“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (ESV)
Or
“The 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.” (NIV)
The ESV translates the word “wishing” while the NIV translates it “wanting” but the bottom line is the same. If God is not willing or wishing that any should perish then why would Scripture also teach that Jacob was elect from before birth and Esau was not (Romans 9:13)?
First of all we need to understand that an expression of God’s will (and even a man’s will) needs to be viewed in three categories. There is the will expressed in an enforced decree (decretive), the will expressed in a prescription or rule (prescriptive), and the will expressed in a disposition or attitude.
God’s decretive will or His will expressed in a decree will can’t be resisted and will be accomplished. When He speaks forth His decree it is going to happen. A biblical example of God’s will expressed in a decree can be found in the book of Daniel. You probably remember the “Handwriting on the Wall” and this has even entered into popular language to indicate that something is decided already and can’t be stopped from occurring.
Daniel 5:24-28God’s prescriptive will is His intent for our behavior expressed in commands that we need to obey. Disobedience brings consequences but obedience is not compelled. The 10 Commandments are excellent examples of God’s expression of His will in a prescriptive manner. He says, “thou shalt not” and yet we do what He told us not to do and then we eventually reap the wages of sin.
“Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
His will of disposition is what we would think of as wishing or expressing an opinion. For example, God tells Ezekiel to tell Israel that “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). So God does not find pleasure in the death (will of disposition) of the wicked and continually stresses that men are making real decisions and yet they persistently stand against the voice of God calling for repentance (prescriptive will).
So we have decretive will or will of decree, prescriptive will or commands, and then God’s will of disposition.
Certainly many have looked at 2 Peter 3:9 and said that it was simply an expression of God’s will of disposition. In fact, the ESV even translates it as “wishes” leaving the interpretation a bit ambiguous. However, the meaning seems a little odd if God is omniscient since He wouldn't need to wait to see if anyone was going to get saved. Besides, there are other scriptures using wish to mean a will of disposition. For example, Matthew 7:12 quotes Jesus saying “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” So the “Golden Rule” uses wish in the way we use use wish to mean a disposition or desire.
The problem with assigning God’s will of disposition to 2 Peter 3:9 is that it uses the wrong word. It is a purposeful wanting in 2 Peter 3:9 and not the wishing of Matthew 7:12. The verse found in 2 Peter 3:9 is not a prescriptive expression of God's will from either context or simple reading of the text. Consequently the most straightforward reading of the Scripture is found by reading the verse as God expressing His will in the decretive sense. So if we read in that way God decrees that He is unwilling (will not let) any perish. Well then suddenly the context is critical (as it always is and we should make sure that we never forget that). Who is “any of you”? If God decrees that He is unwilling to let "any of you" perish and "any of you" is everyone then we wind up finding support for universalism and presto we become heretics.
Scripture always fits together but we often insert ourselves out of context and then work from the middle outward. Remember when we looked at Hebrews how we wished we knew for sure who the epistle was written to so that it would aid our understanding of the Scriptures? Well we know who Peter was written to because it is specified in the first 2 verses of the epistle.
2 Peter 1:1-2Therefore, the epistle is written to the Church and not to the world at large. The “any of you” are the called and elect (see verse 10). The “any of you” is you if you are a believer! You sitting in class or reading this Scripture now, if you are a Christian are the “any of you”. The context of the verse is an explanation of the delay in the second coming of Christ and Scripture tells us that God is delaying because He is not willing that any of the called and elect would perish. This verse is entirely consistent with Chapter 9 of Romans and in no way conflicts. In fact Peter is confirming that God is aware of those He will call and will not return in judgement until He finishes because He will not let any of His elect perish just as Jesus promised (John 6:35-44; John 17:12)
Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
The struggle that we have in understanding how God made us alive when we were dead in our trespasses and sins is natural. It is also natural that we struggle to understand how God in His transcendence relates to His creation. Paul does a detailed explanation in Romans and it is OK that we take time to digest and understand all that God wants to explain to us and then leave the rest in God’s hand. Peter says in this epistle;
2 Peter 3:15-18
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
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