wickedness of the world. If God would end this world before His prescribed time, that is, before the last of the elect have been saved, then God's whole elective program would have been frustrated. And God does not wish this to be. He wishes that all who are to be saved will be saved.
Now when God really desires that some is going to be saved, no human being could resist the will of God. Don't you ever think that God is saying to us, "Now look. I've done all that I can for you, and now it's up to you." That's not the Biblical teaching. When Christ decided to save us, this decision was made before He ever created this universe. And you can depend upon it that all whom He decided to save will be saved. God will draw them. This is John 6:37-44. And read those verses very carefully.
Well, thank you for that question.