Knowing God

Highlights

• "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of a man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the deity." [18]
• "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." [21]
• "Not many of us, I think, would ever naturally say that we have known God. The words imply a definiteness and matter-of-factness of experience to which most of us, if we are honest, have to admit that we are still strangers." [24]
• "Interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing him." [26]
• "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." [34]
• "You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer." [39]
• "All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me and continues to know me." [41]
• "There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose." [42]
• "All manmade images of God, whether molten or mental, are really borrowings from the stock-in-trade of a sinful and ungodly world, and are bound therefore to be out of accord with God's own holy Word." [49]
• "The impression of Jesus is not so much one of deity reduced as of divine capacities restrained." [61]
• "It is not for us to imagine that we can prove the truth of Christianity by our own arguments; nobody can prove the truth of Christianity except the Holy Spirit, by his own almighty work of renewing the blinded heart. It is the sovereign prerogative of Christ's Spirit to convince men's consciences of the truth of Christ's gospel; and Christ's human witnesses must learn to ground their hopes of success not on clever presentation of the truth by man, but on powerful demonstration of the truth by the Spirit." [71]
• "If our God is the same as the God of the New Testament believers, how can we justify ourselves in resting content with an experience of communion with him, and a level of Christian conduct, that falls so far below theirs? If God is the same, this is not an issue that any one of us can evade." [81]
• "I can hide my heart, and my past, and my future plans, from those around me, but I cannot hide anything from God. I can talk in a way that deceives my fellow creatures as to what I really am, but nothing I say or do can deceive God. He sees through all my reserve and pretense; he knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself." [85]
• "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 Creator." [86]
• "Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it." [90]
• "His ultimate objective is to bring them to a state in which they please him entirely and praise him adequately, a state in which he is all in all to them, and he and they rejoice continually in the knowledge of each other's love -- people rejoicing in the saving love of God, set upon them from all eternity, and God rejoicing in the responsive love of people, drawn out of them by grace through the gospel." [92]
• "Fellowship with the Father and the Son is the most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is the greatest, when the cross is the heaviest." [97]
• "It is to be feared that many Christians spend all their lives in too unhumbled and conceited a frame of mind ever to gain wisdom from God at all." [101]
• "The harder we try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed we grow with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more tempted we grow to conclude that life really is as pointless as it looks." [105]
• "For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives." [106]
• "The whole Bible maintains this insistence that God's word is his executive instrument in all human affairs. Of him, as of no one else, it is true that what he says goes. It is in truth the word of God that rules the world and that fixes our fortunes for us." [112]
• "Our souls were made to 'run' on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control and service to God and our fellows. If we abandon these practice, not only do we incur guilt before God; we also progressively destroy our own souls." [114]
• "Even when we cannot see the why and the wherefore of God's dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong." [122]
• "Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God resolves to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision which God need not make in any single case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace." [132]
• "I need not torment myself with the fear that my faith may fail; as grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace." [136] #philippians/1/29
• "The principle which Paul is applying (in Romans 11:20-21) is that behind every display of divine goodness stands a threat of severity in judgement if that goodness is scorned. If we do not let it draw us to God in gratitude and responsive love, we have only ourselves to blame when God turns against us." [164] #romans/11/20-21
• "For God's ultimate objective, as the Bible declares it, is threefold - to vindicate his rule and righteousness by showing his sovereignty in judgement upon sin; to ransom and redeem his chosen people; and to be loved and praise by them for his glorious acts of love and self-vindication. God seeks what we should seek - his glory, in and through men - and it is for the securing of this end, ultimately, that he is jealous." [172]
• "Our sins have been punished; the wheel of retribution has turned; judgement has been inflicted for our ungodliness - but on Jesus, the lamb of God, standing in our place. In his way God is just - and the justifier of those who put faith in Jesus, who 'was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification'." [188] #romans/4/25
• "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. 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." [201]
• "Our heavenly Father will notice, and show special pleasure, when we concentrate our efforts on pleasing him and him alone." [211]
• "...to focus on the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation." [214]
• "So it is not as we strain after feelings and experiences but as we seek God himself, looking to him as our Father, prizing his fellowship, and finding in ourselves an increasing concern to know and please him, that the reality of the Spirit's ministry become visible in our lives." [221]
• "[The basic mistake of those who miss guidance] is to think of [it] as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word." [234]
• "The fundamental mode whereby our rational Creator guides his rational creatures is by rational understanding and application of his written Word." [235]
• "Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into his plan for us and brings good out of them....Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good he is." [241]
• "It is these half-conscious fears, this dread of insecurity, rather than any deliberate refusal to face the cost of following Christ, which make us hold back....In other words, we are not persuaded of the adequacy of God to provide for all the needs of those who launch out wholeheartedly on the deep sea of unconventional living in obedience to the call of Christ." [269-270]
• "...'in everything God works for good with those who love him.' And who are you to suppose that you will be the first exception, the first person to find God wavering and failing to keep his word? Do you not see how you dishonor God by such fears?" [270]
• "Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you." [275]

Notes

1. The Study of God

• The study of God humbles and expands the mind, while also being eminently consolatory
• Studying God is "the most practical project anyone can engage in" (19)
• Basic Themes
  • Godhead of God: the qualities of His deity that set Hi apart from humans and mark the distance between Him as Creator and His creatures
  • Powers of God: His almightiness, omniscience, and omnipresence
  • Perfections of God: His holiness, love and mercy, goodness
• We must all ask, "What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God?"
  • If it is for our own sake, we will become proud/conceited, it cannot be a means to an end in itself
  • Our ultimate concern must be understand the truth of God to know and to serve Him more fully
  • Turn each truth about God into meditation before God leading to prayer and praise to God

2. The People Who Know Their God

• Those who know God:
  • Have great energy for God
    • Cannot rest when anti-God trends are operating around them
    • Are sensitive to to situations in which God's truth and honor are being jeopardized
    • The first point where zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers
      • Lack of prayer is a sure sign that we scarcely know God
  • Have great thoughts about God
  • Show great boldness for God
  • Have great contentment in God

3. Knowing and Being Known

• We were made to know God
• Knowing Him involves:
  1. Listening to God's Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it
  2. Noting God's nature and character, as His Word and works reveal it
  3. Accepting his invitations and doing what He commands
  4. Recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship
• Differences between us "knowing" God and the disciples:
  • His presence with the Christian is spiritual, not bodily - invisible to our physical eyes
  • The Christian knows from the start those truths (from the NT) about the deity and atoning sacrifice of Jesus which the original disciples grasped only gradually
  • Rather than uttering fresh words, Jesus now speaks to us by applying to our consciences Scripture

4. The One True God

• Idolatry can exist in the form of the worship of the true God by images

The Danger in Images

• This includes all forms of pictures and statues of the Father/Christ

1. Images dishonor God, for they obscure his glory
   • "The inevitably conceal most, if not all, of the truth about the personal nature and character of the divine being whom they represent." [46]
   • The cross displays Christ's human weakness, but conceals his divine strength and keeps out of our sight the reality of his joy and power
2. Images mislead us, for they convey false ideas about God
   • Psychologically, if we habitually focus our thoughts on a specific image or picture of God, we will come to think of Him as the image that we are imagining represents him

5. God Incarnate

• If he was truly the Son of God, it is much more startling that he should die than that he should rise again
• The New Testament does not encourage us to puzzle our heads over the physical and psychological problem that the Incarnation raises; instead, we are to worship God for the love that was shown in it
• [[Kenosis Theory]]: the Greek word for "emptying"
  • The idea is that, in order to be fully human, the Son had to renounce some of his divine qualities, otherwise he could not have shared the experience of being limited in space, time, knowledge and consciousness which is essential to human life.
  • This is proven false because Christ claimed in comprehensive and categorical terms that all his teaching was from God: that he was never more than his Father's messenger
  • My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me...I...speak just what the Father has taught me...For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it...Whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. #john/7/16 #john/8/28 #john/12/49-50
  • We must either 1) accept these claims and ascribe full divine authority to all Jesus taught, or 2) reject them and call into question the divine authority of his teaching at every point
• Just as Jesus did not do everything he could have done that was not his Father's will, he did not consciously know all that he might have known, only what the Father willed him to know #matthew/26/53
  • Therefore, Jesus' limitation of knowledge should be viewed in reference, not to the incarnation, but to the will of the Father

6. He Shall Testify

• The doctrine of the Trinity is an essential part of the Christian gospel
• Jesus promised His disciples the gift of "another Comforter" #john/14/16
  • He was the original Comforter, and the Holy Spirit continued His task
• The Father sent the Spirit, as Christ's deputy, to act in the world as the agent and witness of Jesus
• Relationships laid out:
  1. The Son is subject to the Father, for the Son is sent by the Father in the Father's name
  2. The Spirit is subject to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son's name
  3. The Spirit is subject to the Son as well as to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Son as well as by the Father. (Compare 20:22 "He breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'.")
• The average Christian doesn't understand the role of the Holy Spirit
• "Christ sent the Holy Spirit to His disciples to teach them all truth and so save them from all error, to remind them of what they had been taught already, and to reveal to them the rest of what their Lord meant them to learn."
• Without the Holy Spirit, there would be no gospel and no New Testament
  • The Spirit testified to the apostles revealing to them all truth and inspiring them to communicate it with all truthfulness. Hence the gospel, and hence the New Testament.
• Without the Holy Spirit, there would be no faith and no new birth (no Christians)
  • The Spirit testifies by illuminating: opening blind eyes, restoring spiritual vision, enabling sinners to see that the gospel is indeed God's truth, and Scripture is indeed God's Word, and Christ is indeed God's son

7. God Unchanging

• It is easy to feel as if we are outside of the Bible world, looking in; that we are mere spectators
• Our sense of remoteness comes from seeking the link between our situation and that of the various Bible characters in the wrong place
  • The link is God himself
• On His Immutability
  1. God's life does not change
     • We are mutable, He is not
  2. God's character does not change
  3. God's truth does not change
     • "Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens...All your commands are true...You established them to last forever" #psalms/119/89, #psalms/119/151
  4. God's ways do not change
  5. God's purposes do not change
     • "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" #numbers/23/19
     • "As God is both omniscient and omnipotent there is never any need for him to revise his decrees" - (A. W. Pink, 80)
  6. God's Son does not change
     • "[He] is the same yesterday and today and forever" #hebrews/13/8

8. The Majesty of God

• Majesty, when referring to God, is a call to worship and adore Him
• His greatness is no less vivid than His personality
• Forming thoughts about God:
  1. Remove, from our thoughts of God, limits that would make Him small #psalms/139
  2. Compare Him with powers and forces which we regard as great #isaiah/40
     • Correct our thoughts about God - “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.” #isaiah/40/25
     • Correct our thoughts about ourselves - “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God’?” #isaiah/40/27
     • Correct our thoughts about His majesty - “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” #isaiah/40/28

9. God Only Wise

• God's wisdom is allied to omnipotence, so it cannot be frustrated/swayed by human error
• His wisdom never promised to make a fallen world happy or give a comfortable life to all who believe
• His immediate objectives are:
  • To draw us into a relationship of faith, hope, and love with Him
  • To deliver us from sin, showing the power of His grace through us
  • To defend us against the forces of evil
  • To spread the gospel through the world which He saves
• We must learn the practice of living in God’s presence, seeing all life in relation to him, and looking to him, and him alone, as Commander, Defender, and Rewarder
  • Examples of God revealing Abraham’s need for dependence on Him: #genesis/15/1 #genesis/17/1 #psalms/73/25
  • Old weaknesses will reappear, but there will emerge a new outworking of our developed habit of walking with God
  • We see the changed man, Abraham, in these verses: #genesis/13/8 #genesis/14/14 #genesis/14/22 #genesis/21/5
• God orders the events of the human life for a double purpose:
  1. The individual's own personal sanctification
  2. The fulfilling of his appointed ministry and service in the life of the people of God
• When unexpected/upsetting/discouraging things happen, we can know that God in his wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet, and he is dealing with us accordingly
  • We are not promised to know why we experience certain things on earth -- we may not know until we reach heaven
• How do we tackle these unknowns?
  1. Take them as from God, and ask our selves what reactions, to and in them, the gospel of God requires of us
  2. Seek God's face specifically about them
  • Example: Paul's thorn #2corinthians/12/7
• Packer argues that every trouble a Christian experiences will have, at least, the purposes of: being sent to make us humble, and give us a new opportunity of showing the power of Christ in our mortal lives

10. God’s Wisdom and Ours

• Wisdom is a communicable attribute of the Lord - He has bestowed it upon us
• To obtain wisdom, we must learn to reverence God and to receive His Word
  • We accomplish this by “soaking ourselves in Scripture”
• Wisdom is not God revealing to us every reason why anything happens
• Wisdom is that you simply try to see and do the right thing in the actual situation that presents itself - the effect of divine wisdom is to enable us to do just that in the actual situations of everyday life

What Ecclesiastes Teaches

• What the preacher wants to convey is that:
  • This world’s course is enigmatic
  • Much of what happens is inexplicable to us
  • Most occurrences “under the sun” bear no outward of a rational, moral God ordering them at all
• He is warning us of the misconceived quest for understanding
• We wrongfully feel sure that God has enabled us to understand all His ways and the reason why He orchestrates things, and then some very painful and inexplicable comes along and we feel that God has slighted us
• Outline for wisdom in Ecclesiastes
  • Fear God and keep His commandments #ecclesiastes/12/13
  • Trust, obey, reverence, and worship Him #ecclesiastes/5/1-7
  • Do good #ecclesiastes/3/13
  • Remember He will take account of us #ecclesiastes/11/9
  • Live in the present and enjoy it thoroughly #ecclesiastes/7/14 #ecclesiastes/9/7-10 #ecclesiastes/11/9-10
  • Work hard at whatever life calls us to do #ecclesiastes/9/10
  • Enjoy your work #ecclesiastes/2/24 #ecclesiastes/3/12
  • Leave to God its issues #ecclesiastes/11/1-6

11. Thy Word is Truth

• God speaks to us directly to determine our environment and engage our minds and hearts
• His purpose is not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know him so that we may love him through both information and invitation
• The ordering of the first words spoken to man (Adam and Eve) were command, testimony, prohibition, and promise
• The word of God really determines world events
• God says that the mark of true humility and godliness is that a person "trembles at [His] word" #isaiah/66/2
• True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the word of God - it convinces them of sin and assures them of forgiveness

12. The Love of God

• Knowing that "the Son of God...loved us and gave himself for us" #galatians/2/20 allows Christians to apply to ourselves the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose #romans/8/28
• God was happy without humans before they were made
  • He would have continued to be happy had he simply destroyed them after they had sinned
  • But, as it is he has set his love upon particular sinners, meaning, by his own free voluntary choice, he will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven
  • In effect, he has resolved that henceforth for all eternity his happiness shall be conditional upon ours
• Therefore, God saves us, not only for his glory, but also for his gladness
  • Angels rejoicing in heaving when a sinner repents #luke/15/10
  • "exceeding joy" when God sets us faultless #jude/24

13. The Grace of God

• Many people believe that, at their heart, they are thoroughly good folks
  • However, God is not true to himself unless he punishes sin. And, unless one knows and feels the truth of this fact, that wrongdoers have no natural hope of anything from God but retributive judgement, one can never share the biblical faith in divine grace
• 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" #ephesians/2/10 #titus/2/12

14. God the Judge

• God will always know - not just the public façade, but the "secrets of men" #2corinthians/5/10
• The heart of the justice which expresses God's nature is retribution, the rendering to persons what they have deserved
• The character of God is the guarantee that all wrongs will be righted someday
• The gift of justification:
  1. Shields believers from being condemned and banished from God's presence as sinners
  2. Does not at all shield believers from being assessed as Christians, and from forfeiting good which others will enjoy if it turns out that, as Christians, they have been slack, mischievous, or destructive

15. The Wrath of God

• God's wrath is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is - instead, it is a right, judicial, and necessary reaction to objective moral evil
• The recipients of God's wrath always choose it for themselves
  • "The essence of God's action in wrath is to give men what they choose, in all its implications: nothing more, and equally nothing less." [153]

Wrath in Romans

• God's wrath is the active manifesting of his hatred of irreligion and moral evil
• People are given up to their own corrupt preferences and so come to put into practice more and more uninhibitedly the lusts of their sinful hearts
• The law cannot save us, for its only effect is to stimulate sin and show us how far we fall short of righteousness

16. Goodness and Severity

• "Santa Claus Theology": when trials and tribulations come, the only way to save the liberal view of God is to dissociate him from these things and to deny that he has any direct relation to them or control over them; in other words, to deny his omnipotence and lordship over his world
• Generosity is the focal point of God's moral perfection and determines how all of God's other excellences are to be displayed
  • Every meal, pleasure, possession, sleep, health, safety, etc. is a divine gift
  • In Psalm 107 #psalms/107, we see that God:
    • Redeems the helpless
    • Delivers from "darkness and the shadow of death"
    • Heals disease
    • Protects voyagers
• God allows thorns and trials in our life to keep us from falling into the somnolence of complacency and to ensure that we "continue in his goodness" by letting our sense of need bring us back constantly in "self-abasement" and faith to seek his face.

17. The Jealous God

• The jealousy which God shows is a zeal to protect a love relationship or to avenge it when broken, similar to the relationship between a husband-wife, having the proper zeal to keep it intact
• His jealousy presupposes his covenant love, and this love is no transitory affection, accidental and aimless, but is the expression of a sovereign purpose

18. The Heart of the Gospel

• Propitiation: averting God's anger by an offering, ultimately Jesus Christ
• We can see propitiation throughout Scripture:
  1. The rationale of God's justification of sinners
  2. The rationale of the Incarnation of God the Son
  3. The heavenly ministry of our Lord
  4. The definition of the Love of God
• Jesus was sent to be the propitiation of our sins #1john/2/1-2
• Expiation means only half of what propitiation means
  • Putting away or rubbing out of sin so that it no longer constitutes a barrier to friendly fellowship between man and God; rather, propitiation involves the pacifying of the wrath of God

19. Sons of God

• God intends the lives of believers to be a reflection and reproduction of Jesus' own fellowship with himself
• His fatherhood implies: authority, affection, fellowship, and honor
• Adoption is the highest privilege
• Justification is the primary, fundamental blessing that adoption rests on
• It is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, viewing God as Father
• The entire Christian life must be perceived in terms of adoption
  • "Sonship must be the controlling thought" [209]
• Regarding prayer, it must not be thought of in impersonal or mechanical terms, and it may be free and bold
• "The problem of unanswered prayer"
  • The Lord knows best - regarding Paul's prayer for his "thorn in his flesh", it would be utterly wrong to say that God did not answer his prayer #2corinthians/12/8-10
• 5 matters addressed in the Epistles
  1. The greatness of God's love
  2. The glory of the Christian hope
  3. The ministry of the Holy Spirit
  4. The meaning and motives of what the Puritans called "gospel holiness"
  5. The problem of Christian assurance
• Only the person who has grasped that the Lord "disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son" can make sense of Romans 8:28 #romans/8/28 #hebrews/12/6-11
• The source of our assurance comes from the Spirit and convinces us that we are God's children and that the saving love and promises of God apply directly to us

I am a child of God. God is my father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother too. [228]

20. Thou Our Guide

• God made known his will to us through the Old Testament prophets, guiding Jesus and Paul
• Guidance is promised to every child of God
  • Christians who miss it show that they did not seek it as they should, and it is right to be concerned about one's own receptiveness to guidance and should study how to seek it
• Most problems cannot be resolved by direct application of biblical teaching - the search for superspirituality leads only to lunacy
• 6 common pitfalls of unwillingness:
  • To think
  • To think ahead
  • To take advice
  • To suspect oneself
  • To discount personal magnetism
  • To wait
    • When action is needed, light will come
• Trouble is not a sign of being off track, as many afflictions will challenge us as believers #psalms/34/19
• The Christian's guided life may even appear as a waste (e.g. Paul spending years in prison after following God's guidance)

21. These Inward Trials

• A ministry which is wholly concerned with gospel truths can still go wrong by giving those truths an inaccurate application
• The ultimate reason God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast

22. The Adequacy of God

• All roads in the Bible lead to Romans - it has the fullest cross-section of the life of sin and the life of grace, and the deepest analysis of the ay of faith, that the Bible gives anywhere
• The more it is studied, the easier it is and the more deeply it is searched the preciouser things are found in it
• The impact of Romans upon you will depend on what has gone before
• Romans 8 contains two parts of unequal length: #romans/8
  • The adequacy of the grace of God (vv. 1-30)
    • His grace contains: righteousness, the Holy Spirit, sonship, and security
  • The adequacy of the God of grace (vv. 31-39)
• Let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking, making true "that neither death nor life...nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" #romans/8/39-39
• According to Psalm 56, the true believer praises, prays, and pays #psalms/56
• Opposition is a fact: the Christian who is not conscious of being opposed had better watch himself, for he is in danger.
• No good thing will finally be withheld from us
• We shall never need more than he can supply, and it will always be enough for the present #psalms/84/11
• He knew the worst about us at the time he accepted us for Jesus' sake, and the verdict which he passed then was, and is, final
• The true priority of every human being is learning to know Christ

Reflections and Questions

• Do I look habitually to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as showing me the final truth about the nature and the grace of God? [50]