Loving Miss Ruby, Knowing God, and Adopting Benjamin

Twelve years ago this month, a dear, godly lady named Ruby Schoonover gave Todd a copy of Knowing God by J.I. Packer (InterVarsity Press, 1973). Knowing God is not just one of those books you read. It is a book you read and read again and again and again. You mark it up. You highlight it. It's pages are brown at the edges. You devour it.

For two years, Todd preached the gospel in Miss Ruby's church. Twelve years and four boys later, we still find ourselves reading in this classic. Little did we know that Packer's words about adoption in chapter 19 would one day resonate so profoundly with us. What we once acknowledged with our minds, we are now experiencing with our hearts and lives. Adoption is a rich theological concept, but at our house adoption is now more than just a concept--he's a boy named Benjamin who is crawling around on the floor!

You should have and devour your own copy of Knowing God, but here are some choice words on adoption from Packer:

What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as 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 undertand Christianity very well at all.

Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.

Our first point about adoption is that it is the highest privilege that the gospel offers.

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.

Our second point about adoption is that the entire Christian life has to be understood in terms of it.

Adoption, by its very nature, is an art of free kindness to the person adopted. If you become a father by adopting a son or daughter, you do so because you chose to, not because you are bound to. Similarly, God adopts because he chooses to. He had no duty to do so. He need not have done anything about our sins except punish us as we deserved. But he loved us; so he redeemed us, forgave us, took us as his sons and daughters and gave himself to us as our Father.

We love you Miss Ruby!