Last Friday, at 4 pm, we began a seminar at the BBC Project 8 entitled Knowing God.  We based our study on the book by J.I. Packer with the same title.  There were about 20 students.

As it was a seminar, there were questions that we asked which we tried to answer and I will share these questions here:

1. Do we need to know God?

• 2 Thessalonians 1:8 says that God will take vengeance on them who know not God. Clearly our spiritual well-being depends on knowing God.
• John 17:3 says that eternal life means knowing the true God and Jesus Christ. Our eternal destination depends on knowing God.  If we know God, we have eternal life.  If we do now know God, we have eternal death, an existence apart from the light and manifest presence of God.
• Jeremiah 4:22 says that God thinks those who do not know Him are foolish. Wisdom comes in knowing God. Living a life that is pleasing to God depends on knowing God.

2. What do we mean by “knowing God?” Is knowing God the same as knowing about God?  The answer of course is no. Knowing about God is not the same as knowing God.  Knowing about someone is not the same as knowing someone.  Knowing someone implies a relationship.  Knowing about someone is knowing facts about a person.

In Tagalog, we use two different expressions:  “marami akong alam tungkol kay Manny Pacquiao (I know a lot about Manny Pacquiao)” has a totally different meaning from “kilala ko si Manny Pacquiao (I know Manny Pacquiao).”

To “know God” means to have a relationship with God.

3. Where do we start knowing God? Hebrews 11:6 says that he who comes to God  “must believe that he is.” This not only means that we must believe that God exists, but that God is who He says He is.  We cannot approach God with preconceived notions about who He is.  We must seek to know Him as He has revealed himself.  J.I. Packer gives us Five Basic Truths about God:

• God has spoken to man, the Bible is his Word and he gave it to us to make us wise unto salvation.
• God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory in order that men and angels may worship him.
• God is Savior, acting in love through Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power to sin, to adopt them as sons and bless them accordingly.
• God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing salvation, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.
• Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust, obedience, faith, worship, submission and service.  Life must be seen and lived in the light of God’s Word.

4. What should be our aim in knowing God? If we seek theological knowledge for its own sake, we will become proud and conceited.  If we seek to know all about God simply so we call know all the answers, then we will become self-satisfied and self-deceived.  What then should be our aim in knowing God? We must know God in order that we may approach him and live in such a way that our lives conform to the truth of God.

Example:  We have a Sunday School song that goes: “Little eyes, be careful what you see, for the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little eyes what you see.”  If we truly believe that God sees all that we do, hears all that we say, he can read all our thoughts and feelings, that we cannot hide anything from him, then we would do what is right and pleasing in His sight because His eye is always upon us.  And yet, we conduct ourselves one way in public and another way in private.

5. How can finite man comprehend the INFINITE GOD? The illustration I gave is that of an ant and a human.  When an ant on the ground comes to our feet, the ant does not see our feet as feet, he does not perceive it as a part of a bigger being.  All that the ant sees and smells is a potential food source.  When the ant bites our feet, it does not apologize that it has hurt us.  The small ant cannot mentally grasp what a human is, not only because the human is too large for the ant to understand but also because it has never occurred to the ant to think of humans. Humans are so far removed from an ant’s existence, an ant is not even aware that we inhabit the same planet.

We are like that ant.  No matter how we strain all our mental powers, we cannot fully grasp with our minds the entirety of God.  How then can an incomprehensible God be comprehended by finite man?

John 4:24 says that God is a spirit.  A spirit cannot be perceived by the five human senses.  We cannot see, hear, touch, taste or smell a spirit.  And humans can only perceive the world through our senses.  We make sense of the world using our senses.  How can humans, using their five senses, ever know God who is a spirit?

The answer is: through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh.  He is the express image of God the Father.  He is the brightness of the glory of God the Father.  He is the wisdom of God.  He is the power of God.

John 1: 18 says that because no man has seen God at any time, God sent his only begotten Son and His only begotten Son has declared the Father.  The word “declared” here means, revealed, explained, exhibited.

Luke 22:10 says that no man knows the Father except the Son and the Son will reveal the Father to whoever the Son wills.  When Jesus Christ became flesh, he became flesh so that the incomprehensible God can be seen, heard, touched, felt, smelled and yes, even tasted.  God the Son, in coming down to earth to be numbered with sinners like us, condescended to us to show us the Father.

In John 14:8, Philip requested Jesus Christ: “show us the Father.”  And Jesus said, he who has seen me has seen the Father.  This was why Jesus Christ became flesh, so that he can show us what God is like.  Jesus said: “no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”  This is to say, if anyone wants to know God, all one has to do is look to Jesus. Jesus said: I and the Father are one.

Do you know God?  Do you know God through Jesus Christ? Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith…