May I opine for just a moment? Chap 13 especially, but yes combined with chapter 14, could, for me, be at least a year long study.(Make that life long)
I loved how Packer categorizes the struggles that befall those who have learned of God’s grace as the functioning eternal factor in our salvation.The more and the longer I/we meditate on its mystery and evident truth the more in love and awe we fall with this God who so perfectly ascribes His solution to our universal problem of sin. But wait- who among us deserves it? Have we fallen to one of the popular views of grace thinking that, after all, Im not as bad as them? Or as Lee and I have spoken a number of time, the semi-pelagion views that, sure its God,s grace but only in that it is a “come along side nudge” so that we can ultimately “decide” to trust in Jesus, repeat a “sinner’s prayer” and thus be convinced we have just been saved by “accepting Jesus into our heart”.
Then, as he so astutely describes, if we act decently, we will further cement in the minds of our church fellows, and our selves, that we are indeed safe from judgement. Praise be to God for the specificity of the word of God!
