The Study of God

Scripture focus

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

Hosea 6:3 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Packer opens the book by putting a plain choice in front of the reader: either God is the most important reality there is, in which case knowing him is the most important pursuit there is, or he is not, in which case Christianity collapses. Having assumed the first, Packer argues that a Christian who never gets past Sunday-school ideas about God has stunted the one relationship that gives every other part of life its shape.

He is careful to distance real theology from a cold accumulation of facts. Knowledge of God pursued for its own sake, to win arguments or impress other people, sours a person rather than growing them; it puffs up rather than builds up. The test of whether study of God has done its work is not how much a person can now say about him, but whether they have been humbled, and driven to pray.

The chapter's governing idea, which shapes the whole book, is that information about God is only the raw material of a relationship. It has to be turned over in the mind — meditated on — until it becomes prayer, praise and obedience. Theology that never becomes doxology, Packer suggests, has missed the point of its own existence.

Key points

• Studying God's character and works is not an academic extra; it is what orients a whole life.
• Knowledge pursued for its own sake, detached from worship, tends to make a person proud rather than godly.
• The right test of theological study is a transformed relationship with God, not an impressive vocabulary about him.
• Meditation — turning a truth over patiently in the mind — is the hinge between reading about God and knowing him.
• A Christian who avoids doctrine on the grounds that it is 'dry' usually ends up with a smaller, vaguer God, not a warmer faith.

A line worth remembering

If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us.

J. I. Packer Knowing God, ch. 1

Related Scripture

• Hosea 6:3
• Jeremiah 9:23-24
• John 17:3
• Psalm 1:2

For reflection and discussion

1. Where has your own picture of God been shaped more by assumption or feeling than by patient study of Scripture?
2. What is the difference, in practice, between reading about God and meditating on him?
3. Can you name one truth about God that has moved, this year, from something you know to something that has changed how you live?