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Know God and Live Forever
Rosco Brong, D.D.
Life and Knowledge Begun Here Will Grow and Be Perfected Hereafter
"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (II Pet. 3:18).
Everlasting life will last forever. It will last forever because of its quality, not is quantity. It is life of such quality that it knows and desires to know God, and if it knows God at all it must know Him more and more. The quality of eternal life appears in the knowledge of God; its quantity is the measure of this knowledge.
THE QUESTION
It is possible, therefore, to know whether or not you have eternal life. The question is, Do you know God? If you know God, you have eternal life. Jesus said so. But you can know Him only in Christ. Jesus said this, too: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by [through] me" (John 14:6).
The question is not whether or how much you know about God. Do you know Him?
You may know all that theologians say about God; you may even know all that the Bible says about God; you may have read and even memorized the whole Bible from the first verse of Genesis to the last of Revelation. But---do you personally know the God of the Bible?
IN REGENERATION
First of all, do you know God in the experience of the new birth? Jesus rebuked Nicodemus, "a master of Israel," for not knowing these things (John 3:3-10).
Jeremiah had described this work of God among His people under the new covenant as follows: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jer. 31:33-34).
SPIRITUAL IGNORANCE
Only the fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." But it is one thing to have enough natural intelligence to know that there is a God and another thing to have a spiritual mind to know God. "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge?" (Ps. 14:1-4).
However much of natural knowledge lost souls may learn, they are still in spiritual ignorance if they do not know spiritually the true and living God. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30).
Not all who claim to know God really do. Of some we read: "They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate" (Titus 1:16).
Only when we believe the testimony of Jesus Christ and come to Him personally in the new birth do we get to know Him and thus have eternal life. Then we can say in a spiritual sense what some Samaritan believers said to the woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well: "Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world" (John 4:42).
AS KEEPER
If you really know God in the new birth as your Saviour, do you know Him as your Keeper? (Ps. 121:5).
How Satan must dance with glee when he succeeds in getting regenerate souls to doubt the keeping grace of our Lord! How little do we know our God if we can imagine that He would start a salvation which He cannot finish, or that He could fail to keep His word!
Are we really trusting Christ to save us if we cannot trust Him to keep us? What kind of "salvation" is it that is here today and gone tomorrow? If we cannot believe Jesus’ word that as true believers we have eternal life, shall not come into condemnation, and shall never perish (John 5:24; 10:28; etc.), how can we believe anything He says? Paul happily expressed the confidence of the true believer who knows not only the saying but also the keeping power of God: "I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (II Tim. 1:12).
TEACHER AND GUIDE
"If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you" (John 14:15-17).
Do you know God the Holy Spirit as your personal Teacher and Guide? To true believers John wrote: "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. . . .The anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him" (I John 2:20-27).
Do you know Him as Guide? Does He lead you? "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. 8:14).
A FAITHFUL FATHER
Do you know Him as your heavenly Father Who loves you too much to allow you to go on in sin? "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? but if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons" (Heb. 12:6-8).
Those miserable souls who imagine that Christians can continue in sin with impunity need to get acquainted with the God of the Bible. Whatever your pretensions, the Bible says plainly that if you are without chastisement you are no child of God. How well do you know Him as the loving Father Who visits your transgression with the rod, and your iniquity with stripes? (Ps. 89:32).
IN RESURRECTION POWER
Finally, do you know Him in something of that mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead? (Eph. 1:17-20; Rom. 6:1-11; 8:11).
Little or much as we may know God now, our present knowledge is partial at best: "We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. . . .Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (I Cor. 13:9-12).
If you know God in the new birth, if you know Him as the good Shepherd Who keeps His sheep so that not one of them will be lost, if you know Him as your Comforter, Teacher, and Guide in the person of the Holy Spirit, if you know Him as your heavenly Father and have felt His rod when you turned your back upon Him---then let us join in the inspired words of the prophet: "Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten; and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth" (Hosea 6:1-3).
Because in some measure he knew "the only true God" Paul could write (and if we know the same God we can echo his words as our own): "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead" (Phil. 3:7-11).
