In his famous book, The Bondage of the Will, Luther makes this comment, mere human reason

can never comprehend how God is good and merciful, and therefore you make to yourself a God

of your own fancy, who hardens nobody, condemns nobody, and pities everybody.

That's an interesting statement that Luther makes there. The God that we

want to believe in is a God who not only is sometimes merciful, but who is always merciful,

and who never condemns anybody, and never hardens anybody.

... condemns anybody and never hardens anybody.

You and I are made in the image of God, but it does seem that due to our fallenness,

sinful man seeks to create a God in his own image, a God of our own fancy, to quote Martin Luther.

You're listening to the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we conclude a week-long study of some of the hard sayings of the Bible.

Our task is not to create an idol, a version of God that we like or prefer, but instead to submit to what

the one true God has revealed about himself in Scripture. And that's one reason why we must be

very careful when we come to hard sayings in the pages of Scripture, handling and interpreting

them with care.

Throughout his ministry, R.C. Sprold didn't shy away from these hard sayings,

and in fact, he recorded four teaching series covering the hard sayings of the prophets,

of Jesus, of the apostles, and the Bible.

Well, today is the last day to request access to these four series when you give a donation of any amount at renewing your mind.org. And when you do, we'll send you Dr. Sproul's companion

hardcover book outlining and explaining these hard sayings. Don't forget that this offer also

ends at midnight. The final hard saying that we'll consider this week is from the Apostle Paul.

And R.C. Sprole says it's perhaps one of the most difficult texts in the Bible to interpret.

Here's Dr. Sprawl in Romans chapter 9.

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