J.I. Packer on Grace
"To be sure, there have always been some who have found the thought of grace so overwhelmingly wonderful that they could never get over it."
Throughout the history of the church there have always been those who would fight for grace.
Many have suffered for grace.
Grace has inspired some of our finest and most deeply felt songs.
"With Paul, their testimony is, 'By the grace of God I am what I am' (1 Cor. 15:10), and their rule of life is, 'I do not frustrate the grace of God (Gal. 2:21).'"
"But many church people are not like this. They may pay lip service to the idea of grace, but there they stop. Their conception of grace is not so much debased as nonexistent. The thought means nothing to them; it does not touch their experience at all. Talk to them about the church's heating, or last year's accounts, and they are with you at once; but speak to them about the realities to which the word grace points, and their attitude is one of deferential blankness. They do not accuse you of talking nonsense; they do not doubt that your words have meaning; but they feel that, whatever it is that you are talking about, it is beyond them, and the longer they have lived without it the surer they are that at their stage of life they do not really need it."
Comments