"What were we made for? To know God.
What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God.
What is the 'eternal life' that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. "This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (Jn 17:3)
What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else? Knowedge of God. "This is what the LORD says: 'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strenght or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands me and knows me'" (Jer 9:23-24)
What, of all the states God ever sees man in, gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself. "I desired...the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings," says God (Hos 6:6 KJV). (Packer, 33)
"Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord."..."What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, somethign which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person ahs. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?" (Packer, 34)
"The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it." (Packer, 35)
"...the quality and extent of our knowledge of other people depends more on them than on us. Our knowing them is more directly the result of their allowing us to know them than of our attempting to get to know them. When we meet, our part is to give them our attention and interest, to show them good will and to open up in a friendly way from our side. From thapoint, however, it is they, not we, who decide whether we are going to know them or not." (Packer, 35)
"The more conscious we are of our own inferiority, the more we shall feel that our part is simply to attend to this person respectfully and let him take the initiative in the conversation. (Think of meeting the queen of England or the president of the United States.) We would like to get to know this exalted person, but we fully realize that this is a matter for him to decie, not us. If he confines himself to courteous formalities with us, we may be disappointed, but we do not feel able to complain; after all, we had no claim on his friendship.
But if instead he starts at once to take us into his confidence, and tells us frankly what is in his mind on matters of common concern, and if he goes on to invite us to join him in particular undertakings he has planned, gand asks us to make ourselves permanently available for this kind of colaboration whenever he needs, then we shall feel enormously privileged, and it will make a world of difference to our general outlook. If life seemed unimportant and dreary hitherto, it will not seem so anymore, now that the great man has enrolled us among his personal assistants. Here is someting to write home about - and something to live up to!
Now this, so far as it goes, is an illustration of what it means to know God. Well might God say through Jeremiah, 'Let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me' - for knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person's heart." (Packer, 35-36)
"God is actually opening up his heart to you, making friends with you and enlisting you as a colleague - Barth's phrase, a covenant partner." (Packer, 36)
"Whether being a servant is a matter for share or for our pride depends on whose servant one is. Many have said what pride they felt in rendering personal service to Sir Winston Churchill during World War II. How much more should it be a matter of pride and glorying to know and serve the Lord of heaven and earth!" (Packer, 37)
"What, then does the activity of knowing God involve?...we must say that knowing God involves, first listening to God's Word and receiving is as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God's nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship." (Packer, 37)
"The disciples were ordinary Galileans with no special claims on the interest of Jesus...God found found them, called them to himself, took them into his confidence and enrolled them as his agents to declare to the world teh kingdom of God." (Packer, 37)
"Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you. Knowing about him is a necessary precondition of trust him...but the width of of oru knowledge about him is not gauge of the depth of our knowledge of him." (Packer, 39)
"Since knowing God is a matter of personal involvement - mind, will and feeling. It would not, indeed, be a fully personal relationship otherwise. To get to know another person, you have to commit yourslef to his comany and interests, and be ready to identify yourself with his concerns." (Packer, 39)
"God does not exist for our comfrot or happiness or satisfaction, or to provide us with, 'religious experiences,' as if these were the most interesting and important things in life....knowing god is an emotional relationship, as well as an itellectual and volitioanl one...Believers rejoice when their God is honored and vindicated and feel the acutest distress when they see God flouted." (Packer, 40)
"We do not make friends wigh God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us....The word know, when used of God in this way, is a soverign-grace word, pointing to God's initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling, and preserving. (Packer, 41)
"All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, on who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters." (Packer, 42)
"There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and that he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough.) There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. We can not work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know not merely that we know God, but that he knows us." (Packer 42)
