Theologians divide the attributes of God into two categories, communicable and incommunicable. That God created man in his image means that man was given qualities corresponding to the attributes of God. However, not all of God’s attributes were included in this image. Incommunicable attributes are those for which there is no corresponding quality in his image in created man. These attributes were not communicated to Adam. They include aseity (self-existence) and infinitude (unlimited by time or space). Communicable attributes are those that God communicated to man in creation. They are his moral qualities.

God’s communicable attributes are the image of God in us. That image, and therefore those attributes, were lost or damaged in the fall. A part of God’s redemptive plan is the renewal of those communicable attributes (2 Corinthians 3:18; Colossians 3:10).

Among those communicable attributes is wisdom. It should be clearly seen that fallen man is lacking wisdom. It is equally clear that God wants to give us wisdom. Scripture, particularly the book of Proverbs, exhorts us repeatedly to “get wisdom.” The New Testament also instructs us to seek wisdom (Ephesians 5:15-17; James 1:5). But how can we get wisdom? J. I. Packer offers two prerequisites for receiving this gift.

   1. We must learn to reverence God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” . . . Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God’s holiness and sovereignty . . . acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.
   2. We must learn to receive God’s Word. wisdom is divinely wrought in those, and those only, who apply themselves to God’s revelation. “Your commands make me wiser than my enemies,” declares the Psalmist; I have more insight than all my teachers”—why?—“for I meditate on your statutes” (Ps 119:98–99).
   So Paul admonishes the Colossians, “ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly . . . with all wisdom” (Col 3:16). How are we of the twentieth century to do this? By soaking ourselves in the Scriptures, which, as Paul told Timothy (and he had in mind the Old Testament alone!), “are able to make you wise for salvation” through faith in Christ, and to make us “thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:15&ndashl17).
   Again, it is to be feared that many today who profess to be Christ’s never learn wisdom, through failure to attend to God’s written Word. . . . 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 the wisdom which is God’s free gift.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 101–102.

God is love. It is appropriate that this phrase has become so well used in describing God, for God’s love is his one characteristic which explains the relationship he has chosen to have with us. But this phrase is much misunderstood and misused. It has been used to the exclusion of God’s other attributes, such as his holiness and justice. It is also used in a trite way, being equated to human affections. But, compared to God’s love, the deepest human affections are pitifully shallow.

Packer defines God’s love thusly: “God’s love is an exercise of his goodness toward individual sinners whereby, having identified himself with their welfare, he has given his Son to be their Savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation,” and explains,

   1. Gods love is an exercise of his goodness. The bible means by God’s goodness his cosmic generosity. Goodness in God, writes Berkhof, is “that perfection in God which prompts him to deal bountifully and kindly with all His creatures. It is the affection which the creator feels toward His sentient creatures as such.” (Systematic Theology, p. 70, citing Ps 145:9, 15–16; compare Lk 6:35; Acts 14:7). Of this goodness God’s love is the supreme and most glorious manifestation. . . .
    2. God’s love is an exercise of his goodness toward sinners. As such it has the nature of grace and mercy. It is an outgoing of God in kindness which is not merely undeserved but is actually contrary to desert; for the objects of God’s love are rational creatures who have broken God’s law, whose nature is corrupt in God’s sight, and who merit only condemnation and final banishment from his presence.
   It is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have though) unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the object of his love to call it forth; nothing in us could attract or prompt it. Love among persons is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves people because he has chosen to love them . . . no reason for his love can be given except his own sovereign pleasure.
   . . .
   3. Gods love is an exercise in his goodness toward individual sinners. It is not a vague, defused good will toward everyone in general and nobody in particular; rather, as being a function of omniscient almightiness, its nature is to particularize both its objects and its effects. God’s purpose of love, formed before creation (Eph 1:4), involved, first, the choice and selection, of those whom he would bless, and second, the appointment of the benefits to be given them and the means whereby these benefits would be procured and enjoyed. All this was made sure from the start.
. . . The exercise of God’s love toward individual sinners in time is the execution of his purpose to bless those same individual sinners—a purpose which he formed in eternity.
   4. God’s love to sinners involves his identifying himself with their welfare. Such an identification is involved in all love: it is, indeed, the test of whether love is genuine or not. If a father continues cheerful and carefree while his son is getting into trouble, or if a husband remains unmoved when his wife is in distress, we wonder at once how much love there can be in their relationship, for we know that those who truly love are only happy when those whom they love are truly happy also. So it is with God and his love for us.
. . . It is not for nothing that the Bible habitually speaks of God as the loving Father and Husband of his people. It follows from the very nature of these relationships that God’s happiness will not be complete till all his beloved ones are finally out of trouble:
   Till all the ransomed church of God
   Be saved, to sin no more.
. . . 
   Thus God saves, not only for his glory, but also for his gladness. . . .
   5. God’s love to sinners was expressed by the gift of his Son to be their Savior. The measure of his love is how much it gives, and the measure of the love of God is the gift of his only Son to become human, and to die for sins, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God.
   . . .
   Thus, John goes straight on from his first “God is love” to say, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:9–10). Similarly, in his Gospel, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall . . . have eternal life.” (Jn. 3: 16). So too Paul writes, “God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinner, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). . . .
   6. God’s love to sinners reaches its objective as it brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation. A covenant relation is one in which two parties are permanently pledged to each other in mutual service and dependence. (example: marriage). A covenant promise is one by which a covenant relation is set up. (example: marriage vows). Biblical religion has the form of covenant relation with God. . . .
   All Christians inherit this promise through faith in Christ, as Paul argues in Galatians 3:15–29. What does it mean? it is truth in a pantechnicon promise: it contains everything. “This is the first and fundamental promise,” declared Sibbes, the Puritan; “indeed, it is the life and soul of all the promises” (Works VI, 8). . . . Thus faith in Christ introduces us into a relation big with incalculable blessing, both now and for eternity.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 123–127.

Grace is a word we hear often in the church, as well we ought. Sadly, it is a word that is not as commonly understood as spoken. J. I. Packer points out that many who speak the word have actually put their faith in something else. “What is it,” he asks, “that hinders so many who profess to believe in grace from really doing so?” The answer, he says, is that they have a basic misunderstanding of the relation between themselves and God. At the root of this is a failure to grasp “four crucial truths . . . which the doctrine of grace presupposes.”

   1. The moral ill-desert of man. Modern men and women, conscious of their tremendous scientific achievements in recent years, naturally incline to a high opinion of themselves. They view material wealth as in any case more important than moral character, and in the moral realm they are resolutely kind to themselves, treating small virtues as compensating for great vices and refusing to take seriously the idea that, morally speaking, there is anything much wrong with them.
. . . The thought of themselves as creatures fallen from God’s image, rebels against God’s rule, guilty and unclean in God’s sight, fit only for God’s condemnation, never enters their heads.
   2. The retributive justice of God. The way of modern men and women is to turn a blind eye to all wrongdoing as long as they safely can. They tolerate it in others, feeling that there, but for the accident of circumstances, go they themselves. . . . The accepted maxim seems to be that as long as evil can be ignored, it should be; one should punish only as a last resort . . .
   In our pagan way, we take it for granted that God feels as we do. The idea that retribution might be the moral law of God’s world and an expression of his holy character seems to us quite fantastic. Those who uphold it find themselves accused of projecting onto God their own pathological impulses of rage and vindictiveness. Yet the Bible insists throughout that this world which God in his goodness has made is a moral world, one in which retribution is as basic a fact as breathing.
   . . .
   3. The spiritual impotence of man. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People has been almost a modern Bible. A whole technique of business relations has been built up in recent years on the principle of putting the other person in a position where he cannot decently say no. This has confirmed modern men and women in the faith which has animated pagan religion ever since there was such a thing—namely, the belief that we can repair our own relationship with God by putting God in a position where he cannot say no anymore.
   Ancient pagans thought to do this by multiplying gifts and sacrifices; modern pagans seek to do it by churchmanship and morality. . . . but the Bible position is as stated by Toplady:
   Not the labours of my hand
   Can fulfil Thy law’s demands.
   Could my zeal no respite know,
   Could my tears for ever flow,
   All for sin could not atone
—leading to the admission of one’s own helplessness and to the conclusion:
   Thou must save, and Thou alone.
   . . .
   4. The sovereign freedom of God. Ancient paganism thought of each god as bound to his worshipers by bonds of self-interest, because he depended on their service and gifts for his welfare. Modern paganism has at the back of its mind a similar feeling that God is somehow obliged to love and help us, little though we deserve it. . . . But this feeling is not well founded. The God of the Bible does not depend on his human creatures for his well-being (see Ps 50:8–13; Acts 17:25), nor, now that we have sinned, is he bound to show us favor.
   We can only claim from him justice—and justice, for us, means certain condemnation. God does not owe it to anyone to stop justice taking its course. He is not obliged to pity and pardon; if he does so it is an act done, as we say, “of his own free will,” and nobody forces his hand. “It does not depend on man’s will or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Rom 9:16 NEB) Grace is free, in the sense of being self-originated and of proceeding from One who was free not to be gracious. 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.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 128–132.

God is love. This, quite naturally, is a major theme in our understanding of God. We speak of God’s love, we sing of God’s love, we “love to tell the story of Jesus and his love.” It ought to be reflexive for Christians to revel in the love of God. However, God is not a one-dimensional being; he is not only love. He is a holy God who is righteous and just, as well; and his love does not nullify those attributes. Not only is he a loving father, he is a righteous judge. His justice will be served. The Old Testament is filled with narratives of the judgment of God falling on both pagans and the people of God. This is not only an Old Testament manifestation of God’s character, nor is this quality limited to the Father. Jesus himself is “the righteous judge.”

   When we turn from Bible history to Bible teaching—the Law, the Prophets, the Wisdom writings, the words of Christ and his apostles—we find the thoughts of God’s action in judgment overshadowing everything. The Mosaic legislation is given as from a God who is himself a just judge and will not hesitate to inflict penalties by direct providential action if his people break his law. The prophets take up this theme; indeed, the greater part of their recorded teaching consists of exposition and application of the law, and threats of judgment against the lawless and impenitent. They spend a good deal more space preaching judgment than they do prediction the Messiah and his kingdom! In the Wisdom literature, the same viewpoint appears: the one basic certainty underlying all discussion of life’s problems in Job, Ecclesiastes and all the practical maxims of Proverbs is that “God will bring you to judgment,” “God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden sin, whether it is good or evil” (Eccles 11:9; 12:14).
   People who do not actually read the Bible confidently assure us that when we move from the old testament to the new, the theme of divine judgment fades in the background. But if we examine the New Testament, even in the most cursory way, we find at once that the Old Testament emphasized God’s action as a Judge, far from being reduced, is actually intensified.
   The entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment, and by the problem thence arising: How may we sinners get right with God while there is yet time? The New Testament looks on to “the day of judgment,” “the day of wrath,” “the wrath to come,” and proclaims Jesus, the divine Savior, as the divinely appointed Judge.
   The judge who stands before the door (Jas 5:9), “ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Pet 4:5), “the righteous Judge” who will give Paul his crown (2 Tim 4:8), is the Lord Jesus Christ. “He is the one who has been designate by God as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42 NEB). God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed,” Paul told the Athenians (Acts 17:31); and to the Romans he wrote, “God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as the gospel declares” (Rom 2:16).
   Jesus himself says the same. “The Father . . . has entrusted all judgment to the Son. . . . And he has given him authority to judge. . . . A time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear the voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (NEB has “will rise to hear their doom”) (Jn 5:22, 27–29). The Jesus of the New Testament, who is the world’s Savior, is its Judge as well.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 140–141.

Last week in our reading of Packer we saw that “The Jesus of the New Testament, who is the world’s Savior, is its Judge as well.” Today we will see what kind of judge he is. His authority as judge is unlike that of any judge in the human realm. The judge of the world differs from earthly judges in authority, passion, wisdom, and power.

What is involved on the idea of the Father, or Jesus, being a judge? Four thoughts at least are involved.
   1. The judge is a person with authority.In the Bible world, the king was always the supreme judge, because his was the supreme ruling authority. It is on that basis , according to the Bible, that God is judge of his world. As our Maker, he owns us, and as our Owner, he has the right to dispose of us. He has, therefore, a right to make laws for us and to reward us according to whether or not we keep them. In most modern states, the legislature and the judiciary are divided, so that the judge does not make the laws he administers; but in the ancient world this was not so, and it is not so with God. He is both the Lawgiver and the Judge.
   2. The judge is a person identified with what is good and right. The modern idea that a judge should be cold and dispassionate has no place in the Bible. The biblical judge is expected to love justice and fair play and to loathe all ill treatment of one person by another. An unjust judge, one who has no interest in seeing right triumph over wrong, is by biblical standards a monstrosity. The bible leaves us in no doubt that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity, and that the ideal of a judge wholly identified with what is good and right in perfectly fulfilled in him.
   3. The judge is a person of wisdom, to discern truth. In the biblical setting, the judge’s first task is to ascertain the facts in the case that is before him. There is no jury; it is his responsibly, and his alone, to question, and cross-examine, and detect lies and pierce through evasions and establish how matters really stand. When the Bible pictures God judging, it emphasizes his omniscience and wisdom as the searcher of hearts and the finder of facts. Nothing can escape him; we may fool men, but we cannot fool God. He knows us, and judges us, as we really are.
   When Abraham met the Lord in human form at the oaks of Mamre, he gave Abraham to understand the he was on the way to Sodom, to establish the truth about the moral situation there. “The Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gamorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down an see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know’” (Gen 18:20–21). So it is always. God will know. His judgment is according to truth—factual truth, as well as moral truth. He judges “the secrets of men,” not just their public façade. Not for nothing does Paul say, “We must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor 5:10 RV).
   4. The judge is a person of power to execute sentence. The modern judge does no more than pronounce the sentence; another department of the judicial executive then carries it out. The same was true in the ancient world. But God is his own executioner. As he legislates and sentences, so he punishes. All judicial functions coalesce in him.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 141–142.

Judge — it’s a serious title, and one that does not evoke pleasant thoughts. It’s certainly not the first word we think of when we hear the name “Jesus.” But we do not understand Jesus rightly if we neglect knowing him as our judge.

It is not always realized that the main New Testament authority on find judgment, just as on heaven and hell, is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Rightly does the Anglican burial service address Jesus in a single breath as “holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal.” For Jesus constantly affirmed that in the day when all appear before God’s throne to receive the abiding and eternal consequences of the life they have lived, he himself will be the Father’s agent in judgment, and his word of acceptance or rejection will be decisive. Passages to note in this connection are, among others, Matthew 7:13–27; 10:26–33; 12:36–37; 13:24–50; 22:1–14; 24:36—25:46; Luke 13:23–30; 16:19–31; John 5:22–30. The clearest prefiguration of Jesus as Judge is in Matthew 25:31–34, 41: “The Son of Man . . . will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations [everybody] will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another. . . . Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance. . . .’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire.’”
   The clearest account of Jesus’ prerogative as Judge is in John 5:22–23, 26–29: “The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. . . . The Father . . . has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man [to whom dominion, including judicial functions, was promised: Dan 7:13–14]. A time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (RSV). God’s own appointment has made Jesus Christ inescapable. He stands at the end of life’s road for everyone without exception. “Prepare to meet your God” was Amos’s message to Israel (Amos 4:12); “prepare to meet the risen Jesus” is God’s message to the world today (see Acts 17:31). And we can be sure that he who is true God and perfect man will make a perfectly just judge.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 144–145.

These last few posts have presented Jesus as quite fearsome, and fearsome he is. But there is more to the story of “Jesus as Judge.” Next time . . .

The last three posts in this series have presented Jesus as our judge. He is holy and righteous, and has received all power and authority from the Father to judge all men. The day is coming when he will do just that. This ought to be a cause for terror in the hearts of all who have not bowed to his lordship. But for those who are his, there is another side to Christ.

Paul refers to the fact that we must all appear before Christ’s judgment seat as “the terror of the Lord” (2 Cor 5:11 KJV), and well he might. Jesus the Lord, like his Father is holy and pure; we are neither. We live under his eye, he knows our secrets, and on judgment day the whole of our past life will be played back, as it were, before him and brought under review. If we know ourselves at all, we know we are not fit to face him. What then are we to do? The New Testament answer is: Call on the coming Judge to be your present Savior. As Judge, he is the law, but as Savior he is the gospel. Run from him now, and you will meet him as Judge then—and without hope. Seek him now, and you will find him (for “he that seeketh findeth”), and you will then discover that you are looking forward to that future meeting with joy, knowing that there is now “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). So—
   Whilst I draw this fleeting breath;
   When my eyelids close in death;
   When I soar through tracts unknown,
   See thee on thy judment-throne;
   Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
   Let me hide myself in thee.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 146–147.

Just as we cannot know Jesus as Savior until we have first come to terms with him as Judge (see previous posts in this series), we cannot fully appreciate the goodness of God without an understanding of his wrath. But you will not hear much about the wrath of God from many pulpits today. Few home Bible studies will spend much time exploring the topic of wrath. Yet Scripture speaks more of God’s wrath than of his love. Considering that fact, shouldn’t it command more of our attention than we give it? Packer writes:

No doubt it is true that the subject of divine wrath has in the past been handled speculatively, irreverently, even malevolently. No doubt there have been some who have preached on wrath and damnation with tearless eyes and no pain in their hearts. No doubt the sight of small sects cheerfully consigning the whole word, apart from themselves, to hell has disgusted many. Yet if we would know God, it is vital that we face the truth concerning his wrath, however unfashionable it may be, and however strong our initial prejudices against it. Otherwise we shall not understand the gospel of salvation from wrath, nor the propitiatory achievement of the cross, nor the wonder of the redeeming love of God, nor shall we understand the hand of God in history and God’s present dealings with our own people; nor shall we be able to make head or tail of the blood of Revelation; nor will our evangelism have the urgency enjoyed by Jude—“save some, by snatching them out of the fire” (Jude 23 RSV). Neither our knowledge of God nor our service to him will be in accord with the Word.

The wrath of God [wrote A. W. Pink] is a perfection of the Divine character on which we need to meditate frequently. First, that our hearts may be duly impressed by God’s detestation of sin. We are ever prone to regard sin lightly, to gloss over its hideousness, to make excuses for sin. But the more we study and ponder God’s abhorrence of sin and his frightful vengeance upon it, the more likely are we to realize its heinousness. Second, to beget a true fear in our souls for God. “Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28, 29). We cannot serve Him “acceptably” unless there is due “reverence” for His awful Majesty and “godly fear” of His righteous anger, and these are best promoted by frequently calling to mind that “our God is an consuming fire.” Third, to draw our soul in fervent praise [to Jesus Christ] for having delivered us from “the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). Our readiness or our reluctancy to meditate upon the wrath of God becomes a sure test of how our hearts really stand affected towards Him (The Attributes of God, p. 77).

Pink is right. If we would truly know God, and be know of him, we should ask him to teach us here and now to reckon with the solemn reality of his wrath.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 156–157.

The Apostle Paul, in Romans 11, instructs us to “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God.” “The crucial word here,” writes Packer, “is and.” We must be aware of these two aspects of God’s character, neglecting neither, dwelling on neither alone, but contemplating them side by side.

God’s Goodness
Goodness, in God as in human beings, means something admirable, attractive and praiseworthy. When the biblical writers call God good. They are thinking in general of all themoral qualities which prompt his people to call him perfect, and in particular of the generosity which moves them to call him merciful and gracious and to speak of his love. . . .
   The Bible is constantly ringing the changes on the theme of the moral perfection of God, as declared in his own words and verified in the experience of his people. When God stood with Moses on Sinai and “proclaimed the name [that is, the revealed character] of the Lord [that is, God as his peoples Jehovah, the sovereign Savior who says of himself, “I am what I am” in the covenant of grace],” what he said was this, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slaw to anger abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Ex 34:6–7). And this proclaiming of God’s moral perfection was carried out as the fulfillment of his promise to -make all his goodness pass before Moses (Ex 33:19). All the particular perfections that are mentioned here, and all that go with them—God’s truthfulness and trustworthiness, his unfailing justice and wisdom, his tenderness, forbearance and entire adequacy to all who penitently seek his help, his noble kindness in offering believers the exalted destiny of fellowship with him in holiness and love—these things together make up God’s goodness in the overall sense of the sum total of his revealed excellencies.
   . . .
. . . Within the cluster of God’s moral perfections there is one in particular to which the term goodness points—the quality which God especially singled out from the whole when, proclaiming “all his goodness” to Moses, he spoke of himself as “abundant in goodness and truth” (Ex 34:6 KJV). This is the quality of generosity. Generosity means a disposition to give to others in a way that has no mercenary motive, and is not limited by what the recipients deserve but constantly goes beyond it. Generosity expresses the simple wish that others should have what they need to make them happy. Generosity is, so to speak, the focal point of God’s moral perfection; it is the quality which determines how God’s other excellencies are to be displayed.
   . . .

God’s Severity
What, now of God’s severity? The word Paul uses in Romans 11:22 means literally “cutting off”; it denotes God’s decisive withdrawal of his goodness from those who have spurned it. It reminds us of a fact about God which he himself declared when he proclaimed his name to Moses; namely, that though he is “abounding in love and faithfulness,” he “does not leave the guilty unpunished”—that is, the obstinate and impenitent guilty (Ex 34:6–7). The act of severity to which Paul referred was God’s rejection of Israel as a body—breaking them off from his olive tree, of which they were the natural branches—because they did not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Israel had presumed on God’s goodness, while disregarding the concrete manifestation of goodness in his Son; and God’s reaction had been swift—he had cut Israel off. Paul takes occasion from this to warn his Gentile Christians readers that if they should lapse as Israel had lapsed, God would cut them off too. “You stand fast only thorough faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither ill he spare you” (Rom 11:20–21 RSV).
   The principle which Paul is applying here is that behind every display of divine goodness stands a threat of severity in judgment 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.
   . . .
   But God is not impatient in his severity; just the reverse. He is “slow to anger” “(Neh 9:17; Ps 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2) and “longsuffering” (Ex 34:6; Num 14:18; Ps 86:15 KJV). The Bible makes much of the patience and forbearance of God in postponing merited judgments in order to extend the day of grace to give more opportunity for repentance. Peter reminds us how, when the earth was corrupt and crying out for judgment, nevertheless “the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah” (1 Pet 3:20 KJV)—a reference, probably, to the hundred and twenty years’ respite (as it seems to have been) that is mentioned in Genesis 6:3.
   . . .

Our Response
From the above line of thought we can learn at least three lessons.
   1. Appreciate the goodness of God. Count your blessings. Learn not to take natural benefits, endowments and pleasures for granted; learn to thank God for them all. Do not slight the Bible nor the gospel of Jesus Christ, by and attitude of casualness toward either. The Bible shows you a Savior who suffered and died in order that we sinners might be reconciled to God; Calvary is the measure of the goodness of God; lay it to heart. Ask yourself the psalmist’s question —“How can I Repay the Lord of all his goodness to me?” Seek grace to give his answer—“I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. . . . O Lord, truly I am your servant; . . . I will fulfill my vows to the Lord” (Ps 116:12–18).
   2. Appreciate the patience of God. Think how he has born with you, and still bears with you, when so much in your life is unworthy of him and you have so richly deserve his rejection. Learn to marvel at his patience and seek grace to imitate it in your dealings with others; and try not to try his patience any more.
   3. Appreciate the discipline of God. He is both your upholder and, in the last analysis, your environment. All things come of him, and you have tasted his goodness ever day of your life. Has this experience led you to repentance and faith in Christ? If not, you are trifling with God and stand under the threat of his severity. But if, now, he (in Whitefield’s phrase ) puts thorns in your bed, it is only to awaken you from the sleep of spiritual death—to make you rise up to seek his mercy.
   Or if you are a true believer, and he still puts thorns on your bed, it is only to keep you from falling into the somnolence of complacency and to ensure that you “continue in his goodness” be letting your sense of need bring you back constantly in self-abasement and faith to seek his face. This kindly discipline, in which God’s severity touches us for a moment in the context of his goodness, is meant to keep us form having to bear the full brunt of that severity apart form that context. It is a discipline of love, and it must be received accordingly. “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline” (Heb 12:5). “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Ps 119:71).

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 163–166.

Raised as an evangelical Lutheran, the doctrine of Justification has been pretty well drilled into me as the supreme doctrine of the church, with only sola Scriptura as its equal. I’m grateful for that heritage, and the foundation that was laid early in life. These doctrines are the very bedrock of my faith, and without them, I would have nothing to believe in.

In the last several months, however, another doctrine has absolutely captivated my heart. I cannot think of it without being utterly overwhelmed. Whenever I encounter it, I am stopped in my tracks and must simply sit and contemplate it at length. It is the doctrine of Adoption. I have more to say about that, but first this, from J. I. Packer:

   Sonship to God . . . Is not a natural but an adoptive sonship, and so the New Testament explicitly pictures it. . . . The Apostles proclaim that God has so loved those whom he redeemed on the cross that he has adopted them as heirs, to see and share the glory into which his only begotten son has already come. “God sent his Son . . . To redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full [adoptive] rights of sons” (Gal 4:4–5): we, that is, who were “foreordained unto adoption as sons by Jesus Christ unto himself” (Eph 1:5 RV). “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are! . . .” (1 Jn 3:1–2).
   Some years ago, I wrote:

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 tught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctly Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God. (Evangelical Magazine 7, pp. 19–20)

This still seems to me wholly true, and very important. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 201–202 [bold added]

I have a sort of mental picture of God’s adoption process. It is perhaps rather lame; I’m sure I can’t capture such profound truth in a parable of my own design.

There is a fabulously wealthy man who wants to adopt a son. It’s not that he needs to. He already has a son — and not just any son, but a son who is perfect in every way. This man is entirely happy with his natural son, and has no need of another. He loves his son, and his son loves him.

The son he wants to adopt is not just anyone, either. He knows this boy. He has seen him on several occasions. He knows this child. This child is not the typical child that most parents seek to adopt. He is no adorable, cooing baby. He is a homeless child, a loner, living in alleys and abandoned buildings. But he isn’t just any homeless child, either. He has a disease. His disease has deformed his body and twisted his mind. He is filthy, and he stinks. He is vicious and violent, entirely antisocial. He survives by scavenging and stealing. No one would want him.

The man tracks this boy down, finding him in an alley scrounging through a dumpster. He approaches the boy with a smile and an outstretched hand. The boy runs. The man follows him, tracking him to a condemned building. Cornered, the boy begins hurling debris at the man, shouting threats and obscenities.

All the while, the man looks upon him and loves him. He wants him. He wants nothing more than to take him home and lavish his wealth and affection on him. And so he does. He subdues the boy and takes him to his home. He feeds him, clothes him, and treats his illness. He loves him.

And he gives him his name and writes him into his will. This child who was nobody, with no hope, diseased and ugly, hateful and hated, is now a privileged son, heir to a fortune; and he is loved. He has been adopted.

He is me.

I love this doctrine of adoption.

What is the highest blessing and privilege offered by the gospel? Many, if not most, people’s answer would involve something about forgiveness, salvation from the penalty of sin. In short, justification; and it is no wonder that most would answer in that way. Surely, it is a wonderful thing to be forgiven and freed from the threat of eternity in hell. But there is a greater blessing than that. Packer writes:

Adoption . . . is the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification. This may cause raising of eyebrows, for justification is the gift of God on which since Luther evangelicals have laid the greatest stress, and we are accustomed to say, almost without thinking, that free justification is God’s supreme blessing to us sinners. Nonetheless, careful thought will show the truth of the statement we have just made.
   That justification—by which we mean God's forgiveness of the past together with his acceptance for the future—is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing, because it meets our primary spiritual need. We all stand by nature under God’s judgment; his law condemns us; guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable, and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves because we have no peace with our Maker. So we need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers us before it offers us anything else. The first gospel sermons to be preached, those recorded in Acts, lead up to the promise of forgiveness of sins to all who repent and receive Jesus as their Savior and Lord (see Acts 2:38; 3:19; 10:43; 13:38--39; compare 5:31; 17:30--31; 20:21; 22:16; 26:18; Lk 24:47).
   In Romans, Paul’s fullest exposition of his gospel—“the clearest gospel of all,” to Luther's mind—justification through the cross of Christ is expounded first (chaps. 1—5), and made basic to everything else. Regularly Paul speaks of righteousness, remission of sins, and justification as the first and immediate consequence for us of Jesus' death (Rom 3:22-26; 2 Cor 5:18--21; Gal 3:13-14; Eph 1:7; and so on). And as justification is primary blessing, so it is the fundamental blessing, in the sense that everything else in our salvation assumes it, and rests on it—adoption included.
   But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves. Some textbooks on Christian doctrine—Berkhof's, for instance—treat adoption as a mere subsection of justification, but this is inadequate. The two ideas are distinct, and adoption is the more exalted. Justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as judge. In justification, God declares of penitent believers that they are not, and never will be, liable to the death that their sins deserve, because Jesus Christ, their substitute and sacrifice, tasted death in their place on the cross.
   This free gift of acquittal and peace, 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 a greater.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 206–207

Once a person is saved, he no longer needs concern himself with the law. Since he has been forgiven and justified, he no longer needs worry about sin — right? Orthodox Christianity has always replied, “wrong!” But why is that? If we are indeed freed from the law, what part does obedience play in our lives?

Many have found it hard to see what claim the law can have on the Christian. We are free from the law, they say; our salvation does not depend on law-keeping; we are justified through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. How, then, can it matter, or make any difference to anything, whether we keep the law henceforth or not? And since justification means the pardon of all sin, past, present and future, and complete acceptance for all eternity, why should we be concerned whether we sin or not? Why should we think God is concerned? Does it not show an imperfect grasp of justification when a Christian makes an issue of his daily sins, and spends time mourning over them and seeking forgiveness for them? Is not a refusal to look to the law for instruction, or to be concerned about one’s daily shortcomings, part of the true boldness of justifying faith?
   The Puritans had to face these “antinomian” ideas, and sometimes made heavy weather of answering them. If one allows it to be assumed that justification is the be-all and end-all of the gift of salvation, one will always make heavy weather of answering such arguments. The truth is that these ideas must be answered in terms not of justification but of adoption—a reality which the Puritans never highlighted quite enough*. Once the distinction is drawn between these two elements in the gift of salvation, the correct reply becomes plain.
   What is that reply? It is this: that, while it is certainly true that justification frees one forever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one's newfound father. Law-keeping is the family likeness of God’s children; Jesus fulfilled all righteousness, and God calls us to do likewise. Adoption puts law-keeping on a new footing: as children of God, we acknowledge the law's authority as a rule for our lives, because we know that this is what our Father wants. If we sin, we confess our fault and ask our Father’s forgiveness on the basis of the family relationship, as Jesus taught us to do—“Father . . . forgive us our sins” (Lk 11:2, 4). The sins of God’s children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mar the children’s fellowship with their Father. “Be holy, for I am holy” is our Father’s word to us, and it is no part of justifying faith to lose sight of the fact that God, the King, wants his royal children to live lives worthy of their paternity and position.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 222–223

*Joel Beeke, in his book Heirs With Christ: The Puritans on Adoption, disagrees with this assessment of the Puritans.

All Christians desire God’s guidance in their lives. We know that we need it, and that without it, our lives will be a chaotic, purposeless mess. Unless he leads us, we cannot do his will.

But we are often confused on the subject of God’s leading. J. I. Packer suggests two common misconceptions concerning God’s guidance: 1) many who believe that God can guide, and has promised to do so, doubt their own ability to receive his guidance; 2) knowledge of God in our day has been obscured — “turned, in effect, into ignorance of God” — so that there is doubt as to whether God even has a plan, and is able and willing to give guidance. If this was true thirty-six years ago when Packer first published Knowing God, it is even more applicable in our postmodern age. So we’re going to spend two or three Tuesdays on this subject, beginning with the affirmation that God Has a Plan:

Belief that divine guidance is real rests upon two foundation-facts: first the reality of God’s plan for us; second, the ability of God to communicate with us. On both these facts the Bible has much to say. Has God a plan for individuals? Indeed he has. He has formed an “eternal purpose” (literally, a “plan of the ages”), “a plan for the fulness of time,” in accordance with which he “accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 3:11; 1:10–11 RSV). He had a plan for the redemption of his people from Egyptian bondage, when he guided them through the sea and the desert by means of a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. He had a plan for the return of his people from Babylonian exile, where he guided by setting Cyrus on the throne and stirring up his spirit (Ezra 1:1) to send the Jews home to build their temple. He had a plan for Jesus (see Lk 18:31; 22:22 and so on); Jesus’ whole business on earth was to do his Father’s will (Jn 4:34; Heb 10:7 ,9). God had a plan for Paul (see Acts 21:14; 22:14; 26:16–19; 1 Tim 1:16); in five of his letters Paul announces himself as an apostle “by the will of God.” God has a plan for each of his children.
   But can God communicate his plan to us? Indeed he can. As man is a communicative animal, so his Maker is a communicative God. He made known his will to and through the Old Testament prophets. He guided Jesus and Paul. Acts records several instances of detailed guidance (Philip being sent to the desert to meet the Ethiopian eunuch, 8:26, 29; Peter being told to accept the invitation of Cornelius, 10:19–20; the church Antioch being charged to send Paul and Barnabas as missionaries, 13:2; Paul and Silas being called into Europe, 16:6–10; Paul being instructed to press on with his Corinthian ministry, 18:9–10). And though guidance by dreams, visions and direct verbal messages must be judged exceptional and not normal, even for the apostles and their contemporaries, yet these events do at least show that God has no difficulty in making his will known to his servants.
   Moreover, Scripture contains explicit promises of divine guidance, whereby we may know God’s plan for our action. “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you,” says God to David (Ps 32:8 RSV). Isaiah 58:11 contains the assurance that if the people repent and obey, “the Lord will guide you always.” Guidance is a main theme in Psalm 25, where we read, “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. . . . Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him” (vv. 8–9,12). So in Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
   In the New Testament, the same expectation of guidance appears. Paul’s prayer that the Colossians might be filled “with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” and Epaphras’s prayer that they might “stand firm in all the will of God” (Col 1:9; 4:12), clearly assume that God is ready and willing to make his will known. Wisdom in Scripture always means knowledge of the course of action that will please God and secure life, so that the promise of James 1:5—if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him” (RSV)—is in effect a promise of guidance. “Let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed,” counsels Paul. “Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect” (Rom 12:2 NEB).
   Other lines of biblical truth come in here to confirm this confidence that God will guide. First, Christians are God’s sons; and if human parents have a responsibility to give their children guidance in matters where ignorance and incapacity would spell danger, we should not doubt that in the family of God the same applies. “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Mt 7:11).
   Again, Scripture is God’s Word, “profitable” (we read) “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17 RSV). “Teaching” means comprehensive instruction in doctrine and ethics, the work and will of God; “reproof,” “correction” and “training in righteousness” signify the applying of this instruction to our disordered lives; “equipped [ready] for every good work”—that is, a life set to go God’s way—is the promised result.
   Again, Christians have an indwelling Instructor, the Holy Spirit. “You have been anointed by the Holy One. . . . The anointing which you received from him abides in you, . . . his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie” (1 Jn 2:20, 27 RSV). Doubt as to the availability of guidance would be a slur on the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit to his ministry. It is notable that in Acts 8:29; 10:19; 13:2; 16:6 and most strikingly in the decree of the Jerusalem council—“it has seemed to the Holy Spirit and to us” (15:28)—the giving of guidance is specifically ascribed to the Spirit.
   Again, God seeks his glory in our lives, and he is glorified in us only when we obey his will. It follows that, as a means to his own end, he must be ready to teach us his way, so that we may walk in it. Confidence in God’s readiness to teach those who desire to obey underlies all Psalm 119. In Psalm 23:3 David proclaims the reality of God giving guidance for his own glory—“he guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
   So we might go on, but the point is sufficiently established. It is impossible to doubt that guidance is a reality intended for, and promised to, every child of God. Christians who miss it thereby show only that they did not seek it as they should. It is right, therefore, to be concerned about one’s own receptiveness to guidance, and to study how to seek it.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 231–233.

We read last week that God does indeed have a plan, and that he is able to communicate it to us. But there is much confusion about how he accomplishes that. Packer writes on How We Receive Guidance:

Earnest Christians seeking guidance often go wrong. Why is this? Often the reason is that their notion of the nature and method of divine guidance is distorted. They look for a will-o’-the-wisp; they overlook the guidance that is ready at hand and lay themselves open to all sorts of delusions. Their basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word. This idea . . . is a seed-bed in which all forms of fanatacism and folly can grow.
   How do thoughtful Christians come to make this mistake? What seems to happen is this. They hear the word guidance and think at once of a particular class of “guidance problems”—on which, perhaps, the books they have read and the testimonies they have heard tended to harp exclusively. This is the class of problems concerned with what we may call “vocational choices”—choices, that is, between competing options, all of which in themselves appear lawful and good. Should I contemplate marriage, or not? Should I marry this person, or not? . . . Should I serve God in the land of my upbringing, or abroad? Which of the professions open to me should I follow? . . . Is my present sphere of work the right one to stay in? . . . Which claims on my voluntary service time should have priority?
   . . .
   Two features about divine guidance in the case of “vocational choices” are distinctive. Both follow from the nature of the situation itself. First, these problems cannot be resolved by a direct application of biblical teaching. All one can do from Scripture is circumscribe the lawful possibilities between which the choice has to be made. (No biblical text, for instance, told the present writer to propose to the lady who is now his wife, or to seek ordination, or to start his ministry in England, or to buy his large old car.)
   Second, just because Scripture cannot decide one’s choice directly, the factor of God-given prompting and inclination, whereby one is drawn to commit oneself to one set of responsibilities rather than another and finds one’s mind settled in peace as one contemplates them, becomes decisive. The basis of the mistake which we are trying to detect is to assume, first, that all guidance problems have these same two characteristics, and, second, that all life should be treated as a field in which this kind of guidance should be sought.
   The consequences of this mistake among earnest Christians have been both comic and tragic. The idea of a life in which the inward voice of the Spirit decides and directs everything sounds most attractive, for it seems to exalt the Spirit’s ministry and to promise the closest intimacy with God; but in practice this quest for superspirituality leads only to frantic bewilderment or lunacy.
   . . .
   But the true way to honor the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honor the holy Scriptures through which he guides us. The fundamental guidance which God gives to shape our lives—the instilling, that is, of the basic convictions, attitudes, ideals and value judgments, in terms of which we are to live—is not a matter of inward promptings apart from the Word but of the pressure on our consciences of the portrayal of God’s character and will in the Word, which the Spirit enlightens us to understand and apply to ourselves.
   The basic form of divine guidance, therefore, is the presentation to us of positive ideals as guidelines for all our living. “Be the kind of person that Jesus was”; “seek this virtue, and this one, and this, and practice them up to the limit”; “know your responsibilities—husbands, to your wives; wives, to your husbands; parents, to your children; all of you, to all your fellow Christians and all your fellow human beings; know them, and seek strength constantly to discharge them”—this is how God guides us through the Bible, as any student of the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Prophets, the Sermon on the Mount, and the ethical parts of the Epistles will soon discover. “Turn from evil and do good” (Psalm 34:14; 37:27)—this is the highway along which the Bible is concerned to lead us, and all its admonitions are concerned to keep us on it. Be it noted that the reference to being “led by the Spirit” in Romans 8:14 relates not to inward “voices” or any such experience, but to mortifying known sin and not living after the flesh!
   Only within the limits of this guidance does God prompt us inwardly in matters of “vocational” decision. So never expect to be aided to marry an unbeliever, or elope with a married person, as long as 1 Corinthians 7:39 and the seventh commandment stand! The present writer has known divine guidance to be claimed for both courses of action. Inward inclinations were undoubtedly present, but they were quite certainly not from the Spirit of God, for they went against the Word. The Spirit leads within the limits which the Word sets, not beyond them. “He guides me in paths of righteousness” (Ps 23:3)—but not anywhere else.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 233–237.

We have read that God does indeed have a plan for our lives, and that he is able to communicate it to us. We have read of his method of communicating his plan to us. But knowing that does not clear the way for us to easily discern God’s guidance. There are still obstacles, and they are all us.

Even with right ideas about guidance in general, however, it is still easy to go wrong, particularly in “vocational” choices. No area of life bears clearer witness to the frailty of human nature—even regenerate human nature. The work of God in these cases is to incline first our judgment and then our whole being to the course which, of all the competing alternatives, he has marked out as best suited for us, and for his glory and the good of others through us. But the Spirit can be quenched, and we can all too easily behave in a way which stops this guidance from getting through. It is worth listing some of the main pitfalls.
   First, unwillingness to think. It is false piety, super-supernaturalism of an unhealthy and pernicious sort, that demands inward impressions that lave no rational base, and declines to heed the constant biblical summons to “consider.” God made us thinking beings, and he guides our minds as in his presence we think things out—not otherwise. “O that they were wise . . . that they would consider” (Deut 32:29 KJV).
   Second, unwillingness to think ahead and weigh the long-term consequences of alternative courses of action. “Think ahead” is part of the divine rule of life no less than of the human rule of the road. Often we can see what is wise and right (and what is foolish and wrong) only as we dwell on its long-term issues. “O that they were wise . . . that they would consider their latter end!” (Deut 32:29 KJV).
   Third, unwillingness to take advice. Scripture is emphatic on the need for this. “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice” (Prov 12:15). It is a sign of conceit and immaturity to dispense with taking advice in major decisions. There are always people who know the Bible, human nature and our own gifts and limitations better than we do, and even if we cannot finally accept their advice, nothing but good will come to us from carefully weighing what they say.
   Fourth, unwillingness to suspect oneself. We dislike being realistic with ourselves, and we do not know ourselves at all well; we can recognize rationalizations in others and quite overlook them in ourselves. “Feelings” with an ego-boosting, or escapist, or self-indulging, or self-aggrandizing base must be detected and discredited, not mistaken for guidance. This is particularly true of sexual or sexually conditioned feelings. As a biologist-theologian has written:

The joy and general sense of well-being that often (but not always) goes with being “in love” can easily silence conscience and inhibit critical thinking. How often people say that they “feel led” to get married (and probably they will say “the Lord has so clearly guided”), when all they are really describing is a particularly novel state of endocrine balance which makes them feel extremely sanguine and happy. (O. R. Barclay, Guidance, pp. 29-30)

We need to ask ourselves why we “feel” a particular course to be right, and to make ourselves give reasons—and we shall be wise to lay the case before someone else whose judgment we trust, to give a verdict on our reasons. We need also to keep praying, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps 139:23-24 KJV). We can never distrust ourselves too much.
   Fifth, unwillingness to discount personal magnetism. Those who have not been made deeply aware of pride and self-deception in themselves cannot always detect these things in others, and this has from time to time made it possible for well-meaning but deluded people with a flair for self-dramatization to gain an alarming domination over the minds and consciences of others, who fall under their spell and decline to judge them by ordinary standards. And even when a gifted and magnetic person is aware of the danger and tries to avoid it, he is not always able to stop Christian people from treating him as an angel, or a prophet, construing his words as guidance for themselves and blindly following his lead. But this is not the way to be led by God. Outstanding people are not, indeed, necessarily wrong, but they are not necessarily right, either! They, and their views, must be respected, but may not be idolized. “Test everything. Hold on to the good” (1 Thess 5:21).
   Sixth, unwillingness to wait. “Wait on the Lord” is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 237–239.