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“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jer 6:16).
It has been said by someone that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our
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The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified,
Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England,
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.
Five basic truths, five foundation principles of the knowledge about God which Christians have, will determine our course throughout. They are as follows:
God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation. 2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections in all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him. 3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly. 4. 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
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We shall have to deal with the Godhead of God, the qualities of deity which set God apart from humans
We shall have to deal with the powers of God: his almightiness, his omniscience, his omnipresence.
We shall have to deal with the perfections of God, the aspects of his moral character which are manifested in his words and deeds—his
“What is God?” the answer read as follows: “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”
To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception.
His supreme desire was to know and enjoy God himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end.
Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself better.
How are we to do this? How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.
KNOWING VERSUS KNOWING ABOUT
A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him.
interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing him.
1. Those who know God have great energy for God.
People who know their God are before anything else people who pray,
Those who know God have great thoughts of God.
3. Those who know God show great boldness for God.
What, of all the states God ever sees man in, gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself.
Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.
what sort of activity, or event, is it that can properly be described as “knowing God”?
It is clear, to start with, that “knowing” God is of necessity a more complex business than “knowing” another person,
We recognize degrees in our knowledge of our fellow men.
the quality and extent of our knowledge of other people depends more on them than on us.
The more conscious we are of our own inferiority, the more we shall feel that our part is simply to attend to this person respectfully and let him take the initiative in the conversation.
What, then, does the activity of knowing God involve? Holding together the various elements involved in this relationship, as we have sketched it out, we must say that knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.
The only differences are that, first, his presence with the Christian is spiritual, not bodily, and so invisible to our physical eyes; second, the Christian, building on the New Testament witness, knows from the start those truths about the deity and atoning sacrifice of Jesus which the original disciples grasped only gradually, over a period of years; and, third, that Jesus’ way of speaking to us now is not by uttering fresh words, but rather by applying to our consciences those words of his that are recorded in the Gospels,
First, knowing God is a matter of personal dealing,
Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you.
Second, knowing God is a matter of personal involvement—mind, will and feeling. It would not, indeed, be a fully personal relationship otherwise.
God does not exist for our comfort or happiness or satisfaction, or to provide us with “religious experiences,” as if these were the most interesting and important things in life.
But, for all this, we must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship, as well as an intellectual and volitional one, and could not indeed be a deep relation between persons were it not so.
Third, knowing God is a matter of grace. It is a relationship in which the initiative throughout is with God—as it must be, since God is so completely above us and we have so completely forfeited all claim on his favor by our sins.
We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us.
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.
“idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.”
The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man—that
and that he took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.
in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14);
This is the real stumbling block in Christianity. It is here that Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many of those who feel the difficulties concerning the virgin birth, the miracles, the atonement, and the resurrection have come to grief. It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the Incarnation
is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.
the phrase Son of God imply that Jesus, though in a class by himself among created beings, was not personally divine in the same sense as the Father is? In the early church the Arians held this, and in modern times Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians and others have taken the same line of thought.
John takes up this figure and proceeds to tell us seven things about the divine Word.
“In the beginning was the Word” (1:1). Here is the Word’s eternity.
“And the Word was with God” (1:1). Here is the Word’s personality.
