Knowing and Being Known

Today's Scripture

Jeremiah 9:23-24 — "Thus says the LORD: 'Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.'"

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

Daniel 11:32 — "...the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action."

The Big Idea

Knowing facts about someone is not the same as knowing them. You can memorize everything about a famous athlete — stats, birthday, shoe size — and still be a complete stranger to him. J.I. Packer's whole book rests on one claim: the purpose of your life is not to know about God but to know God. And underneath that is something even better — being known by him.

Reflection

The one boast that matters

Listen to what God says through Jeremiah. Don't boast in your wisdom. Don't boast in your might. Don't boast in your riches. Grades, strength, money — the three things every culture, ancient or modern, teaches you to build an identity on. God sweeps all three off the table in a single sentence.

Then he names the one boast he will accept: "that he understands and knows me" (Jeremiah 9:24). Not "that he knows about me." Knows me. The Hebrew word here is a relationship word, the kind used for the closest human bonds. God is saying that the highest achievement available to any human being is friendship with him.

And remember who first heard this. Jeremiah preached to a nation full of temple services, religious vocabulary, and confident experts — on the eve of its collapse. They had plenty of information about God. What they lacked was God. The verse is not advice for beginners; it is a warning for the religious.

Charles Spurgeon was only twenty years old when he stood up and said the same thing:

"The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father." — Charles Spurgeon, "The Immutability of God"

Packer opens Knowing God with the same conviction, and a warning. Theology — which is just an old word for the study of God — is not a hobby for experts. It is survival equipment:

"Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

A blindfold. That is what life without the knowledge of God is like — walking through a world you cannot read, guessing at what matters. And Packer was no cold academic when he wrote it. He confessed in his preface, with a smile: "As clowns yearn to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a treatise on God." This was the subject his heart had circled his whole life.

But there is a catch, and the Bible names it. 1 Corinthians 8:1 — "This 'knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up." Knowledge about God, collected for its own sake, can actually make you worse — prouder, colder, harder to live with. Which raises today's central question.

Information is not friendship

Think about how you "know" a celebrity. You can follow every post, watch every interview, recite their whole story. But if you showed up at their door, they would not know your name. You are a fan, not a friend. All that information, and no relationship.

Now flip it around. Your best friend probably could not list your statistics. But they know what makes you laugh, what you are afraid of, what you will do under pressure. Facts can be collected alone, at a distance, in an afternoon. Knowing a person takes time, trust, and presence. It cannot be downloaded.

Packer says the same gap can quietly open between a Christian and God:

"One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

He adds that you can even know a great deal about godliness — prayer, holiness, church life — without much knowledge of God himself. You can be fluent in the vocabulary and a stranger to the Person. That should unsettle us, because we have more sermons, podcasts, and Bible apps within reach than any generation in history. Information is not our shortage. A.W. Tozer points to what actually shapes a life:

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." — A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

Not what we can recite about God when asked. What actually rises in our hearts when we think of him — that is the real measure.

Jesus himself sets the stakes this high. John 17:3 — "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Notice what eternal life is not. It is not first a place, or a length of time. It is a relationship — knowing God — that begins now and never runs out. Packer turns this verse into the simplest summary of human existence you will ever read:

"What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the 'eternal life' that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Paul had the most impressive religious résumé of his generation — and after meeting Jesus he did the math. Philippians 3:8 — "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." Everything else, he says, is rubbish by comparison. That is not a man with tidy theology notes. That is a man in love.

People who know God do things

How can you tell knowing about God from knowing God? The Bible gives a field test. Daniel 11:32 — "the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action." Knowing God does not produce trivia champions. It produces people with backbone.

Packer looks at Daniel and his friends — young exiles who risked a furnace rather than bow to an idol — and draws out four marks of people who really know God: great energy for God, great thoughts of God, great boldness for God, and great contentment in God. The first one alone is convicting:

"Those who know God have great energy for God." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Energy. Not busyness, not anxiety — energy. People who know God pray like it matters and act like God is real, because to them he is not a topic. He is the most solid fact in their world.

Moses is the Bible's other great case study. By Exodus 33 he had seen more of God's raw power than anyone alive — ten plagues, a sea split open, bread falling from the sky every morning. Yet listen to his prayer at the height of it all: Exodus 33:13 — "Please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight." Watching God's actions had not satisfied Moses. It had made him hungry for God himself. That is the signature of real knowing: the more you taste, the more you want.

So here is an honest check. Does your knowledge of God ever cost you anything? Does it move you to pray when prayer is inconvenient, or to stand firm when standing is unpopular? If not, the missing piece is probably not more information. Augustine diagnosed the real hunger sixteen centuries ago:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." — Augustine, Confessions

We were built for this knowledge the way lungs are built for air. Nothing else fits the slot, no matter how hard we push.

Known before you ever knew

Now comes the turn that keeps all this from becoming one more self-improvement project. Paul writes, "now that you have come to know God" — and then immediately corrects himself — "or rather to be known by God" (Galatians 4:9). The deeper reality is not your grip on God. It is his grip on you.

Psalm 139:1-3 — "O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways." Before you opened this devotion, God already knew every thought you would think while reading it. He knows the version of you that nobody at school or work ever sees. And here is the gospel hiding inside that uncomfortable fact — Packer's most beloved sentence in the whole book:

"There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Read that slowly. God's love is not waiting on new information about you. He saw the worst first and set his love on you anyway. Human relationships run on partial knowledge — people love the edited version of us, and a quiet fear hums underneath: if they really knew me, would they stay? With God, that fear has nowhere to live. He loves the unedited version, because to him there is no other version. Nothing you confess to him tonight will be news.

How can that be, when the unedited version includes real sin? Jesus answers: John 10:14-15 — "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me... and I lay down my life for the sheep." The Son, who knew the Father perfectly from all eternity, went to the cross and was treated as a stranger, so that strangers like us could be brought inside and known as friends. Knowing God is not a ladder you climb. It is a door he opened, at his own expense.

Going Deeper

Tonight, run Packer's simple diagnostic. Take one fact you already believe about God — he is faithful, he is patient, he forgives — and turn it from a statement into a prayer. Not "God is gracious" but "God, you have been gracious to me — here is where." Write one sentence naming the specific place you have seen it. Turning truth about God into talk with God is the whole difference between studying him and knowing him. It takes about two minutes, and it is where the next thirteen days are meant to lead.