St. John Studies

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

There it is.  If you are human, this shoe fits…

We can all feel sorry for ourselves.  We can all castigate ourselves.  We can all go into a deep depression, but what good will these responses do?  It’s a fact: we all sin and fall short of the glory of God.   Some may respond to this by throwing their hands up and saying, “Since I can’t achieve a sinless life; I will just give up and be a merciless sinner.”  Some may distance themselves from the merciless sinners, but that is a joke.  Even the most accomplished Christians sin and fall short of the glory of God.  It is all a matter of degree.  Maybe the most appropriate response is to never give up on trying to live a Christian life.

For the sake of argument, let’s just pretend that we want others to see us a certain way.  We desire for others to apply a label to us.  And that label is “True Christian”.

What does one have to do to get that label?  J.I. Packer is just as straight-forward as Romans 3:   “True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the Word of God” [116].      

Too often Christians measure their degree of belief against others.  That is the wrong measuring stick.  Certainly there will always be people around us who are more “good” than we are, “submitting without reserve to the Word of God, written in the Book of Truth, believing the teaching, trusting the promises, following the commands.  Their eyes are upon the God of the Bible as their Father and the Christ of the Bible as their Savior” [116].

What are their secrets?

First of all, they believe that the commands in God’s Scripture are true.  Psalms 119: 151 says “All Your Commands are true.”  

Packer boils down the commands into basic ideas that we can all understand.  God knows about human nature; “He has a working definition of true humanity.”  In that definition, God shows us what we can be if we follow His commands.  If we act on His Word, we can learn to be truly human [the best we can be on earth] and we can avoid moral self-destruction. 

Packer likes to explain this by discussing the human body as a machine.  It thrives on routines: good food, good rest, and good exercise.  We don’t have to follow healthy routines; we can thumb our noses at the commands.  We can fill up our bodies with alcohol, drugs and poison to the point that we no longer have healthy functioning bodies.  Do this over a long period of time and death will occur.  God’s commandments are like God telling us of the values of routines for our bodies.  Like routines for our bodies, God thinks of our souls in a similar way.  He knows we are made to run on routines like worship, keeping His laws, telling the truth, discipline, self-control and regular service to our fellow man. 

Here is the upshot of all this.  Like following poor health routines can destroy our bodies, not following God’s commands in the care of our souls will progressively destroy our souls.  Packer writes that “One not only becomes desperately miserable; one is steadily being dehumanized” [114].   Packer sees this as a clear choice, black or white, right or wrong if you will.  Human beings can choose to follow God’s commandments or choose to disobey God’s commandments.  Either a person is laboring to keep God’s laws or they are not.  If they are not, they are in the process of destroying their soul.  If they are, they are working toward living the best life a human can live, a life of freedom from the drudgery of sin.

So what’s another way we can achieve that label “True Christian?”

Secondly, true Christians believe God’s promises are true because God keeps them.  Hebrews 10: 23 says it all: “He who promised is faithful.”

How might we determine God is faithful in fulfilling His promises?  Packer writes “He is a covenant-keeping God; He never fails those who trust His Word” [115].  Abraham proved God’s faithfulness, as he waited in his old age for the birth of his promised Son and millions more since Abraham’s day have continued the covenant Abraham made with God—that his descendants would eventually inherit the Land of Israel. 

A covenant is an agreement between God and His people, in which God makes promises to His people and, usually requires certain conduct from them. In the Old Testament, God made agreements with Noah, Abraham, and Moses. Of course Christians base their faith on the New Covenant. 

The Christian view of the “New Covenant” is a new relationship between God and humans mediated by Jesus which necessarily includes all people, both Jews and Gentiles, upon sincere declaration that one believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and God. 

Christians believe that the promises of God are real and their whole goal in life is to have their lives brought in line with those promises.  Packer puts it this way:  “The promises are before them as they pray, and the precepts are before them as they go about their daily tasks” [116]. 

The “true Christian” knows that God has spoken directly to them in His Scriptures, and God has gone forth to create, control and order all things around them.  God’s Word says that “all things work together for their good.”  Acceptance of their circumstances under the direction of God can bring them joy.  As written above, we all fall short of the glory of God and with that in mind, every human being who declares belief in God must also admit that “I sin and fall short of the God’s glory.”  In Packer’s estimation, our human independent streak can cause us to test God’s Word, but the “true Christian” sees Scripture as a touchstone.  They can use God’s Word as a way to test their ideas but “they will not touch anything which they are not sure that Scripture sanctions”

In closing, I will refer back to the description of the true Christian and I will use Packer’s own words.  “Why does this description [true Christian] fit so few of us who profess to be Christians in these days?  You will find it profitable to ask your conscience and He will tell you.”

Or you can consult His Word and He will show you…

I have written about how we should fear God, fear meaning we should respect God, fear meaning we should take God seriously, fear meaning that we should do what He says in His Word.  We should not want to displease our Maker.

I have written about how God’s rule over our lives is absolute; He wants all of us, not just measly partial commitment.  He wants total commitment.  He expects it.

But I have also written about God’s benevolence, His desire to have a personal relationship with us, His desire to live within us, to guide us through this life on a daily basis.  He is not distant. He is there to help us. God cares about all of us.

Fear, absolute rule, and on top of that, benevolence, all good reasons to take God’s Word seriously.

Let’s throw another reason to obey God on the pile.

God’s Word is the Truth.

The Bible is full of references to God as Truth-Teller.

The Bible’s author is the “God of truth” [Psalms 31: 5, Isaiah 65: 16].  His Word is “abundant in truth”—“And the Lord passed by before Him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” [Exodus 34].  “His truth reacheth unto the clouds” [Psalms 108: 4].  James 17:17 says His “Word is truth.”  Psalms 119: 160 declares “All Your Words are true” and Second Samuel 7:28 tells us “Thou art God, and thy Words are true.”

Why is this so important?

To answer this, J.I. Packer* pens a few important reasons: “stability, reliability, firmness, trustworthiness, self-consistent, sincere, realistic, and undeceived.”  You might ask how do those words relate to us?

We all need a firm foundation for our lives.  We need a firm foundation for our beliefs.  We all need core values to live by.

Too often Christians are content to just say “I am a Christian.”  I would venture to say that God wants more than that from us.  Simply put, God wants us not only to say we are Christians, He wants us to “act” like Christians.  In a study I am working on regarding prayer and faith, it is written that “shallow” Christian seems to be happy with just the label.  To tell others “I am a Christian” is enough.   Another thing Christians love to say is “I have faith.”   Saying I have faith seems to be enough because the shallow Christian is happy to just say “I have it.”  Author W. Bingham Hunter** writes that “Many people feel that it doesn’t matter so much what they believe as that they believe.”

The problem goes back to the “c” word above.  God wants total commitment.  He wants us to not only tell others we believe in Him, He wants us to ACT like we believe in Him.  To do that, God wants us to try to act on His truth.  God wants us to try to live in the light of His Word.  God wants us to try to order our hearts according to the truth He give us in the Bible.  To not try is to live the life of a hypocrite.

Living the best Christian life we can is based on truth.  Truth is God’s nature.  He wants to show us things as they really are and He wants us to heed His Word.

John Ortberg*** is an author who has a way of explaining how too many of us act.  His writing is truthful in that it exposes our weakness regarding our ability to obey God.  He talks about public convictions.  Those are beliefs we have and we want others to see that we have them.   We may not really believe them but they “look good.”  If people see us displaying Godly public convictions, they might think we are true followers [maybe in reality we are not].  Private convictions are beliefs we “think” we have.  I write the word think because private convictions are flexible.  Depending on the introduction of additional strong factual information, we may change our private convictions.  Depending on whom we spend time with; we may change our private convictions.  You see, the desire to fit in with others in our social group can really take a toll on our belief system. 

Then you have core convictions.

Ortberg describes core convictions as the rock solid beliefs that really matter.  Not only do we believe in them in a stable, reliable, firm way, we act on them. God is trying to give us the basis of our core convictions in His Word.  God is trying to give us a firm foundation for our lives.  He wants us not only to tell others we are Christians, He wants us to show others we are Christians by our actions.  Our core beliefs should be based on the truth that we find in God’s Word.

We all know how it is in the world.  We are all there; we are all “in the world.”  The power of sin over us is very strong.  Too often we spend time in the darkness of sin when God is asking us to bask in His light. 

Romans 6:23 tells us “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

It all boils down to the ideas that we should respect God, we should commit our lives to Him, we should let Him guide us through life. 

We should do this because He loves us.

He loves us so much He has given us the truth, which we can find in His Word.

*J.I. Packer  Knowing God

**W. Bingham Hunter The God Who Hears

***John Ortberg  Faith and Doubt

My comments on the first four chapters of part two of J.I. Packer’s book Knowing God, have been on God as King, Absolute Monarch of the universe.  Our topics have been God’s unchanging nature, God’s majesty, God’s wisdom and the difference between His wisdom and man’s.

Now it is time to turn to His Word.  If you believe what Packer has written about above, you obviously believe that your God is King.  A second and related fact that you may believe is He speaks in order that His will be done.  “Just as God’s relations with His world have to be understood in terms of His sovereignty, so His sovereignty is to be understood in terms of what the Bible tells us about His Word” [Packer, 109].

Let’s use the framework of the ancient world, where absolute rulers were common.  Absolute rulers most often spoke to their subjects on two levels for two purposes.  One level was communication via laws established to determine the environment of their people [judicial, fiscal and cultural]. This type of communication can be seen as “distant” as laws are enacted and enforced by a ruler’s representatives.   A wise absolute ruler would also make public speeches explaining new laws in order to connect with subjects and elicit their support and cooperation in what he was doing.  Public speaking is the second level of speaking but it is necessary to engage the minds and hearts of subjects.  A dictator can always rule by fiat but benevolent rulers would rather have some agreement among subjects about laws that are going to be enacted.  Reasons for the law can be provided and people can accept the new rules and revolt can be minimized.

Most knowledgeable Christians probably believe that God is the most benevolent monarch that ever could be.  He has established laws for all of us to live by, but He does not wish to be distant from us.  The Hebrews called the Old Testament the Torah which means law and in the Torah, He does give us laws to live by.  However, unlike earthly kings, He did not intend to be distant from us in the giving of these laws.  God literally made man and woman with the intention that He would walk together with us throughout our lives.  He intends for us to know Him and He certainly knows us.  Read His Word in Psalms 139 for clear evidence.  “You have searched me, Lord, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue You, Lord, know it completely [Psalms 139: 1-4].  Since God so loves us, His Word is designed to instruct us but it is also designed to entice us into a relationship.  His Word is not the word of a harsh absolute, dictatorial monarch; it is what Packer refers to as “personal communication with the loving Lord Himself.”

Does God speak to us through His Word?  An actual living human monarch could take to the pulpit or podium  and speak to his people but Christians believe God speaks to us through the Bible, His Word.  Packer writes that one does not have to delve too far into His Word to hear Him speak.  Take the Book of Genesis.  In the process of creating the world, God spoke directly to Adam and Eve.  The words “God said to them” confirms that.  He commanded them [“be fruitful and multiply”].  He prohibited them from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and he made favorable and unfavorable promises to them [for example the seed of woman would bruise the head of the serpent but also woman would suffer in childbirth, man’s work would be hard and both would experience death.   In the first three chapters of Genesis, it is clear that God planned to be very involved with all His creatures, especially the creatures he called man and woman.  Many would argue that the whole Bible is the story of God’s attempt to reestablish a solid relationship with man.

Maybe it would be a “stretch” to claim that God has a public speaking role in the world today but maybe He has something better.   He has a Book that records His efforts to speak directly to man and He intends that we pay attention to His Word.  Jeremiah 13:10 says “these wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words.”  Isaiah 66:2 says that the mark of a true, humble, godly person is they “tremble at my word.”

Instead of revolting against the Word of God, would it not be better to accept it, support it and cooperate with God to bring His will about.  Our God is not a distant God; He is right beside us every day, urging us to live the best life we can live.  He is a benevolent Monarch, loving us every step of the way as we live out our lives.  He has “laid down the law” but it is a law that benefits us, makes our lives better. Instead of hampering our freedom, God’s law can give us freedom from sin.

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish…so is My Word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire” [Isaiah 55: 10-11].

God loves me. 

God loves you.

Love Him back.

I do…

Respond favorably to His Word…

In the previous post, the topic was what God does not give us in the way of wisdom.  Of course, the other half of this topic would be what God does give us. 

To explain what God does not give us, Packer* uses a transportation illustration.  The metaphor of the “electrical signal box” may be what we want as humans [that “big picture” view of what is going on in life] but God does not give us that.**  Wouldn’t it be nice to know the complete purpose of life, to understand why things have turned out the way they have and to be able to understand all upcoming events? 

That is not the type of wisdom we get from God.

Ok, if we don’t get the electrical signal box view, what do we get?  Packer likens wisdom that we get to the act of God  giving us knowledge about how to drive a car [yet another transportation illustration].

However in learning to drive a car, maybe we want to know it all.  For example, we want to know why the road is the way it is.  Maybe the road winds like a serpent’s body.  Maybe it narrows.  Maybe the road has bumps.  God does not give us this knowledge but He gives us knowledge which helps us respond to the conditions of the road in appropriate ways. “What matters in driving is the speed and appropriateness of your reactions to things and the soundness of your judgement as to what scope the situation gives you” [Packer, 103].   Wisdom is doing the right thing in the actual situation that presents itself. “The effect of divine wisdom is to enable you and me to do just that in the actual situations in life” [103].  All we really need to know is how to drive our car “down the road of life.”

If you have wisdom, you have a clear view of life.  Wisdom does not allow us to use unrealistic “comforting illusions, false sentiment or the use of rose-colored glasses.”  Most of us live in a dream world, never capable of knowing what the effect our lives have on our eternal being.  Packer calls this “deep-seated, sin-bred unrealism.”

Ok, we now know that God’s wisdom is like the wisdom we have when we drive a car.  Wise “drivers” know what to do when another car swerves into our lane or when another car is entering our highway from the on ramp.  When a car is stopped on the shoulder, we know we need to move over, for our safety and the safety of the other driver. 

Packer knows that this knowledge might not be pleasing to some, the knowledge of reacting to situations, rather than being able to know why they are coming, but what if that is all we have?  In the previous post Packer relies on the writer of Ecclesiastes to give us some guidance about why we react to our lack of knowledge the way we do.  Let’s turn back to Ecclesiastes to see about the “driving knowledge” that God does give us.

As previously noted, it is wise to fear God but along with fearful respect, it is good to trust and obey Him.  It is also wise to never say more than you mean when you pray to God.  It is wise to do “good” and remember that God will someday take account of your earthly actions.  Even those “secret” sinful acts will come to light one day so be aware that nothing is hidden from God’s view.  Live now and enjoy now; “present pleasures are God’s gifts”.  The writer of Ecclesiastes says that God condemns “flippant behavior” but at the opposite, extreme people who are too proud and too pious to enjoy life are also condemned.  Ask God for grace as you toil at whatever life calls you to do and He will give it to you.  Enjoy you work as you engage in it.  Leave the worth of your work to God; your job is to take advantage of all your opportunities that lie before you as you work.*** 

This is the way of God’s wisdom. 

God might not give us all we want but He gives us quite a lot of “driving” instructions.  Packer writes “We can be sure that the God who made this marvelously complex world order, and who compasses the great redemption from Egypt, and who later compassed the even greater redemption from sin and Satan, knows what He is doing, and ‘doeth all things well.”

Yes, we may think that He hides His hand from us but does He do that on purpose?  This allows us to trust Him and rejoice in Him even when we don’t know His path.  We can choose to ignore the wisdom He has given to us, but we do so at our own peril. 

Ok, it would be good if Packer told us what God wants from as He gives us wisdom. Well here it is: He wants us to “cleave to Him and live for Him in the light of His word through thick and thin” [108].   Yes, the wisdom that He gives us makes us more humble but it also makes us more joyful, more godly, more able to discern His will, and less troubled when painful things come into our lives.  The New Testament tells us that the fruit of wisdom is “Christlikeness” and the root of that wisdom is faith in Christ.  “Thus, the kind of wisdom that God waits to give to those who ask Him is a wisdom that will bind us to Himself, a wisdom that will find expression in a spirit of faith and a life of faithfulness” [108].

Maybe we don’t get the “signal box” view of life, the wisdom that is akin to that of God, but in His wisdom, God does not think we need that.  What we do need is His guidance [maybe one way to express this is that we need his driving instructions].

Don’t we all know that it is no small feat to drive successfully down the road of life. 

Maybe we should be thankful for the wisdom that is given. 

Think about it…

What better knowledge to have, especially if that road leads right to our God, our Father, our Savior.

*From his book Knowing God

**See previous post “Wisdom: What God Does Not Give Us”

***paraphrases from Ecclesiates….

In recent posts, I have tried to reflect what J.I. Packer* has written about wisdom.  I [and Packer] have looked at wisdom from several different perspectives.  Now we have reached the point where we need to “nail down” what wisdom means.  Packer does this with a simple question: “What does it mean for God to give us wisdom?”

First of all, I need to apologize for the metaphor of “nailing down” anything.  That very idea is laughable but it fits well with the problem that man has with gaining great knowledge.  We think we are capable of understanding the wisdom of God but we can’t.

Packer uses transportation illustrations to make the point that we are wrong-headed about what God would give us even if He chose to give us wisdom.  Packer takes the reader to a train station, a rather busy hub.  The trains come and go in an orderly manner, avoiding collision and maintaining a very effective timetable.  People are getting where they need to go if they catch the correct train.  They literally can set their watches by the movement of the trains. 

This is all fascinating but not surprising to railway enthusiasts.  They know about what Packer calls the “electrical signal box” that controls train movements.**  He writes of the box as the control panel for all the many trains in the hub.  Glowing lights show trains moving or stationary on various tracks and as one watches the control panel, the “bigger picture” of the train stations begins to make sense. 

I refer to this illustration to point out that this type of wisdom is not what God give us if He chooses to bestow some inkling of Divine Knowledge on us.  It is merely what we think we will get: “the gift of wisdom consists in a deepened insight into the providential meaning and purpose of events going on around us, an ability to see why God has done what He has done in a particular case, and what He is going to do next.  People feel that if they were really walking close to God, so that He could impart wisdom to them freely, then they would, so to speak, find themselves in the signal box, they would discern the real purpose of everything that happened to them, and it would be clear to them every moment how God was making things work together for good” [Packer, 102-03].

Well, Packer is very clear about what he thinks about our quest for this kind of wisdom. Expecting that we will ever have this level of discernment is “futile.”  “God has given us guidance by application of principles [which] He will on occasion confirm…by unusual providences, which we will recognize at once as corroborative signs.”  This type of momentary ability to see through a glass darkly [1 Corinthians 13:12] is all we can ever expect.  “This is quite a different thing from trying to read a message about God’s secret purposes out of every unusual thing that happens to us” [Packer, 103].

Ok, it is so disappointing that we can’t have what we want, so how do we handle it?

A person who has a tremendous need to see the world as black or white [what psychologists call dichotomous thinking] may say “Well if I can’t have this global level of wisdom, what is the use of seeking wisdom at all?  Packer goes to Ecclesiastes to explain the response that some may have.  Why concern yourself with trying to understand anything; most occurrences “under the sun” bear no outward sign of rational, moral ordering of God.  The author of Ecclesiastes has a dim view of what we can know about this world, Divine Wisdom or not.  A sampling of some phrases sprinkled throughout the Biblical book testify to this: “life is senseless,” “why toil at anything because it will not amount to anything in the end,”  “we have no control,” “the wicked prosper and the good don’t,” and “you see death coming to everyone sooner or later, but coming haphazard, bearing no relation to whether it is deserved.”  In short, God’s ordering of events is inscrutable.  “The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and depressed you get with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more you are tempted to conclude that life really is as pointless as it looks” [Packer, 106].

What is the effect of all this?  Packer says that we might have wounded pride, because God has slighted us.  Unless we repent and approach God in a humble manner our spiritual lives may be “blighted.”  Expanding beyond individual Christians, the church may have what Packer calls “spiritual inertia” and “critical cynicism” due to the fact that God has chosen to hide His providential purposes from us. 

Packer describes what happens as “hard-bitten, joyless apathy of spirit.” 

Do we have to respond with despair, bemoaning the fact that God’s ways are not our ways.***  No; God gives us guidance regarding this problem. 

In my next post, we will turn to the very book that bemoans our plight.  “The preacher [of Ecclesiastes] has helped us to see what it is not [the wisdom that God will give us]; does he give us any guidance as to what it is?

The answer: yes he does.

*from his book Knowing God

**since this book was published in 1973, today’s trains are computerized of course…

***“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

What do you want most in life?

Think about that for a few minutes…

Would you say, “What I want the most in life is to be happy.” Learned men report that happiness is the number one goal that people seek but the Bible says something else; Scripture says that wisdom is the most treasured goal.  Proverbs 3:13 states “Happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gets understanding.”  Proverbs 24: 13-14 says “My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.  Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”  Proverbs is full of Scripture that touts the value of wisdom: check out 19:8, 8:32-36 and 16:16. 

We may think that we can find happiness in all kinds of places, but maybe what the Bible is saying is that if we are Biblically wise, happiness will follow.  Proverbs 15:21 tells us “Folly is a joy to him who has no sense.”  This world is full of examples of people who try to find happiness in worldly things.  Ambitious people try to find happiness in climbing the “ladder of success” at work.  Athletes may try to find happiness in being the best at their sport.  Musicians may try to find it by being famous and selling millions of records and having an adoring fan-base. 

Yes, people also seek happiness in drink, drugs, sex, food, pornography etc. but that kind of happiness is not really true and lasting.  These worldly efforts at happiness are fleeting, leaving us unsatisfied, frustrated, incomplete; in short, we know that there is something more out there.  Again the Bible says what Godly wisdom is and with that, we will have happiness.

Chapter 10 in J.I. Packer’s book Knowing God is devoted to “God’s Wisdom and Ours.”  He begins by recounting the many wise characteristics of God, characteristics that set God apart from man.  God is independent (self-sufficient), immutable (consistent, free from change), infinite (free from all limitations of time) and simple (meaning that God cannot be torn in multiple directions by divergent thoughts and desires; He is never in conflict).  Packer calls these qualities “incommunicable” because they are characteristics of God alone.  Man and God don’t share them.

There are other characteristics of God that are shared with man; those are called “communicable,” meaning that when God made man, He communicated to him some qualities corresponding to His.  Man was to be spiritual, have the freedom to choose. Man could be good, truthful, holy and upright.

As we all know, man had a chance at “being Godlike” but Adam and Eve ruined that, lapsing into ungodliness in the Garden of Eden.  Nevertheless, God is working even to this day to redeem man, “to repair his ruined image by communicating the qualities (spirituality, freedom, goodness, truthfulness, holiness and upright living).  This is what the New Testament means when it says that Christians are being renewed in the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18  and Colossians 3:10). 

Back to wisdom…

Added to those communicable characteristics, theologians also put wisdom.  As God is wise, so He can impart wisdom to His creatures.  Again, one can turn to Proverbs and determine some of the elements of wisdom.  I once asked a pastor about a problem I was having and his response perplexed me.  I wondered if he had some of the same temptations and he abruptly said “No, I do have those temptations, but I have a fear of the Lord.”  At that time in my life, I could not comprehend the meaning of his response.  We assume that fear is a negative thing, that God is some great intimidating force, ruling His Kingdom by threat.  That is not what “fear” means in this context.  For the Christian, we seek refuge, joy and hope from God and it is wise to know that when we sin (fall prey to temptations) we think we run the risk of God not trusting us and therefore we can’t depend on Him to meet our needs.  My pastor was telling me that he feared losing his positive connection to God.

Humility is another factor in the wise person’s life.  If one has a haughty spirit, we are not seeking wisdom from God.  The humble person recognizes that we have to depend on God for everything.  Humility is a foundational characteristic because it allows us “room to grow;” none of us knows everything.  God can teach us, correct us and help us follow His truth.  Prideful people don’t want to be commanded, but Scripture is full of admonitions that it is best if man would follow the commandments of God.  Jesus says in Matthew 7:24 “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon a rock.”  Hearing and acting on God’s word is wise, but the only people who do this are people who rely on God for help, seeking God for answers to their problems.  Wise people realize that they need God, the Father.

Packer fears that many today who profess to be Christians don’t spend much time gathering wisdom from God’s written word.  Packer asks these questions that may make many of us uncomfortable.   “How long is it since you read right through the Bible?  Do you spend as much time with the Bible each day as you do even with the newspaper?  What fools some of us are!—and we remain fools all our lives, simply because we will not take the trouble to do what has to be done to receive wisdom which is God’s free gift” [102-03].

If the Bible is right and wisdom is what man should seek in life, if we have wisdom, we will be happy.  Well Godly wisdom hinges on two things: we must learn to reverence God and we must learn to receive God’s word.  Fear God, be humble in life, be teachable so God can mold you into the person He thinks you should be; His child, reflective of His righteousness, able to stand in awe of His holiness and sovereignty.  Open that book, you know that dusty Bible and learn what God has to say to us.

Take what the Apostle Paul had to say to heart: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…with all wisdom” [Colossians 3:16].

You will get what you want most in life…

Wisdom and happiness…

People who don’t attend a church may not understand the benefits of corporate worship.  You get to know people who are trying to live out a life in Christ, however imperfectly we are all trying to do that.  If you choose to commit to your church, you can really get to know your fellow church members in smaller groups, Bible studies, prayer groups and Sunday school classes.  Sometimes people reveal more private things in small groups; people are “loosened up” and become more comfortable in a more intimate setting.

Let me tell you, some of that sharing can be so helpful; it leads to “iron sharpens iron*” moments.   

We all seem to need help understanding God’s wisdom. In writing about God’s wisdom, I feel first-hand what Isaiah 55:8-9 expresses:  “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  What is the prophet Isaiah really saying about God here?

Try as hard as we might, we will never understand God…

Our finite human brains are just not up to the task.

In today’s Sunday school class, I made an attempt to teach on God’s discipline, for me a daunting task.  I raised questions like how can one distinguish between God’s discipline and God’s wrath?  The point of the class was supposed to be that so many Christians misunderstand the discipline of God; they get confused because they assume (1.) that discipline is a bad thing (2.) that when God disciplines man, it must be because man has done something very wrong.  In our class, I have about eighteen people and all of us have seen hard times.  As I prepared this lesson, it struck me that our church right now has numerous people who are struggling through hard times.  I wondered if I should bring up some of these trials.  I wondered if the class would understand that their hard times may just be examples of God’s discipline. 

Sometimes I feel bold as I teach class and I did today; I think the class was ready to receive my message. I felt that they could understand that some of their trials may just be God’s discipline.

There is a blind man in my class.  He was not blind from birth.   He had his sight for many years and like others in his family, he had an inherited trait that left him totally without sight.  He suspected this was going to happen to him one day because his family members suffered this loss before he did.  I made reference to his blindness.  I alluded to his loss of sight in the context of us all having times of suffering due to God’s discipline.  It was a bit risky. [Of course, none of us knows why we have to suffer].

His sweet wife quickly interjected: “Do you know that Bob could not see until he became blind.”

I knew immediately what she meant and I repeated this back to her:  “You mean that he found our Lord Jesus Christ in his blindness?” 

Her answer and his answer was “Yes.”

Iron sharpens iron.

In dealing with His people, God exercises wisdom far beyond what we can comprehend.  Yes, God disciplines Christians like parents discipline their children.  He loves us and He wants us to grow in righteousness and He either brings or allows trials into our lives to grow us.  Those trials change the way we think about life, but we still feel the pain associated with the trial.   Discipline hurts.   We want God to kiss the boo-boo and make the pain go away and sometimes He refuses to do that.

Packer** writes several pages of “Bible biography” in his book to illustrate this point.  He comments on Abraham and the episode of Sarai and Hagar, how Abraham needed to learn to practice living in God’s presence.   God put Abraham in this situation so he could begin to learn the lesson of “walking with God, resting in His revealed will, relying on Him, waiting for Him, bowing to His providence, obeying Him even when He commands something odd and unconventional.”  Through Abraham’s life experiences and God’s lessons (God’s wisdom), Abraham becomes a man of God.  Packer also illustrates God’s wisdom with Jacob, Abraham’s grandson.  Finally he explains that Joseph is a perfect example of God’s ways being much more comprehensive than man’s ways.***  To put it simply, all of these Biblical characters could not see God’s “big picture.”  God had a long term view and being human, they could only understand what was right in front of them.

Packer writes about these three men: “These things are written for our learning, for the same wisdom that ordered the paths which God’s saints trod in Bible times orders the Christian’s life today.”   Like my Sunday school lesson, we should not question God when upsetting or discouraging things happen in life.  My point was that God’s discipline might be in play, but Packer’s is that God in His wisdom may be making something happen to us to grow our character.  Specifically, maybe He wants us to learn patience, compassion, humility, self- denial.  Maybe He wants to rid us of pride or conceit.   As we often see in times of trouble, God may want to draw us closer to Him, for most of us cry out to God in midst of painful trials.  “Perhaps God is preparing us for forms of service of which we at present have no inkling” [Packer 97].

Packer cites the Apostle Paul as the perfect example of the man of God who accepts his affliction and does not question his Savior.  Paul had a “thorn in his flesh” and he could have blamed it on Satan but he sought Christ’s face three times, asking that it may be removed.  Finally he accepted it, saying the words “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Finally he writes in Second Corinthians 12: 7-9 “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

Paul is a model for all of us as we struggle to accept God’s wisdom, as we struggle to accept God’s discipline.  We don’t have to know God’s plan in order to live out our lives in Christ.  We just have to accept that He knows what He is doing and we don’t.  That is what walking in faith is all about.   When we encounter those “baffling and trying situations” we should do two things (1.) take them as from God (2.) seek God’s face specifically about them.

Certainly Paul was being equipped for service and his ability to accept problems enabled him to glorify God. 

Maybe that same attitude is being worked out in my Sunday school class, as a blind man says to all of us “In my blindness, I began to see.”

*From Proverbs 27:17

**J.I. Packer, from his book  Knowing God

***Abraham, Jacob and Joseph as examples of God’s wisdom being exercised in the life of man.

If we are to know God, we need to behold Him.  When we “behold” something, it means that we are not merely to look at it.   Behold means see or observe something, something that is truly remarkable or impressive.

As J.I. Packer introduces us to God in his book Knowing God, he shares the special characteristics of our Savior that he feels we should behold: God does not change, God is majestic and the current chapter “God Only Wise.”  Packer wants us to behold our God’s wisdom.

Wisdom is a very special quality; to be honest, who would not want it?  Packer writes “wisdom is a moral as well as an intellectual quality.”  It is much more than just intelligence, much more than cleverness, much more than cunning.  Many may have intelligence or even wisdom but if they don’t use it for what Packer calls “a right end,” this unique quality may be abused.

“Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it” [Packer, 90]. 

God never suffers from the temptation to misuse wisdom.  “He alone is naturally and entirely and invariably wise….God is never other than wise in anything that He does.  Wisdom, as the old theologians used to say, is His essence, just as power, and truth, and goodness are His essence—integral elements, that is, in His character” [Packer 90].

Human wisdom is another animal.  Human wisdom can be frustrated by many things beyond a wise person’s control. Pride is one factor that comes to mind.  Many wise individuals have fallen prey to the distorted idea that they are special because they are wise.  They can become over-confident, haughty and begin to have feelings of superiority.  They think that they are always right, always have better answers than others.   The desire for power is another human weakness associated with wisdom.  It is natural to want some sense of control in life, some sense that we can have influence over outcomes.   Power can come from wisdom as we can see clearly what to do and how to do it.  We can use human wisdom to influence others and get our way.  Sometimes the urge to influence others becomes so selfish that wise people help only themselves at the expense of others.

God’s wisdom is not adulterated with such temptations.  God’s wisdom is allied to His omnipotence.  Packer states “Power is as much God’s essence as wisdom is.  Omniscience governing omnipotence, infinite power ruled by infinite wisdom, is a basic biblical description of the Divine character [of God]” [Packer, 91].  Job 9:4 “His wisdom is profound, His power is vast.”   Job 12:13 “To God belongs wisdom and power.”  Job 36:5 “He is mighty in strength and wisdom.”  Isaiah 40: 26, 28 “He has great power and mighty strength… and His understanding no one can fathom.”  Dan 2:20 “Wisdom and power are His.”  Romans 16: 25, 27 “Now to Him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel…God only wise.”

God’s wisdom is always “active” and it never fails.  As humans we may look at the work of God and not see wisdom but that is not God’s fault.  That is our own limited vision.  Packer writes “we cannot recognize God’s wisdom unless we know the end for which He is working” [91].  This raises the question, what is the goal of God’s wisdom?  When God made us, He wanted us to love and honor Him, praising Him for how He put together this wonderfully complex world.  We have fallen but God has not forsaken us; He still wants us to love and honor Him, and He wants us to share that love with each other.  Did God know we would fall?  Of course He did.  Does God have a plan in place for fallen man to achieve glory in this life and ultimate glory in the next world?  Of course He has.  Packer states “His immediate objectives are to draw individual men and women into relationship of faith, hope and love toward Himself, delivering them from sin and showing forth in their lives the power of His grace, to defend His people against the forces of evil; and to spread throughout the world the Gospel by means of which He saves.” [92].

Where do we fail to see God’s wisdom in everyday life?  “All His works of creation and providence display it [God’s wisdom], and until we can see it in them we are just not seeing them straight” [91].   At this point, (to use a cliché) I think it is good to put some “meat” on the bones with a specific example.  Too many times in this life, Christians think that “God is love” means that giving your life to God means that He promises a trouble-free life for all.  It does not matter what your “moral” or “spiritual” state is.   We think that when we declare our love for God, He promises us that we will not experience any pain, any upset.  Illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one are off the table.  If anything like this occurs, that means God’s wisdom and God’s power are not what they are supposed to be.  Packer says this is a “complete mistake,” that He never promised “to keep a fallen world happy” or to make “ungodliness comfortable.”  God’s wisdom is so profound that our comfort is not always His ultimate concern.

I have seen Christians in tough situations say things to others that are not helpful in hard times. A loved one becomes ill, a spouse may pass away or a relative or friend experiences job loss.  Maybe you see a friend struggle with addiction or spend time incarcerated.   At those times, people directly affected cannot look at the “big picture.”  They can’t even begin to consider God’s “long-term view.”  They are too embroiled in the painful present.

Even though saying things like “trust in God; when bad things happen to good people, God can turn them to good” may be hard to understand at difficult moments, this may indeed be God’s wisdom at work.  Yes, he can take painful episodes and make good from them.  He can do this and He will do this.  God’s complex purposes, God’s infinite wisdom, God’s divine plan may include suffering in order to get to His goal. 

When miracles work out, it is easy to declare “behold our God’s wisdom.”

When hardship happens, it is not so easy to declare “behold our God’s wisdom.”

In a world where God’s wisdom is active and it never fails, we need to grow our faith to the point where we see His wisdom at work all the time.

Yes, in the good times and yes, in the bad…

J.I. Packer* asks this question: “How may we form the right idea of God’s greatness?”

Then he answers his own question: “The first [thing] is to remove from our thoughts of God [all] limits that would make Him small.  The second is to compare Him with powers and forces which we regard as great.”

After addressing Packer’s first recommendation in the previous post “Remove From our Thoughts,” let’s turn to some of those powers and forces that he is talking about, those powers and forces we regard as great [in a worldly sense].

Packer bases his comments on Isaiah 40.  In Isaiah, “God speaks to people whose mood is the mood of many Christians today—despondent people, cowed people, secretly despairing people; people against whom the tide of events has been running for a very long time; people who have ceased to believe that the cause of Christ can ever prosper again” [Packer, 86].

It is almost as if God is asking why worship Me?  Why believe in Me?  Why cast your lot with Me?

Packer believes that in Isaiah 40, God makes His case.

Look at what I have done, He says.  Can a man do this?  “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?  Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?” [verse 12].  Do you know of a man who is wise enough to do these tasks?  Do you know a man who is powerful enough to do things like this?   I venture you are like me; you are saying no to both of those questions.  God answers “I am, or I could not have made this world at all.  Behold your God!”  In short, God is saying I am majestic due to the tasks I have completed.  No human can do this.

Look at the nations.  At the writing of Isaiah, the nations of Assyria, Egypt and Babylon were most powerful.  People in Bible times stood in awe of these great nation states.  They had more resources than other principalities.  Their armies were bigger.  But does God fear them?  Does God stand in awe of their power?  You decide as you read Isaiah 40, verses 15 and 17 and the description of our God: “Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales…Before Him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by Him as worthless and less than nothing.”  God is so much greater than the nations; to Him, they are but “flashes in the pan.”  Don’t compare powerful nations to God.  Behold the majesty of your God. 

Look next at the world.  Think about how big it is and how complex it is.   Think of all the people who live on the planet.  We feel quite puny when we compare ourselves to the whole planet, but how does the whole planet compare to God?  In Isaiah 40:22 we get our answer:  “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.   He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”  How does the whole world compare to God?  The answer is the world is God’s “footstool.”   Packer writes that the “feverish activity of bustling millions does not affect Him any more than the chirping and jumping of grasshoppers in the summer sun affects us” [Packer, 87].   Behold the majesty of our God.

Some people always rise to the top, the great people whose laws and policies affect millions of people: governors, rulers, dictators, empire builders.  Again we cower in the presence of great people, fearing retribution when we don’t follow their lead.  We think they control the world; they determine how the world will function.  Isaiah 40:23 is scripture that shows a different attitude.  No one has the power of God, for He is greater than all of the world’s great men.  “He brings princes to naught and rulers of this world to nothing.”   No man has more power than our majestic God.

Lastly, God says look at the stars.  When I travel to the remote country-side, I always take the time to look up.  Earthly lights don’t detract from view in the country and I can see the heavens better.  I must admit that stars make me feel insignificant.  As humans we may have the technology to travel in outer space but we are so limited.  We can see millions of stars, billions of light years away.  It overwhelms our finite minds; we can’t grasp the depths of outer space but God is not overwhelmed.  “Lift your eyes and look at the heavens: Who created all of these?  He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name?  Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” [Isaiah 40:26].  God made the stars, God set them in space.  He is their Maker and their Master.  Such is the majesty of our God.

Packer closes his chapter on the majesty of God by summarizing man’s response to God.  We find ourselves limited and weak and we find it hard to believe that God is not that way also, but He is not.  “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? Says the Holy One” [Isaiah 40: 25].  Packer cites Martin Luther who is quoted as saying man, “Your thoughts are too human.”  We can’t comprehend God’s limitless wisdom and power.  But if we can’t comprehend God, surely He is distant, aloof and man is abandoned.  Not so; “He never abandons anyone on whom He has set His love; nor does Christ, the good Shepherd, ever lose track of His sheep” [Packer, 88].  Thinking God has left us because He is not on our level is a very pessimistic attitude, maybe held by those despondent people, cowed people, secretly despairing people.   There is no evidence of this in God’s word; Packer says “such pessimism deeply dishonors our great God and Savior.”  Lastly, we should not be slow to accept the idea that God is truly majestic.  It is almost as if God is trying to shame us out of hesitating to accept how truly great He is.  Isaiah 40:28 says “What is the trouble? [He asks].  Have you been imagining that I, the Creator, have grown old and tired?  Nobody has ever told you the truth about Me?”

Packer’s last words are the opposite of despondency.  He is not cowed.  He has no despair.  His words reflect God’s truth.  “The need for us is to wait upon the Lord in meditations on His majesty, till we find our strength renewed through the writing of these things on our hearts.” 

There is nothing in this world that compares to God.

He may be more powerful and all-knowing than we can comprehend but He still cares for each of us deeply.

Truly, truly our God is majestic.

From his book Knowing God.

Maybe I overstated the case in the previous post.  I titled it “The Downside to a Personal Relationship with God.”  There is no doubt that some people may object to that title; they see absolutely no “downside” to having a personal relationship with God.  Maybe I used that title to try to catch attention [which I often do with titles].  Maybe I was trying to make a point that in an effort to make God more approachable, we make God smaller than He really is.  Indeed, if we try to do that, there is a “downside”.

My blog is dedicated to discussing other writers’ thoughts and in this case I am reflecting the writings of J.I. Packer, who has a real problem when contemporary Christians don’t hold God in utmost reverence. 

Packer feels we should see God as “majestic”.

But how do we get to the point in our Christian lives when we begin to see God as majestic?  What do we need to do to “form a right idea of God’s greatness?”  Packer says “the Bible teaches us two steps that we must take.” 

In this post, I will discuss the first of those steps: “remove from our thoughts of God limits that would make Him small.”

I have had the opportunity to read Psalm 139 as part of the worship service at my church so I am very familiar with it.   It is an absolute statement of the presence, the knowledge and the power of God.  Psalm 139 will help us remove from our thoughts all limits about God.  It bears repeating here as a true testament to God’s greatness.  “You hem me in—behind and before….Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens [the sky], you are there; if I make my bed in the depths [the underworld], you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, I still cannot escape from the presence of God: even there your hand will guide me…nor can darkness, which hides me from human sight shield me from God’s gaze.”

Do you read anything in the Psalm 139 that even hints at a diminished God?  The way I read it, God’s power is infinite, His knowledge is unlimited.  How could anyone think that God is not majestic as you read those words?  I would add to the word majestic the word omnipresent.  I would also admit as a sinner that Psalm 139 makes me uncomfortable; when I sin, I can try to run from God but I certainly cannot hide.  God is everywhere.

As we ponder the idea that our great God is everywhere, we also need to recognize that God knows everything.  There are no limits to His knowledge of us.  Again from Psalm 139, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise [all my actions and movements];  you perceive my thoughts [all that goes on in my mind] from afar….You are familiar with all my ways [all my habits, plans, aims, desires as well as all my life to date].  Before a word is on my tongue [spoken, or meditated] you know it completely Lord” [Psalm 139, Packer, 85].  Most of us try to hide the feelings of our heart.   Some of us try to hide our past.   Many don’t divulge future plans but all of this is silly, for God knows everything about us.   We cannot hide our thoughts from God.  Packer writes “He sees through all my reserve and pretense; He knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself” [86].

Think about it.  A god [note the small g] that we can hide from would indeed be a small god.  Our God sees all and knows all.  “The true God is great and terrible, just because He is always with me and His eye is always on me.  Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent God” [86].

Finally the Bible is full of scripture that points to God as “almighty.”  “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; He suspends the earth over nothing.  He wraps up the waters in His clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.  He covers the face of the full moon, spreading His clouds over it.  He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.  The pillars of the heavens quake,  aghast at His rebuke.  By His power He churned up the sea; by His wisdom He cut Rahab to pieces.  By His breath the skies became fair; His hand pierced the gliding serpent.  And these are but the outer fringe of His works; how faint the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” [Job 26: 7-14].  Did you note the phrase “these are but the outer fringe of His works”, the outer fringe.  God is capable of doing what He wants to; His resources are unlimited and His power is beyond human comprehension. 

Packer is serious when he states that it should be our job as Christians to think thoughts of God’s greatness; banish all thoughts that would make Him small.  He is worthy of praise.  Maybe the title of my previous post is a bit dramatic.  Maybe there is really no “downside” of a personal relationship with God.

The downside comes in our thoughts about our Maker.  Packer turns to his own physical body as testament of the almighty power of God; maybe we should too.  Again, the psalmist in Psalm 139 says it best: “praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

His wonderful works include you and they include me.  The least we can do as believers is to let our thoughts reflect that.

Remove all our thought that God is small; He is a great God, an all-powerful God, always present and all knowing.

Indeed He is majestic.