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Scripture focus
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
Romans 8:31 KJV
At a glance
After surveying who God is, what difference does that knowledge actually make when life turns hard?
Packer's answer is Romans 8: a God who did not spare his own Son will withhold nothing else his people need, no accusation can overturn their justified standing, and nothing in all creation can separate them from his love.
Summary of the chapter
Packer treats Paul's letter to the Romans as the clearest, most comprehensive statement of the gospel in Scripture, weaving together doctrines of God, humanity, sin, salvation and the church into a single sustained argument. He commends reading it not merely as theology to analyze but as a personal letter addressed to the reader's own conscience and habits.
Romans 8, he argues, is the letter's summit, and the fitting climax of the whole book of Knowing God. Its themes gather everything the earlier chapters have surveyed about God's character into direct application: if God is for his people, no opposition can ultimately overcome them; having given his own Son, God will withhold no other necessary gift; no accusation can overturn a justified standing that rests on God's own verdict; and nothing in all creation is able to separate believers from Christ's love.
The book's closing move is to insist that everything it has surveyed — God's wisdom, love, grace, judgment, wrath, jealousy, fatherhood — was never meant to end in information. Knowing God in Christ is a personal relationship lived out in faith and obedience, and Packer's last word is that this pursuit, more than any achievement the world offers, is what produces a life of real, unshakeable joy.
Key points
- Romans is presented as the clearest and most comprehensive expression of the gospel in the whole Bible.
- Romans 8 functions as both the letter's summit and this book's fitting climax.
- Four assurances anchor the chapter: God is for his people, he withholds no necessary good, no accusation can stand, and nothing can separate believers from his love.
- All of the book's earlier chapters on God's attributes converge here into direct, personal application.
- The ultimate aim of knowing God was never information for its own sake, but a relationship that produces real joy.
A line worth remembering
If God is for us, who can be against us?
J. I. Packer Knowing God, ch. 22
Related Scripture
- Romans 8:28-39
- Romans 8:1
- Romans 8:32
- Romans 8:38-39
For reflection and discussion
- Which of the four assurances in Romans 8 — God's provision, his verdict, or his unbreakable love — do you need most right now?
- Looking back over the whole book, which single truth about God has most changed how you think about him?
- What would it look like, practically, to let the pursuit of knowing God shape your priorities more than any other pursuit this year?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 22, “The Adequacy of God” — in Knowing God by J. I. Packer (InterVarsity Press / Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).