Manton:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2 PETER iii. 9.

THE apostle, in answer to the cavil and exception of the mockers of religion, is taking off the scandal of the delay of Christ’s coming. Three considerations are produced to satisfy the godly

1. The true measure of speed or delay is the eternity of God. which admits of no beginning, succession, and ending, but consists in a constant presentness to all that which to us seems past or to come; and we must judge as he judges. This is laid down, ver. 8.

2. The end of this delay, which is the conversion of sinners. It proceeds not from any culpable slackness in God, but only his patience towards the elect. God is not slack, but we hasty. Our temper requires time and patience to work upon us, and bring us under the power of grace. This is in the text.

3. The manner of coming, which is sudden and unexpected, like the coming of a thief upon a sleepy family, ver. 10; therefore we should rather prepare for it than complain of slackness. We are upon the second consideration. Wherein
1. The false cause of this delay is removed, The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness.
2. The true cause assigned, But is longsuffering to us-ward.

3. The end of this long-suffering propounded (1.) Negatively, Not willing that any should perish; (2.) Positively, But that all should come to repentance. Wherein the way to escape ruin is intimated, which is repentance.

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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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Spurgeon:

Salvation by Knowing the Truth: A Sermon (No. 1516) Delivered by C. H. SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

“God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”—1 Timothy 2:3, 4.

MAY GOD THE HOLY GHOST guide our meditations to the best practical result this evening, that sinners may be saved and saints stirred up to diligence. I do not intend to treat my text controversially. It is like the stone which makes the corner of a building, and it looks towards a different side of the gospel from that which is mostly before us. Two sides of the building of truth meet here. In many a village there is a corner where the idle and the quarrelsome gather together; and theology has such corners. It would be very easy indeed to set ourselves in battle array, and during the next half-hour to carry on a very fierce attack against those who differ from us in opinion upon points which could be raised from this text. I do not see that any good would come of it, and, as we have very little time to spare, and life is short, we had better spend it upon something that may better tend to our edification. May the good Spirit preserve us from a contentious spirit, and help us really to profit by his word.

It is quite certain that when we read that God will have all men to be saved it does not mean that he wills it with the force of a decree or a divine purpose, for, if he did, then all men would be saved. He willed to make the world, and the world was made: he does not so will the salvation of all men, for we know that all men will not be saved. Terrible as the truth is, yet is it certain from holy writ that there are men who, in consequence of their sin and their rejection of the Savior, will go away into everlasting punishment, where shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. There will at the last be goats upon the left hand as well as sheep on the right, tares to be burned as well as wheat to be garnered, chaff to be blown away as well as corn to be preserved. There will be a dreadful hell as well as a glorious heaven, and there is no decree to the contrary.

What then? Shall we try to put another meaning into the text than that which it fairly bears? I trow not. You must, most of you, be acquainted with the general method in which our older Calvinistic friends deal with this text. “All men,” say they,—”that is, some men”: as if the Holy Ghost could not have said “some men” if he had meant some men. “All men,” say they; “that is, some of all sorts of men”: as if the Lord could not have said “all sorts of men” if he had meant that. The Holy Ghost by the apostle has written “all men,” and unquestionably he means all men. I know how to get rid of the force of the “alls” according to that critical method which some time ago was very current, but I do not see how it can be applied here with due regard to truth. I was reading just now the exposition of a very able doctor who explains the text so as to explain it away; he applies grammatical gunpowder to it, and explodes it by way of expounding it. I thought when I read his exposition that it would have been a very capital comment upon the text if it had read, “Who will not have all men to be saved, nor come to a knowledge of the truth.” Had such been the inspired language every remark of the learned doctor would have been exactly in keeping, but as it happens to say, “Who will have all men to be saved,” his observations are more than a little out of place. My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God. I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression. So runs the text, and so we must read it, “God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

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Vines:

1)

Richard Vines, God’s Drawing and Man’s Coming to Christ, Discovered in 32 Sermons on John 6.44, (London: Printed for Abel Roper, at the Sun Against St. Dunstans Church in Fleet Street, 1662), 9.

2)

 Richard Vines, God’s Drawing and Man’s Coming to Christ, Discovered in 32 Sermons on John 6.44, (London: Printed for Abel Roper, at the Sun Against St. Dunstans Church in Fleet Street, 1662), 13-14.