Are you ready for some good news?
You can know God because God wants to be known by you! You can be assured and confident because God knows you.
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” (Galatians 4:8–9, ESV)
As I continue to study Galatians this week, I've paused to consider Paul’s words: “… now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God….”
It’s a mind-bending thought: God wants you to know Him.
There is no way to know someone unless he or she wants to be known. I’ll never know the President or the Queen of England or even a stranger on the street unless that person invites me into personal knowledge of him/her. To gain personal knowledge, to really know someone, requires the other to open access to his/her heart.
It is a remarkable thought that human beings are invited to know the Creator of the cosmos. There is, however, a parallel piece of good news. Because God knows you, you can be assured that He won’t reject you or turn away from you upon discovery of some disappointing aspect of your character.
JI Packer put it poignantly:
“What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it-the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort…in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion God.” Packer, J. I. (2011-09-26). Knowing God (p. 45). Intervarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
God invites you to know Him. God assures you that you are safe with Him because He already knows you. And that’s the Gospel!
