“That all should reach repentance.”

I am listening through Dr. Thomas’s lecture on the Atonement, in which he discusses 2 Peter 3:9.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

And actually I was asked to read this passage in worship service a few weeks ago as well. I knew, of course, that many have difficulties reconciling limited atonement with this seemingly apparent expression of God’s wish that “all should reach repentance.”  But then in reading it, I thought, wow . . . this verse doesn’t have to be so hard.

In Dr. Thomas’s lecture he quotes Calvin and John Murray on the passage, one employing the hidden vs. revealed will of God and the other observing that God in Scripture expresses “wishes” that he has not ordained should come to pass.

I wonder if delving into the hidden/revealed will of God distinction in this instance is really necessary.  It might be simpler if we just look at what Peter seems to be telling his readers. His audience is eagerly waiting for the Day of the Lord and final redemption, and wondering why God delays. This is a similar situation to the church in Thessolonica to whom Paul writes, where the believers are likewise growing restless for the return of Christ.

In this context Peter tells them that the Lord is “patient toward you.” Some manuscripts read “patient on your account.”  Shouldn’t the rest of the verse be read in this light? If it is, then the reading thereafter says to us that God is “not wishing that any [of you, i.e. God's elect] should perish, but that all [of you] should reach repentance.”  There is a definite object of God’s patience stated here, and the object of God’s wish for repentance is implied to be the same.  God’s patience is “toward you.”  The following statement is not to be taken as a general well-wishing for every individual in the world, but an expression of the decretal will with a personal purpose.

If we read it this way then we would see that Peter is not making a broad sweeping statement about God’s will for universal salvation, but rather he is telling us that God is withholding that Day of the Lord specifically for the sake of his elect, so that all the fulness of those he has chosen might certainly reach repentance and not perish.  So the Lord has not yet returned because he is faithful to those he has chosen.  All whom he has willed to save will be saved.

To summarize, there are essentially two different but both “Calvinistic” ways of reading 2 Peter 3:9:

Reading the verse through the lens of the hidden/revealed will of God distinction reconciles the passage with limited atonement by saying that Peter’s statement, while being of unlimited scope, is merely expressing God’s revealed wish that every individual in the world should come to repentance and should not perish, and yet this is not part of God’s hidden will, as He has not decreed that this should be.

However, if we say that God’s patience specifically “toward you” or “on your account” necessarily narrows the field of who Peter means by “any” or “all” immediately afterward, we reconcile the passage with limited atonement by showing that Peter’s statement is itself one of limited scope referring to the elect in history, and so does not present any contradiction with an atonement that is likewise limited.

I believe that this second reading is the most natural of the two.