Do you know Him?

God.

Is this even possible? John knows people in the church who claim they do but he thinks they are lying!

It isn’t because it is impossible to know God because we can. But how?

“We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.” (1 John 2 v 3-4)

You can know a person and then you can really know someone. What’s the difference?

We already have read how John’s desire for the Church is that they encounter and experience Jesus Christ. John’s understanding of knowledge of God is also an experiential one. “We know we have come to know him …” This is ‘we are experiencing a knowing of him today because yesterday we came to know him.’ We are living out our knowing and that is proof we know.

How? By obedience to his commands. We automatically think of at least the 10 commandments. But John is thinking in his letter of something different. “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.” (1 John 3:23) Two commands. Not that we are perfect in either for we fail in the latter no doubt. But we will be known by being a person who focuses their life on believing in Jesus and loving other people.

That is how we know Him. We have experienced Jesus and we are living that experience out by how we live with others.