GOD-KNOWING
HIM
When you come
to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself,
nothing you can do will enable you to find Him.
In God you come up against something
which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God
as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not
know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is
always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are
looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C.S. Lewis
During the
Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, Martin Luther articulated a timeless
distinction between two approaches to knowing God. He labeled one a “theology of glory,” and
applied it to those who believe they can attain to a glorious knowledge of God
by human goodness, religious effort, mystical experiences, or the wisdom of
human reason. According to this view,
God manifests Himself most often through blessings, victory, success, miracles,
power, and other exhilarating experiences of “glory.” By contrast, Luther argued that the biblical
way to know God goes through a “theology of the cross.” God has “hidden” Himself where human wisdom
would not expect to find Him, that is, in the lowliness and suffering of the
man Jesus Christ, and especially in His humiliating death on a Roman
cross. As Luther put it, “true theology
and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ.” So rather than finding God by ascending to
Him through our efforts, wisdom, or self-initiated experiences, God has
descended to us in Jesus whose glory was in the least-expected of places – the
cross – and in a way where He can be found by faith alone.
Don Whitney
Take Up Your Cross
Daily, www.BiblicalSpirituality.org.
Used by Permission.
What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis,
the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact
that He knows me.
J.I. Packer
What were we made for? To know God. What
aim should we have in life? To know God. What is the
eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is
the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans
gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of Himself.
J.I. Packer
The
New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, ed. Mark Water, Baker, 1995, p. 583.
We tend to be
a generation of Christians who major on minor matters but do not seem to
possess the true measure of the gospel in the knowledge of God. We do not really know God. At best we know about Him.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
Grow in Grace, by permission of Banner of
Truth, Carlisle, PA. 1989, p. 41.
Human genius cannot account for the knowledge of God. Neither native abilities, education, nor human will power
can attain insight into the character and heart of God. God is known by “a
divine and supernatural light” (Jonathan Edwards). The youngest and lowliest of
children can exceed the oldest and most elevated of scientists when it comes to
the knowledge of God!
Sam Storms
Divine Election: How and Why Does God Choose? – Part I, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
[Jonathan] Edwards bases this distinction on the
difference between two ways of knowing.
On the one hand, there is knowledge that is merely speculative, notional, a
mere cognitive awareness of some truth. On the other hand, there is what
Edwards calls “the sense of the heart” in which one
recognizes the beauty or amiableness or sweetness of that truth and feels
pleasure and delight in it. It is the difference between knowing or believing
that God is holy and having a “sense” of or enjoying His holiness. “There is a
difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a
sense of its sweetness.” Thus “when the heart is sensible of
the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension.”
Sam Storms
Divine Election: How and Why Does God Choose? – Part I, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
[We] may have
knowledge of God and not be saved, but he can never be saved without knowledge
of God.
John H. Gerstner
Theology for Everyman, Moody, 1965, Chapter 1.
Your
knowledge of God should always lead to greater affection for God.
Karl Graustein
Excerpted from: Growing Up Christian, P&R, 2005, p.
149.
Used by Permission.
The knowledge
of God cannot be denied; it can only be distorted.
Edward T. Welch
When People are Big and God is Small, P&R
Publishing, 1997, p. 85.
Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be
loved to be known.
Blaise Pascal