“”Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God,” writes Paul in Romans 11:22 (KJV). The crucial word here is and. The apostle is explaining the relation between Jew and Gentile in the plan of God…Both must be acknowledged together if God is to be truly known.
Santa Claus and Giant Despair
…Modern muddle-headedness and confusion as to the meaning of faith in God are almost beyond description. People say they believe in God, but they have no idea who it is that they believe in, or what difference believing in him may make…
Christians who want to help their floundering fellows…are bewildered as to where to begin: …What lies at the root of their confusion? Where is the starting point for setting them straight?
To these questions there are several complementary sets of answers. One is that people have gotten into the practice of following private religious hunches rather than learning of God from his own Word; we have to try to help them unlearn the pride and, in some cases, the misconceptions about Scripture which gave rise to this attitude and to base their convictions henceforth not on what they feel but on what the Bible says. A second answer is that modern people think of all religions as equal and equivalent–they draw their ideas about God from pagan as well as Christian sources; we have to try to show people the uniqueness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s last word to man.
A third answer is that people have ceased to recognize the reality of their own sinfulness, which imparts a degree of perversity and enmity against God to all that they think and do; it is our task to try to introduce people to this fact about themselves and so make them self-distrustful and open to correction by the word of Christ. A fourth answer,…is that people today are in the habit of disassociating the thought of God’s goodness from that of his severity; we must seek to wean them from this habit, since nothing but misbelief is possible as long as it persists.
…Protestants are not going to give up their “enlightened” adherence to the doctrine of a celestial Santa Claus merely because a Brunner or a Niebuhr suspects this is not the whole story….
But on the basis of the Santa Claus theology, sins create no problem, and atonement becomes needless; God’s active favor extends no less to those who disregard his commands than to those who keep them. The idea that God’s attitude to me is affected by whether or not I do what he says has no place in the thought of the man on the street, and any attempt to show the need for fear in God’s presence, for trembling at his word, gets written off as impossibly old-fashioned — “Victorian,” “Puritan” and “sub-Christian.”
Yet the Santa Claus theology carries within itself the seeds of its own collapse, for it cannot cope with the fact of evil. It is no accident that when belief in the “good God” of liberalism became widespread, about the turn of the twentieth century, the so-called problem of evil (which was not regarded as a problem before) suddenly leaped into prominence as the number one concern of Christian apologetics. This was inevitable, for it is not possible to see the good will of a heavenly Santa Claus in heartbreaking and destructive things like cruelty, or marital infidelity, or death on the road, or lung cancer. The only way to save the liberal view of God is…to deny his omnipotence and lordship over his world.””
All emboldening in the above quotation is mine.
Any born-again Christian, who is becoming obedient to God’s word, striving to fight the good fight and walk with his God, will be able to see that all of the above are problems in “evangelicalism” today.
If you are interested in other topics Packer addresses in his Knowing God, the content page is linked below:
STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS:
***See, categories, Mission Statement: the narrative and sermon excerpt address the above.
***Abide in God’s means of grace: reading His word; hearing biblical preaching; taking the Lord’s supper; fellowship with believers; and baptism. (See, archives, February 2019, God’s appointed means of grace; also see therein, Beatitude Mercy.)
***If one submits to God’s means of grace, then he will be humbled, instructed…:2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 2Ti 3:17 God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work.
When one hears and reads scripture, he cannot make up his own mind as to what it means. There is one true meaning. God has given preachers and teachers…to His church to ensure that His word is taught. However, there are many preaching that have not been called to that role by God, just as in the Old and New Testaments. You need to know God’s word to discern the false from the true preachers.
We are instructed in His word to seek for understanding as though we were seeking for hidden treasure:
2Pe 1:20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.
Pro 2:1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you,
Pro 2:2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;
Pro 2:3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,
Pro 2:4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures,
Pro 2:5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
Pro 2:6 For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
Pro 2:7 he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
Pro 2:8 guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.
Pro 2:9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;
Pro 2:10 for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
Pro 2:11 discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you,
Pro 2:12 delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, (ESV)