Believe or Know?

Do you know anyone who doesn’t know God?

Notice I said “know.” Not “believe in.”

According to many recent studies, believing in God is almost universal in America. One study says ninety-five percent believe in God, another says ninety-seven percent. Whatever the numbers, almost everyone believes in God. Indeed, scripture says that even the demons believe in God – and they tremble (James 2:19).

We are, indeed, a believing nation.

But, honestly, so what? What does believing in God mean if it changes nothing about the way people live? Does the word “believe” refer to mere mental consent to a creed or doctrine?

In this sense of the term, God did not create us to “believe in” Him. He is patently not interested in our merely acknowledging that He exists.

What He created us for is to be in a relationship with Him. He wants us to know and love Him like He knows and loves us. The original plan, revealed in Eden’s fair glade, was that we enjoy an intimacy with God comparable only to a healthy marriage – full knowing, deep closeness, and delightful love.

The problem is, we have spoiled the original plan: we ignore Him. Though He fashioned us to be in love with Him, we have fallen in love, instead, with ourselves. Like Narcissus, we gaze with sinful vanity into the pool of our own depraved self-will, and find there not the image and reflection of God, but only our mirrored selves. Enthroned upon our own hearts, and infatuated with the pursuit of our own desires, we have excluded Him from our lives by blatant neglect.

And yet, we say we believe in Him.

This “belief” is a far cry from biblical faith. It’s an impersonal, imaginary thing, a passing nod to some invented notions about God. The fact that such “belief” utterly fails to change lives reveals it for what it truly is: a powerless deception masquerading as faith, a fig-leaf bandage to conceal our shameful conceit.

Jesus’ coming to earth, His death and resurrection, reveal with passionate clarity what God is looking for: a relationship with you. God desires to be so near to you, so intimate with you, that it can be described only as Him living in you.

As you actively turn from your sin-driven self-love – an act the Bible calls “repentance” – your life opens to Him: Jesus enters in, and fills you with Himself. At that point, He not only forgives your sin, but changes you into a brand new person on the inside.

Thus begins a whole new relationship. Paul described this relationship as the defining quest of his life: “I consider everything loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

I repeat: knowing Him, not just believing in Him.

So, let’s return to the initial question: “Do you know anyone who doesn’t know God?”

Could that person be you?