Has anything grown on you recently? I didn’t think I’d like this song, but by a couple of minutes in, I was singing along.
Here’s the chorus:
By this we know love that He laid down His life
God’s very own Son came from Heaven to die
Suspended He hung as He shed His own blood
What grace in His pardon, by this we know love
Via Worship Matters
I just can’t wrap my mind around this thought. Horatio Spafford beat me to it by 136 years, and here it is in his own words:
My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought—
My sin—not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
That verse just gets me every time…
What a thought… Jesus went from glory, from hearing the seraphs crying out, “Holy, holy, holy!” to being treated like a common criminal, to hearing the crowds crying, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
This is the 25th and final post on Knowing God and is continued from yesterday.
B. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him graciously give us all things?” In other words, no good thing will finally be withheld from us. Paul points of the adequacy of God as our sovereign benefactor and to the certitude of His redeeming work for us.
In this verse we see:
This is the final chapter in the book, which was probably my favourite. Due to its length, part two will appear tomorrow.
In this chapter, Packer deals with the book of Romans, and in particular, chapter 8.
The letter to the Romans is a high point of the Bible, says Packer. In it we find doctrine—truth about God on various themes, taught by God. It is a book of life, giving an analysis on the life of sin (chapters 1-3, 5-7, 9), the life of grace (3-15) and the life of faith (4, 10, 14). It is also the book of the church, explaining the church’s identity (the true seed of Abraham, Jew or not, chosen by God) and how the church should live. It is also God’s personal letter to His children, exposing their sin and evoking joy, assurance, boldness, and liberty which God gives to those who love Him.
You can only appreciate the magnificence of Romans “[T]he more you have dug into the rest of the Bible, the more you are exercised with the intellectual and moral problems of being a Christian, and the more you have felt the burden of weakness and the strain of faithfulness in your Christian life.” Continue reading
In this chapter, Packer takes on what he considers shortcomings of the ministry of evangelism, which arise from an inaccurate application of gospel truths.
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The evangelistic ministry emphasises the difference that becoming a Christian will make in a person’s life. In stressing the positive aspects (forgiveness of sins, fellowship with God, the power of the indwelling Spirit), the not-so-positive side of Christian life gets downplayed (the daily chastening, the struggle with sin and Satan, the periodic valley moments). This may leave the recent convert with the impression that the Christian life is one in which problems no longer exist—or if they come, they only have to be taken to the throne of grace where they melt away.
It is also entirely possible to over-emphasise the rough side of Christian life, but this is a lesser extreme: false hopes are a greater evil that false fears. False hopes will lead to bitter disillusionment whereas false fears may lead to the pleasant surprise that all isn’t as gloomy as once thought.
God is very gentle with young believers, such that the start of their new life in Christ is marked by great joy, remarkable answers to prayer and fruitfulness un their acts of witness; thus God encourages them. But as they grow stronger, they’re able to bear more and God exposes them to as much testing as they’re able to bear (1 Cor 10:13), but not less (Acts 14:22). In this way, God builds their character, strengthens their faith and prepares them to help others. He glorifies Himself in our lives, making His strength perfect in our weakness. Continue reading
Guidance is a problem to many Christians, not because they doubt the truth of divine guidance, but because they are sure of it. They have no doubt as to God’s ability to lead, having read on it in books and having heard of it from friends and public speakers. The problem arises in that they doubt their own receptiveness to the guidance offered by God. [How I can identify with this paragraph!]
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Belief in the reality of God’s guidance rests on two foundational facts: first, the reality of God’s plan for us; second, the ability of God to communicate with us. God has a plan for individuals—He has an ‘eternal purpose’ which He accomplishes ‘in conformity with the purpose of His will’ (Eph 3:11, 1:11). He had a plan to redeem His people from bondage in Egypt; He had a plan to return them from exile in Babylon. He had a plan for Jesus, whose earthly ministry consisted entirely in doing His Father’s will. He had a plan for Paul, who in 5 of his letters announces himself an apostle ‘by the will of God’. Continue reading
Continued from yesterday.
In the previous chapter, we saw that even though the word ‘propitiation’ may not verbally occur in one’s translation of the NT, nonetheless the concept it presents is fundamentally important in the NT. The same can be said of the word ‘adoption’. The two concepts link together, and Packer’s summary of the NT in 3 words is adoption through propitiation.
Packer now draws evidence from the epistles to show how adoption gives insights into 5 matters:
God adopts us out of free love, not because we are worthy to bear His Name, but despite the fact that we’re the very opposite. He wasn’t obligated to adopt us, He chose to. His love doesn’t end there either: His promise to us is an eternity of love, without distinctions of affection. Continue reading
This chapter will be split in two parts, with part two appearing tomorrow.
The richest answer to, “What is a Christian?” that Packer knows is, “one who has God for his Father.”
Not all men are children of God. In the OT, God is Father to the seed of Abraham (Ex 4:22-23a); in the NT, God is Father to those who’ve put their trust in Christ (Gal 3:26). The gift of sonship comes not through being born, by through being born again (John 1:12-13). It is an adoptive sonship.
The divine fatherhood of God is one aspect of the NT teaching that isn’t found in the OT. Believers as sons of God have a model in Christ and His fellowship with His Father. We learn this from John’s gospel and his first epistle. Packer says:
“In John’s gospel the first evangelical blessing to be named is adoption (1:12), and the climax of the first resurrection appearance is Jesus’s statement that He was ascending to ‘my Father and your Father, my God and your God’ (20:17, NEB). Central in John’s first epistle are the thoughts of sonship as the supreme gift of God’s love (1 John 3:1); of love to the Father (2:15, cf. 5:1-3) and to one’s Christian brothers (2:9-11, 3:10-17, 4:7,21) as the ethic of sonship; of fellowship with God the Father as the privilege of sonship (2:13, 23f.); of righteousness and avoidance of sin as the evidence of sonship (2:29, 3:9 f. – 5:18); and of seeing Jesus, and being like Him, as the hope of sonship (3:3). From these two books together we learn very clearly what God’s fatherhood implied for Jesus, and what it now implies for Christians.”
Jesus’ testimony as recorded in John’s gospel reveals four implications of God’s fatherly relation to Him: Continue reading
These tips come from a talk given at a WordCamp. The talk was aimed at pro bloggers, but these tips can be applied by anyone:
He obviously said a lot more than that, and for someone who’s interested in earning money by blogging, it is an invaluable resource.
Matt Cutts: Straight from Google –What you need to know
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