But even as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts.
There is much in the gospel that is distasteful to the natural man--its humiliating exposure of our sin and helplessness, its demands for our acceptance of God’s will, the fact that it claims to be the only unchangeable truth, and the severity of its judgments upon those who reject (56).