How can I know God?

G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: How can I know God?

After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus appeared to his disciples. In John chapter 20 we read of one disciple who was a little late to the party; his fellow disciples say to Thomas – “we have seen the Lord” but Thomas says, “Unless I see in his hands the marks of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe…” (John 20:25)

Can you relate to doubting Thomas? I know I can, I mean, resurrections are not common – I would want evidence of some kind. And certainly, sitting here in our cynical age of Fake Facebook News, we are all the more sceptical, doubting even our doubts, so that, for an increasing many, even Thomas is too trusting because seeing isn’t believing, because believing can’t be believed!

If you’re confused, then my rhetoric worked – we are living in confusing times…

So… with that preface – ‘How can I know God?’

I don’t know if I’ve just talked myself out of an answer here, but let’s have a go.

Let me start by saying this: taken by itself, Christianity is not a philosophy, it’s not an ethic, and it’s certainly not an empirically verifiable scientific experiment… Taken by itself, Christianity is a revelation… Now, what we do with that revelation, in terms of our philosophising, moralising, and science, is important – but before it is put through those paces, Christianity is, above all, a revelation concerning human salvation through Jesus – the promised Jewish Messiah.

So, in a sense, the Christian answer to the question ‘How can I know God’ is by what God chooses to reveal! But that raises a second point, namely you need to be able to relate that revelation for what it is.

So there’s two things here: Revelation and Relation. Let’s look at them in turn.

First, Revelation.

We know God by what he has chosen to reveal – this is evident in the nature of revelation itself, but also in bible verses such as Deuteronomy 29:29 “the secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons and daughters that we may observe them forever.”

So what has God chosen to reveal? I’m glad you asked 😉

When it comes to revelation, Christian theologians have made a helpful distinction between what they call ‘general revelation’ and ‘special revelation’.

General Revelation refers to general truths that we can know about God through nature and, more specifically human nature. For example, in Romans 1 we read “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” So according to this passage, something about God’s existence and power can be known by observing the world around us; God can be sensed, in some way, through the things of this world… And on a moment’s reflection, I think we can all relate to this notion. The beauty of a sunset… the ingenuity of humanity… the heroism of sacrifice… the precious innocence of a newborn baby.

But General Revelation isn’t limited to the world around us, it also includes the world within, as we ‘take in’ what we sense in the world around us. For example, Romans 2 says that the law of God is written on every human heart, and our conscience bears witness to it. In other words, all of us, in virtue of being human, has an inner sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – I’m not talking about, you know, conventions like ‘in Australia it is right to drive on the left and in the US it is right to drive on the right…’ I’m talking about objective moral values and duties like ‘it is wrong to murder’ and ‘you should care for your fellow man…’ The Bible says this inner conscience, this, too, is an example of General Revelation.

And over the ages, Theologians and Philosophers have formulated various arguments from General Revelation to help us see how we can know God. There is a vast array of arguments, such as:

• Argument from the Cosmos (which considers why there is something rather than nothing)
• Argument from Design (which considers things like the intelligence, purpose and seeming agency in the intricacies of creation, as well as other things, like the fine tunings of nature’s laws and constants)
• We’ve got the Moral Argument, which considers things like the objective nature of good, and conversely evil)
• The Argument from beauty, desire, on and on we could go.

Now, while General Revelation provokes questions and occasions arguments that press beyond the physical world, they don’t, in themselves, tell us much more about what or who stands beyond. And that’s where Special Revelation comes in.

Where General Revelation refers to general truths that we can know about God through nature and human nature, Special Revelation refers to the ways God has specifically chosen to reveal himself in nature. For example, in Hebrews 1 we read “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” So God speaks in times past through the fathers, through the law, through the prophets, but now he speaks chiefly to you and I through His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s why Jesus Himself says to Philip, ‘If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father’. Or elsewhere we read ‘in Him [Jesus] dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form.’ Jesus is the revelation of God.

So what is vaguely sensed about God by General Revelation is made explicit in Special Revelation, namely – the incarnation of God, Jesus, the Christ. So it’s really here, in Special Revelation, that Christianity breaks away as its’ own belief or worldview, in the way Special Revelation compliments what we know about God from General Revelation.

Let me give you a quick example. In Acts 10 we read about a man named Cornelius who knew about God and was, quote, “[a] devout and God-fearing [man]; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly” (Acts 10:2). Now, plenty of people today would say they are God-fearing, and they pray to God regularly – in fact, the majority of the world admits as much. But the question is: who or what is the God they fear and pray to? You see, General Revelation is like a universal declaration of God’s existence, so it tells us something but not everything… We must ask ‘who is this God’?

Well, back in Acts 10, we continue to read how the Apostle Peter is invited over to Cornelius’ house, and Peter tells him and his family all about Jesus… and the text says, they became Christians.

Today, Faith in the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation. “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Rom 10:14).

And this is where we really get to the second part of the question – in receiving the revelation.

Second, Relation

‘How can I know God?’ The Christian worldview says, in effect, it is not enough to know ‘about God’, we must take another step – a step of faith – which transfers that knowledge about God to personal knowledge of God.

Let me put it this way. When I married my wife, and I shared my vows and committed the rest of my life to her, that move on my part was a step of faith… It wasn’t a blind step, I had years of good reasons for taking that step of faith, but it was a step nonetheless… you know, it wasn’t enough for me to know ABOUT marrying her, I had to actually MARRY her – I had to move, I had to step in a well-informed decision of faith.

Ultimately, that is where the answer to this question – ‘How can I know God’ – bottoms out… in what we do what what’s revealed to us… Do we accept the light that has come into the world, or do we reject it?

Well, why would people reject Jesus? Jesus himself tells us… John 7 – the world hates Jesus because He testifies that its works are evil… In other words, people reject Jesus because he preaches a message that requires us to reject our own self-sufficiency… and that can be very hard to do… the good mews that Jesus came into the world to save sinners only makes sense when we understand the bad news that human beings are sinners who need saving. If we cannot see our need of salvation, why would we receive a Saviour?

You see? Revelation and Relation…

God is not simply the deduction to a formal argument or a ‘best explanation’ for what we don’t understand… God is a Personal Being who invites us to know Him – PERSONALLY… relationally. And that’s where faith comes in… Again, not blind – the Bible itself calls us to test the truth and veracity of such claims – but when we do… when we ask those questions ABOUT God we, in the final analysis, are left with a decision: to step by faith into a relationship with God, or to leave the altar of our wonder and walk away.

‘How can I know God’? If this is your question today, I want you to know that how you answer will be the greatest decision of your life.

For me, the answer is simple. All that I know of God depends on His initiative in knowing me through Jesus, and his ongoing sustaining in initiative in getting to know me more and more every single day… as Father… as brother… as helper… as Shepherd… as friend… someone I walk with and talk with through scripture, prayer and meditation.

Seek Him and you will find Him…

John 20:29 “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jeremiah 9:23-24 “Let the one who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me”

1 Corinthians 8:3 “if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”