Summary
Known by God
There is a difference between knowing of someone and truly knowing them. To know a person at depth is to know what makes them tick—their thoughts, their fears, their longings. Scripture insists that this is precisely the kind of knowing God has of us, and the kind of knowing He invites us into with Him through Jesus Christ.
The disciple Philip is a useful window into this truth. The Synoptic Gospels barely mention him, but John gives us a portrait. In John 1:43 Jesus finds Philip and calls him to follow. Philip immediately runs to Nathanael and announces, "We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote" John 1:45—as though Philip were the discoverer. But it was Jesus who found him. That is always the order of grace.
The portrait fills out from there. At the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus turns to Philip and asks where bread can be bought, testing him John 6:5–7. Philip, who had already seen water turned to wine at Cana, retreats to arithmetic: six months' wages would not be enough. In John 12:20–22, when Greeks ask to see Jesus, Philip is unsure and runs the request through Andrew. He is cautious, careful, prone to keeping God inside the box of what he believes possible.
That tendency reaches its peak in the upper room. After Jesus declares, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" John 14:6, and tells the disciples that to know Him is to know the Father, Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied" John 14:8. Philip is asking for a theophany—a visible manifestation of God like the garden in Genesis 3 or Moses in the cleft of the rock in Exodus 33. Jesus answers with a question that pierces: "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" John 14:9. The Father is not hidden behind Jesus; the Father is revealed in Him. Jesus is God in the flesh, and to see Him is to see the Father John 14:10–11.
Notice what runs underneath this whole account: Jesus knew Philip. He knew his doubts, his timidity, his bean-counting calculations, his sin. He chose him anyway, called him by name, and bore with him patiently. The same is true of us. He knows our pride, our tendency to know of Him rather than know Him, our habit of confessing one thing and living another, our small boxes that try to limit His power. Psalm 139 confesses this without flinching: "O LORD, you have searched me and known me." He discerns our thoughts from far away; even at the farthest limits of the sea, His hand leads us and holds us fast.
There is no need to fear being so thoroughly known. The One who sees everything is the One who went to the cross for everything He sees—bearing all our thoughts, words, and deeds, and all we have left undone, in His own body. He died and rose for us, and then He splashed us in the waters of Baptism, claiming us as His own. Baptism is the last judgment in miniature: God's own decision spoken over us, "I know you. You are my child. And I will know you for all of eternity." That is what it means, in the end, to be Known by God—loved and known, known and loved, in Jesus Christ.
Video citations
- "Known by God" 11-19-23 — Would you open your Bible's please with me to the 14th chapter of the gospel of John, if you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that on page 95 in the New Testament, the…