Featured John Bunyan on the Sovereign Choice of God

Only those who are in Christ are loved by God. This is because Christ is our propitiation, which makes us holy before God the Father. God will not and does not love that which is evil. Because God chose his children before the foundation of the world, he demonstrates his love toward us even while we were yet sinners. (We are in Christ)
God will never have even one of his children fail to be adopted by him. He will always love his children...even before they know they are his children.

 

What is the purpose of the law? The law was given so that we might know what sin is.
Jon, you contend that the law is spiritual. The text does not make that claim one way or another. The text tells us the purpose for the law and the fact that sin took advantage of the law to arouse even more evil desires than we had before the law. What the law did was to condemn us before God, our judge. Paul then asks, who will deliver us from this condemnation. He answers this with a praise. There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
If you are not in Christ Jesus, you are condemned. If you are in Christ you are not condemned.

The law shows us our spiritual death, which we cannot bring to life, no matter how hard we might try. Only God can make us spiritually alive. Only God can place us in Christ.

Romans 7:4-14
[4]So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.
[5]When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.
[6]But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.
[7]Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”
[8]But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power.
[9]At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life,
[10]and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead.
[11]Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me.
[12]But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good.
[13]But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.
[14]So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin.

 

Right. Our condemnation stems from Adam's sin. We are born condemned as rebels. This means we are spiritually dead from birth. The law makes us aware of our spiritual situation and reveals our condemnation. The law does not provide hope. There must be a Redeemer. In Christ we are redeemed and made spiritually alive.