Search this study guide
Scripture focus
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
John 17:3 KJV
At a glance
What were human beings actually made for?
To know God — a relationship John's Gospel calls eternal life itself, worth more than wisdom, strength or wealth, and one that is only possible because God took the initiative to make himself known first.
Summary of the chapter
Packer argues that knowing God is not one good pursuit among many but the reason human life exists at all. He leans on Jeremiah's warning against boasting in wisdom, strength or riches, and on Jesus' own definition of eternal life as knowing the Father and the Son, to establish that no other achievement carries the same weight.
He then works out what this knowing involves, since the word can mean something as thin as recognizing a face. Knowing God, he argues, has all the marks of a real relationship: attentive listening to what God has said, a grasp of the sort of person he is, a willing response of obedience, and a delight that grows the longer the relationship continues — very much the shape of knowing another person rather than knowing a fact.
The chapter's final turn is the one Packer wants readers to leave with. It is possible to be so preoccupied with the project of knowing God that the deeper truth gets buried: our security rests not on how well we know him, but on the prior and more remarkable fact that he already knows us completely, and has set his love on us regardless.
Key points
- Scripture treats knowledge of God as the goal of human life, not an optional extra to it.
- Real knowledge of a person always outruns bare acquaintance; the same is true of knowing God.
- Listening to God's own self-disclosure in Scripture is where this relationship necessarily begins.
- Obedience and delight are not add-ons to knowing God; they are what the relationship actually looks like in practice.
- The comfort underneath it all is not the size of our knowledge of God, but the fact of his prior, complete knowledge of us.
A line worth remembering
What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that he knows me.
J. I. Packer Knowing God, ch. 3
Related Scripture
- Jeremiah 9:23-24
- John 10:14-15
- Galatians 4:9
- 1 Corinthians 8:3
For reflection and discussion
- How would your priorities change this month if you treated knowing God as life's central goal rather than a background assumption?
- In what sense is your relationship with God more like knowing a person than knowing a set of facts?
- Why might it matter more, for your peace of mind, that God knows you than that you know God?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 3, “Knowing and Being Known” — in Knowing God by J. I. Packer (InterVarsity Press / Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).