Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

Sonship to God, then, is a gift of grace. It is not a natural but an adoptive sonship,

apostles proclaim that God has so loved those whom he redeemed on the cross that he has adopted them all as his heirs, to see and share the glory into which his only begotten Son has already come.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find

out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand

Christianity very wel...

“Father” is the Christian name for God.

Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp

of adoption.

The revelation to the believer that God is his Father is in a sense the climax of the Bible, just as it was a final step in the revelatory process which the Bible records.

it is because he is what he is that everything else is as it is.

He is the reality behind all reality, the underlying cause of all causes and all events. The name proclaimed him as self-existent, sovereign, and wholly

free from constraint by or dependence on anything...

the aspect of his character

on which God laid most stress in the Old Testament was his holiness.

The angels’ song which Isaiah heard in the temple, with its emphatic repetitions—“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty” (Is 6:3)—could be u...

of the whole Old T...

The basic idea which the word holy expresses is that of separation, or separateness. When God is declared to be holy, the thought is of all that separates him and sets him a...

The constant emphasis was that human beings, because of their weakness as creatures and their defilement as sinful creatures, must learn to humble themselves and be reverent before God.

in the New Testament

we find that things have changed.

the Old Testament revelation of the holiness of God, and its demand for humility in man, is presupposed throughou...

New Testament believers deal with God as their Father. Father is the name by which they call him. Father has now become his covenant name—for the covenant which binds him to his...

the stress of the New Testament is not on the difficulty and danger of drawing near to the holy God, but on the boldness and confidence ...

To those who are Christ’s, the holy God is a loving Father; they belong to his family; they

may approach him without fear

This is the heart of the New Testa...

The truth is that all of us

have a positive ideal of fatherhood by which we judge our own and others’ fathers, and it can safely be said that the person for whom the thought of God’s perfect fatherhood is meaningless or repellent does not exist.

God has not left us to guess what his fatherhood amounts to by drawing analogies from human fatherhood. He revealed the full meaning of this relationship onc...

God intends the lives of believers to be a reflection and reproduction of Jesus’ own fellowship with himself.

In John’s Gospel the first evangelical blessing to be named is adoption

Central in John’s

first epistle are the thoughts of sonship as the supreme gift of God’s love

love to the...

and to one’s Christian brothers...

According to our Lord’s own testimony in John’s Gospel, God’s fatherly relation to him implied four things.

First, fatherhood implied authority.

Second, fatherhood implied affection.

Third, fatherhood implied fellowship.

Fourth, fatherhood implied honor.

All this extends to God’s adopted children.

As Jesus obeyed God, so must they.

As God loved his only begotten Son, so he loves his adopted sons.

As God had fellowship with Jesus, so he does with us.

As God exalted Jesus, so he exalts Jesus’ followers, as brother...

A formal definition and analysis of what adoption means is called for at this point. Here is a fine one, from the Westminster Confession

All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth,

in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God; have His name put upon them, receive the Spirit of

adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cry, Abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him, as by a father; yet never cast of...

the promises, as heirs of everlasti...