Knowing God

Knowing God is a 1973 book by the prolific Christian author J. I. Packer (1926-2020). It describes the basics of the Christian life within the framework of a personal relationship with God, as guided by Scripture. Packer, a British-born and Oxford-educated academic and clergyman, was a leader in evangelical, Reformed, and Anglican circles and was active in both teaching and writing for over six decades of his public career. Knowing God is Packer’s best-known work, having sold over a million copies in North America alone, and Christianity Today named it as one of the top books that have shaped evangelical Christians. The book was originally released as a series of articles in Evangelical Magazine, and it offers a balance of both doctrinal insight and practical wisdom for Christian believers.

This study guide references the 50th anniversary edition of Knowing God, released by InterVarsity Press in 2023. 

Language Note: Following the stylistic conventions of the book, which adopts traditional Christian terminology, this study guide uses masculine pronouns for God.

Summary

Knowing God takes readers through a basic overview of the Christian life, as drawn from the theological insights of the Reformed Protestant tradition. The book is divided into three parts, which deal with the nature of God, the attributes of God, and the application of God’s gospel to the lives of Christians. Throughout the book, Packer roots his reflections in passages from the Bible, such that multiple parts of every chapter stand as expositions and interpretations of biblical texts.

In Part 1, titled “Know the Lord,” Packer begins by asserting the importance of knowing God in a direct and personal way. If God is indeed the creator of the world and of human beings, then they need to know something of God just to make sense of their own experiences of living. Packer presents the Bible as the key to knowing God, encouraging his readers to study Scripture under the belief that it is God’s self-revelation to them and the best way to understand and respond to his invitation to salvation. The Bible reveals God as Trinity, one God in three persons known as God the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.

In Part 2, Packer focuses on the attributes of God, beginning with the immutability, majesty, and wisdom of God. To embark on the journey of knowing God, he asserts, readers must know him as he reveals himself to be, especially as portrayed in the Bible, which necessitates starting with a high view of God, considered in and of himself. Scripture paints this high view of God throughout the text, reiterating God’s unchanging self-sufficiency, sovereign power, and exalted glory. From this starting point, Packer turns to those attributes of God he extends toward human beings—attributes that modern readers consider positive (such as love and grace) and those to which they might react more negatively (like wrath and jealousy). Packer traces the biblical foundations of each of these attributes, noting that they all cohere together in God’s roles as both judge and savior and that one cannot truly understand God’s grace until one has grasped the moral necessity of God’s wrath against sin.

Part 3 addresses the Christian experience more directly, dealing with issues like the way human beings relate to God as Father, the guidance of God in individual Christians’ lives, and the meaning of suffering and trials in one’s life. Packer concludes with a line-by-line exposition of the eighth chapter of the biblical book of Romans, which he regards as the summit of New Testament theology. Here, God’s grace toward the ordinary Christian is a dominant theme, described in the context of what Packer calls “the adequacy of God” (253). He contends that God is sufficient—more than sufficient—to meet all one’s needs and to complete his purposes in one’s life, regardless of what obstacles or difficulties the world might bring against them.