Want to know God?

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa

There is a great difference between possessing knowledge about someone and having a personal knowledge of someone. When it comes to knowing God, there are many who can provide biblically accurate information about who God is and what God has done, but that is far different from having a personal relationship with God. To want to know God is a noble desire, and the good news is that God has revealed Himself in such a way that He can be known personally. Jesus indicated that such personal knowledge of God is actually the essence of eternal life. In John 17 we read Jesus’ prayer to the Father, acknowledging the authority He had received from the Father to give eternal life to all whom the Father had given Him. Jesus then defined that life in terms of knowing “You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

But this still leaves us with the question, what does it mean to know God in this way? The answer is found in Jesus’ words, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me … I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:1, 6). Jesus clearly taught the only way for a person to truly know God was by believing in Him as the Son of God. The unbelieving Jews of Jesus’ day clung to their ethnicity and traditions as the basis for knowing God, but Jesus challenged their claims and taught that it is only by believing in Him that a person is a true child of God. “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). This goes for both Jews and Gentiles; there is no distinction.

Therefore to know God is to know Jesus Christ, and we come to know Jesus Christ by receiving Him, that is, by believing in His name as the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. May God grant you the grace to repent of your sins and to trust in Christ today.