Knowledge and Love

Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.
1 Cor. 8: 1b-3

This is a verse that God has just recently put on my heart for me to meditate on. I think it speaks to me because in my life I have so often relied upon what-I-know to give me a sense of security and belonging, even to give me a sense of identity and (I confess) superiority. God has been dealing with me in this area, and has shown me that I am not what I know. Although my flesh tempts me to be arrogant, to think that what-I-know can place me above another person, God’s Spirit at work in my heart has been unveiling the total bankruptcy of that way of thinking and living. He has uncovered for me the ugliness of my own pride in fleshly knowledge.

In such a process, I’m tempted to reject myself completely, yet He does not do this without love and gentleness as I might do. For the self-rejecting impulse of my flesh is no less perilous than that of knowledge and pride. No, instead, He invites me into a deeper experience of life with Himself as my core identity. I believe that this is what it means for me to be known by Him. As He reveals how He chooses to know me, He unveils the mystery of His acceptance of me through the cross of Jesus.

In this knowing I am deeply blessed by what He tells me is true of myself. No matter how much I have tried in the past through introspection to know myself, to analyze and try to fix my flesh, it has not worked. Instead He has known me from the beginning, and in knowing me, He has made me whole by the power of his love. To know even as I am fully known (1 Cor 13:12), this is to be loved and accepted completely by Him. In the light of this love and knowledge, my intellectual accomplishments, my mental gymnastics, are irrelevant. This is what it means to stand before him Holy and Blameless, in Love (Eph. 1:4). He knows me and accepts me in a way that I have never been able to accept myself, and He has done all this through the power of His Cross and His Life in me that makes me acceptable to Him. Perhaps this is the beginning of knowing as I ought to know. In it I am built up by His love. I praise Him for His goodness to me.

“People don’t want to know how much you know, until they know how much you care.” I believe that there is a Spirit of Love at work in everything that God does. This means that His love is central in what He is choosing to do through you and me. I hear God’s call to my heart: "I want you, Charles. My desire for you is intimacy with Me." To know even as I am fully known. To let down the barriers of self-protection that the mind puts up, and be open to His love. This, perhaps, is the beginning of wisdom.