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).

God in His works

Some study God in His works. And much of His glory does shine there, and we ought to observe it. But what is all the fruit of this alone? Only to “render us inexcusable” (Romans 1:20). The light of the knowledge of the glory of God is both dim and cold light. It has no heat nor power in it. Never did anyone come by the saving knowledge of God by studying the book of creation and providence, though a true Christian may both study it and profit much by it, when he “has known God, or rather is known of God.”

God in His law

Some study God in His holy law. And in it, indeed, is a glorious display of God. But it discloses a holy, just, sin-hating, sin-forbidding, sin-threatening God. Here He is seen as a terrifying judge. No one ever did, or can, know God savingly in the bare light of the law. God can only be known savingly in that representation of Him where He is manifested as a saving God, and that is only in His Son Jesus Christ.

God in His ordinances

Some study to know God in and by His ordinances. To be sure, the ordinances are precious appointments of God, much to be valued and used by us, and their profit is great, when they are blessed by God who appointed them, and when we use them in the right manner. But we must know that, as the virtue of all the Old Testament ordinances lay in their relation to, and shadowing forth of, the Messiah who was then to come, so all the virtue of the New Testament ordinances lies in their relation to and showing forth of Christ who has now come. If therefore you study to know God savingly in and by even the greater light of the gospel ordinances, without regard to Christ in them, you will perish in ignorance of God just as surely as any Jew uncircumcised in heart (see Jeremiah 9:26; Romans 2:20, 29; Philippians 3:3).

God in His Son

Above all these, if you want to know God savingly, study to know Him in and by the only saving representation He has made of Himself — in His Son.

Jesus Christ is the place to find God

Here you have the only true place to find God. Job in his distress said, “O that I knew where I might find him!” He is only to be found in Christ. God dwells in Christ (Colossians 2:9). There, and there only, you must seek Him, and find Him, and know Him savingly.

No creature, no part of the work of God’s hands, is so nearly related to God as the humanity of Christ assumed by the divine person of the Word, “the only begotten of the Father.” This is “the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man” (Hebrews 8:2). This is “the new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20). This is the only “way to the holiest” (Hebrews 20:19).

The devil works hard to darken and disgrace this way to the world. On the one hand, by the gross idolatry which makes a great show of images of Christ and His physical sufferings. On the other hand, by a mystical and metaphysical gospel and supposedly greater spirituality, in which Christ’s saving works in His body are turned into myths and metaphors. Let Christians beware of both, and by faith fix on the flesh of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ which He gave “for the life of the world” (John 6:51). In this tabernacle of His body we see by faith God the Son personally dwelling, and by the same faith see God the Father dwelling in the Son. This is the only way to know God savingly.

Jesus Christ has the words to make God known

In Christ alone we have the new names and relations of God, the only ways in and by which God can be savingly known. When God sent Moses to Israel and to Pharaoh, Moses says to the Lord, “If they shall say to me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say unto them?” What a deep answer is given to this bold question! “God said unto Moses, ‘I AM THAT I AM,’ and he said, ‘Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, “I AM” hath sent me unto you’” (Exodus 3:13–14).

So, if we ask, “What is the name of God? How can we know Him savingly?” it is easily answered. “By His name in Christ.” God can only be savingly known in and by that saving name by which He makes Himself known, and that is His name in Christ. “Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him” (Exodus 23:21). (This awful word about Christ, that He will not pardon those who refuse Him, is only the same as what we have in Hebrews 12:25–26.) But all the saving names and relations of God to us are all in and from His names in Christ and relations in Christ. He Christ’s God and Christ’s Father, and so ours (John 20:17).

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