2 Timothy 2:25–26: Does God Grant Repentance Only to the Elect?

Second Timothy 2:25–26 tells the Lord’s servant to correct opponents with gentleness, “if God perhaps will grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.” The passage joins divine giving and human means in one sentence.

The Pastoral Setting

Paul is instructing Timothy about church life in difficult times. The immediate context is correction of those who oppose the truth (2:14–26): the Lord’s servant must not quarrel but must be kind, able to teach, and patient when wronged (2:24–25). Verse 25 gives the purpose of that gentleness — God may grant repentance — and verse 26 pictures the hope: those captive to the devil’s will may come to their senses and escape the snare. The passage is pastoral before it is doctrinal: it is about how Timothy should treat opponents, and it grounds that treatment in what God can do through patient, truthful correction.

The Interpretive Question

The disputed question is the force of “if God perhaps will grant.” Does the clause teach that repentance is a gift God gives only to the elect — making Timothy’s gentleness the means by which God grants it to them? Or does it describe the hope that patient correction may be the means through which God brings opponents to repentance — leaving the response real and the giving gracious? The syntax is the hinge: “perhaps” (mēpote) marks possibility, and the subject of the giving is God.

What Both Positions Affirm

Both readings affirm that repentance is a work of grace, that God is the ultimate giver, that Timothy’s gentleness is the commanded means, and that opponents may genuinely come to the knowledge of the truth. Neither reading makes repentance a human achievement or gentleness a magic formula. The disagreement is about what the clause proves about the scope of the giving and the order of grace and response.

A Recognizable Reformed Reading, with a Passage-Specific Source

Reformed interpreters read the verse as showing that repentance is God’s gift and therefore cannot be produced by human persuasion alone; the elect are given repentance through the faithful ministry of the word. Calvin’s commentary on the verse is striking, however, for what it emphasizes. He writes that the expression “if sometime,” or “if perhaps,” “points out the difficulty of the case, as being nearly desperate or beyond hope,” and that Paul means that “even towards the most unworthy we must exercise meekness; and although at first there be no appearance of having gained advantage, still we must make the attempt.”^[1] For Calvin, the “perhaps” marks the difficulty of winning opponents — not a list of who will be granted repentance. The giving is God’s, the means are Timothy’s patient instruction, and the hope is real but not guaranteed in any single case.

This matters because the passage-specific source does not read the verse as a proof of unconditional election to repentance; Calvin reads it as pastoral encouragement to persist in gentleness toward even the most difficult opponents, because the outcome rests with God. The doctrine that repentance is granted only to the elect may be argued from other passages and from the Canons of Dort’s teaching on regeneration^[2] — but this verse’s own emphasis is the patience of the teacher and the hope of the outcome.

The Strongest Reformed Objection

The strongest objection is the grammar of giving: Paul says God grants repentance. If repentance is a gift, it cannot be produced by the opponent’s free response alone; the verse therefore supports the doctrine that the will is renewed by grace — and the Reformed tradition extends this to the claim that the gift is given only to the elect.

A Direct Response

The objection’s first step is sound: repentance is a gift, and Beyond Tulip affirms it. The disputed step is the second — that the gift is given only to the elect. The verse says nothing about the scope of the giving; it says the teacher should hope for it in every case and persist in gentleness toward everyone. If the gift were restricted to a hidden subset, the verse’s universal command to hope and persist would lose its point. The verse holds divine giving and human means together without defining who receives the gift; the scope question must be argued from passages that address it directly.

What 2 Timothy 2:25–26 Establishes

Second Timothy 2:25–26 establishes that repentance and escape from the devil’s snare are God’s gifts, that they come through gentle, patient correction, and that teachers should persist in that work with hope. It does not, by itself, establish that the gift is given only to the elect; the verse’s own emphasis is the means and the hope.

Claim Notes

• The Calvin quotations are verbatim from his commentary on 2 Timothy 2:25 (online passage commentary; retrieved August 15, 2026).
• The characterization of Wesley’s Notes follows his treatment of the passage (online passage commentary; retrieved August 15, 2026).^[3]
• The Greek term mēpote (“perhaps”) is noted for the interpretive discussion; the lexical claim is limited to its standard meaning of “lest perhaps” and readers should consult a Greek lexicon for the full range of its use.
• The translation of the Scripture quotations on this page has not been independently identified; the renderings are retained from the original study.