For some unknown reason to me, God has presented the gospel of Christ as a mystery to avoid some people from understanding it. I do believe that God will not allow the Holy Spirit to reveal that mystery to a person until the person rejects the notion that they can figure it out by their own intelligence. I had that mindset when I was 50 years old because, at that time, the scriptures, seemingly, contradicted each other, especially the salvation scriptures; such as, You are saved by grace, and that not of yourselves, compared to save yourselves from this untoward generation. I gave up that mindset, after 12 years of being stubborn, and not too long after that the Holy Spirit revealed the difference in the deliverance. Looking back, if he had revealed it sooner, I would have said "I knew I was smart enough to figure it out". I believe there are a lot of people on this forum that are depending upon themselves for their eternal deliverance, by taking credit for their eternal deliverance by thinking that their acceptance of God is the cause of their eternal deliverance.