These are the notes for our Thursday Night Theology Class at Northshire Baptist Church in Manchester Center, Vermont. Anyone familiar with J.I. Packer's classic, Knowing God will find its influence and content in these notes.
Theology
Proper is simply the technical term for that discipline of study that pertains
to knowing God. Those who enter into the
study of God are entering into what used to be known in Puritan days as the
Queen of the Sciences—Theology Proper.
A
Disclaimer from C.S. Lewis:
“Those like
myself, whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just
penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really
reached. If we describe what we have
imagined [studied] we may make others, and ourselves, believe that we have
really been there—and so fool both them and ourselves.” (The Four Loves)
Beware of the trap of thinking you know God or are becoming intimate with God merely because you are learning and mastering more information about God.
An
Endorsement from C.H. Spurgeon: [January 7, 1855]
“It has been
said by someone that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose
the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect
is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science,
the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the
attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the
doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.
There is
something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity.
It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so
deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass
and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with
the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master science,
finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye
cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be
wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, “I am but
of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to
humble the mind, than thoughts of God....
But while the
subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will
have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe....
The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and
Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.
Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of
man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the
Deity.
And, whilst
humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in
contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is
a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a
balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares?
Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his
immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and
invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling
billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout
musing upon the subject of the Godhead.”
Important
Considerations:
1. Knowing
God is more than knowing about Him.
Whereas,
knowing about God is a necessary prerequisite to knowing God [Rom. 10:14], the
depth of one’s knowledge about God is no gauge of the intimacy of one’s experience
of God.
Psalm
34:8
2. Knowing
God is a matter of grace.
Knowing
about God requires God to make Himself known in impersonal and personal ways. Impersonally, God has made certain facts
about Himself know through “General Revelation”. Personally, God has made His Identity,
Character, Passions, Likes, Dislikes, and Plans known through “Special
Revelation”.
Knowing
God in a personal, experiential, positive, and loving relationship requires God’s
initiative in making Himself personally, experientially, positively, and
lovingly known to us through His grace which is His unmerited and undeserved
favor.
We
do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us!
John
15:16
1
John 4:10
Romans
5:8
We
come to know and love God because God first knew and loved us. And if you are a child of God there has never
been a time when God has not known you.
Psalm
135:13 w/Psalm 138:8
1. Knowing
God requires knowing Jesus
God’s lovingkindness is
His eternal covenant love with those He has chosen to love in a special,
experiential, positive, intimate, an eternal relationship which has been forged
by the requirement of His perfect righteousness being met by those He has
chosen to love in this way.
The Hebrew word from which
“lovingkindness” is translated is chessed
[Pronounced
hess-ed, with a light "k" at the beginning, like you're clearing your
throat].
God's loving-kindness
[chessed] is that sure love which initiates a saving relationship with His
people which will not let His people go. Not all their persistent waywardness
could ever destroy it. Though they be faithless, yet God remains faithful
still. This steady, persistent refusal of God to wash his hands of His wayward
people is the essential meaning of the Hebrew word which is translated
loving-kindness.
However, chessed is sometimes misunderstood so as
to see it as an unwarranted or even unconditional love on God’s part. Chessed,
while being concerned with God’s love for His covenant people cannot be
separated from the righteousness He demands of them in order to be His covenant
people. Chessed demands a perfect righteousness. In other words, God’s love for His people is
dependent upon God’s righteous requirements being met in and by His people. The
reason God is able to love His people with an unconditional love is because He,
in His Son the Lord Jesus, met the condition of perfect personal righteousness He requires.
This perfect righteousness
required by God which enables Him to initiate and establish a relationship with
people in which He knows and loves them in a personal, experiential, positive, loving,
and eternal way was, is, and always will be provided by Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:19
2 Corinthians 5:21 w/Psalm
85:9-10 w/Hebrews 7:25
John 1:18
Matthew 11:25-30
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