Henry:

Q. 20. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the state of sin and misery ?

A. God having out of his mere good pleasure from all eternity elected some to eternal life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of a state of sin and misery, and to bring them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer.

1. Might not God justly have left all mankind to perish in their fallen state? Yes: for in his sight shall no man living be justified, Ps. cxliii. 2. Would God have been a loser by it, if they had been left to perish? No: for, can a man be profitable to God? Job xxii. 2. But did he leave them to perish ? No: for the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man appears, Tit. iii. 4. Was the case of fallen angels helpless and desperate? Yes: for God spared not them, 2 Pet. ii. 4. But is the case of fallen man so ? No: for he is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, 2 Pet. iii. 9. Is God’s patience a token for good ? Yes: the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, 2 Pet. iii. 15. Does it appear that God has a good will to man’s salvation? Yes: As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he turn and live, Ezek. xxxiii. 11. Is this an encouragement to us all to hope in his mercy? Yes: for if the Lord had been pleased to kill us, he would not have showed us such things as these, Judg. xiii. 23.

Matthew Henry, “A Scripture Catechism in the Method of the Assembly’s,” in The Complete Works of Matthew Henry, (Grand Rapids Michigan: Baker, 1978), 2:190.

Grudem:

1) There are several instances where Scripture mentions God’s revealed will. In the Lord’s prayer the petition, “Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6: 10) is a prayer that people would obey God’s revealed will, his commands, on earth just as they do in heaven (that is, fully and completely). This could not be a prayer that God’s secret will (that is, his decrees for events that he has planned) would in fact be fulfilled, for what God has decreed in his secret will shall certainly come to pass. To ask God to bring about what he has already decreed to happen would simply be to pray, “May what is going to happen happen.” That would be a hollow prayer indeed, for it would not be asking for anything at all. Furthermore, since we do not know God’s secret will regarding the future, the person praying a prayer for God’s secret will to be done would never know for what he or she was praying. It would be a prayer without understandable content and without effect. Rather, the prayer “Your will be done” must be understood as an appeal for the revealed will of God to be followed on earth.

If the phrase is understood in this way, it provides a pattern for us to pray on the basis of God’s commands in Scripture. In this sense, Jesus provides us with a guide for an exceedingly broad range of prayer requests. We are encouraged by Christ here to pray that people would obey God’s laws, that they would follow his principles for life, that they would obey his commands to repent of sin and trust in Christ as Savior. To pray these things is to pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

A little later, Jesus says, “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Once again, the reference cannot be to God’s secret will or will of decree (for all mankind follows this, even if unknowingly), but to God’s revealed will, namely, the moral law of God that Christ’s followers are to obey (cf. Matt. 12:50; probably also 18:14). When Paul commands the Ephesians to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5: 17; cf. Rom. 2: 18), he again is speaking of God’s revealed will. So also is John when he says, “If we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (l John 5: 14).

It is probably best to put 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 in this category as well. Paul says that God “desires [or ‘wills, wishes,’ Gk. theleo] all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (l Tim. 2:4). Peter says that the Lord “is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). In neither of these verses can God’s will be understood to be his secret will, his decree concerning what will certainly occur. This is because the New Testament is clear that there will be a final judgment and not all will be saved. It is best therefore to understand these references as speaking of God’s revealed will his commands for mankind to obey and his declaration to us of what is pleasing in his sight.

On the other hand, many passages speak of God’s secret will. When James tells us to say, “If the Lord wills we shall live and we shall do this or that” (James 4:15), he cannot be talking about God’s revealed will or will of precept, for with regard to many of our actions we know that it is according to God’s command that we do one or another activity that we have planned. Rather, to trust in the secret will of God overcomes pride and expresses humble dependence on God’s sovereign control over the events of our lives.  Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 214.  [Italics original;  and underlining mine.]

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Fairbairn:

1) Ezekiel 18:23,

(4.) And now, having repudiated the false imagination of the people, as to the innocent suffering for the guilty, and asserted anew the great principle of God s impartiality in dealing with each according to his desert, the prophet comes to his last hypothetical case–the case, namely, of a supposed change, not, as hitherto, in the character of one generation as compared with another, but in the character of one and the same individual, from bad to good and from good to bad. This was more especially the practical case for the persons here addressed by the prophet, and therefore he reserved it to the last; as it enabled him to shut them up to the alternative of either abandoning at once their sinful ways, or of charging upon their own hardened impenitence all that they might still experience of the troubles and afflictions that pressed upon them. For the message here is, that so far from laying to men s charge the burden of iniquities that had been committed by others, the Lord would not even visit them for their own, if they sincerely repented and turned to the way of righteousness; while on the other hand, if they should begin to fall away into transgression, they must not expect their earlier goodness to screen them from judgment,–because in that case, having taken up with a new condition, it was just and proper that a corresponding change should be introduced into the Divine procedure toward them: “If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he has committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him: in his righteousness that he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? says the Lord Jehovah, and not that he turn from his way and live? But when the righteous turns away from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked does, shall he live? Nothing of all his righteousness that he has done shall be remembered: in his trespass that he has trespassed, and in his sin that he has sinned, in them shall he die.”

What a beautiful simplicity and directness in the statement! It is like the lawgiver anew setting before the people the way of life and the way of death, and calling upon them to determine which of the two they were inclined to choose. Then, what a moving tenderness in the appeal, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked? says the Lord God.” You think of me as if I were a heartless being, indifferent to the calamities that be fall my children, and even delighting to inflict chastisement on them for sins they have not committed. So far from this, I have no pleasure in the destruction of those who by their own transgressions have deserved it, but would rather that they turn from their ways and live. Thus he presents himself as a God of holy love,–love yearning over the lost condition of his wayward children, and earnestly desiring their return to peace and safety,–yet still exercising itself in strict accordance with the principles of righteousness, and only, in so far as these might admit, seeking the good of men. For however desirous to secure their salvation, he neither can nor will save them, except in the way of righteousness.

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Fairbairn:

Ver. I. I exhort then., first of all, that petitions, prayers, supplications, thanksgivings, be made for all men. The connection marked here by the ouv with what precedes cannot be designated very close, and our then may more fitly be taken to represent the illative particle than the therefore of the Authorized Version. But it is absurd to deny, with some German critics (Schleiermacher, De Wette), that there is any logical connection whatever. The apostle had immediately before been charging Timothy and others situated like him to take heed to fulfill with all good fidelity the gospel charge, so that they might be able to war a good warfare, and escape the dangers amid which others had made shipwreck. What could be more natural, after this, than to exhort to the presentation of constant prayers in behalf generally of men, and especially of kings and rulers, that by the proper exercise of their authority these might restrain the evils of the time, and make it possible for God-fearing men to lead quiet and peaceable lives? The multiplication of terms for this intercessory function is somewhat remarkable: petitions (deeseis) the simple expression of want or need), prayers (proseuchas), supplications (enteuzeis, the same as the preceding, with the subordinate idea of closer dealing, entreaties, or earnest pleadings). The distinction between them cannot be very sharply drawn; for in several passages certain of them are used where we might rather have expected others, if respect were had to the distinctive shade of meaning suggested by the etymology (as in chap. iv. 5, where enteuzeis is used of ordinary prayer for the divine blessing, and Eph. vi. 18, where supplications of the most earnest kind are intended, and yet only the two first of the words found here are employed). The variety of expression is perhaps chiefly to be regarded as indicating the large place the subject of intercessory prayer had in the apostle’s mind, and the diverse forms he thought should be given to it, according to the circumstances in which, relatively to others, the people of God might be placed. Hence, thanksgivings were to be added, when the conduct of the parties in question was such as to favor the cause of righteousness and truth,–a fit occasion being thereby presented for grateful acknowledgments to God, who had so inclined their hearts. And when it is said, that first of all such thanksgivings and supplications should be offered, if the expression is coupled with the acts of devotion referred to, it can only mean that they should have a prominent place in worship, should on no account be overlooked or treated as of Httle moment, not that they should actually have the precedence of all others. But the expression is most naturally coupled with the apostle’s request on the subject; he first of all entreats that this be done; it is his foremost advice that people should deal with God in the matter, as the most effectual safeguard.

Ver. 2. By mentioning all men as the object of their prayers and thanksgivings, the apostle undoubtedly meant to teach Christians to cherish wide and generous sympathies, and to identify their own happiness and well-being with those of their fellow-men. But he specially associates the duty with those on whose spirit and behavior the peace and good order of society more directly depended–kings (quite generally, as in the address of our Lord to His disciples. Matt. x. i8; also Rom. xiii. i; i Pet. ii. 13; hence affording no ground to the supposition of Baur, that the emperor and his co-regents in the time of the Antonines were meant by the expression), and all that are in authority (heperoche, strictly eminence, but here, as elsewhere, the eminence of social position–a place of authority). Then follows the more immediate end, as regards the praying persons themselves: in order that we may pass a quiet and tranquil life, in all godliness and gravity; that is, may be allowed freely to enjoy our privileges, and maintain the pious and orderly course which becomes us as Christians, without the molestation, the troubles, and the unseemly shifts which are the natural consequence of inequitable government and abused power. The last epithet, gravity, semnoteti, is quite in its proper place; for though it has respect to deportment rather than to Christian principle or duty, it is very closely allied to this, and is such a respectable and decorous bearing as is appropriate to those who live under the felt apprehension of the great realities of the gospel. The term honesty in the A.V. is quite unsuitable, in the now received sense of that word.

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