Tuesday, January 24, 2017

What is The Biggest Blessing in the Gospel?

There are many blessings promised in the gospel. One of them is that our sins will be forgiven. Another is that we are promised an eternal home when our life on earth is over. Some of us don't even think about the biggest blessing that is promised in the gospel.

What is that blessing? J.I. Packer wrote, "To know God is the biggest and best of the blessings promised in the gospel. Equally, knowing God is celebrated in the Scriptures as the supreme gift of grace." Packer points out that Jeremiah prophesied this promise when he said:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah...and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:31, 34)

Packer goes on by saying, "The fulfillment of this promise is the glory of Christianity. Christians know God. Everyone may know God." Jesus said in John 17:3 that eternal life is knowing the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. The Apostle Paul listed his accomplishments in the flesh and said they are nothing compare to knowing Christ (Philippians 3:8). Andrew W Davis wrote that "knowing Christ better and better became the driving ambition of his life. The foretaste of heavenly fellowship with Jesus left Paul both deeply satisfied and ever thirsty for more. The purpose of his life was to learn how to suffer and die like Christ did, so that he could live the resurrection life that Christ was living in heaven."

The good news of the gospel is that God has made a way for us to know Him. We come to know Him through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. We continue to know God through the reading of His Word, praying to Him, and fellowshipping with His saints. Of everything God can gives us, the best thing is to know Him.

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