Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

problems of being a Christian, and the more you have felt the burden of weakness and the strain of faithfulness in your Christian life, the m...

as Romans is the high peak of the Bible, so chapter 8

is the high peak of Romans.

Comfort is, of course, used here in the old, strong sense of that which encourages and nerves, not in the modern sense of that which tranquilizes and enervates.

“comfort” in the modern sense is self-indulgent, sentimental

and unreal, and the modern “I-go-to-church-for-comfort” religion ...

You will not penetrate the secret of Romans 8 by studying the chapter on its own.

the impact of Romans 8 upon you will reflect what it has cost you to come to terms with what those chapters say.

only if, as a new creature in Christ, you have committed yourself to total holiness and then found in yourself that the flesh is at war with the spirit, so that you live in contradiction, never fully achieving the good you purposed nor avoiding all the evil you renounced

only then will Romans 8 yield up its full riches and make its great power known to you.

Why did he write Romans 8 at all?

The short answer—not

is: because he had just writt...

the more a person sets himself to keep the law the more he finds himself transgressing it.

The law speaks not of privilege and achievement, but only of failure and guilt.

For sensitive Christians, therefore, who know how God hates sin, to be diagnosed by the law is a miserable and depressing experience.

he sees need to remind them at once that what is decisive is not what the law says about them, but what the

gospel says.

by a logic both evangelical and pastoral—evangelical, because the gospel demands the last word; pastoral, because pastors mu...

Paul now picks up again the theme of Christian assurance and develops it as forcibly as he can, from “no condemnation” at the st...

The first thirty verses set forth the adequacy of the grace of God

Paul makes his point by dwelling on four gifts of God given to all who by faith are “in Christ Jesus.” The first is righteousness—“no

The second is the Holy Spirit (vv. 4-27).

The third is ...

The fourth is security, now ...

his theme shifts slightly and becomes the adequacy of the God of grace.

Interest moves from the gift to the Giver, from the thought of deliverance from evil to the thought of God being to each Christian what he said he would be to Abraham—“your

If verses 1-30 are saying, “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory,” then verses 31-39 are say...

Though he does not know them personally (nor us who read him in the twentieth century), he knows that what determines their state is two factors common to all real Christians everywhere in every age. The first is commitment to all-round righteousness.

The second factor is exposure to all-round pressures.

Think of what you know of God through the gospel, says Paul, and apply it. Think against your feelings;

unmask the unbelief they have nourished;

talk to yourself, make yo...

up from your problems to the God of the gospel; let evangelical thinking corr...

First: “If God is for us, who is against us?”

no opposition can finally crush us.

Paul sets before us the a...

God as our sovereign protector, and the decisiveness of his coven...

This is the God who showed his sovereignty by bringing Abraham out of Ur, Israel out of captivity in Egypt and later in Babylon, and Jesus out of the grave; and who shows the same sovereignty still every time he raises a sinner to spiritual life out of spiritual death.

The words for us declare God’s covenant commitment.

the bond of fellowship by which God binds himself to us is his covenant.

when worshipers say “my God,” and God says “my people,” covenant language is being talked.

the words “God is for us” are also covenant language;

here is God’s undertaking to uphold and protect us when people and circumstances are threatening, to provide for us as long as our earthly pilgrimage lasts, and to lead ...

“God is for us” is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains.

The psalmist displays three qualities which together mark out the true believer.

First, he praises, and what he praises is God’s word

he attends to God’s revelation and venerates God in it and according to it, rather than indulging his own...

Second, he prays, and the desire that prompt...

for communion ...