A common argument against Calvinism is that it can’t be true that God only picked a few to be saved from eternity past because God wants to save everyone. The proof text for this is found in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise [to return again] as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” How can it be that God only chose a few if “all should reach repentance?”
The problem is, that this single verse is not a complete picture of God. God doesn’t desire solely to show mercy, but he also desires to show his wrath. Consider Romans 9:22-24 (emphasis is mine):
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—-even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.
Notice that God desires to show his wrath and his power, not just mercy. Sin must be punished and God will send the sons of Adam who do not repent into eternal punishment. God prepared these “vessels of wrath” just as He prepared the “vessels of mercy.”
This whole passage in Romans immediately follows Romans 9:20 where Paul rebukes the hypothetical person who questions why our Creator would work in such a way that cannot be resisted. The answer is simply this: God is glorifying Himself because He is the Creator and this is how He works. Like it or not, that is our God.
Therefore, in 2 Peter 3:9, we cannot understand God’s desire for repentance to be that everyone is able to choose purely out of our own free will, but that God has some say in the matter. He has made us each to fulfill a purpose and for some that purpose is to provide an example of God’s glory, wrath, and power to those of us whose purpose it is to receive mercy. The terror of God’s wrath is terrible to consider but makes the mercy that He has shown through his Son, Jesus Christ, that much more glorious.
Cheers.
