Last week I wrote the first part of what will be a several-part review of J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.Â
This week I’m going to take a look at the remaining chapters of Part I before moving on and moving through a bit of Part II.
Knowledge and Idolatry
Chapter 3, “Knowing and Being Known,” deals more directly with the distinction between knowledge about and knowledge of (which I highlighted in last Thursday’s post).  I like to call the former “factual” and the latter “intimate.”  Concerning the latter, Packer writes that we know a person “according to how much, or how little, they have opened up to us” (35).  It is in the person of Jesus, Packer notes, that God has completely opened himself up to us. What’s more, “to know Jesus is to be saved by Jesus, here and hereafter, from sin, and guilt, and death” (38).  Packer closes Chapter 3 by emphasizing that although our knowing God is crucial, the fact that he knows us is of the utmost importance.  “There is tremendous relief in knowing that [God’s] love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about myself, and quench his determination to bless me” (42).  Tremendous indeed. [Read more…] about Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. II