[Lee Grzywinski]

Hello faithful readers!

I pray this book is a blessing to you all, so far!

“The grace of God is love freely shown towards guilty sinners contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.” Praise God for His grace! We need to be so careful (and intentional) about not letting the thinking of the world affect our thinking. How true in Packer’s day and ours: “willingness to tolerate and indulge evil up to the limit is seen as virtue, while living by fixed principles of right and wrong is censured by some as doubtfully moral.” And this book was written two years before I was even born! Not much has changed in my lifetime. But God never changes. His grace is why He saved us, and His grace is why He will save us until the end. Let us remember that “gratitude will move anyone who has truly received grace to do as God requires.”

Grace, however, cannot be understood apart from God’s justice. It is by grace that we do not get what we deserve. “The reality of divine judgment, as a fact, is set forth on page after page of Bible history.” Christ is the judge of those He does not save by grace. How urgent is the need to tell of His grace! And how urgent is the need to live according to the knowledge He has given us.

[Lynne Mazza-Hilway]

“By the grace of God I am what I am. Our conversion was no accident but an act of God which has it’s place in an eternal plan.” God chooses and calls us. Looking back years before I answered yes to His call, at a young age, He taught me this powerful, humbling truth, that all comes from Him, yes, His grace blesses and determines our paths. I will therefore respond by telling of His wonders and sing of His praise this new song He placed in my heart! “For love awakens love in return… those who have received grace should henceforth give themselves to ‘good works’.”

“The relevance of our doings is not that they ever merit an award… but that they provide an index of what is in the heart… (Even) the words we utter are ‘works’ that show what you are inside.” Praise God for choosing us, giving us eternal salvation and pardon before and because of a righteous Savior! It brings me great peace and comfort knowing He will right all wrongs and hold those who refuse to repent and walk in His ways accountable.

[Theresa]

I love that we wound up reading the chapter about the grace of God and God as judge together. “It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and had no reason to expect anything but severity…It is surely clear that, once the person is convinced that his state and need are as described, the New Testament gospel of grace cannot but sweep him off his feet with wonder and joy. For it tells how our Judge has become our Savior.” As a Christian for many years I pray that I never lose that wonder and awe of who God is and what He did for me. I grew up in a home where love was very conditional and based on usefulness and so to say that God’s grace blew my mind – that there is nothing I can do to earn it – would be putting it mildly. This book is helping me to recapture that awe which brings me to worship more, to be more grateful and to be mindful and intentional about how I spend my time.

It brings me great peace and comfort to know God is the perfect judge.

[Matt&Donna]

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!

[Author]

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