Yes, I deliberately begin with this consideration that there is something extremely distinctive of knowing we are loved by a father, and I do this because the satisfaction of our Father-love need is so overflowingly provided to us by the living God that facing our need and the invitation at the same time is the best thing we could ever do.
I will go so far as to say that our satisfaction in the love of God is able to reach such a point of saturation that we then become the vessels through which our heavenly Father continues to pour his love out into the lives of broken and hurting and sinful people all around us. No matter how distant such an experience may seem to be, it is still what is offered to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
This present journey through these vibrant truths began when I noticed a phrase in Father’s word that stood out like a glaring neon sign on a dark highway.[1]
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. (I John 4)
How is “love perfected with us”?
It is all about, “we know that we abide in him and he in us”.[2] The reason so many church-folk do NOT have Father’s love maturing to perfection is that they do not know the abiding relationship with Jesus Christ that flows from his words.
This is what we need, the abiding relationship with God that gives us full satisfaction that we are his and he is ours.[3] We NEED this. The letter we call I John is saturated with this message that God wants us to KNOW that we abide in him and he abides in us.[4] He wants us to KNOW that we have eternal life, and that we are children of the Living (and Loving) God.
What keeps standing out is that this knowing is what God has in himself. The Triune God has knowingness, the conscious experience and enjoyment of knowing one another, and knowing that they know one another.
The wonder of Paul’s words come back to help us along on our journey, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”[5]
We cannot escape that the very best we can see now is as in a mirror dimly. Paul wasn’t thinking of a glass mirror as we have them today, but the very best of polished metals as they had then. Mirrors were a dim reflection of what people looked like, and so our life-experience on this earth at the present time can give us nothing better than that. We are hindered in so many ways, and so we live with that, that our knowing will always be dim.
We also must accept that what we know in this lifetime is only “in part”. It can never get better than a partial experience of knowing while we are in the flesh in this earthly existence.
However, what stands out is that when we are with God in paradise, we will see “face to face”. We will see the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord as we have never fully seen it.[6] We will not look into the glorious face of our Savior and wish there was a sun shining, or stars in the sky, or a sea reverberating with the powerful love of God. We will see face to face, and nothing could be better!
Also, we “shall know fully, even as we have been fully known.” I believe that this “know fully” is in reference to perfection of relationship rather than completeness of informational knowledge. There is something about someone knowing us that resonates within our souls.
The quest of social media is that we want to be known. Even without the God-rebellion version of pride, we have this innate sense that we should be known. It is part of us. It is part of God. It is why they created us, so they could have a creature who could enjoy what it is like to both be known, and to know. Within God’s Triunity he both knows and is known. It is a wonderful perfection of eternal joy in one another that we can only imagine since it is impossible to experience to perfection in this world.
However, to grow in these things we must consider all the encouragements in First John to “know” things, and thank the Triune that they make this so important to them. It is not like he has had some merciful consideration about us so that he somehow includes concern for our knowing just for us while it isn’t a personal interest of them. This is not like a parent who has no real interest in colouring books lovingly looking through a child’s colouring pages just because he wants his little one to know what it feels like to have someone show such interest.
No, when God addresses our desperate need to know them, it is because knowing is so foundational to being like them. God who is all-knowing wants us to know. God’s all-knowingness is not mere informational knowing, as if they are some kind of cosmic know-it-all who can’t be beaten in any kind of competition. Rather, their knowingness is as one in the constant expression of relationship who knows intimately and perfectly every one of his children.
What strikes me is the degree to which this love-relationship of knowingness is to affect us so that, “as he is so also are we in this world.”[7] What does this mean?!
First, it sounds like, since we are the children of God, which doesn’t just mean offspring, but those who express sameness to the Father, we are the same as God in the world. Whatever he is like in the spiritual realm, that is what we are like in the world.
Second, a significant component of this has to do with love. We must know that we abide in love-relationship with God.[8] We know that “he has given us of his Spirit,”[9] which, as Paul says, “God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”[10] We cannot ask for anything better in this earthly lifetime than the Holy Spirit as the personal expression of the love of God poured into our hearts. It is interesting that the Holy Spirit is not the love of God, but the person by whom the love of God is poured into our hearts. Wonderful!
Third, the greatest expression of love ever known is that, “the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.”[11] Again, the apostle Paul wrote, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”[12] John said that the apostles had both “seen and testify” that the Father sent his Son into the world as the propitiation for our sins.[13] The whole description is in accord with what John had already written, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[14]
Although I wish I could continue on into a fuller meditation on the whole paragraph John had written, part of my ongoing encouragement to all of us is to have a daily time with God in which we listen to his words, pray about whatever he is doing, and prepare our hearts to join him in his work.
In that sense, we do not need to finish a page of the Bible, or a chapter, or a paragraph, or even a verse. As long as we know what has stood out to us the most, and have had a conversation with God in prayer about knowing and doing his will, and can head into the day watchful for how he will work out the things he has spoken, the Holy Spirit will teach and remind of whatever is required for each day.
For me, that means considering what God is doing in my life to mature my experience of his love, and watching for who he brings into my life who needs the love of Jesus through my distinctive place in the body of Christ. If I will work out these aspects of my salvation with fear and trembling, I will join God in whatever he is working in me to will and to work for his good pleasure.[15] And that is good.
© 2018 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1] This is within the context of I John 4:13-21
[2] I John 4:13
[3] John has already made this clear in his gospel when he recorded Jesus’ words of John 15:1-11.
[4] In John’s three letters (epistles), there are 31 uses of “to know”. His gospel account of the life of Jesus Christ has 88 uses of this word in its various forms, indicating it was a significant characteristic of his ministry as an apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here are the uses in his three letters: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?search=know%2C+known%2C+&version=ESV&searchtype=any&wholewordsonly=yes&spanbegin=69&spanend=71&resultspp=500
[5] I Corinthians 13:12
[6] II Corinthians 4:6
[7] I John 4:17
[8] I John 4:13 - the expression “we abide in him and he in us,” is the most quintessential love-relationship human beings can experience.
[9] I John 4:13
[10] Romans 5:5
[11] I John 4:14
[12] Romans 5:8
[13] Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; I John 2:2; 4:10 ~ Propitiation refers to the way Jesus satisfied the demands of God’s justice against our sins by bearing on himself the outpouring of his Father’s wrath until it was so completely expended that he could say, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). This means that God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). He is just in that sin is fully punished, and he is justifier in that he can now give us justification by grace through faith, not through anything we need to do to face the condemnation of our sin.
[14] John 3:16
[15] Philippians 2:12-13
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