Misconception #2: The Condition of the World Today Is God's Will

The second misconception is closely related to the first, but it points in a slightly different direction. The first said everything that happens is God’s will. This one says: the shape the world is in today — its brokenness, its lostness — is God’s will. Where the first dealt with sovereignty and evil in general, this one is aimed more specifically at God’s work in the hearts of men.

The misconception: the world’s broken condition is God’s will

Behind this idea often hides a quiet accusation against God — as if the multitudes who are lost are lost because God was not faithful to them, because He never reached out, because He simply willed most people to perish. Scripture says the opposite, and it begins with how God values every single soul:

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.

Psalm 139:14 (NKJV)

David was not speaking only of himself. Every soul God sends into this world is fearfully and wonderfully made. Look at your own hands, your own face — we are each different, each intricately formed by God. He does not make throwaway people. And His desire for them is just as clear:

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

1 Timothy 2:3-4 (NKJV)

God’s stated desire is that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth that is found in Jesus Christ. That is why He sent His Son into the world — not for a select few, but as the Savior of all:

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

John 1:29 (NKJV)

Jesus died for the sins of all mankind, for all time. He did not offer a half-sacrifice expecting only a handful to be saved. He provided a perfect sacrifice for every soul. In fact, this is part of why hell will be so terrible for the wicked — not only the punishment itself, but the unbearable awareness of the great salvation that was right before them and lost.

God has already done a deep work

So believers must come out of the funk of assuming the world’s condition proves God has been unfaithful to people’s souls. He has not. His work in a human heart runs deeper than we imagine:

Your righteousness is like the great mountains; Your judgments are a great deep; O Lord, You preserve man and beast.

Psalm 36:6 (NKJV)

God’s work is a deep work, like deep waters. Every unsaved person you meet — and yes, we keep interceding for them, keep lifting them before God’s throne — is someone in whom God has already been laboring. He has already manifested Himself to them. He has already sent the Holy Spirit to do His convicting work:

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.

John 16:8 (NKJV)

Sometimes in the church we lose sight of this. We act as though every person we speak to is a blank slate with no prior work of God in them — as though, if they are still lost, the church must simply have failed at its job. That is not true. Jesus diagnosed the real problem:

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

John 3:19 (NKJV)

Part of the church’s job is to call people to stop loving the darkness and come into the light — just as Peter says we ourselves were once in darkness and have now been called into His marvelous light to proclaim His praises. The lost are not lost because God neglected them. As Romans 1 says plainly, they are “without excuse.” God has been faithful to every person’s soul, from birth to death, and He is more intimately at work in each one than we tend to think.

🎥 Watch the full message: Misconception #2 — The Condition of the World Today Is God’s Will

Part of the Misconceptions of the Faith series.