MORE ON WHAT IT MEANS

Since writing the last Insight I’ve looked through my notes again and found what I think is a magnificent description of what it means to know God. It appears in J.I. Packer’s classic book Knowing God, and captures perfectly the relational character of this activity.

Packer begins by raising a number of possibilities as to what knowing God might mean. “What are we talking about when we use the phrase, ‘knowing God’?” he asks. “A special sort of emotion? Shivers down the back? A dreamy, off-the-ground, floating feeling? Tingling thrills and exhilaration, such as drug takers seek? Or is knowing God a special sort of intellectual experience? Does one hear a voice? see a vision? find strange trains of thought coursing through one’s mind? or what?” (Knowing God, p. 30). He then adds, “These matters need discussing, especially since, according to Scripture, this is a region in which it is easy to be fooled, and to think you know God when you do not. We pose the question, then: what sort of activity, or event, is it that can properly be described as ‘knowing God’?” (Ibid, p. 30).

Packer then offers this explanation: “What happens is the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the great God before whom the nations are as a drop in the bucket, comes to him [the Christian, or the person seeking to know God] and begins to talk to him, through the words and truths of Holy Scripture… As he listens to what God is saying… he comes to realize… that God is actually opening his heart to him, making friends with him, and enlisting him as a colleague – in Barth’s phrase, a covenant partner. It is a staggering thing, but it is true – the relationship in which sinful human beings know God is one in which God, so to speak, takes them on to his staff, to be henceforth his fellow workers (see 1 Cor. 3:9) and personal friends” (Ibid., p. 32).

To sum up his explanation Packer adds, “What, then, does the activity of knowing God involve? We must say that knowing God involves, 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, recognizing, and rejoicing in, the love that he has shown in thus approaching one and drawing one into this divine fellowship” (Ibid., p. 32).

As I said above, I think this is a magnificent description of what knowing God entails. Over the coming weeks we will explore several parts of it more fully. But for the moment it is enough to note that knowing God – according to Packer anyway – is about having a relationship with him. It is about hearing from God and responding back to him. There is living, personal, real communication going on, much as it does when we relate to one another. Certainly, it happens in a slightly different way – and we will look at that. But nevertheless, there is open-hearted interaction between persons involved.

And that, Packer says, is a relationship “calculated to thrill a man’s heart” (Ibid., p. 32). Is there anything else like it in the world? An audience with a president, a night out with a superstar – they don’t even begin to compare. It’s worth listening to God’s words through the prophet Jeremiah as we conclude: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight…” (Jeremiah 9:23-4).

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