The Knowledge of God

“As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father.” ST. JOHN x. 15.

“Then shall I know even as also I am knoicn.” 1 CORINTHIANS xui. 12.

first of these two texts is from the words of JL Jesus. He is telling the people of his relation to them on one side, and to his Father on the other. He says he is like a shepherd in the charge of sheep. Between him and the owner of the sheep, who has put him in charge of them, there is the most perfect confidence, a mutual knowledge which is absolute. The second text is from one of the epistles of St. Paul. He is anticipating the completion of life. He is looking forward and saying what man will be when he comes to his completeness. And what he prophecies is just exactly what Christ declares as already present in himself. Paul says, “some day I shall know God as God knows me.” Jesus says, “As God knows me, even so do I now know God.”

Do not these two verses, taken together, give a

very striking picture of the general method of the

Christian faith? Do they not in their combination make that same impression which is made by the whole New Testament? Behold here in almost identical words are the eager hope and the calm assurance of accomplishment. Here is man reaching out for a great spiritual attainment, for the knowledge of God; and here is The Man saying, “I have attained it, I do know God.” That is the very spirit and soul of the New Testament, the hope of man already fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the possibility of man made already manifest in Jesus Christ. Among the differences which have been in the world since Christ’s religion came, is not this one of the greatest, that the best men in all their hopes and struggles have hoped and struggled in the presence of a visible success? In all times, under every faith, the men of hope and struggle have carried in their hearts a deep assurance that the thing for which they strove was possible. Under every discouragement, untouched by any skepticism or contempt of scornful friend or foe, there has lain at the bottom of the soul a conviction too deep for reason to give an account of, that this which seemed so impossible could be done. The soul could break through its selfishness, could despise danger and pain, could enter into communion with God. There could be no struggle at all buoyant and enthusiastic without such certain convictions lying at the bottom of the soul. But now what happened — one of the things which happened — at the incarnation was that this assurance, which had lain at the bottom of the human heart, came forth and was a living, manifest Being. It put on human fl< sh. It spoke with human lips. It worked with human hands. Christ was what man had felt in his soul that lie miht !><•. Christ did what man’s heart had always told him that it was in his humanity to do. The new man which the old manhood had always felt struggling within itself came forth, and men knew themselves, their true selves, for the first time manifest in Him. This was what made man’s hope thenceforth another thing. The stars at which men had guessed, knowing with what they called certainty that they were there, lo! in the Incarnation they burned out visibly. Thenceforth it was with a new and different assurance that the believer said, u I shall some day know as I am known,” when Christ had once said, “As the Father knoweth me, I do now know the Father.” I know that there may seem to borne of you to be something strange in talk like this. Have you been in the habit of thinking of Christ as of one so far away, so different from us, that what he is and does seems to throw no light on what we may be and do? But such a thought as that denies the veiy power of the Incarnation. Here stand our human lives, all dark and lustreless. Here stands one human life in which has been lighted the fire of an evident divinity. Shall we look on and see the fine lines and the fair colors of human nature brought out by the fire which burns within, and not make any glowing inference with regard to our own humanity, with r< to its unfulfilled possibilities and the attainnx which it may confidently Imp.-? Smvlv imt BO! If

He can conquer temptation, then to be conquered by temptation, however it may seem inevitable to-day, cannot be the hopeless doom of man. If he cannot merely be known of God, but know God, then we too may be above the fear of any base agnosticism and look forward to the day in which we too shall know as we are known.

Let us believe indeed that in the experience of Christ there is such revelation of the possibility, such confirmation of the hopes of our humanity! So only does his life become that beacon on the mountain-top, that bugle cry at the army’s head, which he evidently counted it to be, which it has so often been through all the Christian centuries!

One special illustration of all this is in these two texts, which I have chosen for this morning. The knowledge of God, a knowledge of Him such as He has of us, this Christ declares that he possesses. This, because of Christ’s possession of it, we dare to believe that we shall some day possess. Let us try to understand this belief more deeply, that we may make it more thoroughly our own. Let us study first Christ’s assurance about himself, and then St. Paul’s hope for all believers.

“As the Father knoweth me, even so know 1 the Father.” The words are full of that idea of mutualness which gives so much of warmth and richness to all life. Any relation which is all one-sided is unsatisfactory and dull. It is not vividly interesting. We love to think of any two objects, any two beings which have to do with one another as ministering each to each, each sending to the other something in answer to that which it receives. That fills tin- relationship with motion, and with motion come liht ami heat. The sun and the earth, the insect and the plant, the nation and the citizen, the teacher and the pupil, the parent and the child, the sound that strikes the rock and the rock which gives back reverberation to the sound, the air which, filled with light, gives to the light its substance and its swiftness, in every relationship there is this principle of reciprocity. No thing alone is thoroughly alive; all complete Hie subsists in the reaction of mutuality. To give is never perfect life; it needs the complement, the fulfilment of taking. To take is never perfect life; it needs the complement, the fulfilment of giving.

Jesus declares that this is true of knowledge, of the knowledge of himself and God. To be known and to know — these two together make the fulness of the relation of lives to one another.

“The Father knoweth me.” Those words must have summed up for Jesus a large part of the meaning and power of his life. They must have brought back to him the time when, as a child, he had felt about for the deepest connection of his newly conscious life, and behind every dearest connection with his fellow-men had become aware that the Creator of the world, the Being who was behind all other beings, knew him. He had read the assurance of that knowledge in all the sacred history of his ]>• ople. Then he had found the confirmation and witness of it in his own soul. And, once completely grasped and understood, it had become the inspiration and the strength of everything he was and did.

I am not speaking now of that which was unique and singular in Jesus. I am not thinking of the peculiar and separate relation in which he stood to his Father. I am thinking only of that which he shared with all mankind. Simply as man, he felt the knowledge of God reaching out and laying hold of him. He felt his being bosomed on the divine intelligence. “Thine eye did see my substance yet -being imperfect, and in thy book were all my members written.” So David had sung, and as we listen to his song we feel how in that knowledge which God has of him, he is finding, as it were, his naturalization into the universe. He is becoming able to count him self no stray and foreign particle. What God knows has its place, its right, within the universe of God. It feels that knowledge of God seizing it and holding it as the new planet flung into the system feels gravitation seizing it and holding it in its great, warm, tender, mighty hand. All this was real to David. How much more real it must have been to Jesus!

It would be easy, if we had time, to point out what this sense of being known of the Father brought to Jesus. It brought independence. Out of the questionings and cavillings, and hootings, and revilings of the crowd he retired into the heart of it, and was strong. 1 see him enveloped in it, as in a cloud of safety, invisible but real, while he stood in the tempest of reproach and objection in the temple. “My Father knoweth me.” I see him wrap it around him like a cloak as lie faces Pilate upon Gabbatha. It brought him unity. That comprehensive certainty of being known involved the cradle. and the cross, and all that lay between, and made one single total life out of it all. It gave him charity. God’s knowledge of him interpreted to him God’s knowledge of his brethren, and let him freely leave them to the same great knowledge. V enumerate what it gave to him. We tell these blessings of it one by one. But, after all, we know that it was more to him than our enumeration can describe. It was the element in which he lived. It was the air he breathed. It was his life.

And now what shall we say about the other side? Was there no response to this knowledge? Was it only that the Father knew the Son? Did not the Son also know the Father? There is such a one sided knowledge, a knowledge in which one is only known, and the other only knows. The wise man knows this globe on which we live. He knows the rock andriver; he knows the animal and plant; but animal and plant, river and rock do not know him. His live intelligence beats on the surface of an absolutely passive, unconscious, unresponsive world. It gets no answer back. But it is altogether different with this consciousness of Jesus. “The Father knoweth me, and I know the Father,” he declares. The very knowing that he was known by God, <>i’ which I have just now been speaking, was in itself a knowledge of God by him. That independence and unity and charity which came into his life with the certainty that he was held in the intelligence of God, they were themselves an answer to the recognized fact of the divine intelligence. But even more directly thtre was a perception of what God was. There was a recognition by the sympathy of a kindred nature of the essential character of the nature into which it found itself pressed. What shall we say? Was it not like the answer which the plant makes to the sunshine that is poured upon it? The sunshine knows the plant in radiance, and the plant knows the sunshine in grateful bloom.

Jesus was no agnostic. No dreary conviction that there might be a God, but that if there were, he were hopelessly hidden from mankind, unknowable forever — no such dreary negative conviction was possible for him. He knew the Father by the direct perception of a kindred life. Not perfectly! He himself is careful to tell us of the limitation of his knowledge. The prison of his incarnation, of his abiding in mortality enfolded him. But he knew God. He sent back adoration, trust, exuberant love in answer to the recognized care which was always pouring itself upon him. Now and then, in the calm, cool night between the hot and weary days, when he went apart upon the silent mountain-top and prayed, he went to the God whom he knew, that he might know him more clearly. But the knowledge was a continual fact. He knew the Father, as nature knows nature, by direct perception.

Surely it must forever stand as a most impressive and significant fact, a fact that no man who is trying to estimate the worth and strength of spiritual tilings can leave out of his account, that the nol»l«->t ami most peifecl spiritual l.’-iirj; whom this world seen, the U-iii- whom the woiiil with most amazinir unanimity owns for its spiritual pattern ami leader, was sure of God. I cannot get rid of the immense, the literally umneasurable meaning and value of that fact. It comes to me when God is clearest to me, bringing me new and yet more glorious assurance. It comes to me when doubt is with me, and I know my doubt is a mistake, and I sit even in the midst of doubt, joyously waiting for certainty; as the watcher for sunrise sits joyously expect in g the time when the radiance which is already shining on the summits of the hills shall pour down into his valley where it still is dark. It comes to me in sor row and in joy, in hope and fear, in ignorance and wisdom, in work and rest, the great fact, radiant with significance, that Jesus was sure of and believed in and knew God.

Nor must we let our thoughts rest solely on this large knowledge of nature by nature, which is the broadest statement of the truth. The knowledge which the Father had of the Son, and the answering knowledge which the Son had of the Father, referred also to tin; details of action as well as to the elemental facts of existence. “The Father knoweth me;” surely lhen Jesus says that, it means more than just that God was aware of his existence. That wnnl “know” mi the lips of Jesus is always a deep and pregnant word. To know any man is not merely to be sure of his existence, but to have some conception of what his existence signifies, and what it is for. For God to know Jesus was for God to have in his soul some purpose and will about the life of Jesus. The Jesus whom God knew was not a mere name, not even a mere nature. It was Jesus the Saviour of mankind, Jesus the Teacher, the Revealer of Divinity, the Pattern of Righteousness, the Victim of the Cross!

Is not this truly a great step forward? It was much for Christ that he was never for a moment unaware of God’s existence. It was much that every instant he felt God’s being under his being, as the ship feels the ocean under its great sides; but when we add to this, the definite and clear conviction that God had a purpose with regard to every deed which filled those gracious days, how much is added! Now it is not merely a flood of light poured over the whole life, but it is this same light taken up and broken into countless points of brilliance; the whole experience tremulous and palpitating at every promontory with, the consciousness of immediate communication of divinity. The miracle, the sermon, the word of sympathy, the pang of suffering — it was not merely because the Son saw that it was good and right; it was because the Father wanted it, and willed it, that it came. Here is transfiguration. Here is glory. What sense of drudgery, what monotonousness or weariness could there be in a life like that? It was no longer simply a great glassy ocean flooded with the sun. Every wave of the

ocean had caught its own little sun, and the whole was full of infinitely varied yet identical life and light.

And now to this detailed knowledge of God, which means purpose and will, to this also comes its own response. “The Father knoweth me.” That means, “God has a will for every act of mine.” AY hat then can “I know the Father,” mean, except, “In every act of mine, I do the Father’s will.” Obedience be comes the organ and utterance, nay becomes the substance and reality of knowledge on the side of him who is aware that in this more special sense God knows him. I think of Jesus on that day when he called Lazarus back from the dead to life. He travels all the way from Galilee to Bethany. At last he stands beside the tomb. His soul is full of sym pathy. He sees the tears and feels the misery of his poor friends. The dreadfulness of death oppresses him. Then he becomes aware of a will of God. God knows all that is going on there, the whole sad sor row, the bereavement, the horror. And God cannot know anything in pure passivity. He always wants something to be done about the thing he knows. Every knowledge of God involves and issues in a will. God’s will then shines on Jesus: and then be hold! He lifts his head. His face shines like tin-.’Min! The gloom is gone! He stretches out his hand! He opens his lips with the cry of life! “Lazarus, come forth!” “And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes!”

God’s will and t’hrisl’s nlM-di.-nce! Here then there is the perfect mutualness, the absolute under standing and harmony of the Father and the Son. If it were not the morning of the miracle at Bethany, but the awful morning of the cross, it would be still the same. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” There, in those words of completed obedience, the mutual knowledge of Father and Son is perfect, and being blends with being; the vail and barrier of the human flesh no longer hangs between. And so as it concerns this first division of our subject, have we not reached a picture of existence which may well enchain us with its richness and beauty. Father and Son have come close to one another. In mutual knowledge, in harmony of will and obedience they are absolutely one. Of no act that the strong gentle hands do, can we say anything but this, that Father and Son together do it, making one power, working one result. Who is it that calms the sudden tempest on the lake? It is the Father and the Son. It is God in Christ. It is Christ filled with God! Who is it that speaks the parable of the prodigal son, instinct with divine authority and wis dom, tremulous with human tenderness and sympathy? Is it not the divine Father and the human Son, making one power, that utter together those wonder ful words which have moved almost like a great personal presence down through the restless or the sluggish generations of mankind? “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” It is not two confederates taking hold of hands. It is one system of power, in which two elements perfectly blend; which is a fragment and not a whole it’ either of tin- two be lost; which heats with o.ie lite-Mood, knows hut one standard, and issues at last embodied aim pressed in one perfect unit of result. That simj (licit y and richness, wedded to each other, wo try to take into our understandings when we hear .Jesus Bay, “As the Father knoweth me even so know I the Father.”

And then comes St. Paul. Years have passed away. The life and work of Christ have become the pattern and inspiration of the world. A higher and more spiritual standard of life has been set up. St. Paul is always stating it. He states it in that passage of his Epistle to the Corinthians which is the second of oar texts. Let me give what little time remains to a few thoughts upon that passage.

“Then shall I know even as also I am known,” says Paul. I have already bidden you observe how exactly Paul’s hope is identical with Christ’s consciousness. A knowledge of God answering to knowledge of him, that is what St. Paul expects. And the correspondence between Paul and Jesus is complete. It includes both of the two kinds of knowledge which, in speaking of Jesus, I have been trying to define.

First, it includes the larger knowledge of nature by nature. “God knows me,” says St. Paul. “He knows me as the Maker knows His work, lie knows me as the Father knows the child.” That was the fundamental conviction of the great apostle. He went about his daily work enfolded by that conviction. ‘* In Him we live and move and have our be ing,” he cried to the Athenians. But that conviction for him inevitably involved another. If the Father knew the child, then it must be in the child’s power to know the Father. Ignorance he could understand. Hindrance, darkness, perversion and mistake, he saw them everywhere. But the power to know God he knew was in man. Some time certain- .ly it must come forth and be powerful. God might be unknown to many men, Athenians and others, but God was not unknowable by man, not unknowable by any man that lived.

St. Paul, like Christ, was no agnostic. In these days, when a whole school of philosophy takes upon itself not merely to disparage the poor flickering knowledge of God which man has yet attained, but to draw a sharp line, to build a high wall, beyond which the knowledge of man can never go, it is good to resort to the assured confidence of this great soul. To dwell upon how much is unknown may be often very good for us. To declare anything of God to be intrinsically and eternally unknowable by man, is unreasonable. May we not even say that it is insolent, insulting both to God and man. Here we may say, as St. Paul essentially says, as we seemed to hear Jesus say when we were listening to his words, that to know that God knows us is itself a knowledge of God, and promises what depth of future knowledge no man can begin to say.

Let us keep this distinction always in our minds, and so be always i’ull of hope. The unknown is not by any necessity the unknowable, Now there is mercy holding me, of which I hardly know more than that it is there, and that it is merciful. There is wisdom guiding me of whose ep tainly aware, but whose ways I cannot comprehend. But it shall not be always so. Now I am known perfectly, but I know in part, in the very least and weakest and dimmest way. But the time shall come when I shall know as I am known. Let me be sure of that, and with what hope I live. Nay, it is more than IK ppe. For to be sure that such a knowledge shall be mine some day, is in a true sense to know now. Such a hope for the future is a possession in the present.

The other mutualness of knowledge we saw was that which lay between a special will or purpose of God and the corresponding activity of man. That was complete in Jesus. To the completeness of that too we may look forward in ourselves.” He spake and it was done,’’ says David. That is a declaration of the oneness of God with His creation. His will is instantly echoed in its being and its action. The answer is so instantaneous and sure that the oneness between His will and His world is per feet; so perfect that often men’s eyes have not been able to distinguish one from the other, and have said the world was God. Is not that a magnificent picture of the oneness which we would have between God’s will and our action? No force of nature ever fails in its response. The seasons in their coming and their going, the sun in its rising and its’ setting, the tempests and lightnings, fire and hail, snow and vapors, wind and storm fulfilling his word, all of these are absolute; they never vary; the glory of science is in finding out how invariable they are. They are of lower order. They are of easier submission. Their obedience then is just a type and picture, just an image and a prophecy, of what shall come to pass when in our higher world, our world of free thought and free action, we too shall become as obedient to God as are wind, fire, lightning and sunshine in their lower world.

Oh how one longs for it sometimes! With per feet freedom, not turned into machines, still keeping all the glory of our liberty, to answer perfectly to eveiy will of God with absolute obedience. To do the right because it is His will, and to do His will because it is right always. We know that there alone is peace and power. Such a standard cuts right across our ordinary standards. The feeblest life, perfectly harmonized thus with God’s, outshines the mightiest life in which that harmony fails.

Is it not evident that the great hope which St. Paul holds up before us all, and which our hearts recognize and claim, must include this or it is not sufficient. Simply to know God, though the knowledge were complete, simply to know God if it were possible without obedience, would be a barren privilege. 0 how we separate our knowing and our obeying powers, our mental and our moral natures, as if they could be separated, as if either of them could live without the other! No, the promise that we shall know includes the promise that we shall obey! So it attains its fullest richness.

Yhen we say that, eternity springs into life and lives. No longer a bare doctrine, no longer a great arid fact, that we shall live forever, but a great, actual reality! Hark, through the atmosphere of that be lief can you not hear the music of the activity which fills the streets of the New Jerusalem? I hear the feet hurrying over the glassy pavements, the voices calling to each other in the joy of service, the ringing of the hammers on the anvils where in the fire of the love of God eht perfect obedience of His redeemed is forging his perfect will into the instruments of per feet deeds.

Have I wasted your Sunday morning with abstract truths, and far-away visions of the future? It would be waste indeed if abstract truth must not always lie at the heart of concrete action, and if the visions of the future, thoroughly believed, were not the realities of the present What Christ was we shall be some day, and because we shall be it some day, we may begin to be it now. What is the meaning and result of all that I have said to you this morning? O my friends, it is this! You need not live alone, for you may, if you will, know and obey God. You and God, you and God, one system of power knit together in mutual knowledge, and in common standards! That is what Christ claimed you for. Give yourself to Him, and you shall come to that. Behold Him! Hear II mil Come by Him to the Father, and then live! 0 Christ, draw us, thy Father’s children, to our Father now!