Knowing God - J. I. Packer
THIS BOOK changed my life.
I was 19 years old, I’d been a Christian for a few years, thought I knew a lot about God and that I knew better than most people on most things when it came to the Christian faith.
I was in my second year at university, had read barely any Christian books and the only reason why I bought Knowing God was because I liked the front cover! Little did I know that this book, which was written in 1973, is often considered to be one of the most significant Christian books written in the past century.
These words, which come early on in the book, ruined me: ‘One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him.’
Wow.
In his kindness, the Lord used Knowing God to rebuild me and to give me a fresh desire to know him deeply, not just to know about him.
Why is it important to know God?
But isn’t this idea of knowing God all a bit theoretical and disconnected from our everyday lives in the real world? Packer says this in response:
‘The questioner clearly assumes that a study of the nature and character of God will be unpractical and irrelevant for life. In fact, however, it is the most practical project anyone can engage in.
Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.
The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.’
The most important knowledge
Amazingly, God has made himself known to us through Scripture, told us what he is like and we can know him. But as well as that, and underneath it all, is the wonderful reality that he knows us. Packer is so good on this:
‘What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him, because he first knew me, and continues to know me.
He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort – the sort of comfort that energises, be it said, not enervates – in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good.
There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and that he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough).
There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realise this purpose. We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know, not merely that we know God, but that he knows us.’
I could go on writing loads of great quotes from Packer but I won’t!
Instead, why don’t you pick up a copy of Knowing God for yourself, work your way through wonderful chapter after wonderful chapter on what God is like and what it means to be known by him, and ask him to use it as a means for you to get to know him better? Who knows, it might just change your life.
Contents - Knowing God
How to Buy
You can purchase ‘Knowing God’ by J.I. Packer from your local christian bookshop, such as Keith Jones in Bournemouth which has an online store.
