So much of what Jesus said and did shattered the spiritual and religious concepts of 1^st century Judaism. Even a cursory reading of the Gospels reveals the enormous rift between Jesus and the Pharisees in the way they viewed God. Perhaps no aspect of Jesus’ understanding of God was more revolutionary than His insistence that God was His Father and could be our Father.

God as Father was foreign for them and it seems is somewhat foreign to many people today. But as J.I. Packer points out, our adoption as sons is a crucial aspect of our new relationship with God.

“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 as his Father.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 201.

Consider of few of Packer’s thoughts about adoption…

-         “Adoption… is the highest privilege that the gospel offers” (206).

-         Adoption provides the lens through which the “entire Christian life has to be understood” (209)

-         It “shows us the greatness of God’s love” (214).

-         It “shows us the glory of the Christian hope” (216).

-         It “gives us the key to understanding the ministry of the Holy Spirit” (219).

-         It “shows us the meaning and motives of “gospel holiness” (221).

-         It “gives the clue we need to see our way though the problem of assurance” (223).

-         “Adoption… is the basis of Christian conduct” (210).

-         “Adoption… is the basis of Christian prayer” (211).

-         “Adoption… is the basis of the life of faith” (212).

Much like the Pharisees, our struggle to live in right relationship to God may very well stem from our inability to grasp the magnitude of our adoption as children of God.

“You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Exodus 20:5-6 (ESV)

Many people struggle to embrace “jealousy” as an aspect of God’s character. Once again J.I. Packer sheds some helpful light on understanding God.

“God’s jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a (literally) praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious.”

Jealousy can be “zeal to protect a love relationship or to avenge it when broken. This jealousy also operates in the sphere of sex; there, however, it appears not as the blind reaction of wounded pride but as the fruit of marital affection . . . . This sort of jealousy is a positive virtue, for it shows a grasp of the true meaning of the husband-wife relationship, together with a proper zeal to keep it intact.”

“God’s jealousy over his people . . . . presupposes his covenant love; and this love is no transitory affection, accidental and aimless, but is the expression of a sovereign purpose.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 170-172.

Far from being offensive, God’s jealousy is a fundamental expression of His sovereign love for us and His desire to keep our covenant relationship intact.

A few words from J.I. Packer’s Knowing God related to God’s wrath.

“To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex and self-will, the church mumbles on about God’s kindness but says virtually nothing about his judgment. . . . What is it that makes us awkward and embarrassed when the subject comes up, that prompts us to soft-pedal it and hedge when we are asked about it?

The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion that ideas of wrath are in one way or another unworthy of God. . . .  [But] God’s wrath is the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry where anger is called for. . . . It is precisely this adverse reaction to evil, which is a necessary part of moral perfection, that the Bible has in view when it speaks of God’s wrath.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 149-151

The contemporary view of God seems to be that wrath is beneath him and that as God he should be ‘better than’ reacting in anger to human sin.

But as Packer points out, it is precisely his God-ness that requires him to react to sin with wrath. When the moral perfection of his God-ness is offended, anger is the only ‘right’ response.

So God’s wrath is not his ‘dark side’ that should shame us as His children. Rather his wrath is wonderful confirmation of his absolute moral purity.

Today, I share another convicting quote from J.I. Packer on Christmas. This time he speaks of the poverty as the heart of the Christmas spirit.

“We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory . . . . a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony . . . . It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich.”

“We talk glibly of the ‘Christmas spirit,’ rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas.”

“It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians - I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians - go through this world in the spirit of the priest and Levite in our Lord’s parable, see human needs all around them, but . . . . averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit.”

“The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just to their own friends - in whatever way there seems need.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 63-64.

In a culture and season of spending, many Christians fail to realize that poverty is at the heart Christmas.

In the spirit of the season, here’s an old truth from J.I. Packer on Christmas.

“The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man - that the second person of the Godhead became a ’second man’. . . . This is the real stumbling block in Christianity. It is here that Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses . . . have come to grief. It is from misbelief (sic), or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 53-54.

Did you catch that the Incarnation is “the real stumbling block in Christianity”? In other words, for many of the almost-Christian religions heresy begins at failing to embrace the biblical claim that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

“The Incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 54.

So Christmas presents us with an incomprehensible truth upon which Christianity hinges. Namely, that the baby born in the stable and laid in the manger was at the same time God and man.

While I trust this statement will not sound ‘new’ to most of you, I hope it compels you to marvel for two reasons.

1. God accomplished a mind-blowing feat in Bethlehem by squeezing all of His God-ness into a human body. Now that’s impressive.
2. While Christmas seems like a happy time, it is incredibly controversial because it makes such a pivotal claim about Jesus. And this claim ultimately separates true believers from false ones.

So Merry Christmas… or should I say, “Happy Incarnation!”

Our culture celebrates ‘freedom’ (or at least our brand of it) above almost anything. We value the freedom to live and think without boundaries. Even though creativity is beneficial in many areas of life, there is great danger associated with unrestricted thinking about God.

“It needs to be said with the greatest possible emphasis that those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 47.

Free thinking about God leads to imposing human characteristics or attitudes or definitions on Him. We end up saying things like, “God is too loving to allow the innocent to suffer” or “God is too forgiving to punish sinners.”

Again, free thinking can be great mental exercise; however, our thoughts about God must remain within boundaries. We simply cannot allow our minds the freedom to define and/or describe Him.

We must build our understanding of God from His self-revelation. The only way to know anything about God is to listen to what He has said about Himself. To do otherwise is to worship the idol of our own imaginations.

“To make an image of God is to take one’s thoughts of him from a human source, rather than from God himself; and this is precisely what is wrong with image-making.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 49

Knowing God requires submission to the mental boundaries of His self-revelation found in the Bible.

Have you allowed your freedom of thought to lead you to a god of your own imagination?

Yet another reason to make ‘knowing God’ the pursuit of your life…

“Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord. . . . What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 34

What “catches [y]our imagination and lays hold of [y]our allegiance”? What (or who) stars in your daydreams? What (or who) captures your thoughts as you lie awake at night? What is the big objective of your life?

In case you haven’t noticed, I am dedicated to helping people (specifically those people who read my musings here) understand the truths presented in J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. Hopeful that many of you are now serious about knowing God enough to read about it here, I assume you’re wondering what specific activity is involved. So before you ask, I’ll provide the answer.

Again, I’m just borrowing from Packer who offers four activities.[1]

First, knowing God involves “listening to His Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself.” Read the Bible and/or listen to biblical preaching with an openness to understanding the changes it will suggest. As Jesus taught, “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls [them] by name and leads them out” (John 10:3 ESV).

Second, know God involves “noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it.” Again, you must come in contact with the Word in some form and pay careful attention to what it says about God. Knowing about God doesn’t guarantee knowing Him, but not knowing about Him will guarantee not knowing Him.

Third, knowing God involves “accepting his invitations and doing what he commands.” James, the half brother of Jesus summarizes this idea well. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22 ESV).

Fourth, knowing God involves “recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.” Until we regard our salvation as an act of divine love in which we find infinite joy, we will not approach any meaningful knowledge of Him.

Are you engaged in any activity that will lead you to a more intimate knowledge of Him?

From atop J.I. Packer’s shoulders once again, I submit that not many of us who know plenty about God actually know God very well. For the people who know God intimately “losses and ‘crosses’ cease to matter; what they have gained simply banishes these things from their minds.”[1]

Packer summarizes four characteristics of people who know God.[2]

1. “Those who know God have great energy for God.” When lethargy and apathy rule our spiritual lives and our churches, there can be little doubt that God is certainly not known. Where are the men and women who will stand and pray with undying zeal for the things that matter most to God?
2. “Those who know God have great thoughts of God.” When our thoughts about Him revolve around wondering if He will improve our lives, there can be little doubt that God is certainly not known. Where are the men and women who will daydream about God’s “high majesty and moral perfection and gracious faithfulness”?
3. “Those who know God show great boldness for God.” When fear and doubt shape our expressions of faith, there can be little doubt that God is certainly not known. Where are the men and women who will live fearlessly because they realize they’ve already died?
4. “Those who know God have great contentment in God.” When consumerism and materialism run rampant in the church, there can be little doubt that God is not known. Where are the men and women who will find their satisfaction in fellowship with God and stop searching for it at the mall or the office or the classroom or the athletic fields?

Like perhaps no other culture in history, we know plenty about God. We listen to songs about Him. We read books about Him (well, most of them are actually about us, but they talk about Him, too). We watch television shows about Him.

Yet, how many of us exhibit the characteristics of a person who knows God?

[2] Ibid, 27-31.

Today I return to Knowing God (the book by J.I. Packer that I pleaded with you to read a few days ago) to provide the 5 basic truths that form a foundation for our knowledge of God.

These truths are important in the same way an alphabet is important to written language. Without a common, objective foundation of symbols (we call them letters), written language is nonsense. In order for the words and sentences and paragraphs to carry meaning, the basic building block of letters must carry precise, universal meaning.

Likewise, without a common, objective foundation of truth, information about God is incomprehensible. In order for us to gain a proper understanding of his love and justice and wrath, we must grasp and trust the basic building block truths.

1. God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise to salvation.[1]
2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections is all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him.
3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly.
4. God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.
5. Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in light of God’s Word. This, and nothing else, is true religion.

Again, more than the alphabet for reading, these truths are essential for any pursuit of knowledge about God. Lay these truths aside and you cannot know Him. Manipulate or ignore any part of this foundation and you will find yourself seeking someone or something other than God. Because only on this foundation will the details of God’s nature and character become coherent.

Examine these statements. They are highly controversial in our culture. And know that if your view of God veers from these truths at any point, you do not know him accurately and you cannot know him well.