Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

What is grace? In the New Testament, grace means God’s love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

God can bring good out of the extremes of our own folly; 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.

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.”

the law is a source of sinning, for it actually foments what it forbids, and so stirs up the impulse to disobey that the more a person sets himself to keep the law the more he finds himself transgressing it.

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 condemnation” (v. 1). The second is the Holy Spirit (vv. 4-27). The third is sonship—adoption into the divine family in which the Lord Jesus is the firstborn (vv. 14-17, 29). The fourth is security, now and forever (vv. 28-30). This composite endowment—a status, plus a dynamic, plus an identity, plus a safe conduct—is more than enough to support a Christian whatever his trouble.

Think of what you know of God through the gospel, says Paul, and apply it. Think against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; take yourself in hand, talk to yourself, make yourself look up from your problems to the God of the gospel; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking.

What does it mean when I am able to say “God is for me”? The answer is seen in Psalm 56, where the declaration “God is for me” (v. 9) is the hinge on which everything turns.

God has already commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (5:8), it is believable, to say the least, that he will go on to give us “all things” besides.

The Christian, like Israel at Sinai, faces the exclusive claim of the first commandment. God said to Israel: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:2-3; RV renders the last words “beside Me”). This command, like all the Decalogue, was couched in negative form because it came as a summons to stop living in the old way and make a fresh start.

if God denies us something, it is only in order to make room for one or other of the things he has in mind.

Your God is faithful to you, and he is adequate for you. You will never need more than he can supply, and what he supplies, both materially and spiritually, will always be enough for the present. “No good thing does the LORD withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Ps 84:11 RSV). “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13 RSV). “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Think on these things!—and let your thoughts drive out your inhibitions about serving your Master.

The sovereign Lord who justified you will take active steps to see that the status he has given you is maintained and enjoyed to the full. So

The climactic thought to which Paul rises in his fourth question is that no separation from Christ’s love can ever befall us. He conveys this by setting before us God, the Father and the Son, as our sovereign keeper, and by making plain the decisiveness of divine love in settling our destiny.

it is the privilege of all Christians to know for certain that God loves us immutably, and that nothing can at any time part us from that love or come between us and the final enjoyment of its fruits.

Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.