Chapter 14: Not Wishing That Any Should Perish

That was the scoffers' taunt. It had bite. Decades had passed since Jesus ascended. The apostles were aging. The world kept spinning in its old grooves. And the mockers pressed the question any honest believer might also have asked in a quiet moment: If the Lord promised to return, why hasn't He?

Peter's answer is one of the most stunning sentences in the New Testament. He does not defend God's schedule. He does not offer a revised timeline. He reveals God's motive. The delay, Peter says, is not slowness. It is patience. And the patience has a purpose: God is "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).¹

Read that again slowly. Every year of history you have ever puzzled over is wrapped up in that sentence. Every century the church has waited. Every generation that has come and gone since the ascension. Peter says the reason for all of it is the heart of God. The delay is love, holding the door open.

In Chapter 13 we heard the universal saving desire stated. God "desires all people to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4). That was the desire declared. In this chapter we see the desire enacted. God does not simply announce what He wants; He stretches history itself to give it room. Then Peter tells the church what to make of this patience: "Count the patience of our Lord as salvation" (2 Peter 3:15).² The patience is not idle. It is the saving will at work in time.

This chapter establishes the second great salvific-will text and the doctrine it carries: divine patience (Greek makrothymia, "long-suffering, endurance") as a saving instrument. The God who wants all saved is the same God who waits, and He waits because He wants.

B. The Text in Context

Second Peter 3 is a unit built on a single question: Why has the Lord not returned? Peter answers in layers. The scoffers raise the objection (vv. 3–4). Peter corrects their memory and their math (vv. 5–8). Then he gives the real reason (v. 9). And finally he tells the church how to read history in light of it (vv. 14–15).³

The scoffers' argument is simple and old: nothing has changed since creation, so nothing will change (v. 4). Peter calls this willful ignorance (v. 5). They forget that God's word once destroyed a world by water and now holds it in reserve for fire (vv. 5–7). Then comes the timescale correction. "Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (v. 8), echoing Psalm 90:4.⁴ God does not run on the scoffers' clock. What they call delay, He calls a day.

Notice the architecture of the sentence. It opens with a denial: the Lord is not slow. It offers an alternative: He is patient. Then it explains the patience with a purpose clause, in two halves: one negative ("not wishing that any should perish") and one positive ("that all should reach repentance").⁵ The two halves say the same thing from opposite sides. God does not want anyone lost. God wants everyone turned.

Peter does not stop there. Six verses later he tells the church what this patience means for them: "And count the patience of our Lord as salvation" (v. 15).⁶ The patience is not merely delay. It is salvation doing its work.

Peter then appeals to Paul as a witness to the same truth, noting that "our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him" (v. 15b). This is one of the rare moments in the New Testament where one apostolic writer commends another's letters as carrying God's wisdom.⁷ The two apostles are united on this point. The patience of God is not empty waiting. It is saving work.

C. The Heart of the Case

1. The Context Move: The Scoffers and the Promise

The first thing to settle is the question Peter is answering. The scoffers want to know why the return has not happened. Their taunt is a disguised theological claim: if God were going to act, He would have acted by now. Silence means absence.⁸

Peter's reply matters for every question about God's timing, not only eschatology. He says the delay is not a sign that God has forgotten His promise. It is a sign of something about God's character. The long stretch of time between promise and fulfillment is itself an act. It is God's patience on display. And that patience has a clear target: repentance.

Psalm 90:4, which Peter echoes in verse 8, is not a mathematical formula. Peter is not saying that a day literally equals a thousand years. He is saying that God's timescale is not ours.⁹ What the scoffers call "slow," God calls "patient." The point is a disposition, not a calendar. God has all the time in the world, and He uses it.

I want to name what is at stake here. If the delay of history is an expression of God's character, then time itself is a theological statement. Every century that passes without final judgment is a century of divine patience. Every year is God "not wishing that any should perish." The stretch of history is the will to save, expressed in time.

This changes how we read the question of suffering and waiting. The skeptic asks why God allows so much time to pass. The scoffer asks why God does not act. Peter's answer reframes both questions. The time that passes is not God's absence. It is His presence in disguise. The delay that feels like abandonment is actually the space God holds open for rescue. This is a God who would rather wait than close the door too soon.

2. The Exegetical Move: Patient, Not Wishing, Any, All

Let us slow down on the key words. They carry more weight than most English readers notice.

The word translated "patient" is the verb form of patience (Greek makrothymei, "is long-tempered, exercises patience").¹⁰ In the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament), this word family describes God's defining posture toward a sinful world. It is the same quality celebrated in the great creed of Exodus 34:6. There God declares Himself "merciful and gracious, slow to anger" (Hebrew erek appayim, "long of nostrils," that is, slow to flare up).¹¹ When Peter says God is patient, he is reaching back to the oldest self-description God ever gave. This is who God has always been.

And notice: patience is not weakness. The Hebrew image behind it is vivid. "Long of nostrils" pictures a bull who could charge but chooses not to. The patience of God is the restraint of power, not the absence of it. God waits because He has decided to wait. He is not slow. He is deliberate.

"Not wishing" translates the Greek participle mē boulomenos. The verb (Greek boulomai) is worth pausing over. It describes a deliberate, purposeful will. It is not a mere emotion or a wish that might be idly set aside. It is a settled intention.¹² God has resolved that perishing is not His goal for anyone.

George Sidney Hurd makes a useful observation about this word. In Chapter 13 we saw Paul use the word "desires" (Greek thelō) for God's saving will: "who desires all people to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4). Here Peter uses the stronger word boulomai, which carries the sense of deliberation and resolve. Some scholars distinguish the two, noting that boulomai stresses purposeful planning even more than thelō. Hurd's point is that Scripture uses both words to express God's will for the salvation of all, and that both are also used in texts that say God's purposes cannot be frustrated. The same verb family (boulē) appears in Isaiah 14:24 (LXX): "as I have purposed, so it shall stand," and in Isaiah 46:10: "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure."⁴⁵ Neither God's thelō nor His boulē, Hurd argues, can finally be set aside by human resistance. Both words, used of God's saving will, point to something stronger than a wish.

Now look at the scope words. "Not wishing that any should perish" uses the Greek tinas ("any, certain ones"), and "that all should reach repentance" uses pantas ("all, everyone").¹³ The two terms are the negative and positive faces of the same desire. Not any lost. All turned. They mirror each other perfectly. If "any" is universal, then "all" is universal. If "all" is restricted, then "any" is restricted. They must be read together.

I want to be plain about what this means. If the purpose of the delay is repentance for "all," then the delay is the saving will at work. The patience is not God killing time. It is God pursuing a goal. He has not returned yet because His goal has not yet been reached.¹⁴

3. The Whole-Canon Move: Patience as a Saving Instrument

Peter is not alone in connecting God's patience with God's saving purpose. The pattern runs through the whole of Scripture.

Paul asks the question sharply in Romans 2:4: "Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?" Then he names the mistake: "not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance."¹⁵ The verb "is meant to lead" translates the Greek agei ("leads, brings, guides"). God's kindness is not passive. It leads somewhere. And the destination is repentance. This is the same structure we saw in 2 Peter 3:9: patience with a target.

Paul is warning people who think God's patience means God does not care. They treat the delay as permission. Paul says no. The delay is direction. Kindness is walking you toward repentance, and if you do not see it happening, you are not paying attention. The patience and the goal are a single motion.

Peter himself, in his first letter, makes a similar connection: "God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared" (1 Peter 3:20).¹⁶ Here the patience of God in Noah's time is linked to the chance for salvation. God waited. The ark was built. The door stayed open.

Wayne Grudem makes a sharp observation about this verse. Why would Peter mention God's patience at all unless it implied an invitation to repent?¹⁷ The patience has no point if nothing is being offered during it. God did not wait in the days of Noah for no reason. He waited so that people could turn. The parallel to 2 Peter 3:9 is striking. In both texts, God's patience creates space for repentance. In both texts, the waiting has a saving purpose. The time of Noah and the time of the church are linked by the same divine disposition: patience aimed at rescue.

The prophets tell the same story. Joel 2:13 urges Israel: "Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love."¹⁸ Joel adds that God "relents over disaster." The plea assumes that God's patience is real, that the door is still open, and that God's character is the ground for hoping it will stay open.

Jonah knew this too well. After Nineveh repented, Jonah was angry, and he said so: "I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster" (Jonah 4:2). Jonah was quoting the same creed. He knew God's patience would lead to mercy, and he resented it. But the resentment only proves the point. The patience of God is so reliable that even a reluctant prophet could predict what it would do.¹⁹

As we saw in Chapter 5, the Old Testament creed of Exodus 34:6–7 is the earliest and most repeated confession about who God is. "Slow to anger" sits at its center. Peter is drawing from that deep well. He is not inventing a new idea about God. He is applying the oldest one.

What emerges across these texts is a consistent portrait. God's patience is not indifference. It is not neglect. It is the active, purposeful extension of time for the sake of rescue. Wherever Scripture speaks of God's patience, it speaks of salvation waiting to happen.

4. The Exegetical Move: Count the Patience as Salvation (3:15)

Now we come to a verse that deserves far more attention than it usually gets. In verse 15 Peter writes: "And count the patience of our Lord as salvation."²⁰

This is Peter's own commentary on what he just said in verse 9. He is telling the church how to interpret the delay of the Lord's return. Do not count it as absence. Do not count it as failure. Count it as salvation. The patience is not the opposite of God's saving work. It is part of it.

The word "count" (Greek hēgeisthe, "consider, regard") is a command.²¹ Peter is not offering a suggestion. He is giving the church its hermeneutic for history. "When you look at the passing centuries and wonder what God is doing, this is what He is doing: saving. The patience you see is salvation in progress."

I find this remarkable. Peter does not treat the delay as something to apologize for. He treats it as something to celebrate. The long wait is the long rescue. Every generation that passes without the final day is another generation given room to turn. History, on this reading, is a grace period, and the grace is saving grace.²²

Notice also what Peter does next. He appeals to Paul: "just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him" (v. 15b). Peter sees Paul's letters as teaching the same truth.²³ And where does Paul connect patience with salvation? In Romans 2:4, where God's kindness leads to repentance. In Romans 9:22, where God bears with "vessels of wrath" with "much patience." In Romans 11:32, where God consigns all to disobedience "so that he may have mercy on all" (a text we will examine in full in Chapter 17).²⁴ Peter and Paul are singing in the same key.

5. The Constructive Move: The Desire Enacted in Time

Let me gather what we have. In Chapter 13, Paul gave us the saving desire stated: God "desires all people to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4). In this chapter, Peter gives us the saving desire enacted. God does not only want all people saved. He stretches history itself to give them room. He is patient because He is unwilling that any perish. And He tells the church to "count the patience as salvation."²⁵

The two texts together form a pair. One declares the will. The other shows the will at work. Together they answer a question that haunts every theology of the saving will: Is this desire real, or is it merely a sentiment? Peter's answer is clear. It is real enough to hold back the day of the Lord. It is real enough to reshape the calendar of the cosmos. A desire that governs the timetable of history is not a passing wish.

I want to be honest about the hard question 2 Peter 3 also raises. The day of the Lord does come. Peter says so plainly: "The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed" (v. 10).²⁶ The fire is real. The judgment is real. This book does not minimize either one.

But notice what Peter says about the outcome. Verse 13: "But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."²⁷ The fire is not the last word. The last word is a world in which righteousness is at home. The judgment texts are real, and they are treated honestly in Appendix D. The pattern of judgment-as-refining is developed in Chapter 7. For now, what matters is that Peter frames both the patience and the fire as part of the same saving purpose. The patience holds the door open. The fire purifies what comes through it. And the end is a new world where righteousness dwells.

This is the third pillar reinforced from its other side. Chapter 13 said God desires all saved. This chapter says God acts on that desire by holding history open. The saving will is not a theological abstraction. It has a face, and the face is patience. The two chapters together send a pointed question forward to the rest of this Part: If the desire is real and the patience is real, what kind of theology can afford to say it all ends in permanent failure for most of the human race?²⁸

D. Engagement with Specific Scholars

Thomas Talbott places 2 Peter 3:9 alongside 1 Timothy 2:4 and Matthew 18:14 as one of the clearest statements in the New Testament that God's saving will extends to every person without exception. He argues that the Augustinian tradition, which restricts God's mercy to a limited elect, must "either reject outright or else explain away" texts like this one, and that the interpretive maneuvers required to do so "pass well beyond the bounds of reasonable interpretation."²⁹ I think Talbott is right that the plain sense of the text is on the universalist side. A reader who came to 2 Peter 3:9 with no prior theological commitments would not naturally read "not wishing that any should perish" as meaning "not wishing that any of the elect should perish." That reading requires something brought to the text, not drawn from it.

Andrew Hronich observes that the Calvinist attempt to restrict "any" and "all" in this verse to believers strains credibility. He notes that it is hard to see why God would need to be patient so that His already-saved people would repent and not perish. The verse makes sense only if "any" and "all" extend beyond the circle of the already redeemed.³⁰

James Beilby's assessment here is particularly important. Beilby, who is not a universalist, nonetheless recognizes the weight of the evidence. He notes that the Calvinist reinterpretation of 2 Peter 3:9, in which "any" is restricted to the elect, is not an interpretation of what the text actually says. It is, in his words, a "clever way of avoiding the implications of what the text says."³¹ Beilby further observes that the universal reading was uncontested in the early church until Augustine's theological shift in 396.³² For nearly four centuries, the church read these texts the way they sound. That historical consensus should carry weight.

On the other side, Thomas Schreiner represents the Reformed position well. He argues that "patient toward you" fixes the referent. The "you" are the believers Peter addresses. So "any" and "all" refer to the elect whom God is patiently gathering before the end.³³ I will state this reading at full strength and answer it in Section E.

For now, I want to note that Schreiner's reading takes the pastoral context seriously. I respect the instinct behind it. God's patience is real, and it does have the elect in view. The question is whether it has only the elect in view. I do not think it does, for reasons the counter-objections section will develop. But I want to honor the concern: Reformed theology is right that God's patience is not aimless. It has a saving goal. We simply disagree about the scope of that goal.

Gerry Beauchemin develops a related argument in two stages. First, he challenges the assumption that God's "will" in these texts is merely a wish. Beauchemin observes that Bible translators, shaped by a tradition that assumes most people will never be saved, tend to weaken the force of the word. They render "will" as "desire" when the subject is God's saving intention, even though the same word (Greek thelō) carries the force of purpose and determination elsewhere. Peter's word boulomai is even harder to soften. Beauchemin also draws attention to 2 Peter 3:15, where Peter tells the church that "the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation." That short sentence, Beauchemin argues, is staggering. It identifies God's patience not as a prelude to salvation but as salvation itself, still running. And he asks a question worth sitting with: "When does the longsuffering of our heavenly Father for His children ever end? Does it end sooner than yours toward your children?"⁴⁴

Second, Beauchemin connects 2 Peter 3:9 to the broader theme of purpose-driven judgment. He argues that God's patience and God's judgment are not opposed. Both serve the same end: repentance. The patience holds the door open. The judgment, when it comes, is itself a form of correction aimed at the same goal. Beauchemin draws on texts like Deuteronomy 32:39 ("I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal") and 2 Samuel 14:14 ("God does not take away a life; instead, He devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from Him") to argue that even the most severe divine acts have a restorative purpose. On this reading, neither the patience nor the fire is wasted. Both are instruments of a God who will not rest until His purpose is done.⁴⁶

Hurd, in his chapter "Does God Get What He Wants?", takes the argument in a different direction. He sets 2 Peter 3:9 within the larger question that divides Calvinists and Arminians: Does God actually accomplish His saving will, or does it remain a frustrated desire? The Arminians, Hurd observes, affirm that God loves all and desires the salvation of all, but they must weaken the word "will" to something less than a purpose, because on their view human freedom can permanently block it. The Calvinists affirm that God's will is undefeatable, but they must restrict the "all" to the elect, because on their view God does not genuinely will the salvation of every person. Hurd's challenge is direct: if we take both sides seriously, something has to give. Either God's power is limited, or God's love is limited. Both traditions, he argues, share a hidden assumption: that the majority will never be saved. Remove that assumption, and the texts can speak with full force. God wills all saved (the Arminian emphasis), and what God wills, God does (the Calvinist emphasis). Hurd calls this the resolution that neither tradition alone has reached.⁴⁷

E. Counter-Objections

Objection 1: "Patient Toward You" Restricts the Scope

The strongest traditional reading of 2 Peter 3:9 turns on two words: "toward you." Peter writes that God "is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish." The argument runs like this: "you" refers to Peter's readers, who are believers. So "any" and "all" must refer to "any of you" and "all of you." The verse is not about all people. It is about the elect. God delays the end because He is patiently gathering His chosen ones before the final day. Once the last elect person has been brought in, the day will come.³⁴

I want to grant what this reading gets right. Peter is writing to believers. "Toward you" is addressed to his readers. That is plain. But the motive clause that follows cannot be confined to the addressees. Here is why.

"Not wishing that any should perish" states a disposition. And "perish" is exactly what threatens people outside the church, not those already inside it.³⁵ If Peter meant only "not wishing that any of you believers should perish," the statement would be strange. As Hronich observes, it strains credibility to suggest that God's great patience is exercised so that people who are already saved would repent and not perish.³⁶ Believers, on the Reformed view, are already secure. The perishing that Peter describes is the very thing believers have been rescued from. The word makes sense only if it reaches beyond the circle of the already redeemed.

Think of it this way. A lifeguard on duty says to her team, "I am watching you, because I do not want anyone to drown." Does she mean she only cares about her team drowning? Or does she mean that her watchfulness, directed at her team, is motivated by a disposition that extends to everyone in the water? The disposition explains the action. Peter says God is patient toward the church. The reason is a desire that reaches to "any" and "all." The address is specific. The motive is universal.³⁷

There is also a theological oddity in the restriction reading that I want to press gently. If the patience is only for the elect, and if God's sovereign decree guarantees every elect person will be saved, then why is patience needed at all? On the Reformed view, God's decree is certain. The elect will come. There is no risk that any of them will be lost. So what is the patience for? The verse makes best sense when the patience is directed at those whose salvation is not yet secured. Those who might perish. Those who have not yet repented. The very language of the verse pushes us beyond the circle of the already saved.

Objection 2: The "Without Distinction" Maneuver

A second line of defense tries to soften the universal scope by arguing that "all" in such texts means "all kinds of people" or "all without distinction" rather than "all without exception." We examined this reading at length in Chapter 13, where it was stated at full strength and answered.³⁸ Beilby's verdict on this maneuver applies equally here: these reinterpretations are not readings of what the text says but strategies for avoiding its implications.³⁹ If Peter had wanted to say "all kinds of people," there were clear ways to say it. He chose the universal way.

Objection 3: "Then Why Does the Day Ever Come?"

A thoughtful reader might press further: If God's patience is saving patience, and if He does not wish anyone to perish, then why does the day of the Lord come at all? Would true patience not wait forever?⁴⁰

This is a fair question, and I want to answer it honestly. The patience is purposeful. It is not endless postponement. Peter says the day will come (v. 10). The fire will fall. The judgment is real. But here is the key: the day and the fire belong to the same saving purpose as the patience. As we saw in Chapter 7, the biblical pattern of God's judgment is refining, not merely retributive. The fire of the final day does not contradict the patience. It completes what the patience began. The patience held the door open. The fire finishes the work of purification. And the end, Peter says, is "new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (v. 13).⁴¹ For a full treatment of the judgment texts, see Appendix D. For the argument that God's purpose cannot be stopped, see Chapter 18.

Beauchemin makes this point with a practical directness. He asks what positive purpose is served by an infinite, purely retributive penalty. If judgment has no remedial aim, it contradicts the very patience that preceded it. But if judgment, like patience, is purpose-driven, then the two are partners, not opposites. The patience aims at repentance. The judgment, when it arrives, carries the same aim by a different means.⁴⁸ The day comes not because the patience has failed but because the next stage of the saving work has begun.

The restriction reading must also deal with 3:15, and here I think it faces its hardest test. "Count the patience of our Lord as salvation." If the patience is only about gathering the elect, then this command means "count the delay as election-time." But Peter does not say that. He says salvation. He invites the church to see the long wait as God's saving work in progress. That language fits a God who wants all people saved and is holding history open to give them room. It fits less naturally a God who is simply running out the clock on an elect roll call.⁴²

F. Conclusion

Here is what this chapter has shown. Peter faced the oldest objection to the Christian hope: Why hasn't the Lord returned? His answer bypassed every timeline and every forecast. He went straight to the heart of God. The delay is patience. The patience has a purpose. The purpose is that none should perish and all should reach repentance. And the church is to count that patience as salvation itself.

This is the second pillar-text of Part Three. In Chapter 13, Paul declared the saving will: God desires all people to be saved. In this chapter, Peter shows the saving will at work: God stretches time to give it room.

Together the two texts answer the question of sincerity. Is God's desire to save all merely a wish? No. It governs the schedule of the universe. Is it merely a sentiment? No. It holds back the day of the Lord. Is it something God announces but never acts on? No. Peter says the patience is the salvation, still running.

The restriction reading, which confines "any" and "all" to the elect, asks us to believe something remarkable. It asks us to accept that the broadest language Peter could have used carries the narrowest meaning he could have intended. It reads "not wishing that any should perish" as "not wishing that any of the elect should perish." It works only if the system that demands it is already settled: limited election, limited atonement, effectual grace for some.⁴³ But those are exactly the points that Part Two and Part Four of this book contest. Read on its own terms, 2 Peter 3:9 says what it sounds like it says. God is patient because He does not want anyone lost.

I want to say a word to the reader who may feel the force of both sides here. The Reformed tradition is not wrong to emphasize that God's patience has the elect in view. It does. The question is whether the divine disposition that explains God's patience is limited to those He has already chosen, or whether it reflects something about who God is in Himself. I believe the text points to the latter. Peter does not say God is patient because He loves the elect. He says God is patient because He does not wish any to perish. The patience flows from a character trait, not from a list.

What remains to be settled is whether that will can be defeated. The desire is real. The patience is real. Can we count on their success? That is the question Chapter 15 will face. There we will ask whether God's saving will and His sovereign will are two different things. And Chapter 18 will take it further, when we turn to the texts that say God's purpose cannot be stopped.

For now, the foundation under the third pillar has one more stone in place. God desires all to be saved. God acts on that desire by holding history open. And the church is told to count the patience as salvation. The cumulative case that will reach its full force in Chapter 24 gains weight with every text. Who God is (Part One). What the cross covers (Part Two). And now, what God wants (Part Three). Each pillar supports the same hope: that the God revealed in Jesus Christ will not stop until every person He loves has freely come home.

If that is who God is, then the long wait of the world is not silence. It is a love letter, written across the centuries, in the handwriting of patience.

Notes

↑ 1. All Scripture quotations in this chapter are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.

↑ 2. 2 Peter 3:15a. The word sōtērian ("salvation") is the direct object of hēgeisthe ("count, regard"). Peter commands the church to interpret the delay soteriologically.

↑ 3. The structure of 2 Peter 3 is widely recognized as a chiastic or thematic argument from the scoffers' objection (vv. 3–4) to Peter's pastoral exhortation (vv. 14–18), with the divine motive (v. 9) at the center. See Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), 303–12.

↑ 4. Psalm 90:4: "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." Peter draws on this psalm, attributed to Moses, to establish that divine time is incommensurable with human time.

↑ 5. The negative-positive pair (mē boulomenos tinas apolesthai alla pantas eis metanoian chōrēsai) forms a single purpose clause with two complementary faces. The construction is common in Greek when expressing a complete intention: what God does not want and what He does want.

↑ 6. 2 Peter 3:15. The appeal to Paul's letters as carrying "wisdom given him" is one of the earliest canonical endorsements of Pauline authority.

↑ 7. Peter's reference to Paul's letters in 3:15–16, including the note that "some things in them are hard to understand," is a remarkable intra-canonical recognition. For discussion, see Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 330–34.

↑ 8. The scoffers' argument in 3:4 is sometimes called "the principle of uniformity": since nothing has changed, nothing will change. Peter refutes it by pointing to the Flood (vv. 5–6), which proved that God has intervened in the past and can do so again.

↑ 9. Bauckham argues that Peter's use of Psalm 90:4 is not a chronological equivalence but a theological claim about divine perspective. God is not "late" by any standard that applies to Him. See Jude, 2 Peter, 306–8.

↑ 10. The verb makrothymei is the present active indicative of makrothymeō. BDAG defines the word group as "state of remaining tranquil while awaiting an outcome, patience, steadfastness, endurance." The cognate noun makrothymia appears frequently in the New Testament virtue lists (Gal 5:22; Col 3:12; 2 Tim 3:10).

↑ 11. Exodus 34:6–7 is often called "the creedal self-disclosure of God," the Old Testament's most repeated confession. The Hebrew erek appayim (literally "long of nostrils," i.e., slow to anger) is the conceptual ancestor of the Greek makrothymia. The Septuagint of Exodus 34:6 renders it makrothymos. See the discussion of the Exodus 34 creed in Chapter 5.

↑ 12. The verb boulomai is distinguished in classical and Hellenistic usage from thelō by its connotation of deliberation and resolve, though the two overlap considerably in the New Testament. BDAG defines boulomai as "to plan on a course of action, intend, plan, will." In 2 Peter 3:9 the participle boulomenos carries the force of "having purposed, having resolved." The negation (mē) with the participle expresses a settled divine disposition, not a wavering desire.

↑ 13. The tinas ("any") is in the accusative, functioning as the subject of the infinitive apolesthai ("to perish"). The pantas ("all") is likewise accusative, subject of the infinitive chōrēsai ("to reach, to make room for"). The two infinitive clauses mirror each other in scope: what God does not will for "any" is matched by what He does will for "all."

↑ 14. This does not commit the author to the view that God's patience is infinite in the temporal sense, only that the patience has a saving purpose. The day of the Lord does come (v. 10), and its coming is also part of the saving plan. See the discussion in Section E and in Appendix D.

↑ 15. Romans 2:4: ē tou ploutou tēs chrēstotētos autou kai tēs anochēs kai tēs makrothymias kataphroneis, agnoōn hoti to chrēston tou theou eis metanoian se agei? The word agei ("leads") is present active indicative, indicating an ongoing activity. God's kindness does not merely allow repentance; it actively leads toward it.

↑ 16. 1 Peter 3:20: apeitheēsasin pote hote apexedecheto hē tou theou makrothymia en hēmerais Nōe. The reference to divine patience (makrothymia) in the days of Noah creates an explicit parallel with 2 Peter 3:9, linking Noah's generation to the present delay of judgment.

↑ 17. Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988). Grudem argues that the mention of God's patience implies an open invitation to repent. See also Stephen Jonathan, Grace Beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), ch. 3, for a similar observation linking 1 Peter 3:20 and 2 Peter 3:9 through the patience-repentance connection.

↑ 18. Joel 2:13. The prophet draws on the Exodus 34:6 creed to urge Israel to return. The same divine attributes (grace, mercy, patience, steadfast love) ground both Joel's appeal and Peter's explanation of the delay. The prophetic logic is the same: because God is patient, there is room to turn.

↑ 19. On the centrality of the Exodus 34:6–7 creed in Old Testament theology, see the discussion in Chapter 5. The creed appears or is echoed in Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:3. Its presence in 2 Peter 3:9 via the makrothymia word group shows the New Testament continuing the same theological tradition.

↑ 20. 2 Peter 3:15a: kai tēn tou kyriou hēmōn makrothymian sōtērian hēgeisthe. The imperative hēgeisthe ("count, regard, consider") commands the recipients to adopt this interpretation of the delay.

↑ 21. Hēgeomai in the imperative is used elsewhere in the New Testament to command a way of thinking: James 1:2 ("count it all joy"); Philippians 2:3 ("count others more significant than yourselves"). Peter uses it to give the church a hermeneutic: when you look at the long delay, read it as salvation at work.

↑ 22. The term "grace period" is common in popular theology but rarely grounded in an explicit text. 2 Peter 3:9–15 provides exactly that grounding: history is a period of grace precisely because God's patience is salvation-space. The concept is reinforced by Paul's appeal to God's forbearance (anochē) in Romans 3:25–26.

↑ 23. Peter's citation of Paul in 3:15b–16 is the only place in the New Testament where one canonical author explicitly refers to another's writings as bearing divine wisdom. The reference likely has in view several Pauline letters, possibly including Romans (given the thematic overlap with Romans 2:4 and 9:22).

↑ 24. Romans 2:4 (makrothymia leading to repentance); Romans 9:22 (God enduring with pollē makrothymia vessels of wrath prepared for destruction); Romans 11:32 (God consigning all to disobedience so that He might have mercy on all). The makrothymia word group in Paul and Peter serves the same theological function: divine patience as a saving instrument.

↑ 25. The pairing of 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 is standard in the theological literature on God's universal saving will. For a helpful discussion of both texts together, see James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), ch. 3, esp. pp. 81–83.

↑ 26. 2 Peter 3:10. The word translated "burned up" (katakaesētai or, in some manuscripts, heurethēsetai, "will be found [out], exposed") is textually uncertain. Either reading conveys a moment of total disclosure and purification. See Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 316–21, for the textual discussion.

↑ 27. 2 Peter 3:13. The phrase "new heavens and a new earth" echoes Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 and anticipates Revelation 21:1. The outcome of the judgment is not destruction for its own sake but renewal: a world "in which righteousness dwells" (en hois dikaiosynē katoikei).

↑ 28. The force of the question is cumulative. If 1 Timothy 2:4 declares the saving will and 2 Peter 3:9 shows it at work in time, the burden shifts to any theology that claims the will is finally defeated for the majority of the human race. The question is taken up explicitly in Chapters 15, 18, and 20.

↑ 29. Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), ch. 7. Talbott places 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:4, and Matthew 18:14 together as explicit statements that God's saving will is universal, and argues that the Augustinian tradition must "either reject outright or else explain away" these texts.

↑ 30. Andrew Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), ch. 3. Hronich observes that restricting "any" and "all" in 2 Peter 3:9 to believers produces the absurdity that God's patience is exercised so that already-saved people would repent and not perish.

↑ 31. James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 82–83. Beilby's language here is measured but pointed. He does not accuse Calvinist interpreters of bad faith; he notes that the interpretive move is driven by prior theological commitments rather than by the natural sense of the text.

↑ 32. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 82. The claim that the universal reading was uncontested until Augustine is supported by the patristic evidence. The pre-Augustinian church read 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 as teaching genuine universal saving will. Augustine's reinterpretation, narrowing "all" to "all kinds," came in the context of his anti-Pelagian polemic. See also I. Howard Marshall, "Universal Grace and Atonement in the Pastoral Epistles," in The Grace of God, the Will of Man, ed. Clark Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 51–69.

↑ 33. Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003). Schreiner argues that "patient toward you" fixes the scope of "any" and "all" to the elect community. A similar reading is found in other Reformed commentaries, e.g., D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), ch. 4.

↑ 34. This is the standard Reformed reading. For a representative statement, see John Piper, "Are There Two Wills in God?," in Still Sovereign, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 107–31, where the salvific-will texts are interpreted in light of the Reformed understanding of election. See the full engagement with Piper's two-wills argument in Chapter 15.

↑ 35. The verb apollymi ("to perish, to be destroyed") is used throughout the New Testament of those who are lost or face eschatological destruction (e.g., John 3:16; Rom 2:12; 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15; 2 Thess 2:10). It describes the fate of the unredeemed, not the redeemed. That Peter uses it here suggests that the "any" who might perish extends beyond the community of faith.

↑ 36. Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. 3. Hronich writes that the Calvinist restriction "strains credulity to suggest that God wants His saved ones to repent and thus be saved." The logical difficulty is real: if the "any" are already elect and secure, the patience serves no saving purpose for them.

↑ 37. The distinction between address and disposition is standard in pragmatics. A statement addressed to a specific group ("patient toward you") may express a motive that is universal in scope ("not wishing that any should perish"). The address identifies the recipients of the letter; the motive clause identifies the divine disposition that explains the delay.

↑ 38. See the full treatment of the "all kinds of people" reading in Chapter 13, Section E, where it is stated at full strength from Augustine through Calvin to the present, and answered on exegetical, logical, and historical grounds.

↑ 39. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 82–83.

↑ 40. This objection is a version of the problem of eschatological urgency: if God truly does not want anyone to perish, should the end not be delayed indefinitely? The answer turns on the nature of the patience as purposeful (it is achieving something) and the nature of the final judgment as itself a saving event (see Chapter 7 and Appendix D).

↑ 41. For the connection between the fire of judgment and the refiner's fire pattern in the Old Testament, see Chapter 7, where Malachi 3:2–3, Isaiah 1:24–27, and Hebrews 12:5–11 are treated at length. The fire purifies; it does not merely destroy. The pattern suggests that the day of the Lord is the consummation of the saving work, not its abandonment.

↑ 42. Beilby notes that the two-wills argument (see Chapter 15) "is only plausible if it is clear that Scripture teaches the Calvinistic notions of effectual grace and limited atonement." If those doctrines are not settled, the plain reading of the salvific-will texts stands. See Postmortem Opportunity, 83–84.

↑ 43. This is Beilby's central observation regarding the restriction reading: the narrowing of "all" and "any" is driven by prior commitments to limited atonement and effectual grace for the elect alone. The text itself does not demand the restriction. See Postmortem Opportunity, 82–84; and the fuller engagement with the dependence structure of the two-wills argument in Chapter 15.

↑ 44. Gerry Beauchemin, Hope Beyond Hell: The Righteous Purpose of God's Judgment (2007; rev. 2016), ch. I, "Pillars," section "God's Will." Beauchemin argues that translators weaken thelō to "desire" rather than "will" when applied to God's saving intention, even though in other contexts the same word carries the force of determined purpose. He draws on John 21:22–23 to show that the disciples understood Jesus's "If I will" as the equivalent of "to purpose" and "to be decided upon." His observation about God's longsuffering being identified as salvation comes from his treatment of 2 Peter 3:9 and 3:15 in ch. II, "God's Nature," section "His Love."

↑ 45. George Sidney Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ, 2nd ed. (2018), ch. 3, "Does God Get What He Wants?" Hurd notes that "both words [thelō and boulomai] are used to express the will of God concerning our salvation." He observes that Marvin Vincent, commenting on thelō in 1 Timothy 2:4, identifies it as expressing "a determined purpose." Hurd's argument is that when Scripture uses either thelō or the boulē family of God's intentions, it consistently pairs the desire with texts that declare it undefeatable: Isaiah 14:24 ("as I have purposed [boulē], so it shall stand"); Isaiah 46:10–11 ("My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure [boulē]").

↑ 46. Beauchemin, Hope Beyond Hell, ch. III, "Purpose-Driven Judgment," section "Hope Beyond Death." Beauchemin asks what mysteriously happens at death that renders God powerless to bring someone to repentance, and argues that no text makes death the absolute boundary of God's saving will. His key texts include Deuteronomy 32:39 ("I kill and I make alive"); 1 Samuel 2:6 ("He brings down to Sheol and raises up"); and 2 Samuel 14:14 ("God does not take away a life; instead, He devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from Him"). The section "Examples of Purpose-Driven Judgment" in the same chapter provides the biblical pattern behind the argument.

↑ 47. Hurd, Triumph of Mercy, ch. 3, "Does God Get What He Wants?", sections "Two Traditional Opinions" and "The Common Denominator between Arminians and Calvinists." Hurd frames the impasse as follows: "Calvinists are right about God's power, and Arminians are right about His love. The tragedy is that both adhere to Augustine's theory of judgment which forces them to reject (or explain away) the glorious side of each other's theology." He argues that removing the shared assumption of eternal loss resolves the tension: "POWER + LOVE = Blessed Hope." His treatment of 2 Peter 3:9 appears under his discussion of boulomai and the will of God, where he connects it to the purpose texts in Isaiah 14:24 and 46:10–11. See also Hurd's fuller treatment of the Calvinist–Arminian impasse in The Universal Solution: Presenting Biblical Universalism as the Solution to the Debate between Calvinists and Arminians (2016), Introduction and ch. 4.

↑ 48. Beauchemin, Hope Beyond Hell, ch. III, "Purpose-Driven Judgment," section "Justice vs. Infinite Penalty." Beauchemin draws on Psalm 66:10–12 ("You laid affliction on our backs…We went through fire…but You brought us to rich fulfillment") and Lamentations 3:31–33 ("The Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion") to argue that biblical judgment always has a restorative goal. He asks: "What positive purpose is served by infinite punishment?" and observes that the word "yet" in Lamentations 3:32 "assures us the penalty is not infinite."