“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)

© Brian Labosier  June 11, 2022

Popular Evangelicalism often emphasizes how everyone is either saved or lost.  Thus, we are either in a right relationship with God, or we are not.  This is a true distinction and worthy of our reflection, but knowing God involves far more than claiming promises about our eternal destiny. 

We can know about God, and then we can personally experience knowing Him.  Knowing God as a Person always begins with knowing about Him, because we can’t know someone we have never met or someone we know nothing about.  So, we need to begin with a certain knowledge about God.  But even here we can go astray.  It is possible to begin with a faulty understanding of God.  For example, many people think they are worshiping God but in fact are worshiping either popular teachings from the world around us or the products of their own imagination.  Following the wrong God—either from the popular culture or creating our own personal god—is defined in the Bible as idolatry, and it can take many forms. 

In Old Testament times, idolatry was often a major spiritual issue, and such idolatry often involved the worship of physical idols made of gold, silver, stone, or even wood.  By New Testament times, material idols had virtually disappeared—at least among the Jews.  But spiritual error was as prevalent as ever.  Idolatry had shifted from worshiping physical idols to worshiping gods of human creation.  Even today people sometimes conclude, “I like to think of God as______, —where they fill in the blank with whatever (usually heretical) view of God they want, such as a benevolent grandfather figure.  But our relationship with God always needs to be built squarely on what God tells us about Himself in His Word.  If it is not, we are fooling ourselves and buying into an imaginary product of our own creation.

Knowing the true God of the Bible always begins with God’s Word.  The Bible is God’s Self-revelation of Himself.  The amazing truth here is that God has freely chosen to reveal Himself to us.  He also tells us that His written Word is His primary inspired, authoritative, and sufficient means of giving us new life, hope, and guidance. Yet even a knowledge of the Bible isn’t enough.  Many people have read the Bible and know certain facts about God and the Bible without ever truly encountering the God of the Bible.  Yet since the Bible is the one and only infallible source for learning about God, this is always the place to begin.

God tells us that He is the One who takes the initiative in allowing people to know Him.  This is why He spends so much time in the Bible telling us about Himself, what He is doing in this world, and how He wants us to relate to Him.  But God is doing far more that giving us information.  He is introducing Himself and deliberately pursuing a relationship with us.  Jesus tells us His “sheep hear his voice, and he [the Good Shepherd] calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3).  Here is the amazing truth that the God of this universe knows His sheep personally, individually, and even by name.  The Apostle Paul tells us the same thing: true believers “have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (Galatians 4:9, italics added).  In other words, God knows us long before we could ever know Him.  Knowing God always begins with Christ pursuing people through His Spirit, calling them individually by name, and leading them out into a right relationship with Himself.

Paul explains the process of how God brings us to Himself in Romans 8:30: “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (italics added).  Let’s look at this verse more closely.  Being predestined means that our knowing God today began back in the mysterious recesses of eternity past when God elected us to become His people and thus predestined us to salvation.  Elsewhere God tells us that “he [God] chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4).  Our knowing God always begins with Him.  He is the One who takes the initiative and pursues us.

God also tells us in Romans 8:30 some of the intermediate steps in this process.  At some point during our earthly lives, God calls us.  His call involves two different realities: (1) an outward call when we hear with our physical ears someone sharing with us the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and (2) an inward call involving the working of God’s Spirit deep down inside us drawing us to Himself.  God has so orchestrated His plan of salvation that we need to receive both calls to become a child of God.  On the other hand, becoming a follower of God in name only requires only an outward call where one learns some basic information about God and the Bible.  This was true of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.  He called them “hypocrites” on multiple occasions.  They professed to know and love God, but didn’t.  Sadly, this same reality can be true of many today as well.  Those who are genuine believers are totally dependent upon God’s grace in extending to us the enabling inward call of His Spirit.

Then Paul tells us God justifies those whom He calls, to remind us He forgives the sin of all His people and declares us righteous before Him through Christ.  Elsewhere Paul warns us that by nature “no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:11).  This opposition and resistance to God needs to be dealt with before we can ever come to relate to Him.  How does He do this?  God does this through justification. Justification is an act of God that takes place when He forgives all our sins and offenses against Him, and thus, brings us into a proper restored relationship with Himself. God uses many different word pictures in Scripture to describe this work of justification: redemption, restoration, being bought with a price, and last, but not least, propitiation.  This last concept of propitiation is an important, but often neglected expression that simply means that God has turned away His wrath from us and placed it on Jesus at the cross.  This is why Jesus’ death is so important.  His death makes it possible for our sins to be forgiven and our previous hostility against God to be removed.  This act of restoration allows us to become His children and live in a right relationship with Him for all eternity.

Finally, God glorifies His people at the end of time when He wraps up and completes His transforming work in our lives.  This takes place in eternity future when God will glorify His people by making us into all that He has created us to be: people with restored and sinless human natures, inhabiting new resurrection bodies, and living in a glorious new heaven and new earth for all eternity with Him.  We are now able to look ahead even in this present life with hope and joy as we anticipate being glorified and experiencing a future eternity where we will be with Him forever. 

Although God was at work in our lives long before we were ever aware of it, His saving work directly impacts the deepest parts of our being.  God has so ordained the process of redemption that ultimately it is something He does, and yet it is also something that directly involves and impacts us with all our own human thoughts, emotions, and choices.  This is why Paul tells us in Philippians 2:12-13, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  Knowing God is always a both/and reality, involving both God’s working followed by our own accompanying human response; it is never an either/or experience.

The gift of regeneration or new birth takes place when God reaches down, deep inside, and changes something in the innermost parts of our being, enabling us to hear His call, respond to Him in faith, and receive new life.  God’s workings in the depths of our life shows itself consciously in our experience as conversion.  Thus, we respond to Him in faith and repentance and experience a new love for Him.  Knowing God always impacts the deepest parts of our human nature.  After, all, how could knowing the God of this universe not touch the deepest parts of our being with wonder and awe?  This gracious working of God in drawing us to Himself coupled with a genuine response of faith and trust in Christ is what separates true Christians from cultural or nominal Christians.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we experience knowing God as a process.  From our own limited human perspective, knowing God is an experience that has both a conscious beginning and also a going on.  This is clearly true of any human relationship we experience with another person.  Think, for example, of dating, engagement, and marriage.  Those of us who are married know that knowing another person—even a spouse—is the project of a lifetime, and that even those of us who have been married for a long time still experience at least occasional surprises as we discover new things about our spouse.  Still, there has to be a beginning when we first became acquainted with each other, and then there are the various milestones in the dating / marriage process where we gradually grow in depth and intimacy as we get to know that other person.  Before long, we deliberately commit ourselves to each other, become engaged, and finally enter into the covenant of marriage.  But the wedding ceremony is not the end of the process.  Within the covenant of marriage, our relationship with each other ideally continues to grow in depth and intimacy as we live out our commitment to our spouse for the rest of our earthly lives. 

Our experience of knowing other people at a human level prepares us for knowing God.  Knowing God is also a process.  There needs to be a beginning—at least from our limited human perspective.  At some point, we need to hear enough of the core truths of the gospel message of God’s love and grace with sufficient clarity in order to respond to Him in faith and trust (the outward call).  But even here we discover—usually in hindsight—that God was already at work in our lives as the Heavenly Bridegroom, preparing the way by wooing and drawing us into a relationship with Himself through the Spirit’s workings in our lives (the inward call).  But for us, there is always a beginning.  We are not born into a right relationship with the God who created us.  We have to cross a line and enter into that relationship.  Peter describes this miracle in 1 Peter 2:10, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

Furthermore, knowing God is an ongoing process of growing in depth and intimacy.  There is always more to discover about God and the wonder of who He is.  Regardless of where we are spiritually, we can and should continue to grow in our relationship with God for the rest of our earthly lives. This experience of knowing God is also an unending process that goes on for all eternity.  Sometimes we might wonder what God’s children will do for all eternity when we are home in glory.  At least part of the answer is that we will come to know God in an ever-deeper way, even as we continue to grow in our love and worship of Him.  Since He is an infinite Being, there will always be more to discover about God and the wonder of who He is.  Regardless of where we are spiritually, we can always grow in our love and appreciation of who He is.

We begin to experience new life the moment we are first brought into a saving relationship or union with Christ through faith.  Jesus, in His discussion with Nicodemus in John 3, described this as a new birth or being born again—or perhaps better yet, being born from above, as this expression can also be translated.  Not surprisingly, new birth produces new life.  Then we grow as we continue to walk with God, trusting Him and obeying Him in all the experiences of life.  And finally, we will enter into the fullness of this experience of knowing God at the time of our physical death, when God calls us home, or when Christ returns at the end of time and establishes His kingdom, whichever comes first. 

The biblical language of eternal life is another description of the process of knowing God where there is both a beginning and a going on.  Eternal life is both something we begin to experience now as well as something we will experience for all eternity.  Jesus gives us this definition of eternal life in John 17:3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  In other words, eternal life means knowing God. 

The Greek word for eternal literally describes the future age—referring to that time when we will be home with God forever.  But the surprising thing is that Jesus used this language of eternal life to describe a present possession of believers right now in our present lives.  For example, Jesus tells us very clearly that “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has [present tense] eternal life” (John 5:24, italics added).  We don’t have to wait until after we die to experience eternal life; it begins right now.  Eternal life is both a gift we receive initially at the time of our conversion and also a reality we continue to experience in greater and greater measure for all eternity in glory. 

This expression eternal life focuses on both the quantity and the quality of this new life.  Yes, it will last forever (quantity), but the more important truth is that it is a new kind of life where we will experience God’s glorious presence for all eternity (quality).  The amazing thing is that we begin to experience the life of the future age even while we are still living here in this present world.  It should go without saying that since this life of the ages is already the present possession and experience of all those who are united with Christ, we are to called to live a new kind of life right now.  How we live our lives today should reflect this new status of being in a right relationship with God.

Thus, there is both a beginning and an ongoing joyous experience of being in a right relationship with God that will last for all eternity.  This now and forever reality of eternal life has sometimes been described as an illustration of the already/not yet principle in Scripture.  There is both an initial experience and a growing sense of increasing reality.  We can already experience the initial joys of knowing our God and Creator right now in this present life, even though the fullness of this experience still awaits us in the life yet to come in a future new heaven and earth. 

There is one other principle we don’t want to miss.  Whatever happens to us in the life to come is directly related to what takes place in our present earthly lives. 

Pause and Reflect

(1) When we don’t give God the place He deserves in our life, we fill His place with something else.  These substitutes used to be called idols, but this language seems strangely out of place in today’s world.  Instead, many spend their lives pursuing their own pleasure or accumulating the latest gadgets or toys—as if the momentary pleasures of this life could truly meet the deepest needs of the human soul.  What would you say is the focus of your life?

(2) Romans 8:30 tells us how God works in our lives as He predestines His children, calls them, justifies them, and glorifies them.  Do you have at least a general sense of how God works in each of these areas?  Are there any surprises for you here?

(3) Where do you see yourself in this process of knowing God and growing in your relationship with Him?  How could you grow in your appreciation for God’s blessings in your life, especially His gift of new life?