Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast.

God can restore the years that the locust has eaten.

Is your trouble a sense of failure? the knowledge of having made some ghastly mistake? Go back to God; his restoring grace waits for you.

“Lord, why is this?” I trembling cried, “Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?” “ ’Tis in this way,” the Lord replied, “I answer prayer for grace and faith. “These inward trials I employ From self and pride to set thee free; And break thy schemes of earthly joy, That thou may’st seek thy all in me.”

Calvin,

Tyndale,

when the message of Romans gets into a person’s heart there is no telling what may happen.

Tyndale)

Chrysostom had

Edward Elton,

The way into Romans 8 is through Romans 1—7, and the impact of Romans 8 upon you will reflect what it has cost you to come to terms with what those chapters say.

“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Is 46:9-10).

must

God has not forgotten or overlooked his need.

The praising, praying, thankful, faithful person has on him the marks of being a child of God.

Think!

Opposition is a fact:

“He did not spare his own Son.” In saving us, God went to the limit. What

But does this mean that, as a loaded gun is only potentially explosive, and an act of pulling the trigger is needed to make it go off, so Christ’s death achieved only a possibility of salvation, needing an exercise of faith on our part to trigger it off and make it actual?

strictly speaking, we save ourselves by our faith,

specifically

impossible

Christ give us “all things.” What does that cover? Calling, justification, glorification (which in v. 30 includes everything from the new birth to the resurrection of the body) have already been mentioned, and so throughout Romans 8 has the many-sided ministry of the Holy Spirit. Here is wealth indeed,

now in this time,

with persecutions

because he was worthy of their entire and exclusive trust.

your eyes must be open to see others’ needs, both spiritual and material;

especially men;

are not persuaded of the adequacy of God to provide for all the needs of those who launch out wholeheartedly on the deep sea of unconventional living in obedience to the call of Christ.

there is no ultimate loss or irreparable impoverishment to be feared; if God denies us something, it is only in order to make room for one or other of the things he has in mind.

unbelief,

Hold back no longer.

Think on these things!—and

you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.

in knowing him fully we shall find ourselves fully satisfied, needing and desiring nothing more.

Once more, Paul is countering fear—fear, this time, of the unknown, whether in terms of unprecedented suffering (vv. 35-36) or of a horrific future (“the world as it shall be”) or of cosmic forces which one cannot measure or master (height and depth in v. 39 are technical astrological terms for mysterious cosmic powers).

When we speak of the adequacy of God, it is this link that we highlight, and this link is of the essence of Christianity. Those who know God in Christ have found the secret of true freedom and true humanity.