Knowing God

Chapter 7 begins Part 2 of the book, which is focused on the attributes of God. The first attribute to which Packer draws attention is that of God’s constancy and immutability—in other words, the fact that God does not change. Packer connects this abstract idea to the experience of his readers by noting a common problem: many readers of the Bible struggle to make sense of how stories rooted in the culture of the ancient Near East can still apply to modern life today. Packer suggests that God himself is the connecting link: the God that the characters in those stories knew and interacted with is the same God whom contemporary people know and interact with today.

God’s nature and his character are both constant and unchanging, unlike humans, who change in both physical ways (as in death) and moral ways, for the better or the worse. God, by contrast, never changes—he always possesses the summit of all possible excellencies in both his powers and his virtues. Further, the things God has revealed in Scripture, like his truth, his ways, and his purposes, are likewise unchanging, and Packer quotes numerous biblical references in support of this