Knowledge

2 Peter 3:18

“Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen.”

Yesterday I talked about growing in grace, today we’re looking at growing in knowledge.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7  Fools are people who follow the wisdom of the world, those that do not ‘know’ GOD, their faith is in the world and only the seen. Learning to walk in the fear of the Lord is learning to live in awe and reverence of GOD.  It is foundational to our walk of faith. GODis loving and full of grace and mercy; but HE is also all-powerful, awesome, holy, righteous, and sovereign over all things.

Knowledge of Christ is not the knowledge you can get from just going to church or just reading your Bible, you have to have a relationship with HIM.  Most people have a person in their life that knows them better than anyone else, knows their moods just by looking at them, knows what they’re about to say before they say it, this is the kind of ‘knowing’. This person got to have knowledge of you probably by spending LOTS of time with each other. And you can’t ‘know’ GOD without taking time to spend with HIM in prayer or reading HIS Word everyday.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.” Romans 8:14-16 Once a believer you are a child of GOD and a friend of GOD, but before you are a believer, you are an enemy of GOD.

Until you have accepted Jesus as the Son of GOD and that HE died for our sins,  rose again on the third day and sits at GOD’s right hand in Heaven, you are an enemy of GOD. “… Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. “James 4:4 NLT  “For since our friendship with GOD was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.” Romans 5:10

Knowledge of God, once we have knowledge of GOD, we want to please GOD. We have a new spirit that is perfect and filled with the Holy Spirit; our new spirit wants to only please GOD. Our spirit does not want to sin, when we sin, our spirit is sickened. The spirit is clean, it is pure, when we sin it is against GOD and our spirit requires us to repent of those sins. That gnawing feeling you get when you’re a believer that has sinned but you don’t want to repent, that’s your spirit grieving.“I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit within my body…” (Daniel 7:15) Our spirit can be distressed, especially from an unrepentant sin.  David wrote Psalm 51 after he repented of his sin with Bathsheba, in verse 17, “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.”

Knowledge, Greek word, “da’at”, means knowing, intelligence, wisdom, discernment, skill. It comes from the verb, ‘yada’, “to know”. In Isaiah 53:11, “He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.” My concordance says (From the labor of HIS soul he shall see light) this can be taken to mean that knowledge of HIM (that is knowing HIM) justifies them, or that HE uses HIS knowledge and skills to obtain their justification: that is, HE, by HIS priestly intercession, knows how to justify believers.  So by knowing Jesus, by claiming HIM as Lord and Savior in our lives, we ‘know’ HIM and that is what saves us. 

The knowledge of GOD brings us grace, and that grace and knowledge of GOD is which saves us.