Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

For the vital truth to be grasped here is that the Spirit is given to Christians as “the Spirit of adoption,” and in all his ministry to Christians he acts as the Spirit of adoption.

Just as adoption itself is the key thought for unlocking, and the focal thought for unifying, the New Testament view of the Christian life, so a recognition that the Spirit comes to us as the Spirit of adoption is the key thought for unlocking, and the focal thought for integrating, all that the New Testament tells us about his ministry to Christians.

In the first place, he makes and keeps us conscious—sometimes vividly conscious, always conscious to some extent, even when the perverse part of us prompts us to deny this consciousness—that we are God’s children by free grace through Jesus Christ. This is his work of giving faith, assurance and joy.

In the second place, he moves us to look to God as to a father, showing toward him the respectful boldness and unlimited trust that is natural to children secure in an adored father’s love. This is his work of making us cry “Abba, Father”—the attitude described is what the cry expresses.

In the third place, he impels us to act up to our position as royal children by manifesting the family likeness (conforming to Christ), furthering the family welfare (loving the brethren) and maintaining the family honor...

Fourth, and following on from what we have just said, our adoption shows us the meaning and motives of “gospel holiness.”

First, what has already been said shows us its essential nature. It is simply a consistent living out of our filial relationship with God into which the gospel brings us. It is just a matter of the child of God being true to type, true to his Father, to his Savior and to himself.

Second, the adoptive relationship, which displays God’s grace so signally, itself provides the motive for this authentically holy living.

The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God’s kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification.

But he who has mastered the truth of adoption both retains assurance and receives blessing in the day of trouble: this is one aspect of faith’s victory over the world.

while it is certainly true that justification frees one forever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as the means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one’s newfound Father.

Law-keeping is the family likeness of God’s children; Jesus fulfilled all righteousness, and God calls us to do likewise.

Fifth, our adoption gives the due we need to see our way through the problem of assurance.

First, the family relationship must be an abiding one, lasting forever. Perfect parents do not cast off their children. Christians may act the prodigal, but God will not cease to act the prodigal’s father.

Second, God will go out of his way to make his children feel his love for them and know their privilege and security as members of his family. Adopted children need assurance that they belong, and a perfect parent will not withhold it.

We note that in this verse witness to our adoption is borne from two distinct sources: our spirit (that is, our conscious self), and God’s Spirit, who bears witness with our spirit, and so to our spirit.

The witness of our spirit, he writes, becomes a reality as “the Holy Spirit enables us to ascertain our sonship, from being conscious of, and discovering in ourselves, the true marks of a renewed state.”

Our heavenly Father intends his children to know his love for them, and their own security in his family.

more easily felt than tell’t,”

God is a better father than this denial allows for: he keeps his children in faith and grace and will not let them slip from his hand.

The Reformers and Wesley were right to say that assurance is integral to faith; the Puritans, however, were also right to lay more stress than either on the fact that Christians who grieve the Spirit by sin, and who fail to seek God with all their heart, must expect to miss the full fruition of this crowning gift of the double witness, just as careless and naughty children stop their parents’ smiles and provoke frowns instead.

(R. S. Candlish, The Fatherhood of God; R. A. Webb, The Reformed Doctrine of Adoption),

I am a child of God. God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother too.

For many Christians, guidance is a chronic problem. Why? Not because they doubt that divine guidance is a fact, but because they are sure it is.

In our day, as we have frequently noted already, knowledge of God has been obscured—turned, in effect, into ignorance of God—by the twisting of our thoughts about God.

Belief that divine guidance is real rests upon two foundation-facts: first, the reality of God’s plan for us; second, the ability of God to communicate with us.

Moreover, Scripture contains explicit promises of divine guidance, whereby we may know God’s plan for our action.

First, Christians are God’s sons; and if human parents have a responsibility to give their children guidance in matters where ignorance and incapacity would spell danger, we should not doubt that in the family of God the same applies.

Again, Scripture is God’s Word, “profitable” (we read) “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work”

Again, Christians have an indwelling Instructor, the Holy Spirit. “You have been anointed by the Holy One . . . The anointing which you received from him abides in you, . . . his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie”

Doubt as to the availability of guidance would be a slur on the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit to his ministry.

Again, God seeks his glory in our lives, and he is glorified in us only when we obey his will. It follows that, as a means to his own end, he must be ready to teach us his way, so that we may walk in it.

They look for a will-o’-the-wisp; they overlook the guidance that is ready at hand and lay themselves open to all sorts of delusions. Their basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word.

But what is not right is to jump to the conclusion that, in the last analysis, all guidance problems are of this one type.

Two features about divine guidance in the case of “vocational choices” are distinctive.

First, these problems cannot be resolved by a direct application ...

Second, just because Scripture cannot decide one’s choice directly, the factor of God-given prompting and inclination, whereby one is drawn to commit oneself to one set of responsibilities rather than another and finds one’s mind settled in peace as one contemplates them, becomes decisive.

The basis of the mistake which we are trying to detect is to assume, first, that all guidance problems have these same two characteristics, and, second, that all life should be treated as a field in which this kind of guidance should be sought.

The idea of a life in which the inward voice of the Spirit decides and directs everything sounds most attractive, for it seems to exalt the Spirit’s ministry and to promise the closest intimacy with God; but in practice this quest for superspirituality leads only to frantic bewilderment or lunacy.

What conduct of this sort shows is failure to grasp that the fundamental mode whereby our rational Creator guides his rational creatures is by rational understanding and application of his written Word.

But the true way to honor the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honor the holy Scriptures through which he guides us.

The basic form of divine guidance, therefore, is the presentation to us of positive ideals as guidelines for all our living. “Be the kind of person that Jesus was”; “seek this virtue, and this one, and this, and practice them up to the limit”; “know your responsibilities—husbands, to your wives, wives, to your husbands; parents, to your children; all of you, to all your fellow Christians and all your fellow human beings; know them, and seek strength constantly to discharge them”

First, unwillingness to think.

God made us thinking beings, and he guides our minds as in his presence we think things out—not otherwise.

Second, unwillingness to think ahead and weigh the long-term consequences of alternative courses of action.

Often we can see what is wise and right (and what is foolish and wrong) only as we dwell on its long-term issues.

Third, unwillingness to take advice.

There are always people who know the Bible, human nature and our own gifts and limitations better than we do, and even if we cannot finally accept their advice, nothing but good will come to us from carefully weighing what they say.

Fourth, unwillingness to suspect oneself.

We need to ask ourselves why we “feel” a particular course to be right, and to make ourselves give reasons—and we shall be wise to lay the case before someone else whose judgment we trust, to give a verdict on our reasons.