“There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death, and on forever.”

Packer regularly draws attention not only to the necessity of knowing God, but to the quality of life that such knowing engenders. This quote also exemplifies the theme of knowing God personally, putting stress on the idea of knowing God as a relational reality and not just an intellectual achievement.

“What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. […] What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God.”

Here, the book’s title is underscored, with the idea of knowing God presented as the ultimate goal of all human life. This extract, coming from the beginning of Chapter 3, draws the attention of the reader because it stands in such contrast to Packer’s usual practice of using long, multi-clause sentences.

“What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?”

This quote, which follows not long after the previous quote, continues the characterization of knowing God as the most important aspect of a person’s life. Here, Packer draws on the theology of the nature of God, alluding to God’s infinite scope and matchless glory, such that the knowledge of God constitutes the highest possible aim in life that any person could ever have.

“If Jesus had been no more than a very remarkable, godly man, the difficulties in believing what the New Testament tells us about his life and work would be truly mountainous. But if Jesus was the same person as the eternal Word, the Father’s agent in creation, […] it is no wonder if fresh acts of creative power marked his coming into this world, and his life in it, and his exit from it.”

Packer is implicitly responding to a modern skeptical perspective on the Gospels, which prefers to take Jesus as a good moral teacher whose words and deeds later got transmuted out of all proportion by his followers, rather than to take the Gospels’ presentation of Jesus at face value. Packer’s point is that if one adopts that position, one has to write off an enormous amount of textual and historical evidence, whereas if one were willing to entertain the notion of Jesus’s divinity, all of that evidence would fall neatly into place.

“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.”

Here, Packer addresses the theology of the Holy Spirit, which he suggests many Christians do not really understand as they should. The opening part of the quote is posed as a question from an imaginary debate partner, a Christian who is not clear on what the Holy Spirit does. Packer’s response underscores his belief that the Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity whose works are now present and active across the whole span of Christian experience.

“The word majesty, when applied to God, is always a declaration of his greatness and an invitation to worship.”

In this short quote, Packer provides a balanced presentation of one of the book’s main themes, The Relationship Between Doctrine and Devotion. In explaining the concept of majesty, Packer both gives a doctrinal definition and then points to its practical implications for Christian devotional practices.

“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.”

This quote, like the preceding one, is a definition of a theological concept. Wisdom is a difficult concept for many people to define, as it is commonly mistaken for an accumulation of knowledge, but Packer highlights once again the fusion of doctrine and action, asserting that wisdom is not just an intellectual virtue, but an active, practical one.

“Power is as much God’s essence as wisdom is. Omniscience governing omnipotence, infinite power ruled by infinite wisdom, is a basic biblical description of the divine character.”

In this part of the book, as Packer is focusing on the divine attributes as a means of explaining the doctrine behind the knowledge of God, he stresses the interplay between those attributes. The divine attributes do not exist in isolation from one another but are human terms for those aspects of virtue which they can discern in the undivided wholeness of God’s moral character.

“We should not, therefore, be too taken aback when unexpected and upsetting and discouraging things happen to us now. What do they mean? Simply that God in his wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet, and he is dealing with us accordingly.”

Knowing God is a book that, at least in part, is targeted toward those issues that Packer sees as points of real concern in contemporary Christian experience, with a special focus on those which have the potential to throw a person’s relational knowledge of God off track. One of those issues is how Christians are to think about difficulties that come their way, and here Packer encourages his readers not to think about such setbacks as a cause for doubt or complaint, but rather as an invitation to grow to new heights of moral virtue.

“For what is this wisdom that he gives? As we have seen, it is not a sharing in all his knowledge, but a disposition to confess that he is wise, and to cleave to him and live for him in the light of his Word through thick and thin.”

Here, Packer extends his definition of wisdom to include not only divine wisdom but human wisdom as well, given as a gift from God. Since wisdom, as he defined it earlier, is a practical virtue—an active form of moral goodness—he applies that definition to human experience and concludes that the particular action enjoined by human wisdom, above all other actions, is simply to trust in God.

“For, though God is a great king, it is not his wish to live at a distance from his subjects. Rather the reverse: He made us with the intention that he and we might walk together forever in a love relationship.”

Packer’s relational understanding of the knowledge of God comes to the forefront here, asserting that one’s stance toward God is not defined as an intellectual or spiritual value, like enlightenment, but as a relationship. And not just any relationship, but one which is direct, intimate, and intentional: a personal relationship of love.

“Truth in the Bible is a quality of persons primarily, and of propositions only secondarily. It means stability, reliability, firmness, trustworthiness, the quality of a person who is entirely self-consistent, sincere, realistic, undeceived. God is such a person.”

Although Packer does not mention it by name, there is an old philosophical puzzle in the background of this quote, which goes back in some form to Plato. It explores the goodness or truth of God with the question of whether truth is true because of its inner coherence (in which case God would be subject to it), or simply because God says it is true (in which case it could be seen as a capricious value). Packer’s answer, taken from the Bible’s portrayal of truth, is simply to root it in the character of God: truth is not so much a depiction of propositional veracity as it is an accurate depiction of the way God’s true character.

“We are only living truly human lives just so far as we are laboring to keep God’s commandments; no further.”

This quote shows Packer’s belief that God, as the creator of all things, is the one who designed humans for a particular kind of life—living in a relationship of love with him—and that to operate outside that design is to abandon something fundamental in what it means to be human. He notes, however, he’s not implying that those who do not follow God’s commands are somehow sub-human, nor that they should be treated as such. Rather, he argues that they have the invitation and possibility before them of becoming even more fully what they were always meant to be.

“So the love of the God who is spirit is no fitful, fluctuating thing, as human love is, nor is it a mere impotent longing for things that may never be; it is, rather, a spontaneous determination of God’s whole being in an attitude of benevolence and benefaction, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed.”

Packer asserts that part of the difficulty in trying to understand the divine nature using the moral categories of human experience is that the human attribute of “love” is not the same as God’s, since the finite limitations of human nature do not apply to him. While love is often an up-and-down, emotionally unrestrained experience for humans, the infinite constancy of God’s nature means that his love is unwavering and always exists at its fullest possible extent.

“God’s love is an exercise of his goodness toward individual sinners whereby, having identified himself with their welfare, he has given his Son to be their Savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation.”

Packer’s way of framing divine attributes: not as static moral categories, but as practical aspects of God’s moral nature, is best understood as an undivided symphony of action. He defines love with reference to another value in the constellation of God’s attributes—goodness—as exemplified in his act of sending Jesus to pay the price for human salvation.

“God is not true to himself unless he punishes sin. And unless one knows and feels the truth of this fact, that wrongdoers have no natural hope of anything from God but retributive judgment, one can never share the biblical faith in divine grace.”

In these middle chapters of Part 2, Packer is intent on explaining the roles and aspects of God’s character with which modern readers tend to have the most trouble, like his role as judge. The trouble comes from thinking about judgment as an emotional state rather than as a good and proper office for the Lord of all creation; Packer addresses that problem by emphasizing once again the action inherent in this part of God’s character, rather than an emotive state.

“Moral indifference would be an imperfection in God, not a perfection. But not to judge the world would be to show moral indifference. The final proof that God is a perfect moral Being, not indifferent to questions of right and wrong, is the fact that he has committed himself to judge the world.”

This quote, like the one above, focuses on the judgment of God. Here, Packer shows that the moral value that some modern readers would rather see in God—a willingness to treat sin lightly and loosely—would be a moral imperfection in God, a vice rather than a virtue. What is needed is not a judge who does not care about serious offences, but rather one who deals with such things seriously, exercising both judgment and, if he should will it, the extension of a costly and precious mercy.

“God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry where anger is called for.”

Packer again draws attention to the fact that the attributes of God are not intended as representations of emotional states, but as anthropomorphisms which describe the roles and actions undertaken by God’s undivided moral character. Wrath is thus not an explosive, unhinged emotional response, but a way of describing God’s proper action against evil.

“The basic description of the saving death of Christ in the Bible is as a propitiation, that is, as that which quenched God’s wrath against us by obliterating our sins from his sight. God’s wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness; it shows itself in retributive justice. But Jesus Christ has shielded us from the nightmare prospect of retributive justice by becoming our representative substitute, in obedience to his Father’s will, and receiving the wages of our sin in our place.”

This quote combines Packer’s reflections on the wrath and judgment of God with a basic depiction of the gospel message. Packer sees these concepts connected to one another through the biblical idea of propitiation, known in ancient religion as a sacrifice that turns away divine wrath.

“What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.”

This quote underscores the theme of knowing God personally. Knowledge of God is not an abstract intellectual exercise, but a real, living connection in communion with God. It takes the shape of a relationship, and specifically, a relationship between a loving father and his beloved children.

“[W]ere I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.”

Here, Packer condenses his theology of the gospel message down to a pithy and memorable phrase: “adoption through propitiation.” This means, in short, that believers can become sons and daughters of God through the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

“In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of kings. […] [T]hroughout their lives he is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ.”

Packer returns here to one of his main practical points throughout the book—that trials and difficulties are not aberrations in the Christian life, but a part of God’s work to bring believers to a higher moral character and a deeper relationship with himself. Both of these elements—moral refinement and relationality—can be seen in Packer’s illustration of royal children.

“The fundamental guidance which God gives to shape our lives—the instilling, that is, of the basic convictions, attitudes, ideals, and value judgments, in terms of which we are to live—is not a matter of inward promptings apart from the Word but of the pressure on our consciences of the portrayal of God’s character and will in the Word, which the Spirit enlightens us to understand and apply to ourselves.”

This passage highlights The Role of Scripture in Gaining Knowledge of God as a central theme in the text. Packer believes that many Christians err by seeking guidance from God without availing themselves of the guidance already provided in the Bible. Scripture offers both the starting point and the fundamental boundaries of any guidance which God might offer to a Christian.