2 Peter 3:9

2 Peter 3:9? Major problem for Calvinists, if you ask me. If what Peter meant here when he said “all” was those believers to whom the letter was written, then wouldn’t he be saying that God is not willing for any those believers to perish but for all those believers to come to repentance? This simply would not make sense, you must see, for how can one who is already a believer come to repentance? So are these people believers or non-believers?

Believers, obviously. If you have read Peter’s epistles at all, he made very clear to whom his letters were addressed. But there is something to be said here. The people who Peter was writing to were believers, however the people who Peter was writing about are all those beloved and chosen by God; some, like those to whom Peter was writing, existed as believers at the time but many were not yet even born! Peter is writing to those particular believers but the context quite plainly demonstrates that he is not writing about only those particular believers; included were all those yet to come. The elect who at that time had “obtained a faith of equal standing” are temporally separated from the elect who had not yet obtained that faith or even been born. He is writing to these believers but also about those yet to come.

Consistently throughout both epistles (3:1), the “us” being referred to are “those who have obtained a faith of equal standing” with the apostles (1:1), to whom God granted “his precious and very great promises” (1:4 [with whom he is not slack concerning his promises, 3:9; cf. 3:13-14]), the “beloved” (3:1, 8, 14, 17), and the “brethren” (1:10a) who—notice carefully now—have been chosen and called by God (1:10b; cf. 1 Pet. 1:2, 2:9). This is for whom the Lord is longsuffering, not willing that any of these should perish but that all those chosen and called by God, the full number thereof, should come to repentance. As the apostle Paul makes clear (3:15-16 authenticates Paul), there is a remnant of Israel who will see their salvation after the full number of the Gentiles has come in. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as the scoffers would have us believe. The Lord is not late; he has a set time for his return which has always been known to God (Mar. 13:32) and this timing is without any regard to when his creatures think he should return. As Matthew Henry put the matter, the Lord “does not delay beyond the appointed time . . . [in as much as] God kept the time that he had appointed for the delivering of Israel out of Egypt, to a day (Exo. 12:41), so he will keep to the time appointed in coming to judge the world.” Men have their ideas of when they think the Lord should return; “but they set one time and God sets another, and he will not fail to keep the day which he has appointed.”

There is still another consideration which adds further support to this interpretation, that the “all” in this passage refers not to all mankind indiscriminately but to the sheep chosen and called by the Father. For if it refers indiscriminately to all mankind, then we have created a number of contradictions from one end of Scripture to the other, because we find in various places throughout Scripture that God, although he takes no pleasure in it, is indeed willing that some should perish—and that very justly, on account of their sin and rebellion.

But we don’t even need to examine scripture elsewhere, for in Peter’s own epistle here, he too affirms that God is in fact willing that some men should perish. He affirms, here in his second epistle (2:9-17), that God does indeed “reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment,” ungodly men who are “like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed” and who “will utterly perish in their own corruption, and will receive the wages of unrighteousness,” men that he refers to as “accursed children” for whom “is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.” And even in this very third chapter we are examining (3:7), Peter proclaims that “the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

Remember also something Paul said, with regard to God’s enduring patience and the objects thereof: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction.” And why would God do this? “In order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” (Rom. 9:21-24; cf. 5:9; 1 Thes. 5:9; 1:10). Since God, in his righteous justice, is indeed willing that some should perish on account of their sins and transgressions (Rom. 12:19 [cf. Deut. 32:35]; Col. 3:6; Joh. 3:36; Rom. 6:16, 23; 1 Cor. 15:56; etc.), obviously the “all” in this passage refers to the “us” stated therein, who are amply identified as God’s chosen sheep given to the Son, for whom he laid down his life.