to will: to want, wish, or be disposed toward something, ranging from casual desire to deliberate purpose
This is the ordinary, everyday verb for wanting in the New Testament, and by far the most common one. It runs across a wide band of the inner life: a light personal wish ("I would like"), a settled readiness to act ("I am willing"), a firm resolve or purpose, and, when God is the one wanting, his sovereign will ("God wants all people to be saved"). What holds the range together is the leaning of a person toward something, an act of the will rather than a passing feeling.
Older reference books drew a sharp line between this verb and its near-twin βούλομαι, claiming that one named warm, spontaneous desire and the other cool, deliberate purpose. Tellingly, respected authorities could not even agree on which verb was which, and closer study of everyday Greek documents from the New Testament era has shown the supposed line to be an illusion. By the first century this verb had simply become the standard word for willing and had absorbed most of what its rival once covered, so that in the great majority of passages the two are interchangeable. An interpretation that leans on a hard contrast between them, as some do at 2 Peter 3:9, is building on sand.
Because it is the plain word for willing, it carries some of the New Testament’s heaviest moments about the will itself. In Gethsemane Jesus prays "not what I want, but what you want." In Romans 7 Paul agonizes that "what I want to do, I do not do." The same verb names God’s saving purpose and, at times, a person’s stubborn refusal of it. The drama in these passages comes from theology, from questions about God’s will and human will, not from any hidden meaning tucked inside the word.
A distinct corner of its use means to take pleasure in or to prefer. This shows up especially in quotations from the Old Testament, where it echoes a Hebrew verb for delighting in something, as in "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," and in the everyday observation that no one who has drunk old wine wants the new.