Question: I understand the following to be a brief summary of Jesus’ words regarding God’s Sovereign purpose in election from John 6:35-45:
Unless it is granted, no one will come to Christ. All to whom it is
granted will come to Christ, and all of these will be raised up to
eternal life on the last day. So, this being the case, can you please
explain to me the meaning of John 12:32, where Jesus said: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”?
Answer: What I will say here may surprise you, but
the word “all” has a number of different meanings in the Bible. We tend
to assume that when Jesus speaks of drawing “all men” that He is
referring to every last person on the planet. Well, that may or may not
be true, but it is in the CONTEXT where we find the phrase that tells us
if this assumption is correct or misplaced.
Even today we use the words “all” or “every” in many different ways.
When a school teacher asks the people in his classroom, “Are we all
here?” or “is everyone listening?” we understand he is not talking about
every one of the 6.5 billion plus folk on the planet, but all the
students who have signed up for the class. Context determines the proper
interpretation or meaning of words. When the word “all” is used, it is
used within a context.
In this illustration, the “all” had a context of the school
classroom, which did not include “all” the hockey players in Iceland,
“all” the dentists in Denmark, or “all” the carpet layers in Atlanta,
Georgia. To rip the word “all” out of its setting and say that the
teacher was referring to all people everywhere, would be to totally
misunderstand and misinterpret how the word was being used. Again, it is
context that determines correct interpretation. Keep Reading...
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