God Wants All men to Repent and be Saved

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Eze 33
11 Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!

1 Timothy 2
3This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Matt 23
37"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

2 Peter 3
9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

 

[emarc]

Eze 33
11 Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!

1 Timothy 2
3This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Matt 23
37"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

2 Peter 3
9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

God does not want anyone going to hell which is the good news. The bad news is that He respects our choices.
God bless.

 

[TinaG]

Hi!

I don’t think you will find anyone who will argue with your post. But that is not the whole story, as not all are saved. So what gives? Some argue that God’s sovereignty is more important to Him than our free will, some that free will is, and some that God works it out mysteriously so that both His sovereignty and our free will have integrity. There must be more to what you are posting than you posted.

-Tina

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Hi!

I don’t think you will find anyone who will argue with your post. But that is not the whole story, as not all are saved. So what gives? Some argue that God’s sovereignty is more important to Him than our free will, some that free will is, and some that God works it out mysteriously so that both His sovereignty and our free will have integrity. There must be more to what you are posting than you posted.

-Tina

Many Calvinists argue that God does not want all men to be saved.

My post is actually quite complete.

Here’s a key line:

how often** I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing**.

 

[TinaG]

Many Calvinists argue that God does not want all men to be saved.

Really? Please cite your sources. Since you said “many” they should be easy to find.

The Calvinists I know make a distinction between God’s desire to save all men and His sovereign election to save some. While He desires to save all, He saves only some for the praise of His glory. They would agree with your verses completely. Your argument with them is not with whether He desires to save all, but rather with why not all are saved. My guess is that you place that entirely on the free will of man. Surely you have read of predestination as well as of free will, so placing it entirely on the free will side of things is a distortion of what is going on.

They would also argue that man cannot be willing to be saved unless God gives them the grace to change from rebellion to the desire to please God, and that the alternative to that is Pelagianism.

-Tina

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Really? Please cite your sources. Since you said “many” they should be easy to find.

It is quite easy to find.

From Calvinist Corner:

Unconditional Election:
God does not base His election on anything He sees in the individual. He chooses the elect according to the kind intention of His will without any consideration of merit within the individual. Nor does God look into the future to see who would pick Him. Also, as some are elected into salvation, others are not.

From another Calvinist site:
Unconditional Election:
According to this point, God predestines or chooses to soften the hard, sin-enslaved hearts of certain fallen individuals and liberate them from their death not because of any merit they have but despite their demerits–i.e., He ELECTS to change their hearts (and thereby join them to Christ and His saving work) DESPITE the fact that they hate God and oppose Him and have hard hearts, not soft hearts, and have sin-enslaved wills, not free wills. Thus, believers have no reason to boast about themselves or their own actions: the only thing that differentiates them from Judas, Esau, or others who never respond in faith is that** God gave them grace that He withheld from such reprobates**.

 

[TinaG]

It is quite easy to find.

From Calvinist Corner:

Unconditional Election:
God does not base His election on anything He sees in the individual. He chooses the elect according to the kind intention of His will without any consideration of merit within the individual. Nor does God look into the future to see who would pick Him. Also, as some are elected into salvation, others are not.

From another Calvinist site:
Unconditional Election:
According to this point, God predestines or chooses to soften the hard, sin-enslaved hearts of certain fallen individuals and liberate them from their death not because of any merit they have but despite their demerits–i.e., He ELECTS to change their hearts (and thereby join them to Christ and His saving work) DESPITE the fact that they hate God and oppose Him and have hard hearts, not soft hearts, and have sin-enslaved wills, not free wills. Thus, believers have no reason to boast about themselves or their own actions: the only thing that differentiates them from Judas, Esau, or others who never respond in faith is that** God gave them grace that He withheld from such reprobates**.

Please provide links. And these do not say what you seem to want them to say. Find a quote that says God does not want all to be saved.

Thank you,

-Tina

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Please provide links. And these do not say what you seem to want them to say. Find a quote that says God does not want all to be saved.

Thank you,

-Tina

Google Calvinist TULIP and you will see several sites. I just picked the first two.

Clearly, if salvation is due soley to God’s grace AND he withholds this grace from some people, then God does not want all people to be saved.

That’s exactly what Calvin believed and that’s what 5 points Calvinists believe today.

If this is a revelation to you, perhaps you should do a little research.

 

[TinaG]

Sorry, this conversation is going nowhere. I am unsubscribing from this thread.

-Tina

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

Sorry, this conversation is going nowhere. I am unsubscribing from this thread.

-Tina

Is your point that your mind is closed on this matter?

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

God does not want anyone going to hell which is the good news. The bad news is that He respects our choices.
God bless.

Exactly.

He won’t force us to follow, nor will he reject our requests for help.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

Really? Please cite your sources. Since you said “many” they should be easy to find.

The Calvinists I know make a distinction between God’s desire to save all men and His sovereign election to save some. While He desires to save all, He saves only some for the praise of His glory.

I’m aware of that as well. I believe John Piper has discussed the difference between God’s desire and God’s will.

 

[poetryforjesus]

Ok now I am curious. Does the Catholic church make a distinction between God’s desire to save and God’s choice to save? That would not reflect very well on God’s mercy, because it would tell me that God loves some people better than others. Doesn’t God love each soul with an infinite love? Then how could He choose to predestine some for salvation and not others?

This is such a mystery for me. My heart tells me that everybody is destined to become great saints, but not everybody wants to follow that destiny. In fact, it seems that only a few do.

Looking forward to hear more discussion here.

 

[John7]

God does not want anyone going to hell which is the good news. The bad news is that He respects our choices.
God bless.

though he’s not a man, I wonder if God wants the Devil to go to hell (ie into the lake of fire)?

 

[TinaG]

Ok now I am curious. Does the Catholic church make a distinction between God’s desire to save and God’s choice to save? That would not reflect very well on God’s mercy, because it would tell me that God loves some people better than others. Doesn’t God love each soul with an infinite love? Then how could He choose to predestine some for salvation and not others?

This is such a mystery for me. My heart tells me that everybody is destined to become great saints, but not everybody wants to follow that destiny. In fact, it seems that only a few do.

Looking forward to hear more discussion here.

I looked over the thread and thought I would return.

What is hard to deal with, for me anyway, is that two things are equally true, and neither is in subordination to each other. We have free will, but God also predestines. Passages such as Romans 8:28-30 and Romans 9:6-33, Ephesians 1:11 and others state that God selects some and passes over others for salvation. Other passages show that we must take care to be sure we do not fail the race. We can fall away, but those who do not fall away never will.

I think some of this goes back to the mystery and the incomprehensibility of God. There is the notion of the simplicity of God (God’s goodness=His mercy, grace, acts, will, desire, thought, etc.). He is just but also merciful. His mercy is exactly the same thing as His justice. We can understand God only by analogy, and that imperfectly. So we are stuck with a situation in which there are promises for eternal life we can take great comfort in, and there are commands that if we fail to heed we should take great warnings from.

Pharoah, Esau and Judas are three examples of people who seem to suffer reprobation (God deliberately rejecting them). God hardened Pharoah’s heart. The lesson for me in this is to cry out to God lest He harden my heart, lest He give me over to my desires per Romans 1.

To say that it is all up to us is a false gospel. Man’s will is fallen and in fallen condition he does not want to be saved. If he wants to be saved, that is an indication that God has worked on his heart even to have that desire.

I’m no theologian and this probably does not make sense, but that is me.

-Tina

 

[TinaG]

I wanted to add this to the previous post, but I came back too late:

One thing I do not know is how Piper reconciles a seeming contradiction in God, if he buys the argument that God is simple: God desires one thing but does another. The simplicity argument would mean that all should be saved. But OTOH if God is simple and desires all to be saved, all should be. So my criticism here is not with Piper but with the situation, which I cannot claim to fathom.

-Tina

 

[poetryforjesus]

Hey Tina, thanks for sharing your perspective. I do look forward to someone explaining the Catholic perspective on this issue. It probably has been discussed elsewhere before.

Another intriguing aspect of this whole thing is how God allows and even desires us to intercede for sinners. It’s not as if God cannot save them without anyone of us getting involved, but somehow He is pleased to work through our prayers. It’s like, God is pleased with those who do love Him; when they plead with Him to save some souls, God gladly grants their request, whereas perhaps otherwise God would not have given them the grace to be saved.

I have been reading about Marian devotions. Several writers including St. Louis De Montfort insist that devotion to Mary is a great sign of predestination. I instinctively believe that but I don’t really understand how that is.

 

[TinaG]

Hey Tina, thanks for sharing your perspective. I do look forward to someone explaining the Catholic perspective on this issue. It probably has been discussed elsewhere before.

Another intriguing aspect of this whole thing is how God allows and even desires us to intercede for sinners. It’s not as if God cannot save them without anyone of us getting involved, but somehow He is pleased to work through our prayers. It’s like, God is pleased with those who do love Him; when they plead with Him to save some souls, God gladly grants their request, whereas perhaps otherwise God would not have given them the grace to be saved.

I have been reading about Marian devotions. Several writers including St. Louis De Montfort insist that devotion to Mary is a great sign of predestination. I instinctively believe that but I don’t really understand how that is.

Hi!

I’m still trying to figure this stuff out. Thanks!

Somebody once said that God loves to work through paradoxes.

-Tina

 

[SemperReformada]

Is your point that your mind is closed on this matter?

You seem to every now and then post on Reformed theology (otherwise known as Calvinism) and constantly mis-represent the Reformed position.

Why don’t you pick up a good book on Calvinism, study it for awhile, ask questions and then you will be in a better position to start threads on the subject?

 

[TinaG]

You seem to every now and then post on Reformed theology (otherwise known as Calvinism) and constantly mis-represent the Reformed position.

Why don’t you pick up a good book on Calvinism, study it for awhile, ask questions and then you will be in a better position to start threads on the subject?

SR,

Hi!

We could speculate on his early quick responses and his silence of late. Evidence on this thread indicates that he does severely misrepresent the Reformed position. Perhaps you could suggest a good book for him to read and see how he responds? I gave up on the thread earlier because it seemed like he was not responding to me in a meaningful way.

I brought up the difficulty of the two wills of God versus the idea of the simplicity of God. I would like to hear it if you have an answer for that.

-Tina