The books to bypass in the search for God
Posted at Reformation Scotland:
We are surrounded by things which tell us about God — a glimpse of His power here, a hint of His goodness there. But not everything that tells us about God will let us get to know God as our Saviour. Robert Traill (1642–1716) names four places where we will find out something about God yet may still fall short of salvation. A friend of William Guthrie and James Guthrie, Robert Traill studied at Edinburgh University, was exiled to Holland, and pastored presbyterian churches in Kent and London. The following updated extract is taken from one of the sermons preached on Jesus’ prayer in John 17, which he calls “the Lord’s prayer.”You cannot know God except as He reveals Himself. He reveals Himself no other way but in Christ, so as to be savingly known. There are four books (if I may so call them) that many use in studying to know God, but they are only poor scholars if they do not have better, and fitter, and plainer books.
God in Himself
Some study an absolute God, God in Himself. But an absolute God is an abyss, and all that go near it, fall into it and are destroyed. Luther boldly said, “Let hypocrites and unbelievers do as they please, I will have nothing to do with an absolute God.”
God in His Son, God in covenant with His Son, God clothed with grace and mercy and shining in His promises in Christ, is the God we must seek to know, and when by grace we attain to knowing Him, we may humbly glory in it. “Let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:24).
