We've heard it over and over again on this thread that God only saves the elect, and that God only WANTED to save the elect. Calvinism notoriously interprets John 3:16 "For God so love the world" as that Jesus was speaking ONLY to the elect.
However, there's a problem with this view. If Calvinism is intent on this kind of exegesis, then it needs to be consistently applied to all of Scripture. You can't limit the audience in John 3:16, and then expand the audience elsewhere. Either John 3:16 was limited to those elect in that context, or the Calvinist must concede that it actually does apply to the whole world (1 John 2:2).
Now if it applies ONLY to those elect in John 3:16, then the Calvinist faces a conundrum in Isaiah 53:5-6
"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
So who is the audience here? ISRAEL. Thus if the Calvinist interpretation of John 3:16 applies only to elect Gentiles, then the same logic of interpretation applied to Isaiah 53 would have the "we" "us" "our" of verses 5-6 limiting the death and atonement of Christ to the Jews.
The elect from Israel and all the world is who will be saved. That is quite OBVIOUSLY who that passage is referring to.
Now where else in the Bible does God state who He desires to save, and to whom is salvation offered?
1 Timothy 2:3-4
"For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."
God's will, like your will- is complex.
You have no desire to see your children feel pain, yet you know that if you teach them to ride a bicycle, at some point, they are going to crash. They will scrape their knee or possibly even break a bone. You do not WILL that for your children, but you know it will happen.
Yet you go ahead and teach them to ride that bike anyway. Why? Because your will is not simple. You can will one thing, but will the very opposite of that one thing even more because the end result of it is what most pleases you. The end result which you are willing to risk your children's pain for is that they obtain the joy of riding a bike.
You will two things- the dead level opposite of one another. You pursue the the thing you will the MOST of the two things that you will.
Do you see? It is not simple. If you need everything to be simple, you'll never get the truth of anything- including soteriology.
God really does will that all men be saved. We are to pray for all men because we pray to a God who cares about all men and really does will that all men be saved.
But he wills something more. He wills for the results that come only from a world in which people perish.
Now, you will say that God never willed for a world where people perish.
Then I will remind you that God did not HAVE to make this world. And he did not have to make this world exactly the way he made it. And I will point out to you that God KNEW- he absolutely KNEW that IF HE MADE THIS WORLD that people would perish- yet he made it anyway.
God willed to make a world in which people would perish because there was something valuable enough to him that he was willing to have people perish to get it.
Now, we can quibble over what that thing is- but both non-cals and Cals agree that God was willing to build a world in which he knew people would perish in order to have this thing.
Arminians say the thing God wanted so much that he was willing to make a world in which people perish was a creature endowed with free will to choose to love him.
Calvinists say that God wanted to glorify his grace and his Son.
But regardless, ALL OF US cannot deny that God built this world KNOWING that if he did people would perish in this world.
Yet God was willing for this world to exist anyway.
Something was valuable enough to God to create people who would perish in order that God might obtain it.
That is an invincible fact.
