Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

false hopes are a greater evil than false fears.

grace means God’s love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love.

Unreality toward God is the wasting disease of much modern Christianity.

The quest for “comfort” in the modern sense is self-indulgent, sentimental and unreal, and the modern “I-go-to-church-for-comfort” religion is not Christianity;

you must accept for yourself the position of such a person, in the sense that you renounce all future expectations from society and learn to take it as a matter of course if the people around you give you the cold shoulder and view you with contempt and disgust, as an alien sort of being. You may often find yourself treated in this fashion

Again: you are called to be a meek person, not always standing up for your rights, nor concerned to get your own back, nor troubled in your heart by ill treatment and personal slights (though, if you are normally sensitive, these things are bound to hurt you at the top level of consciousness); but you are simply to commit your cause to God and leave it to him to vindicate you if and when he sees fit. Your attitude to other people, good and bad, nice and nasty, both Christians and unbelievers, is to be that of

All that Paul says serves to show that the idea of Christ condemning us is absurd. He died—to save us from condemnation, by bearing the penalty of our sins as our substitute.