The One Thing This Book Is About (1 of 2)

Before the twenty traditions, before the historical analysis, before the Reformation and the genealogies and the prophetic charts, there is one thing this book is about. Everything else is an illustration of it.

Knowing about God is not knowing God.

These are not the same and the difference is eternal. A person can master the doctrines, win the arguments, hold the correct position on every disputed question in this book, and stand at the end of it having never known the One the doctrines describe. Jesus said this plainly, and it is the most frightening sentence in the New Testament for anyone who has built an identity on being right.

"On that day, many will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from Me, you lawbreakers!'" — Matthew 7:22–23 (NET)

Read what they had. Prophecy. Deliverance ministry. Powerful works, done in His name. By every external measure these were the most effective, most orthodox, most active people in the room. And the verdict was not "you were slightly wrong about eschatology." The verdict was I never knew you. The Greek word is ginōskō — relational, experiential knowing. The same root that governs the verse this entire project is built on:

"Now this is eternal life — that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You sent." — John 17:3 (NET)

Eternal life is defined, by Jesus, in the present tense, as knowing. Not knowing about. Knowing. The people turned away in Matthew 7 had everything except that, and everything except that was nothing.

And one more word has to be un-flattened alongside know, because it is the word the people in Matthew 7 would have used to describe themselves: believe. Modern English has worn the word down to assent — agreeing that certain statements are true, having prayed the prayer, holding the membership. The apostle John never uses it that way. His Gospel never once contains the noun faith; he writes the verb — pisteuō, nearly a hundred times — and his signature construction is believing into: an ongoing entrusting of the whole self into a Person, the way weight is entrusted to a bridge. That is why John 3:36 can set the one who believes against the one who disobeys as opposites in a single sentence — in John's vocabulary, believing and following are one motion seen from two sides. James finishes the demolition: the demons believe the statements are true, and shudder. Agreeing mentally with true statements is something devils do. It saves no one. So wherever this book says believe, it means John's verb, and the reader should carry both un-flattened words through everything that follows — know and believe — because every tradition examined here is, at bottom, a way of holding the flattened versions of both while the living versions go unlived. Chapter Six returns to this word at length, where the flattening has done its costliest work.

This is the measure against which every tradition in this book is weighed. The question is never merely whether Young Earth Creationism holds up under Scripture, or whether the pre-tribulation rapture can be defended, or which Bible translation is most faithful. The question underneath every one of those is this: is this tradition producing the knowing of John 17:3, or is it producing a substitute that feels like faithfulness and leaves the knowing unaddressed?

And how would a person tell whether the knowing is real, and not just a feeling wearing religious language? That question deserves an honest answer, because "I know Him" can be claimed by anyone, and intensity of conviction proves nothing — the people in Matthew 7 were intensely convinced. John does not leave it to guesswork. He wrote a whole letter of tests, and not one of them measures the strength of an experience. Every one of them measures fruit.

"We know that we have crossed over from death to life because we love our fellow Christians." — 1 John 3:14 (NET)

The knowing is verified by what it grows: love, patience, the ability to bear with a brother who reads the Text differently, the unity Jesus prayed for. It cannot be weighed on a scale or proven in a debate, and this book will not pretend otherwise. But it is not therefore invisible. Its fruit can be seen, and so can the fruit of its substitutes. A tradition producing anger, contempt, and broken tables is producing something, and what it produces can be examined against what the Spirit produces. That test — fruit, not heat — runs under every case in this book, and it examines the author of this book by exactly the same standard.

Paul settled this with his own résumé. He had more theological credentials than anyone holding any tradition in this book. Circumcised the eighth day, of the people of Israel, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, blameless under the law. And he wrote:

"More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things — indeed, I regard them as dung! — that I may gain Christ." — Philippians 3:8 (NET)