J. I. Packer on Grace:
Definition: The grace of God is love freely shown towards guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed I defiance of their demerit. It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and had no reason to expect anything but severity.
Those who suppose that the doctrine of God’s grace tends to encourage moral laxity (‘final salvation is certain anyway, no matter what we do; therefore our conduct doesn’t matter’) are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure; and the revealed will of God is that those who have received grace should henceforth give themselves to ‘good works’ (Eph 2:10, Titus 2:11 f); and gratitude will move any man who has truly received grace to do as God requires, and daily to cry out thus---
Oh! to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be;
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee!
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
Prone to leave the God I love—
Take my heart, oh, take and seal it,
Seal it from Thy courts above!
QUOTES on Adoption
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18 It is like a fairy story – the reigning monarch adopts waifs and strays to make princes of them – but, praise God, it is not a fairy story: it is hard and solid fact, founded on the bedrock of free and sovereign grace. This, and nothing less than this, is what adoption means. No wonder that John cries, ‘Behold, what manner of love…!’ When once you understand adoption, your heart will cry the same. J.I. Packer, Knowing God
As we try to replace old behaviors with new ones, it easy to take our eyes of our status as children of God. In fact, the longer we struggle with a problem, the more likely we are to define ourselves by that problem. We come to believe that our problem is who we are. But while these labels may describe particular ways we struggle as sinners in a fallen world, they are not our identity! If we allow them to define us, we will live trapped within their boundaries. This is no way for a child of God to live!” Paul Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands
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 has 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 well at all.
J.I. Packer, Knowing God
How great is the love
the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called
children of God! (1 John 3:1)
the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called
children of God! (1 John 3:1)
For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption. (Romans 8:15-16).
Extra: Average Christian’s view of God from J I Packer: “he imagines God as a magnified image of himself, and assumes that God shares his own complacency about himself.
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