Letters to the Family of God

Dear Friends,

The greatness of God is greater than we can grasp. Theologians have described God as incomprehensible.

When taken to unhealthy and unwise extremes, incomprehensible means we can’t know anything about God with certainty. All our thoughts about God are as good as a guess or, at best, a hunch. A very frightening way to live.

When taken in context, it means God is infinite, and we are not. What we may know about God, He is pleased to share. As our knowledge of God depends on God and not us.

I Know This Horse

It goes without saying that people aren't horses. Horses are much easier to know than people. People can keep secrets. They do not always show everybody everything in their head and heart. So, while we can get to know horses in a few days, it might take years for a person.

Even then we may be surprised (good or bad) by what time reveals. Our knowledge of people can only be in degrees. To some extent, our knowledge of people depends on their willingness to allow us to know them.

And when we begin to know people, and they take us into their confidence, they begin to tell us what is on their minds and their concerns, and maybe even invite us into their plans, asking us to be available. At some point, we begin to understand the importance of such a great privilege. Other human beings are opening themselves up to us, allowing us to share in this knowledge of them. That is, in many ways, an illustration of what it means to know God.

That they understand and know me (Jeremiah 9:24)

Maybe, in the past, you had a little knowledge of the Bible, but it was nothing more than knowing how you could live better. You controlled the desire to know God, and, as a result, your relationship with God was on a need-to-know basis. What you needed to know from God to live better, you searched. However, when you heard God through the gospel, you found Him as He is. His first gift to you was to bring you very low.

He began to tell you of your sin, guilt, weakness, blindness, and foolishness. He made the argument that you should see yourself as hopeless and helpless. The only remedy you had was to cry to Him, in Christ’s name, for forgiveness, but He didn't stop there. You realize that as you listened, God opened up Himself to you. He was making friends with you and enlisting you as His partner, His colleague. It is a staggering thing in the Gospel that God not only makes His enemies His friends and His children, but He makes them His partners as well. Fellow workers is how Paul would describe it in 1 Corinthians 3: 9.

As you think about it, in the Gospel, God told us everything about Him we needed to know, what it meant to know Him—the intellectual, volitional, and emotional parts of the relationship. We learned from Him to rejoice when He was honored, grow in sadness when He was disobeyed, distressed when it was us, and doubly distressed when He was scorned.

At the heart of our relationship with God, it is a gain to know that yes, we know Him, but it is an indescribable wonder to be able to say that God (God!) knows us, that we are never out of His mind, He is always in our presence, that He is the God who loves me, no moment when His eye is off of me. His attention is always on me. His care for me never wavers. This is to be a solid comfort, the sort of comfort that not only brings security and energy but affection.

In the Gospels, the Pharisees were in the routine habit of putting their righteousness on display for all to see, mostly for the sake of their image and power. But they hid in their hearts what they honestly were. However, all the twisted little things about the Christian our fellow human beings do not see, and we are glad; God sees and knows, yet we can thank God that although He knows, He sees Christ in us. So that in Him, you are filled with God through your union with Christ. (Colossians 2:10) Filled with God, it takes the breath away.