“God’s decretive will refers to the secret, all-encompassing divine purpose according to which he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. His preceptive will refers to the commands and prohibitions in Scripture.”

There is a reason I said God’s “Will(s)” (plural) instead of God’s “will” (singular). My focus in this installment of 10 things you should know is the question of whether or not there are two senses in which God may be said to “will” something.

(1) The first thing we should remember is that in one sense God’s “will” is irresistible and cannot be frustrated or ultimately overcome. We see this in texts such as these:

“I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose [or willing] of Yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

“All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:35).

“But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3; cf. Eph. 1:11).

(2) We are also told that God “wills” that all be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) and that all “come to repentance” (2 Pt. 3:9). How do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements? The answer is found in a distinction between God’s preceptive will and his decretive will.

Consider Exodus 4:21-23 and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. God, through Moses, will command Pharaoh to let the people go. That is God’s preceptive will, i.e., his will of precept or command. It is what God says should happen. Others refer to this as God’s revealed will or his moral will. But God also says he will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will refuse to let the people go. That is God’s decretive will, i.e., his will of decree or purpose. It is what God has ordained shall happen. It is also called his hidden will or sovereign will or efficient will. “Thus what we see [in Exodus] is that God commands that Pharaoh do a thing that God himself wills not to allow. The good thing that God commands he prevents. And the thing he brings about involves sin” (John Piper, “Are There Two Wills in God?” 114).

(3) God’s decretive will refers to the secret, all-encompassing divine purpose according to which he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. His preceptive will refers to the commands and prohibitions in Scripture. One must reckon with the fact that God may decree what he has forbidden. That is to say, his decretive will may have ordained that event x shall occur, whereas Scripture, God’s preceptive will, orders that event x should not occur. John Frame put it this way:

“God’s will is sometimes thwarted because he wills it to be, because he has given one of his desires precedence over another” (No Other God, 113).

“God does not intend to bring about everything he values, but he never fails to bring about what he intends” (113).

(4) To put it as simply as possible: God is often pleased to ordain his own displeasure.

(5) Perhaps the best example of the two senses in which God may be said to “will” something is found in Acts 2:22-23 and 4:27-28. Here we see that in some sense God “willed” the delivering up of his Son while in another sense “did not will” it because it was a sinful thing for his executioners to do. As Piper explains, “Herod’s contempt for Jesus (Luke 23:11), Pilate’s spineless expediency (Luke 23:24), the Jews’ ‘Crucify! Crucify him!’ (Luke 23:21), and the Gentile soldiers’ mockery (Luke 23:36) were also sinful attitudes and deeds. Yet in Acts 4:27-28 Luke expresses his understanding of the sovereignty of God in these acts by recording the prayer of the Jerusalem saints: ‘Truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever thy hand and thy plan (boule) had predestined to take place.’ Herod, Pilate, the soldiers, and Jewish crowds lifted their hand to rebel against the Most High only to find that their rebellion was unwitting (sinful) service in the inscrutable designs of God. . . . Therefore we know that it was not the ‘will of God’ that Judas and Pilate and Herod and the Gentile soldiers and the Jewish crowds disobey the moral law of God by sinning in delivering Jesus up to be crucified. But we also know that it was the will of God that this come to pass. Therefore we know that God in some sense wills what he does not will in another sense” (111-112).

(6) What God has eternally decreed shall occur may be the opposite of what he in Scripture says should or should not occur. It is important to keep in mind that our responsibility is to obey the revealed will of God and not to speculate on what is hidden. Only rarely, as in the case of predictive prophecy, does God reveal to us his decretive will. Examples of God’s preceptive or revealed will include Ezek. 18:3; Matt. 6:10; 7:21; Eph. 5:17; and 1 Thess. 4:3. Some would also place in this category 1 Tim. 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9. Examples of God’s decretive or hidden will include James 4:15; 1 Cor. 4:19; Matt. 11:25-26.

(7) Another example of this principle is found in Revelation 17:16-17. Clearly, “waging war against the Lamb is sin and sin is contrary to the will of God. Nevertheless the angel says (literally), ‘God gave into their [the ten kings] hearts to do his will, and to perform one will, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled’ (v. 17). Therefore God willed (in one sense) to influence the hearts of the ten kings so that they would do what is against his will (in another sense)” (Piper, 112).

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