Is knowability a word?  From the red underline in my spellchecker it’s saying it’s not, but oh well, it’s a word today.  I’ll add that to the list of things for me to work on… loving God well, pursuing joy in God, serving others better, and …. spelling/making up words as I go along.

Ok, over the weekend I was looking up at God’s creation, and the vastness of it all, I realized that just as we only know a glimmer of creation, we only know a glimmer of who God is.  As we pursue to know the Lord, to grow into His likeness we all are confronted by how much there is to know.  How can finite man, reach into the infinite?  The reality is that we will never know everything there is to know about God.  Moreover if you grasp even a glimmer of God’s infinitude, then you will know that what we can know of God is incredibly little compared to what there is to know.  Kind of like a child can’t understand the vastness of the ocean from being in a kiddie pool.  So what does that mean?  Is that good news or bad news?

I want to touch on those in reverse order, so first is this good or bad news?  I hope for you it is good news.  We are promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34 – “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Moreover, 1 Corinthians 13:12 tells us “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

This is good news of the gospel, we will know God fully when we see him face to face.  Everything required to reconcile us to God to enable that to happen was purchased by God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, on the cross.

So if we can only know a very small amount about God, what is the point?  God has given us more than enough to live, to manifest Him in a world that is darkened by sin.  This is the point, the glory of God magnified in us, whom God has shown mercy on through His son. This point I believe is given in 2 Corinthians 4:6-11 – “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair’ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.  For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

For those like me who take great joy in knowing more and more about God, the question I have to ask myself is this – “How has my life manifested what I DO know of God, in the person of Jesus Christ?”  Are there things about the character of God that I do know that I am not living out?  God is glorified not merely in knowing, but in our doing and becoming more like His Son.  I have yet to meet someone who has read through the Bible and said “yeah I got all that, I figured that whole sin business out / don’t do that anymore, and I need something else”.  If you do meet that person, run, ha ha.

I hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend, and today is a profitable day of introspection and prayer with the Lord.  May God bless and keep you.

Grace and Peace,
Adam