We live in such an age of information. I was moving my office last week, and packed up just a few of the medical tomes that have followed me wherever I’ve lived for the past years… thousands of pages, each page filled with accumulated information and specific knowledge.
Though I’ve benefited greatly from education, I think I’m probably not alone in having grown up in a Christian culture which doesn’t value knowledge much. “Book learning” is looked at with a skeptical eye. Seminary, I was warned, is often better called “Cemetery.” Knowledge is cold stuff, making the head big and the heart small.
This is in the Bible, I’ve been told, and 1 Corinthians 8:1 quoted: “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”
So… why a post on knowledge in a site dedicated to grace?
Because as I’ve grown in my Christian walk, I’ve come to see true knowledge as the single greatest gift, the very ground of the grace in which I stand.
How can this be? Because knowledge, true knowledge, is a gift of God. And true knowledge of Christ is the center of my life. All the true knowledge of Christ I have is from God, from His Word. All the experience of Christ, of His love, understood in light of this knowledge.
It’s not hidden knowledge, special knowledge, in the sense of Gnosticism. But it is fantastically special, and hidden in the sense of being thought foolishness by those who don’t know Jesus. I pursue it with all my heart, mind, soul and strength.
Consider a brief survey:
“For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Knowledge leads us to consider what Jesus did for us.
“We know that a person is not justified by works of the law” (Galatians 2:16). Is this not a marvelous truth that we have to know to be saved?
“I count everything loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Everything loss, for the sake of knowledge.
“We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true” (1 John 5:20). Jesus himself gives knowledge.
We are told that the Holy Spirit is primarily a teacher, a passer on of knowledge. We are prayed for by Paul (Ephesians 1, 3), to understand (know) God’s working on and for us, and to know the love of Christ. We are urged to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18).
Every single one of these passages… involves knowledge.
Well, the argument goes, it needs to drop the 18 inches from your head to your heart. Because if it is in your head, it puffs up.
Well… maybe. But don’t use 1 Corinthians 8:1 for that thought. There, the thought is that the knowledge of food offered to idols is puffing up; the context is that those folks thought that they knew what God required… and they didn’t. What puffed them up was false knowledge.
You could say that false knowledge puffs up.
True knowledge, knowledge of Christ, is different. That knowledge pushes us to respond in love, because of the grace that Christ has poured out on us. That knowledge “fills us to the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).
So… the greatest grace I’ve experienced is knowledge. Knowledge with a particular object: Christ. Knowledge of who He is. Knowledge of what He’s done. Knowledge that knocks my socks off, that changes who I am, that alters my perception of reality. Knowledge that is so huge, that God himself, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is the one who must impart it to me.
May this knowledge strengthen us, grow us, cause us to change… as all things pertaining to life and godliness are “through the knowledge of Him” (2 Peter 1:3).
Happy studying, and much grace be yours… in the knowledge of Christ!