God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9) since he will divide the sheep and goats.

[fhansen]

So, in a finite period of time, with incomplete knowledge and corrupted minds, humans can earn, nay CHOOSE infinite torment?! These are not 'just weights.'

Do you believe, then, in universal salvation? Otherwise we have a problem either way. And universal salvation poses another problem; neither Scripture or the Church historically, east and west, has taught it. Anyway, the Church teaches that only knowledge of sin, sufficiently understood, can make one culpable as its committed.

 

[V37]

I don’t think it’s helpful to jump from Is.24 to imply a divine itch to damn. Firstly cursings were often educational, consequences ratcheted up in line with disobedience, with surrender at any point accepted. The divine desire was to ratchet up blessing for obedience. I hold that Yahweh hates sinfulness—relational failure—but not sinners, yet ultimately but not yearningly will allow all who side with sin to have it their own way and to fade into unrelationship, hell. Covenant is for people-centred relationship; violating it (Is.24:5) is towards termination of relationship, an adultery. Whatever the biblical covenant, violation is punished with the hope of restoration but allowance of eventual hopelessness. God can be defeated, but none will gain from his defeat. He desires none to ultimately fall and has done and does what can could and can be done to redeem. I hold 2 Pt.3:9 to be a universal truism that will demonstrate his limits: ultimately the ‘goats’, so to speak, will go their own way. There is no divine ‘want/desire’ for folk to ultimately perish, though he can ‘want/desire’ immediate perishing for educative/redemptive purpose: Paul desired the Roman offender to perish for the offender’s longterm good (1 Cor.5) as well as the Corinthian church’s.

God’s ‘love’ can mean ‘choice’—Jacob was chosen; Judas was ‘loved’. Likewise 'hate' can mean bypassing. Love/hate can have other meanings in other contexts. Eg Jhn.3:16 was about immediate salvation limited to those hearing the gospel who could thereby know immediate heaven or hell. Within that covenant arguably some enable him to 'love' them more. (As an aside I reject fhansen’s idea that ‘God’ died for us: pace Charles Wesley the Immortal never died; it was Jesus the mortal.) That beyond the timeline God sees all responses need not imply that the atonement was limited in design to the receivers, howbeit was limited in mortal life to the hearing/welcome of Christ (Rm.10:13-4) and beyond mortal life has been limited to all with a welcome for God.

 

[Tayla]

2 Peter 3:9 - The LORD is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Yes, God wants everyone to come to him. Why would he want some to reject him?

 

[fhansen]

I don’t think it’s helpful to jump from Is.24 to imply a divine itch to damn. Firstly cursings were often educational, consequences ratcheted up in line with disobedience, with surrender at any point accepted. The divine desire was to ratchet up blessing for obedience. I hold that Yahweh hates sinfulness—relational failure—but not sinners, yet ultimately but not yearningly will allow all who side with sin to have it their own way and to fade into unrelationship, hell. Covenant is for people-centred relationship; violating it (Is.24:5) is towards termination of relationship, an adultery. Whatever the biblical covenant, violation is punished with the hope of restoration but allowance of eventual hopelessness. God can be defeated, but none will gain from his defeat. He desires none to ultimately fall and has done and does what can could and can be done to redeem. I hold 2 Pt.3:9 to be a universal truism that will demonstrate his limits: ultimately the ‘goats’, so to speak, will go their own way. There is no divine ‘want/desire’ for folk to ultimately perish, though he can ‘want/desire’ immediate perishing for educative/redemptive purpose: Paul desired the Roman offender to perish for the offender’s longterm good (1 Cor.5) as well as the Corinthian church’s.

God’s ‘love’ can mean ‘choice’—Jacob was chosen; Judas was ‘loved’. Likewise 'hate' can mean bypassing. Love/hate can have other meanings in other contexts. Eg Jhn.3:16 was about immediate salvation limited to those hearing the gospel who could thereby know immediate heaven or hell. Within that covenant arguably some enable him to 'love' them more. (As an aside I reject fhansen’s idea that ‘God’ died for us: pace Charles Wesley the Immortal never died; it was Jesus the mortal.) That beyond the timeline God sees all responses need not imply that the atonement was limited in design to the receivers, howbeit was limited in mortal life to the hearing/welcome of Christ (Rm.10:13-4) and beyond mortal life has been limited to all with a welcome for God.

I'd disagree only on that one point. Jesus's human and divine nature may have been different, and yet were/are inseparable. When we see Jesus we see the Father. When Jesus experienced sorrow or compassion or anger and even humility we begin to know better the nature and will of God. God reluctantly yet willingly accepted His passion with all the humiliation and pain that He knew it would mean. God died as a human, experiencing that death as we all do while yet knowing that it didn't mean the end, that He would raise to life again to prove eternal life to us, never having died spiritually of course. Jesus raised Himself from the dead. This is how we know the true nature and will of God, one even willing to suffer death for us, at His creation's own hands in spite of our sin, a very different God from the concept we somehow automatically default to: an angry God, distant and aloof in His superiority, whimsical perhaps-the god we generally play whenever we might abuse power or authority. Enmity and division had come from us, not from Him. "They hated Me without reason", Jesus said in reference to Himself and His Father, quoting Psalms. The Son of God is God. Jesus was never mortal.