To Know You, then Know You More
To know God is to love Him, and to love God is to know Him.
This piece of writing is a personal reflection upon pondering on what privilege, what gracious gift it is to be able to live this life getting to know the One True God. Upon knowing God more and more, my view towards life after death has been largely shifted, or rather I would say, corrected. It is no longer striving to get to “Heaven” and avoiding “Hell”. And such change in eternal mindset has in turn refined how I view my life and purpose today. Thankful for the people who have been involved in helping me to get to this liberating conviction.
A God who is not unknown
“For in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.” — Acts 17:28–29 NKJV
Seeing the sheets of gold leaf used to gild a frame reminded me of what the apostle Paul preached to the people of Athens as recorded in Acts 17:22–34. He proclaimed and revealed to the people that this “unknown god” they were worshiping without knowing did not live in physical altars and temples nor was He any of those man-made representations crafted from silver, gold or stone. The One True God is a living God who dwells in His people, who is not silent but instead has revealed Himself and speaking to us through His Son, Jesus (Hebrews 1:2) — the God incarnate, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), the very visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). In the passage, Paul began with God as the Creator and ended with the inevitable coming judgment where God through Christ will be the Righteous Judge — and the assurance of this coming reality can be seen in Paul’s core message of the work of Jesus, specifically here on His triumphant resurrection.
The sweetness of knowing God
Cultivating relationships are complicated, even when physical presence is not a hindrance. Simply because, knowing our fellow human beings is always a bittersweet experience. We learn more of their true self, the good and bad, what we like and dislike (I too, am a factory of many flaws), leading to deciding whether they should simply remain acquaintances or whether we can trust them enough to open up our hearts and proceed into the many stages of relationship.
It is only in the knowing of our triune God we find only sweetness — because all that He is, is truly nothing but good. Such irresistible Grace, such Love that surpasses knowledge, such Joy my limited human words cannot do justice in describing. One simply cannot resist His constant invitation to deeper intimacy and deeper knowing once that foretaste of lovingkindness and goodness is experienced and embraced.
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”
- Psalm 34:8 NKJV“Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.”
- Psalm 63:3 NKJV
God longs for us to know Him intimately, to actually be in a two-way loving relationship with Him, for this is one of the main reasons we were created: for God Himself — in Whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Our knowledge of God should not stop in our own personal salvation. To me, experiencing God’s grace that has been life-changing to say the least — from the spiritually dead me to fully alive in Christ — is only the beginning of partaking in His Kingdom work. And thus, knowing Christ (not merely head knowledge about Him) and all that comes from being His offspring and heirs of His promises is a gift, always to be cherished. Just like any other relationships, our relationship with God is one to be wholly committed in, constantly nurtured, and truly enjoyed. For if these lack, we can take a hint where the relationship is heading, and it is not somewhere good.
Heaven is where You are
In waiting for their wedding, both the groom and the bride will go to great lengths to know each other better (though a lifetime of deeper knowing is ahead of them). One does not enter into a covenant of marriage without at least knowing as much as possible about their soon-to-be other half. And Jesus’s second coming is not only Him as the Righteous Judge as previously mentioned. The Scripture tells us that Jesus is also the Bridegroom, and we, the Church, is His bride. And so, how much should we desire to know Christ all the more? Many still tend to think that life ends with either Heaven and Hell, but the true Christian should know that Heaven is first and foremost not a destination nor is it a place. Simply put (without going into complex details on the new heavens and the new earth), Heaven is where Christ is and if eternity means being in perfect communion with Christ, how can we look forward to that glorious day if we do not know Him and delight in Him right now?
Just like knowing our loved ones is a journey of a lifetime, we also have a lifetime in the land of the living to know more of God, to know more of Jesus, and to enjoy the Spirit’s guiding in the process. This is where I’m always thankful for the Bible (and time and time again reminding myself not to take the Bible and its accessibility for granted) because it is a true proof that God is speaking and not silent. As Saint Augustine says in his Confessions, “the holy scripture is a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries; composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.”
Just as a bride longs to see her bridegroom on their awaited wedding day (and vice versa, OR, is it actually the groom who is supposed to be more excited to unveil his betrothed? *the ladies smiling*), as His Bride, we shall live prepared, yet always longing for that day we get to see Him face to face, the day we can finally fully know Him as we have been fully known all this time (1 Corinthians 13:12). And to this end it is only fitting that we faithfully commit to our Lord and Savior, our Bridegroom and Beloved Jesus: yes Lord, I must know You more.
To know God is to love Him, and to love God is to know Him. I deeply believe that, knowing God cannot end without loving Him, for where there is knowing God relationally, there is loving Him in return, and where one claims to love God, there is knowing involved. What great gain it is to know Him and to love Him. But even more so, to grasp the truth that He loved us first and that He fully knows us and still loves us with an everlasting love.
“Now godliness with contentment is great gain.” — I Timothy 6:6 NKJV
“But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.” — 1 Corinthians 8:3 NKJV
“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.’”— Philippians 3:7–11 NKJV
I want to know you, Jesus my Lord
King of the Heavens, King of my soul
I trade my treasure and all my rewards
Jesus to know you, then know you more
— CityAlight, I Want to Know You
To my fellow brethren who are journeying in the faith, may we continue to be the faithful bride of Christ, spiritually awake and abounding in every good work till the day our beloved Bridegroom comes. May we be all the more passionate in knowing Christ more and more, and loving Him more and more — with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength. Amen!
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