At this point you may be saying to yourself: ‘This cannot be true, God wants everyone to be saved.’ In the following verse we can see that God wants all men to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus:

 

“This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3-4)

 

So God wants all men to be saved but he isn’t going to save everyone.

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“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

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This is not a contradiction but it does raise one big question: If he wants everyone to be saved why doesn’t he save everyone?  "One of you will say to me:  'Then why does God still blame us?  For who resists his will?'  But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?  Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' (Rom. 9:19-20)  Do we honestly think that we have the right to question the motives of the Creator of the universe?  Can we fathom the length and breadth of the heavens, or understand how they were made?  

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Nonetheless, we are given answers to this question in scripture: 

 

“What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?” (Romans 9:22-24)

 

God chooses to “show his wrath and make his power known.”  He did this to make the “riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy.” Consider Abraham's meeting with God before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham was only able to discuss the matter with God, because God chose to open the dialogue with him.  And in the end, only Lot and his daughters were saved in spite of Abraham's pleas.  If everyone was saved no-one would fully understand how great a gift salvation is or how bad sin really is. 

 

God is just, and he chooses to show his wrath and make his power known, so those he saves can better understand the extent of his mercy.  We may not understand this fully, but by the faith that he has given us, we know that God's judgement is right.