God Wants All Men to Be Saved (I Tim 2:1-7) Geoff Thomas

The incarnate God's love for recalcitrant Jerusalem makes him weep over it; "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who would kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matt.23:37). Would any describe these hearers of Christ as penitent and exercised sinners? We are told of them that they would kill and stone those God sends to them. They are brutal bloodthirsty murderers. These are the ones for whom Christ cries, "O!" in anguish, repeating the city's name in affection. To them he expresses his longing to have gathered them to safety, but they reject him. Is this not a love as wide as a whole city? Will we too not love Bangkok, and Amsterdam, and Las Vegas, and Paris, and New Orleans, and Soho, and San Francisco with their teeming millions and abundant cruelty and sensuality? Not with a love that would indulge in or sympathise with the wickednesses, but would see its citizens saved from their sin and its consequences...

When that anonymous man filled the pulpit at the last minute in the Artillery Street Primitive Methodist Church in Colchester one snowy January day almost exactly one hundred and fifty years ago in the absence of the invited preacher he spotted a teenager in the congregation. He had no knowledge that that boy was elected to eternal life, any more than any person can know another person is elect before they believe, but he did know two things that were true about him because they are true of every person on the planet, that the boy had a soul, and that it was not God's will that he should perish, but that he come under the sheltering wings of Christ's grace. He believed that God wanted this boy to be saved, and so he told the boy the way of salvation and urged him to look to the Lord and live. Thank God he did because the boy hearing that message was Charles Haddon Spurgeon through whom many more believed on Christ.

It is God's love that moves him to imploringly entreat everyone to look to Jesus Christ. Think of the way the apostle Paul, filled with the Spirit of God, addressed men and women, "We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). He quotes to the Romans Isaiah 65:2 and says to them, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people." Only a deep persuasion that God loves his hearers would make a preacher implore them to be reconciled to God accompanied by such tender gestures of entreaty. How familiar were Paul's tears to the Ephesian elders - as well-known as his doctrines (Acts 20:19 and 31).

It is from this whole picture that we with all the orthodox church have developed this conviction that God wants every single person on this planet to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. In the gospel God speaks to every sinner in particular, as though he were addressing them by their names saying, "I desire you to come to me and find rest. I am willing to give this to you. Warmly and affectionately I am offering life and salvation to you. I will accept no excuses. Do not plead that you do not know whether you are elected to salvation, nor that you cannot come because you are ignorant of whether God the Father gave you to God the Son. Do not plead that you are dead in sin and cannot turn, because whether you can or cannot you must believe. 'This is the work of God that you believe on him whom he has sent" (John 6:29)." Thus God himself earnestly and lovingly addresses everyone, beseeching his hearers to entrust themselves to him, because he loves them and wants them to be saved.

Hear Spurgeon himself preaching on the text, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." (Rev.22:17) It was the famous revival year, 1859, and Spurgeon was speaking at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens on October 16th. He says in the course of this sermon, "How wide is this invitation! There are some ministers who are afraid to invite sinners, then why are they ministers? They are afraid to perform the most important part of the sacred office. There was a time I must confess when I somewhat faltered when about to give a free invitation. My doctrinal sentiments did at that time somewhat hamper me. I boldly confess that I am unchanged as to the doctrines I have preached; I preach Calvinism as high, as stern, and as sound as ever; but I do feel, and always did feel a longing to invite sinners to Christ. And I do feel also, that not only is such a course consistent with the soundest doctrines, but that the other course is after all the unsound one, and has no title whatever to plead Scripture on its behalf.

"There has grown up in many churches an idea that none are to be called to Christ but what they call sensible sinners. I sometimes rebut that by remarking, that I call stupid sinners to Christ as well as sensible sinners, and that stupid sinners make by far the greatest proportion of the ungodly. But I glory in the confession that I preach Christ even to insensible sinners - that I would say even to the dry bones of the valley, as Ezekiel did, 'Ye dry bones live!' doing it as an act of faith; not faith in the power of those that hear to obey the command, but faith in the power of God who gives the command to give strength also to those addressed, that they may be constrained to obey it. But now listen to my text; for here, at least, there is no limitation. But sensible or insensible, all that the text saith is, 'Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely.' The one question I have to ask this morning is, art thou willing?"

So I am saying that this verse in the New Testament is teaching that God sincerely wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, and that the fountain head of this desire is his love for all men. I do not believe that such love is the same as that electing love of his own people which caused him to give the whole church to his Son before the foundation of the world and effectually redeem them. "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" (Ephs.5:25-27). That is a divine affection, "nought but his loved ones know." There are thus two kinds of divine love.