Amazon.com: Knowing God: J. I. Packer: Books
One reason I can no longer recommend this book to new believers is the portrayal of Jacob. In the Bible, God blesses Jacob’s struggles with Isaac, Esau, Laban, his wives and his sons and says they are struggles with God himself. The people of God are named after these struggles.
Yet in popular Evangelical religion, Jacob is just an immoral lout who only demonstrates salvation by grace because nothing else is worth emulating. This is the exegesis of those in power taking away what the Bible says to the marginalized. Moralists in control, like Laban, will always find fault with Jacob for continuing to struggle and not knowing his place. (I’m sure Packer doesn’t mean to do this, but that’s the tradition as he’s inherited and transmitted it.)
