Adams:

“Not willing that any should perish.” There is no man that hates the effect of his own worth. If the painter have drawn a counterfeit, or limned the resemblance of a creature, lie regards it as the effect of his own curious art. If a man begets a son, he is tied in affection to him by the bond of nature. If a preacher convert a profligate, and beget a soul unto Christ, he loves him in a higher degree of relation than those of art or nature, even of grace. And will the most wise and good Creator of all things hate the workmanship of his own hands? No, the Lord hates nothing that, he hath made. There is something in the creatures he hath made, which he hates; but the creature itself, as it is a creature, he loves. Our weakness doth often fail to distinguish between a man and his fault; so we hate the man together with his vice, whereas we should hate the vice and love the man. But God can distinguish betwixt the metal which is his and the dross of the metal which is not his: he rejects the dross, but he wishes well to the metal. If a man’s wife be an adulteress, he puts her away, because she then ceases to be a wife ; but if she repent, God doth not put her away, because she does not cease to he a woman. Adultery may make her no wife, death itself cannot make her no creature. Both God and her husband detest her sin; yet God doth, and her husband should, love her soul.

But if God be not willing that any should perish, how then do any come to perish? Can they perish against his will? Shall any be lost whom he will save? I might answer this objection, that the question here is not concerning God’s secret will; But so much of it as is revealed to us in his holy word, whereby he affords means of salvation to all, declaring himself not willing that any should perish. But let us soberly examine this point; for Scripture seems to contradict Scripture. “God will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth,” 1 Tim. ii.4: and here, he is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” On the contrary, “Whom he will he hardens,” Rom. ix.18: and, “I will harden the heart of Pharaoh,” Exod. vii.3. Is the Spirit divided? If truth be against truth, how can it stand? Who will harden? That God which is rich in goodness, whose mercy is above all his works, will he? He which is grieved for our offenses, and wills not the death of a sinner, will he harden? And of all places, the temple for his Holy Spirit to repose in, the exchequer and storehouse for all his graces, will he harden the heart? He says, he will: yet dares the blasphemous sinner rub his filthiness on that immaculate purity of his Maker? Does he live by his mercy, and yet charge him of injustice, making it the midwife of so foul a progeny? Evil could never be the child of goodness, nor can sin (so basely descended) lay claim to omnipotency. Doth pure water and puddle flow immediately from the self-same spring? or light and darkness from the same sun? How then comes it to pass? Consider with me these positions.

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Calvin:

1)

“But the Lord is not slack,” or, delays not. He checks extreme and unreasonable haste by another reason, that is, that the Lord defers his coming that he might invite all mankind to repentance. For our minds are always prurient, and a doubt often creeps in, why he does not come sooner. But when we hear that the Lord, in delaying, shows a concern for our salvation, and that he defers the time because he has a care for us, there is no reason why we should any longer complain of tardiness. He is tardy who allows an occasion to pass by through slothfulness: there is nothing like this in God, who in the best manner regulates time to promote our salvation. And as to the duration of the whole world, we must think exactly the same as of the life of every individual; for God by prolonging time to each, sustains him that he may repent. In the like manner he does not hasten the end of the world, in order to give to all time to repent. This is a very necessary admonition, so that we may learn to employ time aright, as we shall otherwise suffer a just punishment for our idleness.

“Not willing that any should perish.” So wonderful is his love towards mankind, that he would have them all to be saved, and is of his own self prepared to bestow salvation on the lost. But the order is to be noticed, that God is ready to receive all to repentance, so that none may perish; for in these words the way and manner of obtaining salvation is pointed out. Every one of us, therefore, who is desirous of salvation, must learn to enter in by this way. But it may be asked, If God wishes none to perish, why is it that so many do perish? To this my answer is, that no mention is here made of the hidden purpose of God, according to which the reprobate are doomed to their own ruin, but only of his will as made known to us in the gospel. For God there stretches forth his hand without a difference to all, but lays hold only of those, to lead them to himself, whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world.

But as the verb choresai is often taken passively by the Greeks, no less suitable to this passage is the verb which I have put in the margin, that God would have all, who had been before wandering and scattered, to be gathered or come together to repentance.

Calvin, Commentary, 2 Peter 3:9

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