For many, Christ is a stone of stumbling, a stone which they strike their foot against and stumble over in the path to life. Why do they stumble? They claim to want life and they claim – at least some of them – to love God, but this way is too hard for them. What is the matter? The problem is that the way to life by Jesus Christ is too costly for them. Not that they have to pay for forgiveness or a place in heaven or for God’s favour, but it costs us in the sense that God requires us to cease loving the world and the things it offers. First of all he requires repentance of all sin, so that the one who comes to Christ must forsake the world and forsake even himself, and take up his cross and follow Christ daily. He must humble himself before the one whose kingdom was not of this world. He must follow the one who was not great in the eyes of this world, but was despised and rejected by men. Are we willing to follow him, for it is certain that if we do, we like him will be derided by the world.
The word ‘appointed’ may be slightly strong. It has certain content in it, which isn't in the Greek. The Greek is ‘set’, or ‘placed down’. Yes, there is a considerable amount of predestination in that, but ‘appointed’ is probably a little strong. Here are those who repudiate Christ. What does the Scripture say here about them? Does it say they were appointed to that, as though God elects those who will be saved, and he also elects to damnation those who would be lost? A lot of people think like this. They think, ‘If God elects a great host to salvation, overrules in their lives, and brings them to himself, it follows that he must elect that person to damnation, and to hell.’ That is our simple reasoning, and some people insist on reasoning like this. But that's not the right way to look at it. God elects to salvation all those who are saved. It wasn't our initiative; it wasn't our smart decision, as if we made a better response to the message of the gospel. It’s a mighty act of intervening, overruling grace that convicts our hearts, and opens our minds and bends our wills – it’s called regeneration – so that our ears are open to the gospel and we’re moved at what God has done in Christ, and we run to him for salvation and grace. But what about the lost? Are they not, in exactly the same way, chosen to damnation? You mustn’t put it quite like that, because the Scripture also teaches that God does not desire the death of a sinner. The heart of God is indescribably kind. He is an eternally just God, and he will punish the lost. It means simply this: that in the case of those who are not saved by grace, God has not chosen to intervene, and therefore things will take their course, and they will be judged according to their choice. They will be subject to the fall of man. The whole human race fell in Adam and rejected the rule of God, and that is endorsed by everyone of us as an individual. Doesn't it make us feel so utterly and entirely grateful to God, that he has intervened and overruled in the case of millions and millions of people, including us, and brought us away from our determined choice, so that we see our need and to come to him? But as far as the others are concerned, God has left them to their choice, and therefore their destiny is set; it's placed; it's inevitable. We must avoid human crass oversimplification. God has not intervened. God has left the lost to the inevitable course of the rejection of God. Just leave it at that, and preserving in your minds the mighty heart of the love of God.