Q. 1. “Where does God’s ‘desire’ stand with regards to His will?”
The desire of God is always in His
decree and the end which it achieves. (EPCA,
“Universalism and the Reformed Churches”)
God’s
will has historically and very helpfully been spoken of in chiefly two ways:
there is the “will of God’s decree”
(i.e. what God shall do—this refers
to His eternal counsel which determined absolutely everything that shall come
to pass) and there is the “will of God’s command”
(i.e. what He tells us we should do—this
refers to His moral, ethical requirements which are summed in the Ten
Commandments) … When we come to the will of God’s decree, that definitely is what God desires, wishes and wants to
happen—and therefore it comes about. When we deal with the commands of God, on the other hand, they don’t tell us what God desires or wishes or wants to happen—they
tell us what God is pleased with. (Rev. Angus Stewart—public lecture, “God’s
Saving Will in the New Testament”)
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Q. 2. “Does not God’s command tell us
what God desires?”
Angus
Stewart: “A
command of God doesn’t show what God desires.
It merely shows what pleases God.”
Matthew Winzer: “The will of
precept has no volitional content, for it simply states what God has
commanded ought to be done by man. Whether man wills to do it
is absolutely dependent upon whether God has decreed that he shall do it. So it
is quite inappropriate to say that God wills something to be with
reference to His will of command, for the preceptive will never pertains to
the futurition of actions, only to the obligation of
them. (“Murray on the Free Offer: A
Review”)
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758):
“A command and manifestation of will [aka, ‘a desire’] are not the same thing.
**A command does not always imply a true desire that the thing commanded
should be done.** So much is manifest [or, we see solid proof of this]
by the instance of Abraham commanded to offer up Isaac” (“The Works of
Jonathan Edwards” [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974], vol. II, p. 548).
Charles L. Rodman: “Since God
gives grace and repentance according to His desire and purpose, only to those
whom He has chosen in Christ,—and answer in the affirmative to the above
question, must also imply with respect to the reprobate, that God desires that they shall obey His precepts as fallen creatures,
without His gift of grace and repentance. In other words, God must be said
to desire the obedience and salvation of the reprobate without grace. Such is a
thoroughly Pelagian notion, and a distinct trespass beyond the boundaries of
divine revelation, and is an encroachment upon the mystery of divine
sovereignty and human responsibility. The same doctrine to be consistent, must
also affirm that God in commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah,
also desired that Abraham should slay him. Furthermore, in this system, it
would seem, that while God sees the company of the reprobate like drowning men,
and earnestly longs for and desires their salvation, He does nothing to provide
them with the means of deliverance, i.e., the application of His grace to their
hearts, and the benefits of the redemption purchased by Christ. It might well
be asked, if God had not purposed that wicked men by His determinate counsel
should take and slay the Lord Jesus, how then would He have accomplished His
desire in the salvation of His people?
While it is denied that God desires that the
reprobate shall obey His precepts, it must also be denied that God in any
instance desire that His precepts shall be broken., for that would imply that
God is an author and desirer of sin. Where the purpose of God is fulfilled in
the breaking of a precept, it is a case in which He has made the wrath of man
to praise Him. These things demonstrate the error of separating desire from
purpose in God and joining it to precept.
A negative answer to the question simply holds,
that because God is sovereign, omniscient, and omnipotent, having decreed
whatsoever comes to pass, governing all His creatures and all their actions, He
will fulfil all His desire and pleasure, and so never did, nor ever will, have
unaccomplished purposes and desires. We therefore maintain that a desire in the
inscrutable counsel of God’s will cannot manifestly be mixed with the
fulfilment or non-fulfilment of His perceptive and revealed will with respect
to all men. Since the will of God is inscrutable and unsearchable, so is His
desire, except where His will and purposes concerning His own glory, and the
salvation of His elect are revealed. Therefore, no desire in God can be
understood apart from His eternal will and purpose, which with respect to
fallen mankind, is only revealed as separating the elect from the reprobate.
When desire is said to be opposed to purpose in the Omnipotent and Omniscient
Being of God, it is nothing but a confusion of the divine nature, and an
unwarranted searching by its proponents into the inscrutable counsel of God’s
will.” (Source: “The Desire of God for the Salvation of the Reprobate” [EPCA],
pp. 4-5)
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Q.
3. “What sort of problems arise when we say that a ‘command’ of God entails a
‘desire’ of God?”
If
a command of God means that God wants
every individual person to do it, what does that do to God? Thomas Aquinas
[described] God as “the unmoved Mover,” [but the] view of a ‘command’ of God
requiring that God desires that it
take place makes God “the most frustrated
Desirer ever.” Think of it this way: The unbeliever, because of his total
depravity, cannot do any good (“There is none that doeth good”—Rom. 3:12). [If
we follow the idea that God’s commands tell us what God ‘desires,’ then you end
up with] the majority of people, all of their life, frustrating a desire of
God. Think of the [elect child of God]—some are regenerated as infants and
others are regenerated later: Let’s say there’s someone who’s effectually called
when he’s thirty years old, so that everything up to that thirty years was only
sinful and nothing righteous and pleasing to God in [anything] that person did.
Then, after that person is converted,
the good that he would, he does not, and the evil that he would not, that he
does (cf. Rom. 7:14-16)—i.e. even in the good that he does, there is always
sin; and, for use of a better phrase, even in the evil that we do, there is always
a little bit of good in it—for you always hate
it as a believer. So if every command means that God desires it (e.g. the Ten Commandments: “no other gods before Me;
worship Me only in the way that I tell you; don’t take the name of the Lord God
in vain and remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; honour all authority over
you; no killing, adultery, stealing, lying or coveting …”)—you end up with
God’s desires with regard to the reprobate and all their lives … thwarted; and
then all the life of the elect before they’re saved (more unfulfilled desires),
and then with regard to the believer, as he never seems to do anything perfect
either … This view ends up with God just incredibly frustrated, failed
desires—all these things He wished and wanted to happen never happen (the
opposite happens), and that He decreed these things so that they would never
happen (He decreed the fall, He decreed reprobation, He decreed that Christ
wouldn’t die for the reprobate, He decreed that He wouldn’t regenerate them or reveal
Christ to them, or preserve them or keep them, or glorify them, or raise them
up at the resurrection …) What does that do to God? [The] Bible talks about
God’s will being sovereign, gracious, saving, etc.
A
command of God doesn’t show what God desires.
It shows what pleases God. So you can
say to an unbeliever “You should repent, because your life has been totally
displeasing to God and wicked. And this would be the first thing you do that
has ever pleased God.” And you can say to someone who’s a Christian, “You need
to change the way you are living in this area of your life because that’s
dishonouring to God. This pleases Him. This is the good, perfect, acceptable
and pleasing will of God (cf. Rom. 12:2, which is dealing with the will of command).”
(Rev. Angus Stewart—public
lecture, “God’s Saving Will in the New Testament,” Q&A Session)
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Q. 4. “Is God’s preceptive will (what
He commands) a reflection or revelation of His very heart and nature?”
It is. God’s precepts reveal God’s
holiness and what He approves of. (Rev.
Angus Stewart)
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Q. 5. “What is the difference between
someone simply ‘approving’ or being ‘pleased with’ something, and someone actually
‘desiring’ or ‘wishing’ something to take place?”
A desire
unrealised implies frustration, impotence and failure. However, if X approves of action Y and action Y is not
done, X is not frustrated and has not failed, etc. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
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Q. 6. “Are God’s commands properly
called His ‘revealed’ will?”
Yes, but it is also revealed in
Scripture that God freely wills to save some and not all (election and
reprobation).
The phrase “God’s revealed will” is
ambiguous and needs to be defined carefully in the 21st century because people
use it to smuggle in false ideas. Some, for instance, contrast ‘secret’ will
(election) and ‘revealed’ will (commands) to say that the Bible says little
about election and reprobation, that we should basically ignore it, focus on
the commands, and see in them a desire of God to save everybody. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
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Q. 7. “Are we to say then that God
doesn’t desire that all men repent
and come to faith in Christ?”
People are to be ‘called’ to repent and
believe, but this does not mean God ‘desires’ all men to repent and believe. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
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Q. 8. “Do not the Canons of Dordt III/IV, 8 tell us that God desires all men to
repent and believe when it states: ‘For God hath most earnestly and truly shown
in His word ‘what is pleasing to Him,’
namely, that those who are called should come to Him. He moreover ‘seriously promises’ eternal life and
rest to as many as shall come to Him and believe on Him.’”
The Canons
say that repentance and faith are ‘pleasing’ to God, not that God ‘desires’ the
reprobate to be saved. (Rev. Angus
Stewart)
With regard to [Canons III/IV, 8], the subject is not what God desires, or wills,
but what pleases Him. He has delight in men’s believing on Christ and
coming to God by Him. Faith pleases
Him. Unbelief displeases Him. It is
the same as the truth expressed in Acts 4 at the end—the wicked murder of His
Son displeased God, but He Himself
determined that death for our salvation. There is no contradiction. God is not
required to give the faith that pleases Him to any man. The unbelief that
displeases Him is not His doing in men, but their own wickedness. (Prof. David J. Engelsma)
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Q. 9. “If God says to the reprobate
‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved,’ but really has no desire for
them to do such, but rather only desires for them to continue in their hardness
of heart and unbelief, would that not make God a liar or a trickster or double
minded?
Think it through … Did God “desire”
Pharoah to let Israel go before the 1st plague? And what about a god who
supposedly really wants to save everybody but takes zero steps to achieve this?
Instead, He does loads of things to do the exact opposite: reprobate, hatred,
hardening, etc. Sounds like a double-minded and insincere God! (Rev. Angus
Stewart)
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Q. 10. “Are not unbelievers rendered
without excuse on the judgment day if God is said to not ‘desire’ their
salvation? After all, in rejecting the gospel and refusing to repent they acted
according to God’s desire, didn’t
they?”
This argument could just as easily be
made by Arminians: “If Christ has not died for everyone, then the gospel
command does not leave them without excuse ...”
Unbelievers are left without excuse
because they were told by God what they should do (and what He approves of) but
they wickedly refused.
This argument also proves too much:
unless God desires that I be 100% holy, then I have an excuse for every sin! (Rev. Angus Stewart)
One should not speak of God’s desire that men are unbelieving, but of
His determinate will. God’s command to the reprobate that they
believe expresses His will of command,
and their duty. His counsel that these same persons not believe is His will of decree. This distinction is
plainly biblical. God commanded
Pharaoh to let His people go. This was Pharaoh's duty. At the same time, God
hardened the king’s heart so that he would not obey the command. This is His
will of decree. The account in Exodus
and the reference to the event in Romans 9 teach this explicitly. Men are
judged not according to the decree,
but according to the command. Objection
to the biblical teaching of the decree is opposition to the sovereignty of God.
(Prof. David J. Engelsma)
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Q. 11. “We must distinguish between
Gods ‘revealed decree’ and His ‘hidden counsel.’”
A better way, to avoid confusion, is to
distinguish between God’s “will of decree” and “will of command.”
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Q. 12. “Did not Christ Himself weep over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44)
though He did not decree its salvation but rather its destruction? Does not
this weeping of Christ indicate a desire for the salvation of the entire
nation?”
In the parallel passage of Luke 19, Matthew 23:37,
with which Luke 19 must be compared, Jesus teaches His will to gather
Jerusalem’s children, distinguishing Jerusalem and her children. Jesus did
not will to gather all “Jerusalem,” that is, the members of the Jewish nation,
but her “children.”
Despite the nation’s opposition in its officials,
Jesus did gather Jerusalem’s children. His will to salvation was
definite—Jerusalem’s children—and
this will was accomplished despite the opposition of Jerusalem’s officials.
Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem was not sorrow over a
frustrated will to save all, but characteristically human grief over the fatal wickedness of a city and people that had
once been the city and people of God. The sin
of unbelief with its certain consequences of destruction grieved Jesus, as a
man, deeply. This in no way implied the failure of Jesus as God’s Savior to
save all whom the Father had given Him in the decree of election, namely,
Jerusalem's “children”—the elect Jacobs in distinction from the reprobate
Esaus. (Prof. David J. Engelsma)
For further quotes on Matthew 23:37 and
Luke 19:41-44, check out the following:
http://www.cprf.co.uk/quotes/matthew2337quotes.htm
OR
http://www.cprf.co.uk/articles/matthew23v37offer.html
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Q. 13. “God gave 631 laws to the nation
of Israel. Are you saying that He did not intend for them to be kept?”
He ‘commanded’ that they were to be
kept, which indicates that the keeping of them pleases Him and the breaking of them angers Him. But what is meant by “intend”? Decree? No. Command and
be pleased with obedience, yes. But the question seems to mean something
between these two things. (Rev. Angus
Stewart)
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Q. 14. “What is the relation between
the desire of God and the law’s requirement of obedience? Though God commands
all men to walk in obedience to His law, why does God not ‘desire’ all men to
do so?”
[The] desire of God concerning the
fulfilment of His moral law, is inseparable from its fulfilment by His grace.
Scripture teaches, “without me ye can
do nothing” (John 15:5), so that it must follow that God does not desire that wicked men without grace,
obey His precepts. By His grace, God requires and desires the obedience of
those whom He has effectually called by His Spirit. “For it is God which
worketh in you both to will and to do His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
For God to desire that men shall act
outside His grace in obedience to His precepts, would violate His own moral
order. For God to desire the salvation of men and not grant them the means of
grace, which is essential to save them would make Him a monster. For men to
imagine that they can please God without grace, makes them Pelagians. The
Scripture teaches that without faith it is impossible to please God, for faith
is a gift of God. (EPCA, “Universalism
and the Reformed Churches”)
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Q. 15 “Are you saying He commands us to
do and be something He doesn’t desire for us to be?”
His commands tell us what is right,
what He approves of, and what we must do. What God desires, since He is all-powerful and irresistible, always happens—i.e. His decree, His good
pleasure in Christ to glorify Himself—Job 23:13. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
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Q. 16. “How are we to interpret the
words ‘this is the will of God’ in I Thessalonians 4:3?”
The text is referring to God’s will of command. This is what He demands people to do, what pleases Him,
and that fornication is what He is awfully displeased with and punishes (Heb.
13:4). (Rev. Angus Stewart)
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Q. 17. “What is the difference between
someone ‘requiring’ something, and someone ‘desiring’ something?”
Requiring is a demand, something you must
do. Desiring is wanting/wishing. The well-meant offer teaches a desire,
want, or wish of God that is not fulfilled with regard to the reprobate and
therefore implies a God who is failing and frustrated. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
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This divides God by introducing contrariety into
His nature. It supposes what the Remonstrant Corvinus was ready to grant, “that
there are desires in God that are never fulfilled.” But as John Owen ably
retorted: “Now, surely, to desire what one is sure will never come to pass is
not an act regulated by wisdom or counsel.” (Rev.
Matthew Winzer, “Murray on the Free Offer: A Review”; see John Owen, “Works,”
vol. 10, p. 25)
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Q. 19. “Do we have historical support for the idea
that only the will of decree is the
will of God in the proper sense of the term, as an act of volition?”
… that voluntas
signi, in which God reveals what is our duty, and what we ought to do, not
what is his decree, or what he either will, or ought to do, is not God’s will
properly, but by a figure only;
for commands, and promises, and threatenings revealed argue not the will and
purpose, decree or intention of God, which are properly his will. (Samuel Rutherford, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself (Glasgow: Samuel and Archibald
Gardner, 1803), p. 480)
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Q. 20. “Does not the preceptive will reveal what is
‘pleasing’ or ‘delightful’ to God?”
No one denies that the preceptive will reveals what is
pleasing or delightful to God, or that repentance and faith are things pleasing
to God. But Reformed theology cannot accept the conclusion … that the precept
indicates a delight, pleasure, wish, desire or any other volitional quality
within God to the actual repentance of every man. That notion destroys the
simplicity of God’s will. The unity of God’s will is found in the fact that the
preceptive will reveals that God delights in the salvation of repentant sinners, while God’s decretive
will has sovereignly determined to which
sinners in particular God is pleased to grant repentance.
Between the delight of God’s nature and the will of His
decree there is a most perfect and consummate harmony. The universalism [of the
“well-meant” offer] destroys this unity.
There is and can be no contradiction within the will of
God, or between God’s will of delight and His decree. God’s decree, after all,
is God willing His “eternal good pleasure” or delight. [The “well-meant” offer
makes] God’s will contradictory and thereby turn it into a complex will and a
“profound mystery” … God cannot be divided. (Rev.
Christopher J. Connors, “The Biblical Offer of the Gospel”)
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