09/07/2023 – Chapter 19 excerpts: “Sons of God”
Only my 2nd posting on “Knowing God” by J.I. Packer, with only three chapters left after this one. Well, needless to say it doesn’t have anything to do with quality. Unlike some past books, I just won’t necessarily be going in chapter order. If you are logged on, you can filter on the book category and/or search on the title or author to pull these posts up. As I have noted, contact me via email , Jimmy, at semikkah7@protonmail.com if you need a logon. and password.
My excerpts will begin with Packer’s chapter premise and end with some challenging questions to push us down the sanctification trail. Let’s get started!:
“Adoption: The Highest Privilege (pg 206)”
Premise: “Our first point about adoption is that it is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification. This may cause some raising of eyebrows ,….
- Justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as judge.
- Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father… To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is the greater.
See: Galations 4: 1-7 !”
“… Many have found it hard to see what claim the law can have on the Christian. We are free from the law, they say; our salvation does not depend on law-keeping; we are justified through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. How then can it matter, or make any difference to anything, whether we keep the law henceforth or not?…
The Puritans had to face these ‘antinomian’ ideas, and sometime made heavy weather of answering them… The truth is that these ideas must be answered in terms not of justification but of adoption — a reality which the Puritans never highlighted quite enough. Once the distinction is drawn between these two elements in the gift of salvation, the correct reply becomes plain.
What is that reply? It is this: that, 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. Adoption puts law-keeping on a new footing: as children of God, we acknowledge the law’s authority as a rule for our lives, because we know that this is what our Father wants. If we sin, we confess our fault and ask our Father’s forgiveness on the basis of the family relationship, as Jesus taught us to to —“Father… forgive us our sins”. (Luke 11:2, 4). The sins of God’s children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mare the children’s fellowship with their Father. ‘Be holy, for I am holy’ is our Father’s word to us, and it is not part of justifying faith to lose sight of the fact that God, the King, wants his royal children to live lives worthy of their paternity and position…
The Puritans of the next century made a point of teaching that what is essential in Fatih is not assurance of salvation, whether present or future, but vital repentance and commitment to Jesus Christ….”
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“To help us realize more adequately who and what, as children of God, we are and are called to be, here are some questions by which we do well to examine ourselves again and again.
Do I understand my adoption? Do I value it? Do I daily remind myself of my privilege as a child of God?
Have I sought full assurance of my adoption? Do I daily dwell on the love of God for me?
Do I treat God as my Father in heaven, loving, honoring and obeying him, seeking and welcoming his fellowship, and trying in everything to please him, as a human parent would want his child to do?
Do I think of Jesus Christ, my Savior and my Lord, as my brother too, bearing to me not only a divine authority but also a divine-human sympathy? Do I think daily how close he is to me, how completely he understands me, and how much , as my kinsman-redeemer, he cares for me?
Have I learned to hate the things that dispelse my Father? Am I sensitive to the evil things to which he is sensitive? Do I make a point of avoiding them, lest I grieve him?
Do I look forward daily to that great family occasion when the children of God will finally gather in heaven before the throne of God, their Father, and of the Lamb, their brother and their Lord? Have I felt the thrill of this hope?
Do I love my Christian brothers and sisters with whom I live day by day, in a way that I shall not be ashamed of when in heaven I think back over it?
Am I proud of my Father, and of his family, to which by his grace I belong?
Does the family likeness appear in me? If not, why not?
God humble us; God instruct us; God make us his own true children.”
Soli Deo Gloria!