Or are they? well to us they are because we are a prideful, fallen, feeble, finite perverted, warped creation. Do we actually understand any of the doctrines fully even the ones we teach to our children in Sunday school. Can one fully comprehend 3 persons in 1? or incarnation? or God being eternal-no beginning, no end? or Jesus is fully God, fully man? There is a fallen pride about ourselves where we think we know better than God, that somehow God made a mistake so we try to get to the bottom of what "He is really trying to say" by using reason much like Eve in the garden when the snake asked her, "Did God really say?" Eve pondered on it so much so that she and Adam reasoned themselves right out of the garden. If only they could suppress their pride and be content with what God literally told them and not what they think God was trying to say or what He meant to say?
Grace to You Audio Player (http://www.gty.org/AudioPlayer/Sermons/90-283 - broken link)
Does God Love the World?, Part 1 :: Grace to You
"God loved the world. He loves the world to the extent that He shows them common grace, compassion, warning and gospel opportunity. He has provided a sufficient Savior for the whole world. But sinners refuse to come and bear the culpability and the guilt for that refusal. Jesus said, "You will die in your sins and where I go you will never come because you do not believe in Me." The responsibility always falls at the foot of the sinner. You say, "I'm not sure how that fits together with election." Oh, I don't know why you would be unsure about that. I'm absolutely positive that that doesn't fit together with election in my mind. But that's very encouraging to me because that means God is a lot brighter than I am. Jesus approached one day in Jerusalem and He wept over the city, Luke 19:41, and He said, "If you had known in this day, even you, even you, if you had just known the things which make for peace, now they're hidden from your eyes." Too late...too late. Yes, God does love the whole world. Yes, anybody anywhere anytime who wants to believe can believe. We know that's a work of God. And yet it's the man or the woman's responsibility to take the opportunity that's offered to them. I know that that doesn't make perfect sense in our minds, but hell is full of people who refused to believe, who held to their sin. And heaven is full of people whom the Lord transformed. But sinners are there because they made their choice. On the other hand, we're in heaven because God made His choice. It's that impossible paradox that exists at every point in the great doctrines of Scripture.
I don't need to sort that out. I don't need to solve that. I just need to be faithful to take the gospel to the ends of the world and beg unbelievers to repent, right?"
-John MacArthur
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