Men are already condemn to hell. Adam's race is under bondage. Our Savior came to call us out of our bondage just like He called the Israelites out of their bondage. The Israelites that left Egypt, despite their suffering, wanted nothing more than to go back to Egypt. God took them via the Red Sea just so they wouldn't go back. And when they saw what laid ahead they wanted to turn back to Egypt.
We're not unlike the Israelites except in one very important respect. The only thing that keeps us from wanting to go back to Egypt is the Holy Spirit. God specifically tells us that He will give us a new heart and spirit so that we will walk in His way. It's not our choice because if it was our choice we would choose Egypt.
John 3:16...What does the word "whoever" mean there? If God says that salvation is available to "whoever" believes, then how is He not lying
Read the entire text.
Augustine compares and contrasts the believers against the unbelievers in his Treatise of the Predestination of the Saints:
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Let us, then, understand the calling whereby they become elected,not those who are elected because they have believed, but who are elected that they may believe. For the Lord Himself also sufficiently explains this calling when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." [John 15.16.] For if they had been elected because they had believed, they themselves would certainly have first chosen Him by believing in Him, so that they should deserve to be elected. But He takes away this supposition altogether when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." And yet they themselves, beyond a doubt, chose Him when they believed on Him. Whence it is not for any other reason that He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," than because they did not choose Him that He should choose them, but He chose them that they might choose Him; because His mercy preceded them according to grace, not according to debt. Therefore He chose them out of the world while He was wearing flesh, but as those who were already chosen in Himself before the foundation of the world. This is the changeless truth concerning predestination and grace. For what is it that the apostle says, "As He hath chosen us in Himself before the foundation of the world"? [Eph. 1.4.] And assuredly, if this were said because God foreknew that they would believe, not because He Himself would make them believers, the Son is speaking against such a foreknowledge as that when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you;" when God should rather have foreknown this very thing, that they themselves would have chosen Him, so that they might deserve to be chosen by Him. Therefore they were elected before the foundation of the world with that predestination in which God foreknew what He Himself would do; but they were elected out of the world with that calling whereby God fulfilled that which He predestinated. For whom He predestinated, them He also called, with that calling, to wit, which is according to the purpose. Not others, therefore, but those whom He predestinated, them He also called; nor others, but those whom He so called, them He also justified; nor others, but those whom He predestinated, called, and justified, them He also glorified; assuredly to that end which has no end. Therefore God elected believers; but He chose them that they might be so, not because they were already so. The Apostle James says: "Has not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love Him?" [James 2.5.] By choosing them, therefore; He makes them rich in faith, as He makes them heirs of the kingdom; because He is rightly said to choose that in them, in order to make which in them He chose them. I ask, who can hear the Lord saying, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," and can dare to say that men believe in order to be elected, when they are rather elected to believe; lest against the judgment of truth they be found to have first chosen Christ to whom Christ says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you"? [John 15.16.]
Whenever there is a discrepancy between what God says and what man has chosen to believe, we always have to go with what God says. There is not one verse of Scripture that indicates that God makes the choice for man as to eternal destiny. Repeatedly, God says He has provided a way of salvation and it is up to man to choose whether to accept that way or reject it. When God says that it is not His will that any perish, we have to choose to either believe what He says or not believe what He says. If it's not His will that any perish, then He is not going to determine that some will perish and take their option to accept Christ away from them.
From what I've seen on this thread and on previous threads dealing with Calvinism, the impression I'm getting is that people who have this belief system want the responsibility for their eternal destiny taken out of their hands and handed to God. Unfortunately, nowhere in the Bible does God take responsibility for the decision that He has given to man to make. It's extremely risky to believe that one has no control over whether or not to accept Christ's death on the cross as payment for sin; it is taking the risk of a lifetime to go through life believing that we are totally helpless, that we are nothing more than robots, that God made us, tells us that He does not want us to perish, then cruelly decides, while telling no one that He is deciding and by leading people to believe that the decision is theirs, that certain people have been chosen to go to hell after all.
John Calvin, at the time of his death, admitted that he was wrong about atonement. It's too bad that those who still believe his errors haven't heard that he did, at the end, repent.
“The only reason we have faith is because God gives us faith.”
Scripture, please. Where does scripture say God gives us saving faith as a gift?