Knowing God is the consummate Christian classic. Over the last thirty plus years more than one million copies have been sold. In challenging believers to accept the greatest privilege and responsibility of the Christian life, learning to know God, J.I. Packer not only showed himself to be a great writer, but also a great theologian.
To know the Lord begins with knowing about Him. Studying and understanding what the Scripture reveals to us about God is the beginning of truly knowing Him. Packer iterates that we must acknowledge the God of the Bible to be the only true God incarnate in the form of His Son Jesus Christ revealed to us in Scripture.
Packer then discussed the characteristics of God as He relates to His people. God reveals Himself in wisdom, truth, justice, grace, wrath, and even jealousy. All of God’s relational characteristics should bring believers both into awe of God and surrender to Him. Knowing God must change us.
Finally Packer examined the heart of the Gospel in the book of Romans. He reminded believers that Jesus Christ became the propitiation for our sins to bring us into His family. As children of the heavenly Father we can be guaranteed of the absolute adequacy and efficiency of God to both save and keep us.
Knowing God is at the same time a strenuously intellectual theological statement on the nature and character of God and an intensely practical paradigm for followers of Christ to grow in relationship with God. Packer effectively reminds his readers that knowing God is the most challenging and important right in the Christian life. This classic is a must read for the believer seeking to faithfully walk with the one true God.
