Does God Desire Every Man To Be Saved?

I have been per­son­ally con­victed by read­ing James White’s The Potter’s Free­dom that God does in fact not desire all men to be saved. This being said, I repent of my for­mer con­vic­tion that there are two sote­ri­o­log­i­cal wills in God (although I do think God does will one thing and do another in cer­tain cir­cum­stances). This idea is made pop­u­lar among reformed the­olo­gians such as John Piper, Wayne Gru­dem, and Jonathan Edwards. God instead desires all “kinds/classes of men” to be saved.

Below are some excerpts from another view of reformed the­olo­gians (some of them see “all men” as being both Jews and Gen­tiles). The focus is on 1 Tim­o­thy 2:4, because 2 Peter 3:9 is clearly writ­ten to Chris­tians in an escha­to­log­i­cal con­text. Please refrain from mak­ing emo­tional com­ments, but keep them exeget­i­cal. Note: I have thought this through a lot to ensure I am not read­ing into the texts.

James White (The Potter’s Free­dom)

Who are kings and all who are in author­ity? They are kinds of men, classes of men. Paul often spoke of “all men” in this fash­ion [cf. Titus 2:11]. First, if one takes “all men” in verse 4 to mean “all men indi­vid­u­ally,” does it not fol­low that Christ of neces­sity must be medi­a­tor for all men as well? If one say, “Yes, Christ med­i­tates for every sin­gle human being,” does it not fol­low that Christ fails as a medi­a­tor every time a per­son negates His work by their all-powerful act of free will? One could hope that no bib­li­cal scholar would ever pro­mote such an idea…

George Smeaton (The Doc­trine of the Atone­ment, as Taught by the Apos­tles)

When the apos­tle directs Chris­tians to pray for all men, the allu­sion is to be under­stood as point­ing out ranks, con­di­tions, and classes of men. This is evi­dent, partly because they did not know all men numer­i­cally; partly because, among men in the wide sense, there are some for whom we are not to pray, viz. those who have sinned unto death (1 John v. 16). That the allu­sion is not to all men numer­i­cally, may be proved, too, from the announce­ment that God will have all men to be saved (ver. 14 [should be 4]), which refers to ranks and con­di­tions, not to indi­vid­u­als; for God’s will would be effec­tual on all men, if the other mean­ing were intended.

John Calvin (Insti­tutes of the Chris­t­ian Reli­gion)

Sec­ondly, they quote a pas­sage from Paul in which he states that God ‘wills all men to be saved’ [I Tim. 2:3–4]. Even though this is dis­tinct from the above rea­son, it has some­thing in com­mon with it. I reply: first, it is clear from the con­text how He wills it. For Paul cou­ples the two points: that He wills them to be saved, and to come to a recog­ni­tion of the truth. If they mean that this has been fixed by God’s eter­nal plan so that they may receive the doc­trine of sal­va­tion, what does that say­ing of Moses’ mean: ‘What nation is so glo­ri­ous that God should draw nigh unto it as he does unto you?’ [Deut. 4:7 p., cf. Comm.]. How did it hap­pen that God deprived many peo­ples of the light of his gospel while oth­ers enjoyed it? How did it hap­pen that the pure recog­ni­tion of the doc­trine of god­li­ness never came to some, while oth­ers barely tasted some obscure rudi­ments of it? From this it will be easy to deter­mine the drift of Paul’s rea­son­ing. He had enjoined Tim­o­thy to make solemn prayers in the church for kings and rulers [I Tim. 2:1–2]. But since it seemed some­what absurd to pour out prayers to God for an almost hope­less class of men (not only strangers all to the body of Christ, but intent upon crush­ing his King­dom with all their strength), he adds, ‘This is accept­able to God, who wills all men to be saved’ [I Tim. 2:3–4 p.]. By this, Paul surely means only that God has not closed the way unto sal­va­tion to any order of men; rather, he has so poured out his mercy that he would have none with­out it.

John Owen (Works)

These, and the like rea­sons, which com­pel us to under­stand by all men, verse 4, whom God would have to be saved, men of all sorts, do also pre­vail for the same accep­ta­tion of the word all, verse 6, where Christ is said to give him­self ‘a ran­som for all;’ where­unto you may also add all those whereby we before declared that it was of absolute neces­sity and just equity that all they for whom a ran­som was paid should have a part and por­tion in that ran­som, and, if that be accepted as suf­fi­cient, be set at lib­erty. Pay­ing and accept­ing of a ran­som inti­mate a com­mu­ta­tion and set­ting free of all them for whom the ran­som is paid and accepted. By all, then, can none be under­stood but the redeemed, ran­somed ones of Jesus Christ,â??such as, for him and by virtue of the price of his blood, are vin­di­cated unto the glo­ri­ous lib­erty of the chil­dren of God; which, as some of all sorts are expressly said to be, Rev. v. 9 (which place is inter­pre­ta­tive of this), so that all in the world uni­ver­sally are so is con­fess­edly false.

John Gill (The Cause of God and Truth)

I rather think that by all men are meant the Gen­tiles, who are some­times called the world, the whole world, and every crea­ture (Rom. 11:12, 15; 1 John 2:2; Mark 16:15); which is the sense, I appre­hend, in which it is used in verse 1, where the apos­tle exhorts, that sup­pli­ca­tions, prayers, inter­ces­sions, and giv­ing thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all in author­ity; which was con­trary to a notion that obtained among the Jews, of whom there were many in the prim­i­tive churches, that they should not pray for hea­thens and hea­then magistrates.

Loraine Boet­tner (What is the Gospel?)

What about 1 Tim­o­thy 2:4–6, ‘Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowl­edge of the truth… Who gave him­self a ran­som for all’? It must be noted that ‘all’ is used in var­i­ous senses. Often­times it means not all men with­out excep­tion but all men with­out dis­tinc­tion: Jews and Gen­tiles, bond and free, men and women, rich and poor. In this con­text it is clearly used in that sense.