My Stance and Does God Want Everyone Saved

Wow, you got my paradox, I would answer Yes and then No.

How is God sovereign? Is the 10 quadrillion dollar question.

 

Well, let's go to scripture,

Romans 9 shows God is sovereign.

Lamentations 3 shows God's wholehearted will is not accomplished.

 

Lamentations 3:33-36
For He does not afflict [j]willingly (literally with His heart)
Or grieve the sons of men.
To crush under His feet
All the prisoners of the [k]land,
35 To [l]deprive a man of justice
In the presence of the Most High,
36 To [m]defraud a man in his lawsuit—
Of these things the Lord does not [n]approve.

Lamentations shows two things:
1. God desires with His heart the absence of having to grieve those whom punishment is well deserved, as in Jerusalem.
2. God's heart's desire is the absence of sin.

Matthew 23:37
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.

Lamentations 3:33-36 allows us to split God's will into two categories. Especially when combined with texts like Matthew 23:37. God has what He does with His heart in it and what He does with His heart not in it.

Notice how this varies from Calvinism's two wills. A Declarative and permissive will. What God desires and what God allows.

The problem is why is God's heart unwillingly making decrees He does not desire? God's declarative will cannot be against His heart or will, otherwise why decree it to happen.

Thus, there is something wrong with children of wrath in the sense that God seems unpleased with the idea. He could of course make children of wrath and mercy of those already fallen, this serves the purpose of making the knowledge of His glory and wrath known to all. However, where did sin come from that God does things his heart are not in?

We might argue He derives some pleasure of any sort in having children of wrath. Traditionally, this argued to be the revelation of His wrath and glory. Wrath to sinners unjustified by Christ. Glory known to sinners justified by Christ.

This breaks down though.

1. God according to scripture does not with His heart will, desire with His heart, or take pleasure in judgment upon the wicked. He hates sin in His creation. Then, how can God want sin in His creation with His declarative will? Why not decree a nonsinful creation. What good is sin and evil to the God of scripture, who does not want sin and whose heart does not will judgment upon the wicked except when His heart is not in it?

2. Ezekiel shows God's good pleasure is not served by sinners condemned to judgment. Notice God uses His title of the Sovereign YHVH in Ezekiel 33:11. Literally Adonai Yahweh. This mystery is profound and God hits it with an exclamation point.

In the OT how many wondered at the fact the Sovereign Creator has his chosen nation in rebellion.

A key logical question remains, why did Yahweh allow sin if He receives nothing from it in terms of pleasure? But instead must do what His heart is not in.

Ezekiel 18:23 NASB
Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked,” declares the Lord God, “[k]rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?

Ezekiel 18:32 NASB
"For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies," declares the Lord GOD. "Therefore, repent and live."

Ezekiel 33:11 NASB
"Say to them, 'As I live!' declares the Lord GOD, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'

3. Where does the sin of the serpent, Adam, and the angels come? This is not secondary or tertiary to Calvinism, it refutes the whole idea as presently understood. Sin is accounted for in Arminian thought due to choice between obedience or disobedience. We can argue if the idea of "free will" is biblical, but it does explain things logically as Irenaeus' soul making theodicy or more recently Platinga's free will defense make clear.

Calvinism on the other hand is left with a logical hole. A very big one at that.

 

Ok, I threw punches at Calvinism. I well next throw punches at Arminianism in a little. I get R.C. Sproul on this issue a bit.

 

OK, something I have noticed, and fell for myself, is the Arminian habit of defending God's "goodness." Well the problem is what is meant by good? If is the character of God as explained to us in the bible, with full knowledge that God is innocent in all ways no matter what He does in scripture, we have it right. However, this is not what Arminians typically mean. They mean a good that is good to our modern understanding of "goodness," which is not biblical good.

Arminians too often say, "Let God be good!" To this I must retort with the Reformers: "Let God be God."

Romans 9 is the most offensive section of scripture to modern mankind. So I will go to it immediately.

6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s [d]descendants, but: “[e]through Isaac your [f]descendants will be named.” 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as [g]descendants. 9 For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; 11 for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would [h]stand, not because of works but [j]because of Him who calls, 12 it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed [k]throughout the whole earth.” 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel [l]for honorable use and another [m]for common use?

22 [n]What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. 25 As He says also in Hosea,

“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’
And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’”
26 “And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved; 28 for the Lord will execute His word on the earth, [o]thoroughly and [p]quickly.” 29 And just as Isaiah foretold,

“Unless the Lord of [q]Sabaoth had left to us a [r]posterity,
We would have become like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.”

*The first highlighted section reveals that God has sovereign choice to choose whom He wants for blessing. He can have compassion and mercy on whom He wants from before birth. Independent of the constructs for good and evil found among mankind. This is not capricious but an aspect of an innocent God's character.

*The second highlighted section reveals that God has sovereign choice to choose whom He wants for wrath. When mankind retorts that is unfair, God responds by saying does not a potter have a right to make the clay as he desires? That rankles our sense of justice. However, it is still within the character of an almighty and innocent God.

*The third highlighted section is the fusion of these two concerns into an analogy many Arminians reject at face value. That God can make His almighty power known by making some people to be objects of wrath from creation. People destined for hell. While others are to be made at their creation to be vessels of mercy to make known the riches of His glory upon them. It is not beyond God's character or power to do these things, otherwise scripture would not say it is so with such frankness.

*God can make children of wrath and children of mercy, He is under no obligation to save us who have rebelled. Rebels do not get a vote, no matter how “unfair” that seems.

I will continue in a later post.

 

I have a bunch of Lutheran friends who would disagree. Brother, I'll be honest, I'm still trying to figure this stuff out, this is hard. Thanks for your prodding, although I still believe God desires all saved, I am now cognizant that this is not equally. Nor did I understand my God Who reigns in heaven on His throne above the Cherubim. He is infinite nightmare to His enemies and even to terrifying to those that love Him. Thank you for showing me that about Yahweh.

 

I would think God's greatest concern would be for His heart's desires, to include his glory. Brother I must send you back to post #86, where I lay out why Calvinism's ideas of two wills of God doesn't make sense.

 

I just figured the cosmic humor in all this. The new question everything hinges on is: What does God want? It seems to be a subtle and unknown question that divides Calvinists and Arminians. Because the two answer it so differently.