²⁵… perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, ²⁶and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.

“Perhaps” seems a strange word for the apostle to use, who strongly challenges us elsewhere to “prove what the will of God is” (Rom. 12:1–2). The topic of God’s will is a favorite debate among those who take biblical teaching seriously. Scholars distinguish various aspects of God’s will.

First is His sovereign will (see Eph. 1:11): all of creation follows exactly as God has designed it from the beginning all the way to the end. He is in supreme and absolute control over everything. If that were not the case, there would be something outside of His authority and therefore independent of Him. This, of course, would be absurd. If anything exists, then God created it. If He didn’t create it, then it doesn’t exist. That is the point of John 1:1–2.

We also think of God’s decretive will, what He commands us. The Lord makes clear statements about how He wants us to behave. These statements do not prescribe what will take place but what He intends to happen. The Ten Commandments are symbolic of the many such decrees of God.

This leads to a third sense, that of God’s permissive will. He wills that humans, created in His image, have the free choice in whether they obey or disobey God’s decretive will. His sovereign will, in a way that is beyond our ability to comprehend, encompasses both His decretive will and permissive will. He gave us the freedom to say “no” to Him, and then through the cross He restored to us the freedom to say “yes” to Him.

Of course, we struggle with sorting all this out, and thus theologians (academic and armchair alike) debate fiercely. Paul begs off on this with his phrase “perhaps God.” He infers that repentance is something granted to sinners. They cannot repent apart from God gracing them with repentance. If that means God gives them only the ability to repent (as some teach), then Paul’s “perhaps” would be vacuous. Contrarily, he is uncertain of what God does “sovereignly.” We can agree that it is God’s desire (“will”) for people to repent (2 Peter 3:9), but will He actually grant repentance in a particular instance (in this case, the false teachers in Ephesus)? The “perhaps,” while reflecting Paul’s uncertainty, also reveals his heart being knitted together with God’s desire that all should repent. The benefits are enormous: knowledge of the truth, regaining their senses, escaping the clutches of the devil’s will.

Lord, I pray for those who have fallen away from You, that You would grant them the grace of a repentant heart.