Fear and Trembling

These are the last two articles I wrote for my local paper on J. I. Packer's book Knowing God .  These were written for a series of articles on Packer's book by members of my church.  The other articles can be found at this link. Knowing God , Chapter Nineteen: Sons of God, Part One by John K. Jones Last week we looked at what J. I. Packer calls the heart of the gospel, propitiation. Propitiation is the fact that “The wrath of God against us, both present and to come, has been quenched.” In essence, this Scripture means that the wrath we deserve due to our sin was transferred to Christ. If you have repented of your sin and placed your faith in Christ, God is not mad at you anymore. This week we will briefly look at one outcome related to propitiation: adoption. The idea here is that God has become the Father of those who place their trust in Him. As John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become chi...

This is the next article amoung four I have recently written for my local paper. Knowing God , Chapter Fourteen: God the Judge by John K. Jones Over the last two articles, we have looked in turn on God’s love and His grace. We have seen the beauty of Exodus 34:6-7: "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” This article turns to the second part of verse 7: “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” We too often revel in God’s love and grace while giving no thought to His justice. However, the Bible shows everywhere the terrible face of God as judge. As J. I. Packer notes in Chapter 14 of Knowing God, God judged Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), the entire world in Noah’s day (Genesis 6-8), Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19), Egypt (Exodus 7-12), those who worshiped the golden calf (Leviticus 10:1-3), and even His chosen people, Israel (J...

I have been helping the members of my church write a series of articles for our local paper on J. I. Packer's Knowing God .  I thought I would post the articles I have written here on "Fear and Trembling." Knowing God , Chapter Five: God Incarnate by John K. Jones What is light? What is matter? Science has long been puzzled by questions like these because, when we perform experiments, both light and the constituencies of matter behave like a particle some of the time and a wave some of the time. Particles are things that move in a straight line like small billiard balls. Waves are spread-out things that expand like ripples in a pond. In theory, something cannot be both. Science has its mysteries. As J. I. Packer points out in Chapter 5 of Knowing God, Christianity has mysteries too. The supreme mystery of Christianity is the idea that God became a man to walk, talk, eat, sleep, hunger, thirst, hurt, and be all that it means to be human on this earth (Hebrews 2:17-...