7 Know Jesus, Know God

whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.”

The original Greek word used for garbage is translated more precisely as “dung,” so he’s being pretty graphic here! In other words, all those things that I used to think were fantastic, that my little world revolved around, that I was pursuing as hard as possible, were just a pile of manure compared to knowing Jesus Christ.

Paul then states in verse 10, “I want to know Christ— yes, to know the power of his resurrection.” And then Paul sets a path: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (verses 13–14).

This was the passion of Paul’s heart and his plea to believers. You will never get to know God with a casual, halfhearted attitude. It’s going to take real desire followed up by real discipline in your life.

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Let me follow up the previous principle about truth with a question. How much can you love and trust a person? Have you ever thought about that? This is a big question. Let me give you the answer: You can love and trust a person to the exact degree that you know them. Loving and trusting is based upon knowing. Sometimes we hear people say with enthusiasm (and a bit of spiritual naivete), “I just love the whole world.” I say baloney! You can’t love the whole world! There’s only one in this universe who has the capacity to love like that and it’s God. You can’t love people you don’t know, except theoretically, and theoretical love is not real love. You can only love people you know, and your loving is in direct proportion to your knowing.

Oftentimes, the more we know people, the less we love them. This is why it takes a supernatural love. In Greek this is called agape love, a God kind of love. Why? There is nothing lovable about us. We were absolutely unlovable to God, and yet, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This is agape

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love. This love can be commanded because Jesus said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

It’s like Jesus is saying He couldn’t care less how you feel about each other. There are people who turn you off and you would like them out of your life. Jesus is basically saying, “So what? I command you to love them with My agape love that is available to you.” Humanly speaking, the more we know them, oftentimes the less we love them. This is contrary to God’s way. The more we know God, the more we love Him. The more we know people, the more we should love them.

One time I was sharing this message with a group of people who didn’t know me at all. My family was in the back of the room. I told the crowd, “None of you here would probably trust me with your life. You don’t trust me, and rightly so, because you don’t know me yet.” One of my daughters was just absolutely appalled when she heard this, and she nudged my wife sitting next to her. She said, “Well Mommy, I trust Daddy!” Do you see why she was upset? What was the difference? My daughter knew me. Therefore, she had ultimate trust in me because of my track record with her. To that point I had been proven trustworthy.

You know how fathers are with our children sometimes. They may be standing on the sofa or a table or something. We will say jump and our child will take off airborne and jump. Why? They know and trust us. Now,

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if we ever say jump and step aside, the next time they’ll say no, because we proved last time that we couldn’t be trusted.

This is what Satan does. Satan tries to make you believe that when God says jump, He’s going to let you fall. He is going to interject himself into a situation where God is asking you to make a step of faith, and then he’ll try to make God appear inadequate. However, right knowing about God leads to right thinking about God, which leads to right loving and living for God.

Jesus Is the Way

This really gets to the heart of the issue. How do we gain accurate knowledge of God so that we can think correctly about Him, love Him as we ought to love Him, and then live our lives in keeping with His plan? How? Jesus Christ. You cannot know God to any greater degree than you know Jesus Christ, because in Him the Word has become flesh and we have beheld His grace, glory, and truth (John 1:14). “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (Colossians 1:19).

Many of us as Christians still have wrong understandings of Jesus. There are all kinds of ways Jesus is portrayed in the church that are incorrect. One of them is the gentle Jesus who is meek and mild; that guy who never raises His voice and looks like He’s just stepped

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out of the beauty parlor. Every hair is in place, and He is poised! My point is that we oftentimes have images of Jesus that are not really the Jesus of the Bible. You’ve got to really get to know Jesus Christ. Saturate your being in Jesus—and that takes place through the gospel.

John 1:18 tells us that Jesus made God known to us. Later in John 14:9, Jesus tells us that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father. We just read this in Colossians 1:19. Literally what the Bible is saying here is that Jesus Christ is the exegete of God. This simply means that Jesus gives us the perfect interpretation of God. In other words, in Jesus Christ, God has taken a picture of Himself so that we can really see Him.

The cardinal principle, then, is that all right thinking about God begins with right thinking about Jesus Christ. So, saturate yourself in the first four books of the New Testament. A lot of times we focus on the rest of the New Testament. But the point of these latter books is to drive you back to the four gospels.

Peter said, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). How can you know what those steps are unless you go back and absorb them from the gospels? Study them and walk through them and saturate your very being with Jesus Christ. The more you know Jesus, the more you will know God.

Since my knowledge comes from the Bible, which is

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the basis for my right thinking of Jesus Christ, my right thinking about God through Jesus also comes from my study of the Bible. I cannot know God to any greater degree than I know Jesus. I cannot know Jesus to any greater degree than I correctly know the Bible. Do you see how this keeps coming back to an accurate knowledge of God’s Word?

New Birth

The door to our right thinking about God is Jesus Christ. The door to our correct understanding of His Word is the new birth, also known as conversion. This is the experience that gives us a new mind, a new spiritual being, and a new spiritual nature whereby we have the capacity to know and love God.

There are two things that we must do to receive the new birth experience. We must repent and we must believe. Repentance is turning from and believing is turning to. We turn from our past way of living, thinking, and wrong understanding about ourselves. We repent and turn from the world, and we turn to Jesus Christ. We release our embrace on the world to embrace Jesus Christ. This is the way that we are regenerated.

Repentance is the Greek word metanoia, and it comes from meta, meaning “afterward” (implying change), and noia, meaning “to perceive.” Therefore, repentance

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means to think again, to have a second thought, to have a change of one’s mind. This is the reason why the gospel always expects change to take place.

John the Baptist came preaching repentance. Jesus also came, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). What was He saying? He was saying our thinking was all wrong. We’d better give it a second thought. We’d better think things through again. We’d better think about Him again. We’d better think about sin again. We’d better think about what the Lord says. Repentance is to have a second thought and a change of mind.

In 2 Corinthians 5:16–17, Paul shares a truth that took place in his life: “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” He’s basically saying that he used to think of Jesus Christ in human terms. Paul saw Him as just another rabbi or teacher. He used to see Jesus from a human standpoint, but he repented.

When we have a change of thought about Jesus, it always results in a change of direction. The change of mind is what the Bible calls repentance. The change of direction is what the Bible calls conversion. We repented and then we converted. We turned around and it led to a different direction in our life.

The entire New Testament expects that when some-

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