What is the difference between God’s will and God’s desire?
Question 2003
Scripture presents what appears to be a genuine tension. God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), yet plainly not all people are saved. He tells Israel through Ezekiel that He takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11), yet the wicked do die in their sins. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and cried out, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). The apparent tension between what God wills and what actually occurs is not something to be explained away; it is something Scripture itself invites us to sit with honestly.
God’s Declared Purposes
There is a dimension of God’s will that refers to what He has determined will come to pass — His ultimate purposes for creation, for the redemption of His people, for the return of Christ, for the new heavens and earth. These will not be frustrated. Isaiah 46:10 declares that God “announces the end from the beginning,” that His counsel will stand and He will accomplish all His purpose. When Scripture speaks in this sense, it refers to God’s settled determinations about the broad arc of history, the fulfilment of covenant promises, and the ultimate destination of all things. No human decision, no satanic opposition, and no sequence of events can unravel what God has purposed at this level.
God’s Moral Desires
There is another dimension of God’s will that refers to what He genuinely wants for people — His moral desires for how human beings live and respond to Him. God desires all people to be saved. He desires the wicked to repent. He desired Israel to obey. Jesus desired to gather Jerusalem. These are not merely rhetorical statements inserted into Scripture for effect; they are genuine expressions of what God wants for those He has made in His image. Because God has created human beings with genuine freedom to respond or to refuse, those desires are not always fulfilled. A person can stand before God’s call and choose to turn away, and God, who could override that choice, does not do so.
This is where the distinction matters practically. It means that God genuinely grieves over human rebellion. When the wicked perish, God is not coldly executing a plan He designed for them — He is dealing in judgement with people who refused what He genuinely offered. There is no contradiction in affirming both that God’s ultimate purposes will stand and that God genuinely desires outcomes that human freedom sometimes prevents.
Keeping the Tension Honest
The theological temptation is to collapse this distinction in one direction or the other. One approach insists that everything that happens is exactly what God willed, meaning His desires and His decrees are always identical — but this makes God the author of every sin and every refusal of the gospel, which Scripture will not allow. The other approach suggests that God’s purposes are at the mercy of human decisions, which leaves us with a God whose plans are constantly being reworked, and which Scripture equally will not support. The honest position is to hold both realities: God’s ultimate purposes are not in jeopardy, and God’s moral desires for human beings are genuine, not theatrical.
The language Jesus uses in Matthew 23:37 is striking and should not be softened. “You were not willing” is not a statement about a divine decree — it is a statement about Jerusalem’s choice. The desire was real. The unwillingness was real. Both are true at the same time.
So, now what?
Understanding this distinction protects us from two pastoral errors. It prevents us from concluding that because someone has not been saved, God must not have wanted them to be — which is cold and unbiblical. And it prevents us from concluding that God’s purposes might ultimately fail, that the story might not end as He has declared it will. God desires the salvation of every person you speak to. His purposes for His own people are settled. These two truths are companions, not rivals.
“The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
