01.02. The knowledge of God.
2. The knowledge of God.
God the highest good for mankind - that is the testimony of the whole of Scripture.
It begins with the account that God created man in His image and likeness, so that he might know God his Creator, love Him wholeheartedly and live with Him in eternal bliss. And it ends with the description of the New Jerusalem, whose inhabitants will see God’s face, and His name will be on their foreheads. In between lies the revelation of God in all its length and breadth, which has as its content the one, great, all-embracing promise of the covenant of grace: I will be your God and you will be my people, and which in Emmanuel, God-with-us, receives its middle and culmination. For promise and fulfillment go hand in hand; the word of God is the concept, the seed, the germ of action and is fully realized in action. Just as God in the beginning brought things into being out of nothing through the word, so through the word of promise He will bring about, in the course of the centuries, the new heaven and the new earth, in which the tabernacle of God will be with mankind.
Therefore Christ, in whom the Word became flesh, is called by John, John 1:14, also full of grace and truth.
He is the Word, who in the beginning was with God and God Himself, and as such was the life and light of mankind. Because the Father communicates His life in Him and expresses His thoughts in Him, the full essence of God is revealed in Him. He not only declares to us the Father and not only reveals His name, but He shows us and gives us the Father in Himself. Christ is God given and God given; God revealed and God communicated, and therefore full of truth and full of grace. From the very first moment in which it was spoken, the word of promise, ’I will be your God’, has been fulfilled: ’I am your God’. God gives Himself to His people, in order that His people may give themselves to Him. In Scripture we find God repeating the statement: I am your God. From the mother’s promise in Genesis 3:15 onward, this rich promise, concluding in all salvation, is repeated at every moment in the life of the patriarchs, in the history of the people of Israel and of the church of the New Testament. And then all through the ages the congregation responds in endless variations with the thanks and praise of faith: You are our God and we are Your people, Your sheep. This declaration is not a rational doctrine, nor a form of unity that is imitated, but the confession of a deeply felt reality, experienced in life itself. The prophets and apostles, the pious in general, who appear before us in the Old and New Testaments and later in the Church of Christ, did not philosophize about God in abstract notions, but they confessed what God was to them and what they had in common with their God in all the circumstances of life. God for them was not a cold concept, which they dissected mentally, but a living, personal power, a reality, infinitely more essential than the world around them, the one, eternal, adorable Being. They counted with Him in their lives, they dwelt in His tent, they walked before Him, they served in His courts, they worshipped in His sanctuary. The authenticity and depth of their experience is expressed in the language they use to express what God is to them. They need not search for words, for their mouths overflow with what fills their hearts, and the world and nature provide them with images for their thoughts. To them God is a King, a Lord, a Hero, a Guide, a Shepherd, a Savior, a Redeemer, a Helper, a Physician, a Husbandman, a Father. All their salvation and bliss, truth and righteousness, life and mercy, strength and power, peace and rest are found in Him. He is to them a sun and a shield, a compass and a buckler, a light and a fire, a fountain and a spring, a rock and a shelter, a high room and a tower, a reward and a shadow, a city and a temple. All that the world contains, scattered and divided, is a parable of the unsearchable fullness of salvation, which is present in God for his people. That is why David in Psalms 16:2 (according to a better translation) addressed Jehovah in this way: You are my Lord, I have no higher good than You (You are my highest good), and Asaph in Psalms 73:1-28 sang: Whom have I in heaven but You, nor have I any pleasure in the earth. If my flesh and my heart fail, God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever. Heaven with all its bliss and glory is empty and deadly without God to the pious; and if he lives in God’s fellowship, he has no desire for anything on earth, because the love of God far exceeds all other goods. This is the experience of the children of God, made by them because God Himself gave Himself to them to enjoy in the Son of His love. Christ also says that eternal life for human beings, the whole of salvation, consists in the knowledge of the one and only true God and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent.
It was a solemn hour when Christ spoke these words. He was about to enter the Garden of Gethsemane across the Kidron stream and fight the last battle of his soul. Before doing so, He, as our High Priest, prepared Himself for His suffering and death, and prayed to the Father that He might glorify Him through and after His suffering, so that the Son might again glorify the Father in the distribution of all those benefits which He was now going to acquire through His obedience unto death. When the Son prays like this, He knows that He desires nothing else than what is the Father’s own will and pleasure. The Father has given Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to what the Father has given Him. And that eternal life consists of nothing else than the knowledge of the one, true God in the face of Jesus Christ, the Sent One, John 17:1-3. The knowledge of which Jesus speaks here evidently bears an entirely peculiar character. It is different from all other knowledge that man can acquire, not in degree, but in principle and essence. This is clearly shown if we compare the two types of knowledge for a moment. The knowledge of God, referred to here by Jesus, differs from the knowledge of created things in origin and object, in essence and fruit.
It differs from it first of all in origin, for it is due to Christ alone. All other knowledge we acquire in a certain sense through our own understanding and judgment, through our own efforts and research. But the knowledge of the one and true God we, as children, must let ourselves be given by Christ. It is nowhere to be found without Him, in any scientific school or among any renowned philosopher. Christ alone knew the Father. After all, in the beginning he was with God, lay in his lap and saw him face to face. He was God Himself, the reflection of His glory and the expressed image of His independence, the Father’s own, only begotten, much-loved Son, in whom He had all His pleasure, Matthew 3:17, John 1:14, Romans 8:12, Hebrews 1:3. Nothing in the nature of the Father is hidden from the Son, because He shares the same nature, the same attributes, the same knowledge. No one knows the Father but the Son, Matthew 11:27. And this Son hath come unto us, and declared unto us the Father. He has revealed the name of his Father to man; therefore He became flesh and appeared on earth, that He might make known to us the Truthful One, 1 John 5:20. We did not know God and did not even enjoy the knowledge of His ways. But Christ has made us know the Father. He was not a philosopher, a scientist or an artisan; His work was to reveal the name of the Father to us. And that He has done, fully, all His life. He has revealed Him in His words, in His works, in His life, in His death, in His person and in His entire appearance.
2 His appearance. He never spoke or did anything except what He saw the Father doing. His food was to accomplish His will. He who saw Him, saw the Father, John 4:34, John 8:26, John 8:28, John 12:50, John 14:9.
He received the name Jesus from God Himself, because He was to save His people from their sins, Matthew 1:21. He is called Christ, because he is the Anointed of the Father, chosen and appointed by God himself to all his offices, Isaiah 42:1, Matthew 3:16. And He is the Anointed One, because He did not come in His own name like so many false prophets and priests, He did not exalt Himself and did not accept the honor Himself; but because the Father so loved this world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life, John 3:16.
Those who accept Him therefore receive the right and the authority to bear the name of the children of God John 1:12. They are born of God, they are partakers of the divine nature, they know God in the face of Christ, His Son. No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and whom the Son wills to reveal, Matthew 11:27.
Secondly, the knowledge of God differs from all other knowledge in its object. Because the latter, especially in recent times, may have expanded so far, it is limited to the creature and does not find the infinite. There is a revelation of God’s eternal power and divinity also in the works of nature. But the knowledge of God obtained therefrom is slight, obscured, mixed with error and, moreover, not held in value. For men, knowing God by nature, have not glorified or thanked Him as God, but have been perverted in their deliberations and have changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the creature. The world is both a hiding place and a revelation of God, Romans 1:20-23. But here, in the high-priestly prayer, One appears before us, who forsakes all finite things and speaks of the knowledge of God! God the object of human knowledge, who can grasp that? God, who is the Infinite and the Incomprehensible One; who is not measured in time nor in eternity; before whom the angels cover their faces with their wings; who lives in an inaccessible light, whom no man has seen or can see! He, the object of human knowledge, of the man whose breath is in his nostrils and who is less than nothing and more than vanity! He would know God, whose whole knowledge is piecework! For all his knowledge, what does he know? What does he know in his ear, in his being, in his purpose? Does not mystery surround him from all sides? Does he not always stand at the borders of the unknown? And this man, a poor, weak, wandering and darkened creature, would know God, the high, holy, only, omnipotent God!
It is far beyond our understanding, but Christ speaks of it, who has seen the Father and explained Him to us. We can rely on Him, and His testimony is true and worthy of all acceptance. If you want to know, O man, who God is, do not ask the wise, the scholars, the researchers of this age, but look at Christ and hear His word. Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven, or who shall descend into the abyss? For the word that Christ preaches is near you. He himself is the Word, the perfect revelation of the Father. As He is, so is the Father, equally just and holy, but also equally full of grace and truth. At his cross the full contents of the faith of the Old Covenant are revealed: Merciful and gracious is the Lord, longsuffering and great in benevolence. He will not punish us for our sins, nor reimburse us for our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does He take our transgressions from us. As a father takes care of his children, so does the Lord take care of those who fear Him, Psalms 103:8-13. And beholding the glory of Christ in the mirror of His word, we joyfully exclaim: We know Him because we are known by Him; we love Him because He first loved us, 1 John 4:19. In the third place, the origin and content determine the essence of God’s knowledge in its peculiarity. In the quoted verse from the High Priestly Prayer Jesus does not speak of knowing, but of knowing God. The difference between the two is great. To know a lot about a creature, a plant or an animal or a human being, a country or a people, from books, is something completely different from knowing it from one’s own observation. To know is the description given by others of a person or thing; to know is the object itself. Knowing is a matter of the head; knowing involves a personal interest and an activity of the heart.
Because the knowledge of God, given by Christ, is described in His Word, it is possible to know in this area what essentially differs from the knowledge intended by Jesus. There is a knowing of the Lord’s will, without the willingness of the heart to do that will, Luke 12:47-48. There is a calling of Lord, Lord, that in no way opens the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 7:21. There is a faith, like that of the devils, which does not arouse love, but fear and trembling, James 2:19. There are hearers of the word, who do not wish to be doers and therefore will be struck with double blows, James 1:23. When Jesus speaks here of knowing God, He has in mind a knowledge, related to the one He possesses Himself. He was not a theologian by profession, nor a doctor or professor of divinity. He saw Him everywhere, in nature, in His word, in His service; He loved Him above all things and obeyed Him in everything, even unto the death of the cross. His knowing of the truth was one with his doing of the truth. And knowledge was united with love.
It is a similar knowledge that Jesus means when He connects life to it. No, to know God does not consist in knowing much about God, but it lies in the fact that we have seen Him ourselves in the face of Christ, that we have met Him on our path of life, and have personally become acquainted with His virtues, His righteousness and holiness, His mercy and grace in the experience of our souls. That is why this knowledge, as opposed to other sciences, is called the knowledge of faith. It is not the fruit of intellectual investigation and reflection, but of childlike and simple faith, of that faith which is not only a sure knowledge but also a firm trust that not only others, but also I, have been granted forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation by God, through pure grace, solely for the merit of Christ’s will. Only those who become like children will enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3. Only the pure in heart see the face of God, Matthew 5:8. Only those born again of water and the Spirit can see God’s kingdom, John 3:5. If any man will do the will of God, he shall know the doctrine of Christ, whether it is of God or whether it speaks of himself, John 7:17. They that know his name shall trust in him, Psalms 9:11; and in the same degree God is known when he is loved.
If we understand the knowledge of God in this way, it is no wonder, in the fourth place, that its effect and fruit is no less than eternal life. Between knowledge and life there seems to be very little understanding. Doesn’t Ecclesiastes truthfully say: in much wisdom is much sorrow; who increases his knowledge, increases his sorrow; to make many books is no end; and to read much is weariness of the flesh, Ecclesiastes 1:18, Ecclesiastes 12:12.
Knowledge is power - we understand that, at least to a certain extent. He who knows, rules. All knowledge is a triumph of the spirit over matter, a submission of the earth to the dominion of man. But knowledge is life - who can understand that? And yet, already in the natural sphere, knowledge increases the depth and richness of life. The more comprehensive the consciousness, the more intense the life. The inanimate creatures do not know, and they do not live. When consciousness is awakened in animals, their lives also gain in content and extent. Among humans, the richest life is that of the one who knows the most. What is the life of the sick in spirit, of the ignorant, of the simple, of the undeveloped poor and limited, compared to that of the thinker and poet! But however much difference there may be, it is only a difference of degree, the life itself does not change; it always, with the greatest scholar as well as with the simplest day laborer, goes down in death, for it is fed only from the finite sources of this world. - But here we are talking about knowledge, not of any creature, but of the one true God.
If the knowledge of visible things already enriches life, how much more will the knowledge of God be the life of the dead? For God is not a God of the dead and the dead, but of life and the living. All those whom He created in His image and restored to His community are thereby raised above death and mortality. He that believeth in me, saith Jesus, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die for ever, John 11:25-26. Knowing God in the face of Christ brings eternal life, joy beyond measure and heavenly bliss. Not only does it result in these, but knowing God is itself life, new, eternal, blissful life.
According to this teaching of the Holy Scriptures, the Christian Church determined the character of that science which from time immemorial has borne the name of Theology or Theology. It is the science that derives the knowledge of God from His revelation, contemplates it under the guidance of His Spirit, and then seeks to describe it to His glory. And a theologian, a true scholar of God, is he who speaks from God, through God, about God, to His Glory. Between scholars and the simple-minded there is therefore only one difference in degree. They have together one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all of you. But to each one of us -is grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ, Ephesians 4:5-7. In this spirit Calvin introduced his Geneva Catechism with the question: what is the main purpose of human life? And the answer was clear and powerful: so that men may know the sins of God by which they were created. Similarly, the Catechism of Westminster began its teaching with the question: What is the highest and principal aim of man? and gave this short and significant answer: Man’s highest aim is to glorify God and to enjoy Him perfectly for all eternity.