The Greatness and Majesty of God

J.I. Packer on the majesty and greatness of God:

“The Christian’s instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God.

But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack:  and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby.  We are modern people, and modern people, though they cherish great thoughts of themselves, have as a rule small thoughts of God.  When the person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty.”

“Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are – weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic.  But this is not the God of the Bible!  Our personal life is a finite thing:  it is limited in every direction, in space, in time, in knowledge, in power.  But God is not so limited.  He is eternal, infinite and almighty.  He has us in his hands; we never have him in ours.  Like us, he is personal, but unlike us, he is great.  In all its constant stress on the reality of God’s personal concern for his people, and on the gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, patience and yearning compassion that he shows toward them, the Bible never lets us lose sight of his majesty and his unlimited dominion over all his creatures.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 83.