JI Packer’s book “Getting to Know God” has become a classic for the Christian West. The great strength of the book lies in the combination of good theology and faith. This makes the book a ‘must’ for both theologians and simple churchgoers. Below is a summary.
Part 1 (Chs 1-6): Know the Lord
The Bible and the lives of Christians are not just about knowledge about God, but especially about knowledge of God. If knowledge about God does not lead to knowledge of God, then this will bear little fruit. Only when a person has true knowledge of God (obtained especially through the path of faithful meditation, prayer and worship) will he be able to live a life that is not determined by fleshly desires or external circumstances, but that is devoted to God. The Christian who knows God will experience God’s peace and joy and will see his own life and circumstances in the light of the revealed Word.
God is infinitely exalted above people and it is therefore entirely due to His grace that He makes Himself known through us. The Bible describes the wonderful fact that God wants to be known by us as a caring God and has therefore chosen us. To reveal Himself, He sent His Son into the world: Christ, God manifest in the flesh. In the face of this fact, we adopt a humble and completely committed approach. Getting to know God should be our sole purpose in life and our entire walk should be centered on our relationship with Him.
It is crucial that we use good methods in developing our knowledge of and about God. Strict care must be taken to ensure that we are guided by what God says about Himself in His Word. The temptation to somehow approach God with our own imagination must be resisted. God is beyond all understanding and we are completely dependent on Him for knowledge of Him.
The knowledge of God involves the knowledge of three distinct Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Son has revealed the Father on earth. To this end He became man and His divine power was limited, as far as the Father determined. His life on earth was dedicated to the salvation of lost man and in his death and resurrection lies the only hope for the world for eternal reconciliation with God. The Holy Spirit opens people’s eyes to this and invests people with God’s power to testify to this. He is the divine Person who continues Christ’s work. The church of Christ must pay more attention to this and honor the Holy Spirit for his work.
Part 2 (Ch 7-17): Behold, here is your God
Even though the cultural context of the Bible is quite different from our own, we can still come to know God from the Bible. God Himself has not changed and will never change. As He revealed Himself in the times of the Old and New Testament, so we too may know Him.
In the Bible, the majesty of God is frequently described, often inviting and resulting in praise and worship. The Bible reveals God as the One who has all power, sees all things, hears all things, can do all things. He is infinitely greater and more exalted than all that has been created and He therefore far exceeds our imagination. Christians must be (better) aware of this and must approach God in accordance with His majesty. The wisdom of God is often
mentioned in the Bible together with his omnipotence. Through this wisdom and omnipotence, God knows how to accurately achieve the goals He has set. God’s greatest and eternal purpose is for a great multitude of people to find true life in Him, in a personal relationship. To achieve this, God directs the life of each individual believer in such a way that everything that happens to him or her will contribute to the improvement and deepening of this relationship, especially from the perspectives of eternity. The histories of the lives of major characters in the Bible testify to this.
The wisdom of God is most evident in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. In this way, God secured His eternal purpose, even though humanity had turned its back on Him . Through the work and Person of Christ, man is restored to his relationship with God and may grow again into the image of God.
It is important to realize that the wisdom of God is of a completely different order than the wisdom that God gives to people. God in His wisdom is in control of our lives and of the entire world. We are called, according to the wisdom given to us, to fully trust it under all circumstances, to surrender ourselves to Him and to live obediently from His Word.
The greatest joy anyone can experience is knowing the heart of God: God’s love. The heart of every believer may and should be completely filled with this. Because God is love, the believer is assured that everything in his life will work together for good. God’s eternal plan for every believer and the daily management of his life come from the love of God. Not even sin could extinguish the love of God. Despite the fact that we had forfeited His glory, He looked after us in sovereign love and gave His Son to save and bless us, both in this life and in the life to come.
The grace of God is formally confessed by the churches, but many Christians have lost sight of it . A condition for understanding the grace of God is that we listen carefully to what the Bible teaches about our sinfulness and our total inability to restore our relationship with God. Many Christians are not sufficiently aware of this and therefore cannot properly understand the grace of God. The grace of God concerns His love that He freely shows to sinners, who of themselves deserve nothing and are good for nothing other than eternal condemnation. By this grace, sins are forgiven in Christ and people are chosen and restored to the image of God.
An important theme throughout the Bible is: God as Judge. He, the all-knowing God, judges us righteously according to our actions, thoughts and dispositions . Every human activity is thus fully rewarded: man gets what he deserves. Because He is our Maker and we are his property, He is also the Lawgiver and has the power to execute judgment. In the New Testament, Christ is appointed Judge. When we appear before His judgment seat, He will reveal everything and pronounce final judgment. Because we are all sinners, only those who have found life in Christ will be saved by being absolved of their guilt on the basis of His own sacrifice.
Throughout the Bible, unlike Christianity today, there is a special emphasis on the wrath of God. We must remember that God’s wrath is very different from that of people. Where we are often uncontrolled or even cruel in our anger, God is completely just in his anger. In His wrath He responds to things that provoke His wrath. This concerns in particular the activities of people that show that they have deliberately turned away from God. The wrath of God is especially against people who despise Christ, do not want to be reconciled with God and choose sin over obedience. This wrath will especially reveal itself at the final judgment, but it is also active in the here and now. For example, God uses governments to punish people or He can abandon people and even entire societies to their own passions and reprehensible thinking. Only when we trust in the work and Person of Christ can we escape God’s wrath.
The Bible also frequently mentions God’s lovingkindness. This includes his faithfulness, bounty and generosity to every person, believer or unbeliever. But the goodness of God is even more evident in the special care that God has for those who belong to Him. He blesses them daily with countless blessings in every way, redeeming them from the power of sin and sanctifying them into the image of His Son. When people reject this lovingkindness of God, God’s severity is revealed. This means that, in the actual meaning of the word, one will be cut off from Him and ultimately rejected forever. The Bible emphasizes that God is longsuffering in this regard. Man’s rejection is the last thing God wants and in His longsuffering He still gives people the opportunity to convert to Christ.
Some important Bible passages mention the jealousy of God. This jealousy can be understood from the covenant relationship that God has with His people. The Bible uses the image of a marriage for this. When the people are unfaithful, for example by worshiping idols or seeking true happiness by following carnal desires, this arouses the jealousy of God. He is the faithful covenant partner and works with utmost zeal for his people. He expects complete loyalty and surrender from us. God’s love and zeal for us requires a response on our part and when we ogle idols we hurt Him deeply.
Part 3 (chs 18-22): If God is for us
Through Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice, God’s wrath against our sin has been appeased and its debt justly paid. People who put their trust in Christ are therefore reconciled to God and live in peace with Him forever. This is the central message of the Bible, the Old Testament points to it and the New fulfills it.
The most glorious truth in the Bible is that of the revelation of God as our Father. In the Old Testament there was a certain distance between God and his people, but in the New Testament God meets us in Christ very Personally and fatherly. In Christ we have been adopted as God’s children and have become heirs of His glory. As children of God we may live in fellowship with Him, where He honors us as His true children and brothers and sisters of His Son. Because of this privileged position, we can always feel safe and secure, regardless of the circumstances of our lives.
The truth of the adoption of people as children of God was central to Jesus’ teaching. Jesus’ disciples had to realize what it meant to be adopted as children of God and from there they had to learn to believe, pray and act. They had to learn to understand that God as Almighty Father would care for them and that they were called to surrender their lives completely to Him. This teaching of Jesus is continued in our hearts through the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of sonship (Rom.8). Through Him we, disciples and followers of Jesus, learn to live more and more from our position as God’s children. We derive more and more faith, joy and certainty from this. We will realize and experience more and more that the heavenly Father loves us boundlessly and directs and uses everything in our lives in such a way that we live in ever closer communion with Him. At the same time, the Holy Spirit also works in us the sanctification of life that fits our position as God’s children. Through Him we will learn to do God’s will and to behave as members of God’s family, in the image of Christ. This learning process will not be painless for any Christian, but we can always know that God will never let us fail and that He will accurately achieve His purpose for us. This particularly concerns dying to our own flesh and living in obedience to the Word. The more we surrender ourselves to Him in trust, the more often and more strongly we will be able to experience how great His love is for us.
It is of great importance for a Christian to realize that God is concerned with him and that He wants to teach us by grace to live according to His principles. God wants to teach us to live ever closer to Him out of His love and grace. And we learn this mainly by being exposed to all kinds of trials. Through these trials we are confronted with our sin and weaknesses and we learn to live in dependence on God. God will make it clear to us in this way that in Him we possess everything we need here and for eternity, for all areas of our existence. Because a Christian is fully assured of this from the Word, he should not avoid trials (any longer) by trying to secure his own life outside of God. Christians are called to live as pilgrims in the world. This means that we do not let our well-being depend in any way on what this world has to offer, but that we follow Christ in everything. In doing so, we will undoubtedly encounter strong opposition, both from within ourselves and from the world around us. But if, as God’s adopted children, we continue to hold on to the promises of the gospel, then on this path we will increasingly experience the true joy and the true life that consists in the knowledge of God our Father.