Part Four · Chapter Eighteen
Knowing the Father Through the Son (2 of 2)
This explains why Volume I and Volume II are inseparable. Volume I’s commands are not obstacles to the knowing described in Volume II. They are the road into it. You cannot know God deeply while systematically refusing to obey Him. You can know about Him. You can have accurate theology about Him. But the intimate, experiential knowing of John 17:3 grows through the soil of obedience, and it shrivels in the soil of compromise.
Four: It Is Tested and Deepened by Suffering
The most counterintuitive quality of the knowing relationship is the role that suffering plays in it.
Paul’s Philippians 3:10 prayer names two things he wants to know in Christ: “the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings.” He does not want one without the other. He understands that the knowing of the resurrection’s power is inseparable from the knowing that comes through sharing in the sufferings. This is not masochism. It is the recognition of a pattern that runs through the entire New Testament: suffering, when received within the knowing relationship, produces a depth of knowing that prosperity cannot produce.
Peter, writing to disciples facing persecution, says: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ.” (1 Peter 4:12–13) Participation in the sufferings of Christ is presented not as a tragedy that has befallen the disciple but as an entry into a deeper dimension of the knowing. You know something about Christ in suffering that you simply cannot know in comfort. The shape of the cross is the shape of the deepest knowing.
This does not mean the disciple seeks suffering. It means that when suffering arrives — and Jesus promised it would — the disciple receives it as a potential deepening of the knowing rather than evidence of its absence. The God who is known in the Garden of Gethsemane by the Son who said “Abba, Father” in the middle of the most concentrated human suffering imaginable is also known in Gethsemane by the disciples who face their own version of that prayer. “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to pass unless I drink it, may your will be done.” That is the knowing forged in the furnace.
Five: It Is Never Completed in This Life
The knowing of John 17:3 is eternal, not in the sense that it is monotonously unchanging, but in the sense that it never reaches a terminal point of completion. The Father and the Son are infinite. Their character has infinite depth. The knowing of them that the disciple pursues throughout his life on earth and continues throughout eternity is a knowing that grows without ever exhausting its object.
Jonathan Edwards described this as the chief joy of heaven: not a static arrival at a destination, but an ever-increasing knowing of an inexhaustible God. The joy of heaven is not that it is finally over and you can rest. It is that the knowing that was partial and impeded on earth becomes full and unimpeded — and then continues to deepen forever, because the One who is known is infinite and the knowing never has nowhere left to go.
This means that what the disciple does with his life on earth — every act of obedience, every discipline practiced, every relationship of love, every suffering received within the knowing relationship — is not preparatory to eternal life. It is eternal life at an earlier and less complete stage, but real and genuine eternal life nonetheless. The seed is smaller than the tree. But the seed is already the tree’s life, present in a form the tree will grow out of.
| ETERNAL LIFE AS DESTINATION | ETERNAL LIFE AS KNOWING |
|---|---|
| Begins at death | Begins at regeneration (John 17:3) |
| Primary content: heaven | Primary content: knowing God |
| Present life is preparation | Present life is the life itself |
| Death is the transition to what matters | Death deepens what is already real |
| Discipleship is duty toward a future reward | Discipleship is the relationship itself |
| Suffering interrupts the journey | Suffering deepens the knowing |
| Obedience is the price of admission | Obedience is the pathway into more knowing |
| This life is a corridor to be endured | This life is the first chapter of an eternal story |
The Knowing and the Commands
The single most significant practical implication of receiving John 17:3 fully is the transformation of the disciple’s relationship to the commands of Jesus.
A disciple who does not have the John 17:3 framework experiences the commands primarily as obligations. He obeys because he should. Because the King requires it. Because disobedience has consequences. His obedience is real, but it is fueled by duty. It exhausts rather than replenishes. The commands are a weight he carries toward a reward he hopes is worth it.
The disciple who has received John 17:3 experiences the commands as instruments of the knowing. He does not obey in order to earn the knowing. He obeys because each act of obedience deepens the knowing he already has. John 14:21: keeping the commands produces the showing of Jesus. The obedience and the knowing are not two separate activities in sequence — obey now, know later. They are simultaneous. Obedience is the environment in which the knowing grows. And the knowing is the fuel that makes obedience sustainable.
This is the transformation that lies behind the single most important statement in the Summary of Part Two: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” Eternal life is not the consequence of believing. Eternal life is the believing. Not the moment of initial faith only — but the living, ongoing, growing trust in the One who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. That trust is the knowing. The knowing is the life.