Do We Really Know Him?

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”—John 17:3

“Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”—Ephesians 4:13

I have a friend who is outgoing, warm, and seems to know people everywhere. Once, we were on our way to a gathering when we passed someone he greeted. I casually asked, “Do you know him?”

“Of course!” he answered without hesitation.

But when I asked a couple more questions—“How many children does he have?” “What has he been up to lately?”—my friend began to hesitate.

“Well…I’m not really sure.”

It turned out that when he said he “knew” the man, he meant that he knew who he was. He had met him, heard a few things about him, and knew some basic information. We can certainly call that “knowing” someone, but it was not quite the kind of knowing I had assumed.

When we say we truly know someone, we usually mean something more. We have interacted with them, talked with them, done things together. That person does not exist merely as information in our minds; we have an actual relationship with them.

But does having a relationship necessarily mean that we truly know someone?

Most of us have probably experienced moments that suggest otherwise. We may live with someone in the same family for ten or twenty years, only to hear them say something one day and suddenly think, Is that really how you see things? How did I never know this about you?

Familiarity is not the same as knowing. Even people who live together every day can relate to the person they imagine the other to be rather than to the person who is actually there.

And the opposite can happen too. Sometimes we meet someone for the first time, talk for a while, and come away feeling as though we have known each other for years.

So perhaps the depth of knowing someone is not determined simply by how long we have known them. To know someone deeply is to gradually understand how they see things and how they treat people; what matters to them and what they will not compromise; what they value and how they understand the world. Over time, we begin to understand why they make the choices they do.

And as a relationship deepens, so does our knowledge of one another—and with it, our influence on each other. We begin to care about the people they care about and pay attention to the things that matter to them. Things that once meant little to us may begin to matter simply because they matter to someone we love.

Slowly, the way two people speak, act, and even see the world may begin to draw closer together. Others may notice and say, “You two are becoming more and more alike.”

At that point, they do not merely “know” each other. They have begun walking through life together. And the depth of that shared journey reflects something of their commitment to one another.

So when Jesus says,

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3),

what kind of “knowing” does He mean?

Clearly, it is more than simply knowing about Him.

We can be familiar with the Bible and Christian doctrine. We can know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, know the miracles He performed, and know that He was crucified and rose again on the third day. We may be very familiar with all of these things without necessarily knowing Him deeply.

To truly know God means that we have entered into a relationship with the one true God: we receive Him, trust Him, and belong to Him.

And yet even then, we may still project onto Jesus the person we expect Him to be.

Those who place great importance on rules may be especially drawn to Jesus’ standards. Those who value acceptance may especially notice His compassion. Those who care deeply about success may easily come to see Him primarily as the Lord who helps them succeed.

None of these perceptions is necessarily entirely wrong. Each may reflect something we have genuinely seen in Him. The problem comes when we are willing to see only the parts of Jesus that feel familiar, affirming, or useful to us.

Consider someone who places great importance on rules. If he comes to see Jesus primarily as the One who sets standards, he may gradually turn himself into a measuring stick, constantly measuring himself and everyone else by whether the rules have been kept. Yet he may forget that the Jesus who upheld God’s standards was also the Jesus who deliberately drew near to tax collectors and sinners and ate with them.

He may not be deliberately distorting Jesus at all. He has simply come to know one aspect of Him and allowed that one aspect to become the whole.

In the end, what feels like knowing Jesus more deeply may actually be nothing more than becoming increasingly familiar with the Jesus as I understand Him.

So true knowledge of Christ cannot stop at agreement. We belong to Him, enter into what He is doing, follow Him, and walk with Him. And this life of knowing God and knowing Christ is itself eternal life. It does not begin only when we enter heaven. It has already begun now.

Yet the number of years we have been Christians does not automatically mean that our knowledge of Him has grown deeper.

Because truly knowing Him necessarily includes allowing Him to correct us.

We may have followed Christ for many years, read a great deal of Scripture, and understood a great deal of doctrine, yet when real situations arise, we may discover how far our instincts still are from His. If we have followed Him for years but our comfort zones have never been challenged by Him, or if we read the Bible and pray but His way of seeing people and circumstances never enters into our own responses, then perhaps we need to ask ourselves a difficult question:

Am I following Him, or have I been asking Him to follow me?

For example, we believe that God is just, and we long for Him to bring justice to those who have been wronged. But when the justice we expect does not come, we may begin to wonder: Why isn’t God doing anything? Does He really care?

At that moment, perhaps it is not only our faith that is being tested, but also our understanding of God. Have I quietly come to define “God is just” as “God will carry out justice according to the timetable and in the manner that seem right to me”? When He does not act according to my understanding, am I still willing to trust Him and continue knowing Him—or do I rush to define Him by what I think He should do?

At other times, it is not our understanding of God that needs correcting, but something within ourselves.

When I am dealing with someone who has hurt me and whose actions I strongly disagree with, I may have good reason to keep some distance. Yet it is easy to allow coldness, or even hostility, to settle quietly into my heart and call the whole thing “reasonable self-protection.”

Once, while reading a passage about forgiveness, I suddenly realized that the problem was not that I had never known those words. I had read them many times. I had simply learned to pass over them quietly. After following Christ for years, I had somehow reserved one small territory within myself and marked it, “Not open for discussion.”

This is what walking with Christ really does: again and again, the real Jesus corrects both the Jesus we have constructed in our minds and the person we ourselves have become.

We return to the Gospels and watch how He treats people, how He confronts sin, and how He shows compassion to the weak. We see how He refuses the applause of the crowd, submits Himself to the Father, and walks toward the cross. Gradually, we begin to understand what He loves and what matters to Him.

Then, in the ordinary choices of daily life, we begin to ask, “What would Jesus do here?”

Not by consulting the Jesus of our imagination, but by returning again and again to His actual words, choices, and character.

Slowly, what He loves begins to become what we love. What matters to Him begins to matter to us. His way of seeing people and circumstances begins, little by little, to reshape our own.

And perhaps this is why Paul places knowing the Son of God and growing into maturity in the same sentence:

“In the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
—Ephesians 4:13

Knowing Him and growing into maturity are, in the end, part of the same journey.

So perhaps the question I need to ask myself is this: After all these years of following Christ, do I actually know Him better than I did before—or do I simply know more about Him?

Am I absorbing Jesus into my world, reshaping Him until He becomes a Jesus who increasingly resembles me? Or, as I walk with Him, is my life slowly being reshaped into His likeness?

May we not merely know things about Jesus, but walk with Him for a very long time.

Long enough that, almost without noticing, something of His expression, His voice, and His way of seeing the world begins to appear in us.