Knowing God & Christ: The Essence of Eternal Life.

As human beings created in the ‘image of God’ we were made to be relational creatures. As such one of the greatest blessings in life is TO KNOW and BE KNOWN.

As the hymnist suggests, “For the joy of human love/ Brother, sister, parent, child/ Friends on earth, and friends above/ For all gentle thoughts and mild. Lord of all, to Thee we raise/ This our hymn of grateful praise.”  As wonderful as human relationships can be, they pale in comparison to the joy of knowing Christ!

It’s why Christians sing praise songs like:

“Knowing you, Jesus
Knowing you, there is no greater thing
You're my all, you're the best
You're my joy, my righteousness
And I love you, Lord!”

In John 17 as the Lord poured out his soul in prayer the Savior clearly understood that by going to the cross He was opening the gates of heaven that His people might experience personal fellowship with the Godhead.  Yes, biblical Christianity involves sound doctrine and orthodox theology but it’s also paramount that we appreciate the experiential component of our so great a salvation. 

I sometimes wonder if in all our theological studies and sentence diagramming we have forgotten this- the essence of eternal life is ‘Knowing God!’  In his classic work, Knowing God, J. I. Packer noted that there’s a world of difference between “knowing about God and truly knowing God.”