Knowing God: Chapter 11 - Thy Word is Truth

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The focus of chapter 11 in Knowing God is truth: the word of God is true because God is truth in His very nature. Therefore, what He says must be true. 

As we read the Bible it is helpful for us to know that there are three overarching categories (or characteristics) to what the Bible says:

  1. Law - Commands and prohibitions with sanctions (consequences) attached
  2. Promise - Favorable and unfavorable, conditional and unconditional realities that can and will come about
  3. Testimony - Information given by God about Himself and people

As we read Scripture it is helpful to look to see which of these three categories particular truths fall into.


And as we read we must remember that “what [God] says goes” (always and without exception...Isa 55:10-11). 


This means that...

  1. God’s commands are true. (Psa 119:151)
  2. God’s promises are true, for God keeps them. (Heb 10:23)

In regards to the prior, Dr. Packer notes, “[God’s law] shows us what we were made to be, and teaches us how to be truly human, and warns us against moral self-destruction.” (cf. God promises certain death from sin. This happens not just physically, but spiritually as through sin “one is steadily being dehumanized,” a slow, steady march of death as we “progressively destroy our own souls.”)


In regards to the latter, the admonition of Puritan Samuel Clark is quoted: “A fixed, constant attention to the promises, and a firm belief of them, would prevent solicitude (worry) and anxiety about the concerns of life...Christians deprive themselves of their most solid comforts by their unbelief and forgetfulness of God’s promises.”


Ultimately we may say “True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the word of God.”

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