What is the key to truly knowing God?

Here we have an answer divinely simple, divinely sure. Jesus reveals God to the soul — reveals the Father to the heart. Precious fact! We are not sent to creation, to learn who God is — though we see His power, wisdom and goodness there. We are not sent to the Law — though we see His justice there. We are not sent to providence — though we see the profound mysteries of His government there. No; if we want to know who and what God is, we are to look in the face of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who dwelt in His bosom before the worlds, who was His eternal delight, the object of His affections, the centre of His counsels. He it is who reveals God to the soul. We cannot have the slightest idea of what God is apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. "In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead [Theotes] bodily." "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ."

Christ is the Revealer of God. Before His incarnation clouds and darkness more or less hid the Creator from the ken of His creatures. Christ's coming into the world has made known all that God is. His love, His grace, His holiness, His righteousness, have all been expressed perfectly in Jesus Christ. He who would know God need not study nature or providence for this purpose (these at best only declare parts of His ways); Christ and Christ alone is the manifestation of God to man. We recall His own words: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father, but by Me" (John 10:6).

In order that we might truly and really know God and the Father, there was a twofold kind of revelation necessary — not only one kind, but two kinds. That is to say, we needed a revelation of God, as really as we needed a revelation from God. We need both. A revelation from God we have in all its precious blessedness in the written word, which we call the scriptures; but the revelation of God we have in the incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore it is that no one can really know God or the Father except in the Son. To be without the Son is to be without the Father. (See 1 John 2:23.) And that is a very solemn reflection for our hearts, an immense thing in a certain way, because it meets at once all the ideas in the minds of men, who would speak of the knowledge of God or the understanding of God, without Christ.

All this is unspeakably precious. Jesus has revealed God to our souls. We could know absolutely nothing of God if the Son had not come and spoken to us. But — thanks and praise to our God! — we can say with all possible certainty, "We know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true: and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."

Now God has been manifested here on earth and this is specially set before us in John's writings, hence the frequent occurrence of the word "truth" there. That revelation has reached us in the Lord Jesus Christ who could say, "I am the truth" inasmuch as He could also say, "He that has seen Me has seen the Father." He it is who makes God real to us and perfectly expresses all that He is, and hence we have in the knowledge of Christ the key that unlocks all reality everywhere.

But God was not, and could not be, fully known until the only-begotten Son which is in His bosom came forth to reveal Him, then, and not till then, was God manifested in flesh. Then, and not till then, did any, either men or angels, behold Him fully revealed. In the Old Testament Scriptures His power and wisdom and the glory of His many attributes were disclosed, but in Jesus His nature is revealed, so that if we would know God, in the fulness of His nature and the blessedness of His love, we must read the New Testament Scriptures. David longed for a complete and all satisfying revelation of God to his soul, and in the Psalms he cried, “O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me... then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy” (Ps. 43:3). God has answered the deep longing for the light and the truth that was ever in the souls of His saints in that old dispensation, and in the New Testament days, the fulness of the times, He “sent forth His Son, made of a woman,” and He is THE LIGHT and He is THE TRUTH. As we read the Gospels we see the light and hear the truth. Behold the Lord healing the lepers and blessing the children, moved with compassion for the widow in her sorrow and raising her dead son to remove that sorrow, stilling the storm to relieve His disciples of their fear, and feeding the multitude lest they fainted on their homeward way, weeping with bereaved and faithful Mary, and yearning with tears over unfaithful and rebellious Jerusalem. Hear Him saying to an outcast sinner, “Thy sins are forgiven,” and to another, “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” See Him stretching out His hands to weary and sin-sick men, and saying to them, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Behold His acts of kindness and listen to His words of grace, and in beholding and hearing Him, you will behold and hear the Father. How attractive God has become in Jesus: we see God in Christ, not imputing our transgressions to us, we draw near to Him with confidence, we feel that He is all we need, a Saviour God and the all-sufficient object of our otherwise empty, unsatisfied hearts. But we were not there to see and hear these things. We are dependent on a record of them, and that record we have in the Bible. It gives us the divinely inspired account of all that Jesus said and did that are necessary for our faith and salvation.

The apostle here says, "We declare to you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made to the fathers, God has fulfilled the same to us their children, in that he has raised up Jesus." Here is one who is to fulfil all God's will. God brings Himself before the eyes of men in this Person. If we do not believe in Christ as the revelation of God we must remain in our natural darkness, we can never know Him. There is no other light. Jesus is the true light. God has found a way of bringing Himself before our eyes. And all this light is that our souls may be saved. Jesus is set to be a light of the Gentiles, that He may be for salvation to the ends of the earth. Salvation is found in the knowledge of God; it cannot be known otherwise. It is not found in darkness and unbelief. And if God is to be known He must declare Himself; this He has done in Christ. There is no wisdom in man that can reach up to God. What human mind could pry into the secret of God? Who could approach into His presence? No creature. Hence if man is to know God, God must first declare Himself. If man is to approach to God, God must first draw near to man. This He has done in Christ. And He has drawn near to a rebellious race in kindness and love.

When "the Word became flesh" and dwelt among men, He revealed the great secret as to how God was to be known when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and has revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight" (Matt. 11:25-26). These words from the lips of the Lord Himself, declare that the knowledge of God cannot be gained by laborious and brain-wearying investigation, no matter how sincere the labour may be, but only by revelation; they strike at the root of the pride of the human intellect and prick the bubble of those who "vainly puffed up in their fleshly minds" reject the revelation and think to find out God by their own searching; they shut out the reasonings and imaginations of the self-confident mind, which always, alas, since man is fallen, and "alienated in his mind by wicked works" exalts itself against the true knowledge of God (Col. 2:18; 1:21; 2 Cor. 10:5). And they show that there are two sides to the fact of revelation. There is activity on God's part and receptivity on ours. God is revealed, and the babes receive the revelation; the light shines and there are eyes that admit it; the truth is declared, but it is also believed; God must speak and men must hear, for faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." And we are as dependent upon God for the babe-nature and the opened eyes and the believing heart, and the listening ears, as we are for the revelation that these perceive, appreciate and appropriate.

In Old Testament times there were certain limited revelations of God's attributes and ways. The heavens declared the glory of His power, and the firmament showed His handiwork. The law given at Sinai announced the uprightness of His kingdom and the justice of His throne. He showed Himself often in His providential care for men and as the covenant-keeping God; and proclaimed His name, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." But these partial revelations, rays from the eternal splendour, only served to make those who received them cry out for a fuller, a complete knowledge of His heart and nature, as when Moses said, "Show me Thy glory" (Ex. 33) and David pleaded, "O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me, let them bring me to Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacles" (Ps. 43). Those soul longings have been answered in a manner that neither Moses nor David could have conceived; the glory has appeared and the light and the truth have come in the Son of God, for "God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last times spoken to us by His Son (lit, in Son) … Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person" (Heb. 1:3). "No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (John 1:18). And the Son in whom God has spoken and who has declared what God is in His very nature and has glorified Him on the earth, said. "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), and "I am the truth" (John 14:6).

To state that the salvation of God is worthy of its supreme author expresses all that can be said of it, in height, depth, and breadth, to the soul which already knows Him. But to souls which, to their shame, "have not the knowledge of God," it is manifest the above statement can convey little if any real meaning. Indeed, it is in this great salvation that God has been pleased to reveal Himself. Objectively, we perceive this in Simeon's adoring utterance (Luke 2), when he saw God's salvation in the blessed babe by whom God was to be - yea, was - declared. The two things go together; the salvation of God, and the revelation of God. And this is also true subjectively, so that the saved soul knows God; as we read, "Every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God." (1 John 4:7.) And again, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17 3.)

"Through the knowledge [lit., full knowledge] of God" — not a smattering. We ought to be growing in it. We know God and are known of Him. But of the Son it is said, "No one knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any one the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." The Father reveals the Son. People talk of God's love, but they don't know it till they see it in the cross. You must "see and believe"; believe God's love, and know Christ's work.