Why We Study God

It is possible to study theology and not know God. Eta Linnemann could tell you that. She was a New Testament scholar, theologian, professor of theology at Braunschweig Technical University, inductee to the Society for New Testament studies, multi-credentialed, and a woman of letters. But, to her own admission, she didn’t know Christ personally. It is possible to know about God without knowing God. At a low point in Eta’s life, with the help of a Christian brother, she came to know Christ. Her advice to others after her conversion was to throw away everything she wrote before coming to know Jesus. She counted all her learning as dung in view of knowing Christ. Our scripture today encourages us to study God, but it also points us to the true end and aim of all our theological pursuits: the worship of God for who he is with our lives.

“Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives.” ³ J.I. Packer wrote that fifty years ago, and it is a truth that stands today. The study of God should lead to the knowledge of God and a life lived in the light of God, all by the power of the Holy Spirit. Theology without the Spirit is dry. And dark. Good for storing potatoes, but bad for growing flowers – and we are a planting of the Lord. We need the light of the truth found in his word, embraced by our understanding, and absorbed into our hearts. If the end of the study of God is to know God and knowing God is crucial to how we live, then let us press on to know the Lord in our study and in our living. He will come as the spring rains to us. Sunlight and rain. That’s what makes flowers grow.

You can learn a lot about a person by the way they relate to others. Paul the apostle modeled godly relationship well. Paul, tender Paul. He called Timothy his true son and longed for him. He instructed Timothy and encouraged him. He considered the meeting of friends to be an occasion for joy. He bled when he was cut and felt the pain of broken relationship. Paul, tender, loving Paul. The bible is a book about God and his relationship with man. Through Jesus, God says, “I care about my relationship with you.” No one expresses how God feels about us better than Jesus, the Great Reconciler. So, if we learn a lot about someone by how they relate to others, then Jesus must be central in our study of who God is. To know Jesus is to know God.

In our theological pursuits we are plunging into bottomless depths and searching out the unsearchable. Theology is an attempt at grasping what cannot be grasped. Yet God still desires us to draw near, seek his face, and call on him to speak to us unsearchable things. Theology is possible because God in his graciousness says it is. It is his glory to conceal and our glory to search. Call it a holy hide and seek of cosmic proportions. We will never reach the bottom of who God is, it’s true; we scarcely plumb the surface of the ocean vastness of his being. But we try anyways. And with each subsequent dive, we go deeper, our lung capacity increases, our curiosity heightens, and our souls grow hungrier and hungrier to be engulfed in the knowledge of our Creator. We seek God to know God.

Scripture could be read as one long invitation from God to us for us to know him. He promises that we will find him when we seek for him wholeheartedly. This implies pure motives in the construction of our theology — that we seek him as the treasure, not with duplicity of heart, not as a means to justify our lifestyle, not for what he can do for us, not to gain a storehouse of knowledge; we seek him to gain him. He is the pearl of great price. This is an invitation; an invitation to find the better things, to find that which is truly life, to find him. You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.” ⁴ We seek God to know God.