“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”
in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord
Blessings at the beginning of epistles are not mere formalities. We discover blessings in personal knowledge of God.
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).
The word for “knowledge” implies an active relationship with God. We do not know God from hearsay. We know Him personally for ourselves. Knowing Him personally, influences the direction of our lives.
This knowledge edifies us as we participate in it (Romans 15:14; 1 Corinthians 14:6). Knowledge of this sort transcends the theoretical and goes hand in hand with relationship (Philippians 3:10). When we come to grips with the person of Christ we renounce confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:4), confess Christ as Lord (Philippians 3:8) and constantly renew our relationship with him (Philippians 3:12). We experience the power of His resurrection (Philippians 3:10).
“That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Colossians 1:10-12).
The Colossians passage implies more than knowledge about God. The idea is to experience knowledge of God. That is, we should increase in the experience of knowing God.
The word “knowledge” in this verse is an intense word. It means to know thoroughly. We must know God with discernment and full knowledge.
Knowledge of God is not obscure. We cannot grow in knowledge of God (2 Peter 3:18) with a closed Bible. Rather we increase in the knowledge of God as we increase in the knowledge of God’s Word. The more we know the Bible, the more we know God. We cannot know how to live the Christian life without the Bible.
Principle:
Extensive, personal knowledge of God is the highest ideal of the Christian life.
Application:
Do you know God as a person or is He just a lot of information?
Knowledge of God is the greatest virtue of Christianity. No experience, even a spiritual experience, will validate our relationship with God. Truth validates experience, not the other way around. Thus only the Bible can validate experience. We are incapable of loving Christ without some knowledge of Christ. We cannot love Christ without truth. Experience can only confirm truth; it does not make truth.
Some people have wide emotional swings. They can go to a movie and cry the moment the good guy gets the girl at the end. This is an ecstatic experience for them. Some people can get an ecstatic experience from a bottle. There are many ways to produce an ecstatic experience if you are easily triggered by emotion. Often, these people are far from true Christian living because they lack the self discipline to get into the Word. They operate on wide emotional swings. They think that they can agonize in the closet and be spiritual. Many people operate by strictly psychologically induced experience. But emotional variations have little to do with true Christian living.
“For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day” (2 Timothy 1:12).
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