Most of my reviews in this column introduce new or recent books. But the true test of a book’s value is whether it can stand the test of time. This month, we look back at Knowing God, a Christian classic written 50 years ago by the late theologian J. I. Packer.
“As clowns yearn to play Hamlet,” writes Packer, “so I have wanted to write a treatise on God” (5). He acknowledges that this book falls short of that mark. Indeed, who could hope to describe God comprehensively? But comprehensive knowledge without application is folly. “A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him” (21). In this vein, Packer’s book is accessible theology, not because it makes shallow what was deep, but because it makes practical what was theoretical.
Packer begins with the premise that knowing God is our ultimate purpose in life. In each chapter, he unpacks an attribute or truth about God in a way that spurs us to seek God and to worship him. The great danger for modern man, like idol-worshippers of old, is that we make God out to be who we wish he was, not who he actually is. Packer warns that “those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment” (42).
To know God as he is, we must accept him as he reveals himself in Scripture—all of Scripture. “The subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society” and Christians have “conditioned themselves never to raise the matter” (134). Posting about God’s love may get likes on Instagram, but if we flinch from teaching about God’s wrath (or justice, or holiness), we reimagine God. When we seek to know God as he truly is, we find him to be so much more glorious than we could imagine.
We may be tempted to think that if we only understood God better, we could make perfect sense of the hardships of our lives. Packer rids us of this illusion as well. Did Job, Abraham, or Joseph know the details of God’s plan for them? That is not God’s way. Rather, as they clung to God through hardship, they learned to know his faithfulness in uncertainty. So with us—when we know God, we learn that “the peace of God is first and foremost peace with God” (177). God is not capricious; he sends us trials to cure us of our misguided self-confidence so we can know his adequacy.
“What matters supremely,” says Packer, “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” (37). Packer’s book has and will remain relevant because it addresses the chief need of all men in all times. Read it and see the majesty of God. Remember the adequacy of God. Rejoice in the love of God. Then go out and live for the glory of God.