by J I Packer
FOREWORD
Picture of person sitting on high front balcony of Spanish house watching travellers go by on the road below. The balconeers can overhear the travellers talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on way travellers walk or they may discuss questions about road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from different points along it and so forth but they are onlookers and their problems are theoretical only. The travellers by contrast face problems which though they have their theoretical angle are essentially practical - problems of the "which way to go" and "how to make it" type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too.
Evil = balconeers problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God`s sovereignty and goodness. Traveller = how to master evil and bring good out of it.
Sin = balconeer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal perversity are really credible. Traveller = knowing sin from within asks what hope there is of deliverance.
Godhead = balconeer is asking how one God can conceivably be 3, what sort of unity 3 could have and how 3 who make one can be persons. Traveller = wants to know how to show proper honour, love and trust towards 3 persons who are now together at work to bring him out of sin to glory.
Ignorance of God - ignorance of both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him - lies at root of much of the church`s weakness today. 2 unhappy trends seem to have produced this state of affairs:
Christian minds have been conformed to modern spirit - spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God. Set God at a distance if not to deny him altogether. Have allowed God to become remote despite being preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world. Thoughts of death, eternity, judgment, the greatness of the soul and abiding consequences of temporal decisions are all "out" for moderns and Christian church has formed habit of playing down these themes in just same way.
Christian minds have been confused by the modern scepticism. Bible has come under heavy fire. The foundation facts of faith are called in question.
Jeremiah 6 verse 16 "Stand ye in the way and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."
CHAPTER 1 The study of God
"Is our journey really necessary ... why need anyone take time of today for the kind of study you propose?" The questioner clearly assumes that a study of the nature and character of God will be unpractical and irrelevant for life. Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. 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. 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.
Where do we start from? From where we are!
5 basic truths, 5 foundation principles of the knowledge about God which Christians have will determine our course throughout.
God has spoken to man and the Bible is His word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation
God is Lord and King over His world; He rules all things for His own glory, displaying His perfections in all that He does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore Him.
God is Saviour, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as His sons, and to bless them accordingly.
God is Triune; there are within the Godhead 3 persons, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and the work of salvation is one in which all 3 act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.
Godliness means responding to God`s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God`s word. This and nothing else is true religion.
We shall have to deal with the Godhead of God - qualities which set God apart from men and mark the difference and distance between the Creator and His creatures: such as His self-existence, His infinity, His eternity, His unchangeableness. Deal with the powers of God: His almightiness, His omniscience, His omnipresence. Deal with the perfections of God, the aspects of His moral character which are maifested in His words and deeds - His holiness, His love and mercy, His truthfulness, His faithfulness, His goodness, His patience, His justice. We shall have to take note of what pleases Him, what offends Him, what awakens His wrath, what affords Him satisfaction and joy.
What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth - Westminster Shorter Catechism
What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have got it?
Psalm 119 the Psalmist`s concern to get knowledge about God was not a theoretical but a practical concern. His supreme desire was to know and enjoy God Himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end. He wanted to understand God`s truth in order that his heart might respond to it and his life be conformed to it. "blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart ... O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes." (verses 1, 2 and 5) His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand.
Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself the better. We must seek in studying God to be led to God.
How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? We must turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on and applying to oneself the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.
CHAPTER 2 - The People Who Know Their God
Not many of us would ever naturally say that we have known God. The words imply a definiteness and matter-of-factness of experience to which most of us have to admit we are still strangers. We claim, to have a testimony and can rattle off our conversion story; we say that we know God - this is what evangelicals are expected to say: but would it occur to us to say, without hesitation, and with reference to particular events in our personal history, that we have known God?
Nor would we naturally say that in the light of the knowledge of God in which we have come to enjoy past disappointments and present heartbreaks, that they don`t matter. To most of us they do matter. We live with them as our "crosses".
Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do.
"What things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him ... that I may know him ..." Philippians 3 verses 7 - 10
Paul means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind. Yet this is what many of us do! It show how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God.
We can state the gospel clearly, and can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If anyone asks us how men may know God, we can at one produce the right formulae - that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, in virtue of His cross and mediation, on the basis of His word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith.
A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him.
First, one can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of Him. We find in ourselves a deep interest in theology. We read books of theological exposition and apologetics. We dip into Christian history and study the Christian creed. We learn to find our way around in the scriptures. Others appreciate our interest in these things and we find ourselves asked to give our opinion in public on this or that Christian question, to lead study groups, to give papers, to write articles and generally to accept responsibility, informal if not formal, for acting as teachers and arbiters of orthodoxy in our own Christian circle. Our friends tell us how much they value our contribution and this spurs us to further explorations of God`s truth, so that we may be equal to the demands made upon us. All very fine - yet interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing Him.
Second, one can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God. It depends on the sermons one hears, the books one reads and the company one keeps. It is possible to learn a great deal at second hand about the practice of Christianity. Yet one can have all this and hardly know God at all.
The question is not whether we are good at theology or balanced in our approach to problems of Christian living; the question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is plain matter of fact, that we have known God and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us?
What other effects does knowledge of God have on a man? Think of Daniel ...
Those who know God have great energy for God. Daniel 11 verse 32 "the people that know their God shall be strong and do exploits" The action taken by those who know God is their reaction to the anti-God trends which they see operating around them. While their God is being defied or disregarded, they cannot rest; they feel they must do something; the dishonour done to God`s name goads them into action. Daniel and his 3 friends knew God and in consequence felt compelled from time to time actively to stand out against the conventions and dictates of irreligion and false religion. Daniel in particular appears as one who would not let a situation of that sort slide but felt bound openly to challenge it. Rather than risk possible ritual defilement through eating palace food, he insisted on a vegetarian diet to the consternation of the prince of eunuchs (Daniel 1 verses 8 - 16).
When Darius suspended the practice of prayer for a month, on pain of death Daniel not merely went on praying 3 times a day but did so in front of an open window, so that everyone might see what he was doing (chapter 6 verse 10)
Those who know their God are sensitive to situations in which God`s truth and honour are being directly or tacitly jeopardised and rather than let the matter go by default will force the issue on men`s attention and seek thereby to compel a change of heart about it - even at personal risk.
Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray and the first point where their zeal and energy for God`s glory come to expression is in their prayers.
In Daniel 9 we read how, when the prophet "understood by the books" that the foretold time of Israel`s captivity was drawing to an end, and when at the same time he realised that the nation`s sin was still such as to provoke God to judgment rather than mercy, he set himself to seek God "by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes (verse 3) and prayed for the restoring of Jerusalem with a vehemence and passion and agony of spirit to which most of us are complete strangers. Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God`s cause - energy, indeed, which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channelled into such prayer - and the more knowledge the more energy!
We can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us. If however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.
Those who know God have great thoughts of God. In the book of Daniel there is no more vivid or sustained presentation of the many-sided reality of God`s sovereignty in the whole Bible. In face of the might and splendour of the Babylonian empire which had swallowed up Palestine and the prospect of further great world-empires to follow, dwarfing Israel by every standard of human calculation, the book as a whole forms a dramatic reminder that the God of Israel is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that "heavens do rule" (chapter 4 verse 6), that God`s hand is on history at every point, that history, indeed, is no more than "His story" the unfolding of His eternal plan and that the kingdom which will triumph in the end is God`s.
The central truth which Daniel taught Nebuchadnezzar in chapters 2 and 4 and of which he reminded Belshazzar in chapter 5 (verses 18 - 23) and which Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged in chapter 4 (verses 34 - 37) and which was the basis of Daniel`s prayers in chapter 2 and 9, and of his confidence in defying authority in chapters 1 and 6 and of which God made to Daniel in chapters 2, 4, 7, 8 and 10 and 11 - 12 is the truth that "the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men" (chapter 4 verse 25, chapter 5 verse 21). He knows and foreknows, all things, and His foreknowledge is foreordination; He therefore, will have the last word, both in world history and in the destiny of every man; His kingdom and righteousness will triumph in the end, for neither men nor angels shall be able to thwart Him.
These were the thoughts of God which filled Daniel`s mind - witness his prayers chapter 2 verse 20 and chapter 9 verses 4, 7, 9 and 14 - is this the view of God which our own praying expresses? By this test we may measure how much or how little we know God.
Those who know God show great boldness for God. Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They had measured the risk. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact He did. But these things did not move them. Once they were convinced that their stand was right and that loyalty to their God required them to take it. This is the spirit of all who know God. They may find the determination of the right course to take agonisingly difficult, but once they are clear on it they embrace it boldly and without hesitation. It does not worry them that others of God`s people see the matter differently, and do not stand with them. By this test also we may measure our own knowledge of God.
Those who know God have great contentment in God. There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them and that this relationship guarantees God`s favour to them in life, through death and on for ever. Romans 8 verses 1, 16, 28, 30, 33 and 35. This is the peace which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew; hence the calm contentment with which they stood their ground in face of Nebuchadnezzar`s ultimatum - "if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" Their reply? "O Nebuchadnezzar we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us ... and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not be it known unto thee O king, that we will not serve thy gods" The comprehensiveness of our contentment is another measure whereby we may judge whether we really know God.
Do we desire such knowledge of God? Then ...
First, we must recognise how much we lack knowledge of God. We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.
Second, we must seek the Saviour. When He was on the earth, He invited men to company with HIm; thus they came to know Him and in knowing Him to know His Father. The OT records pre-incarnate manifestations of the Lord Jesus doing the same thing - companying with men, in character as the angel of the Lord - Daniel 3 verse 25 a fourth person appeared in the fiery furnace, Daniel 6 verse 22 who shut the lions mouths? The Lord Jesus is now absent from us in body, but spiritually it makes no difference; still we may find and know God through seeking and finding His company. It is those who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found Him - for the promise is that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we shall surely find Him - who can stand before the world to testify that they have known God.
CHAPTER 3 Knowing and Being known
We were made to know God. Our aim in life should be to know God. The "eternal life" that Jesus gives is knowledge of God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17 verse 3) What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God. "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me." (Jeremiah 9 verse 23) What, of all the states God ever sees man in, gives Him most pleasure? Knowledge of Himself "I desire ... the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." says God (Hosea 6 verse 6)
This provides at once a foundation, shape and goal for our lives, plus a principle of priorities and a scale of values. Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life`s problems fall into place of their own accord. What higher, more exalted and more compelling can there be than to know God?
What are we talking about when we use the phrase "knowing God". What activity or event is it that can properly be described as "knowing God"?
Knowing God is of necessity a more complex business than "knowing" a fellow-man. Knowledge of something abstract like a language is acquired by learning; knowledge of something inanimate like Ben Nevis or the British Museum comes by inspection and exploration. When one gets to living things, knowing them becomes a good deal more complicated. One does not know a living thing till one knows, not merely its past history, but how it is likely to react and behave under specific circumstances. In the case of human beings people cover up and do not show everybody all that is in their hearts. We recognise degrees in our knowledge of our fellow-men; we know them, we say "well", "not very well", "just to shake hands with", "intimately" or perhaps "inside out" according to how much, or how little, they have opened up to us when we meet them.
The quality and extent of our knowledge of them depends more on them than on us. Our knowing them is more directly the result of their allowing us to know them than of our attempting to get to know them. When we meet, our part is to give them our attention and interest, to show them good-will and to open up in a friendly way from our side. From that point, however, it is they, not we, who decide whether we are going to know them or not.
Well might God say through Jeremiah "Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me" - for knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a man`s heart. The almighty Creator, the Lord of Hosts, the great God comes to him and begins to talk to him, through the words and truths of the Holy Scripture. Perhaps he has been acquainted with the bible and Christian truth for many years and it has meant nothing to him; but one day he wakes up to the fact that God is actually speaking to him - him! - through the biblical message. As he listens to what God is saying, God is talking to him about his sin, and guilt and weakness and blindness and folly and compels him to judge himself hopeless and helpless and to cry out for forgiveness. He comes to realise as he listens that God is actually opening his heart to him, making friends with him and enlisting him a colleague, a covenant partner.
The relationship in which sinful human beings know God is one in which God, takes them on to his staff, to be henceforth his fellow-workers and personal friends.
What then does the activity of knowing God involve?
First listening to God`s word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself.
Second, noting God`s nature and character, as his word and works reveal it.
Third, accepting his invitations, and doing what he commands.
Fourth, recognising and rejoicing in, the love that He has shown in thus approaching one and drawing on into this divine fellowship.
The bible uses pictures and analogies and telling us that we know God in the manner of a son knowing his father, a wife knowing her husband, a subject knowing his king and a sheep knowing its shepherd. All 4 analogies point to a relation in which the knower "looks up" to the one known and the latter responsibility for the welfare of the former. This is part of the bi,/blical concept of knowing God, that those who know Him - that is, those by whom he allows himself to be known - are loved and cared for by him.
The disciples were ordinary Galileans with no special claims on the interest of Jesus. But Jesus, the rabbi who spoke with authority, the prophet who was more than a prophet, the master who evoked in them increasing awe and devotion till they could not but acknowledge him as their God, found them, called them to Himself, took them into his confidence and enrolled them as his agents to declare to the world the kingdom of God "He appointed 12 to be with him and to be sent out to preach ..." (Mark 3 verse 14) They recognised the one who had chosen them and called them friends as "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16 verse 16), the man born to be king, the bearer of "the words of eternal life" (John 6 verse 68) and the sense of allegiance and privilege which this knowledge brought transformed their whole lives.
The only difference today is that, first, His presence with the Christian is spiritual not bodily and so invisible to our physical eyes, second, the Christian building on the NT witness knows from the start those truths about the deity and atoning sacrifice of Jesus which the original disciples grasped gradually over a period of years and third, that Jesus` way of speaking to us now is not by uttering fresh words but rather by applying to our consciences those words of his that are recorded in the gospels, together with the rest of the biblical testimony to himself.
But knowing Jesus Christ still remains as definite a relation of personal discipleship as it was for the 12 when he was on the earth. The Jesus who walks through the gospel story walks with the Christians now and knowing him involves going with him, now as then.
"My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me" John 10 verse 27
"I am the bread of life ... the door of the sheep ... the good shepherd ... the resurrrection" John 6 verse 35, 10 verse 7, 14 and chapter 11 verse 25
"He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him. Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life" John 5 verse 23
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me and ye shall find rest." Matthew 11 verse 28
Jesus voice is "heard" when Jesus` claim is acknowledged, His promise trusted, and His call answered.
"I know them and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." John 10 verse 27
To know Jesus is to be saved by Jesus, here and hereafter, from sin, guilt and death.
First, knowing God is a matter of personal dealing, as is all direct acquaintance with personal beings. It is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you and begin dealt with him by him as he takes knowledge of you. You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer and a simple Bible-reader and sermon-hearer who is full of the Holy Ghost will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Saviour than more learned men who are content with being theologically correct. The reason is that the former will deal with God regarding the practical application of truth to his life, whereas the latter will not.
Second, knowing God is a matter of personal involvement in mind, will and feeling. "O taste and see that the Lord is good" Psalm 34 verse 8. To taste is as we sya to try a mouthful of something with a view to appreciate its flavour. The emotional side is often played down for fear of encouraging a maudalin self-absorption. Knowing God is an emotional relationship as well as an intellectual and volitional one and could not indeed by a deep relation between persons were it not so.
Third, knowing God is a matter of grace. It is a relationship in which the intiative throughout is with God. We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us. "Now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God ..." Galatians 4 verse 9. Grace came first and remains fundamental in our salvation. "Know" when used of God in this way, is a soverign-grace word, pointing to God`s initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and persevering.
"And the Lord said unto Moses ... thou hast found grace in my sight and I know thee by name" Exodus 13 verse 17
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee." Jeremiah 1 verse 5
"I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine ... and I lay down my life for the sheep ... My sheep hear my voice and I know them .. and they shall never perish" John 10 verse 14 and 27
It is a knowledge that implies personal affection, redeeming action, covenant faithfulness and providential watchfulness, towards those whom God knows. It implies in other words, salvation, now and for ever.
What matters supremely is 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.
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