Well I would strongly disagree with your last statement. It is very clear to me and others that election is by God and by his own good pleasure. With this statement you pulled down all the good that was said before.
To ed and web...i would agree that this verse if left to
its own will read unlimited atonement just as the freewillers would have it. But we are not to read the Bible that way....a verse here..and a verse there. Context is KING.
This reminds me of something that I use to ask my girls, to get them to think on their own.
I would ask....
"Is every statement in the Bible true?"
A kid will say yes. But the truth is the Bible is right, but the Bible has statements from men that said it
wrong. Jobs friends is a case in point. If we were to quote Jobs friends as the truth...we would be wrong...for Jobs friends were wrong.
This happen on this thread, but I saw it to late to reply. A person on this thread used a statement that was WRONG as if it was right. The verse is in the Bible, but the book it is found in has another meaning then what was stated in this thread.
So in order to understand the Bible message we must read the whole Bible and not pick our key verses. Many want to start with a idea and find verses to support the idea. This I feel is wrong. The whole book must be looked at...the writer must be looked at....who he wrote the book to...history...slang...the list goes on. One or two verse can not be our life line.
Anyway..I agree with web and ed..(web and ed sounds like a TV show)..in that the verse
on its own shows unlimited atonement. I disagree with all the other junk that was stated after this.