Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

“And the Word was God” (1:1). Here is the Word’s deity.

“Through him all things were made” (1:3). Here is the Word creating.

“In him was life” (1:4). Here is the Word animating. There is no physical life

“And that life was the light of men” (1:4). Here is the Word revealing.

“The Word became flesh” (1:14). Here is the Word incarnate.

The Christmas message rests on the staggering fact that the child in the manger was—God.

The baby born at Bethlehem was God made man.

“He had to be made like his brothers in every way. . . . Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Incomprehensibly. We shall be wise to remember this, to shun speculation and contentedly to adore.

The Son appears in the Gospels not as an independent divine person, but as a dependent one, who thinks and acts only and wholly as the Father directs. “The Son can do nothing by himself”; “By myself I can do nothing” (Jn 5:19, 30). “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (Jn 6:38). “I do nothing on my own. . . .

This is the deep end of theology, no doubt, but John throws us straight into it. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). The Word was a person in fellowship with God, and the Word was himself personally and eternally divine. He was, as John proceeds to tell us, the only Son of the Father. John sets this mystery of one God in two persons at the head of his Gospel because he knows that nobody can make head or tail of the words and works of Jesus of Nazareth till he has grasped the fact that this Jesus is in truth God the Son. THIRD PERSON But this is not all that John means us to learn about the plurality of persons in the Godhead. For, in his account of our Lord’s last talk to his disciples, he reports how the Savior, having explained that he was going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, went on to promise them the gift of “another Comforter” (Jn 14:16 KJV).

the following set of relationships: 1. The Son is subject to the Father, for the Son is sent by the Father in his (the Father’s) name. 2. The Spirit is subject to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son’s name. 3. The Spirit is subject to the Son as well as to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Son as well as by the Father. (Compare 20:22: “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”)

the average Christian, deep down, is in a complete fog as to what work the Holy Spirit does. Some talk of the Spirit of Christ in the way that one would talk of the spirit of Christmas—as a vague cultural pressure making for bonhomie and religiosity. Some think of the Spirit as inspiring the moral convictions of unbelievers like Gandhi or the theosophical mysticism of a Rudolf Steiner. But most, perhaps, do not think of the Holy Spirit at all, and have no positive ideas of any sort about what he does.

But is the work of the Holy Spirit really important? Important! Why, were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no church, no Christianity in the world at all.

The Spirit testified to the apostles by revealing to them all truth and inspiring them to communicate it with all truthfulness. Hence the gospel, and hence the New Testament. But the world would have had neither without the Holy Spirit.

To the apostles, he testified by revealing and inspiring, as we saw. To the rest of us, down the ages, he testifies by illuminating: opening blinded eyes, restoring spiritual vision, enabling sinners to see that the gospel is indeed God’s truth, and Scripture is indeed God’s Word, and Christ is indeed God’s Son.

1. God’s life does not change. He is “from all eternity” (Ps 93:2), “the eternal King” (Jer 10:10),

Created things have a beginning and an ending, but not so their Creator.

The first and fundamental difference between the Creator and his creatures is that they are mutable and their nature admits of change, whereas God is immutable and can never cease to be what he is.

2. God’s character does not change. Strain, or shock, or a lobotomy, can alter the character of a person, but nothing can alter the character of God.

3. God’s truth does not change. People sometimes say things that they do not really mean, simply because they do not know their own mind; also, because their views change, they frequently find that they can no longer stand behind things that they said in the past.

The words of human beings are unstable things. But not so the words of God. They stand forever, as abidingly valid expressions of his mind and thought.

4. God’s ways do not change. He continues to act toward sinful men and women in the way that he does in the Bible story.

5. God’s purposes do not change. “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind,” declared Samuel, “for he is not a man, that he should change his mind” (1 Sam 15:29).

Repenting means revising one’s judgment and changing one’s plan of action. God never does this; he never needs to, for his plans are made on the basis of a complete knowledge and control which extend to all things past, present and future, so that there can be no sudden emergencies or unexpected developments to take him by surprise.

6. God’s Son does not change. Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8),

The God of Genesis is the Creator, bringing order out of chaos, calling life into being by his word, making Adam from earth’s dust and Eve from Adam’s rib (chaps. 1–2). And he is Lord of all that he has made.

The all-seeing God is also God almighty, the resources of whose power are already revealed to me by the amazing complexity of my own physical body, which he made for me.

God is greater than the world’s great men. “He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing” (Is 40:23).

1. “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One” (Is 40:25 RSV).

2. “Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed away from my God?” (Is 40:27 RV).

It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, or overlooking, or losing interest in, the state and needs of his own people.

3. “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” (Is 40:28 KJV).

How slow we are to believe in God as God, sovereign, all-seeing and almighty! How little we make of the majesty of our Lord and Savior Christ!

What does the Bible mean when it calls God wise?

to be truly wise, in the Bible sense, our intelligence and cleverness must be harnessed to a right end. Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.

Wisdom is, in fact, the practical side of moral goodness.

Not even to Christians has he promised a trouble-free life; rather the reverse.

When he made us, his purpose was that we should love and honor him, praising him for the wonderfully ordered complexity and variety of his world, using it according to his will, and so enjoying both it and him.

Jacob was now weak and despairing, and humble and dependent enough to be blessed. “He weakened my strength in the way,” said the psalmist (Ps 102:23 KJV); that was what God had done to Jacob.

But the Bible tells us that now, in fulfillment of his plan of redemption, God is at work in Christian believers to repair his ruined image by communicating these qualities to them afresh.

The first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs are a single sustained exhortation to seek this gift.

What steps must a person take to lay hold of this gift? There are two prerequisites, according to Scripture.

1. We must learn to reverence God.

2. We must learn to receive God’s word.

What does it mean for God to give us wisdom? What kind of a gift is it?

it is like being taught to drive. What matters in driving is the speed and appropriateness of your reactions to things and the soundness of your judgment as to what scope a situation

The effect of divine wisdom is to enable you and me to do just that in the actual situations of everyday life. To drive well, you have to keep your eyes skinned to notice exactly what is in front of you.

he took it for granted that wisdom, when he gained it, would tell him the reasons for God’s various doings in the ordinary course of providence.

Look (says the preacher) at the sort of world we live in. Take off your rose-colored glasses, rub your eyes and look at it long and hard. What do you see? You see life’s background set by aimlessly recurring cycles in nature (1:4-7). You see its shape fixed by times and circumstances over which we have no control (3:1-8; 9:11-12). You see death coming to everyone sooner or later, but coming haphazard; its coming bears no relation to whether it is deserved (7:15; 8:8). Humans die like beasts (3:19-20), good ones like bad, wise ones like fools (2:14, 16; 9:2-3). You see evil running rampant (3:16; 4:1; 5:8; 8:11; 9:3); the wicked prosper, the good don’t (8:14). Seeing all this, you realize that God’s ordering of events is inscrutable; much as you want to make it out, you cannot do so (3:11; 7:13-14; 8:17 RV; 11:5). The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed you grow with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more you are tempted to conclude that life really is as pointless as it looks. But once you conclude that there really is no rhyme or reason in things, what “profit”—value, gain, point, purpose—can you find in any sort of constructive endeavor? (1:3; 2:11, 22; 3:9; 5:16). If life is senseless, then it is valueless; and in that case, what use is it working to create things, to build a business, to make money, even to seek wisdom—for none of this can do you any obvious good (2...