How Well Do You Understand Christianity?
November 3, 2009 | 0 Comments
On his blog, Justin Taylor recently posted the following:
You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator.
In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father.
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.
For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up I the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God.
Evangelical Magazine 7, pp. 19-20, cited in Knowing God, p. 201. Packer says on p. 202:
Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.
How well do we really understand this concept of God as our Father and us as His adopted Sons? And if we did have a better understanding of it, how differently would we view our relationship to him? Our relationships with others? Our work? Ourselves?
This prompted me to go back and look my copy of Packer's Knowing God and what he had to further say about our adoption as God's sons:
Our first point about adoption is that it is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification... This free gift of acquittal and peace (justification), won for us at the cost of Calvary, is wonderful enough, in all conscience - but justification does not of itself imply any intimate or deep relationship with God the judge. In idea, at any rate, you could have the reality of justification without any close fellowship with God resulting.
But contrast this, now, with adoption. Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship - he establishes us as his children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater (Knowing God, pp. 206 - 07).
Does this not demonstrate just how great the Good News really is? That as God's children He not only pardons us of our sins, but delights in us and desires intimate fellowship with us? When we have had all of eternity to reflect upon this truth I do not think we will have even begun to plumb the depths of just how wonderful it really is. But how much we make of God as our loving heavenly Father does demonstrate how much we really understand what Christianity is all about.
