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Hosea: Heart-Broken Prophet of a Heart-Broken God
Hosea 2:1-20; 11:8-9 Luke 15:11-24
If we are deprived of food it won’t be long before the physical ravages of our malnutrition are evident to everyone. If we are deprived of mental stimulation or restorative sleep we’ll be manifestly deranged in no time. And if people forsake the living God, the Holy One of Israel beside whom there is none other, how long will it be before the consequent spiritual degeneration is evident to the spiritually discerning? And how long after that before there’s a deterioration and decay that even those who make little or no religious profession will nonetheless recognize, even if they describe it as a social problem (rather than as spiritual declension)?
The prophet Hosea watched it all happen among his people. Hosea, like all the Hebrew prophets (like Jesus too) used a vocabulary to speak of disobedient, God-defiant people that makes my speech appear genteel. Hosea knew that when the nerve of living faith is severed, spiritual paralysis occurs and putrefaction is underway. In other words, spiritual declension among God’s people, the spiritually discerning know, is unmistakable and undeniable if only because it is as grotesque as it is repugnant.
All the Hebrew prophets were of one mind on this matter. Hosea lived only a few decades after Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, only a few decades after Elisha, Elijah’s successor. Twenty years before Hosea cried out in heartbreak another Hebrew prophet, Amos, had cried out in rage.
Amos never minced words. He fulminated against the criminally rich who lolled about in self-congratulatory luxury while the victims they defrauded went barefoot. Religious observances, as familiar as an old slipper and no less sentimental, gave rise to warm ‘fuzzies’ within worshippers and simultaneously blunted their sensitivity to the presence and purpose and power of the God they pretended to worship. The clergy were professionals in the worst sense of ‘professional’: they were paid to keep the religious operation operating. Judges, on the other hand, weren’t paid so much as they were ‘paid off,’ bribed. Theft was cheered. Adultery was flaunted. Civic leaders exploited the people they were charged to protect.
Amos found it all unendurable. He raged in a voice that could crack rocks. “God won’t tolerate what’s underway in Israel,” he exploded; “God’s judgement is merited, just and inescapable. Israel will fall to the sword of the Assyrian. And when it happens,” Amos continued, “don’t whine or whimper that you’ve been victimized or visited with bad luck. If you wail, ‘What did we do to deserve this?’ you merely display your sin-blinded stupidity.” So said Amos.
Hosea agreed with every word. Amos’s raging denunciation is truly the word of God. And yet, said, Hosea, the word of denunciation and destruction isn’t God’s last word. God’s final word is a word of compassion; specifically it’s a promise of restoration born of God’s heartbreak.
In this regard Hosea maintained that Israel had forsaken God, and God would hide himself from Israel – but not forever. God would inflict horrific wounds upon Israel, painful beyond imagining, but these wounds would prove to be the incisions of the surgeon. The blazing judgement of God couldn’t be postponed or deflected, but the conflagration was the fire of God’s love, and because this fire was God’s love burning hot, love’s white-hot heat would cleanse and cauterize. So said Hosea.
Where Amos raged, Hosea raged too – and then wept. Where Amos denounced, Hosea denounced too – and then pleaded.
Who were these men? Amos was a shepherd-cowboy who lived in Tekoa, a wilderness area in the south of Israel much like the area that gave us John the Baptist 750 years later. Hosea, on the other hand, lived in a fertile, affluent area in the north of Israel. Both men were haunted by God’s address as God summoned them and commissioned them to announce God’s truth and God’s righteousness to God’s delinquent people.
While both men suffered as only a prophet can suffer when God in his immensity leans on the prophet, Hosea also suffered atrociously on account of his domestic situation. Hosea suffered the heartbreak and humiliation and seeming hopelessness of a husband whose wife has violated their marriage covenant and disgraced herself through her shameless promiscuity.
Hosea had a wife, Gomer. Gomer derailed. She traipsed off to the marketplace, Square One, and prostituted herself there day after day. Business was good. She became notorious. And the more notorious she became, the more her business expanded. Customers were many and precautions were few. She became pregnant, an occupational hazard of prostitutes. Hosea knew her child wasn’t his.
And then in the midst of his heartbreak it was given to Hosea to see his wife’s unfaithfulness as the mirror-reflection of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. And in his wife’s illegitimate offspring he saw as never before Israelites whose religiosity was born of the many spirits who aren’t holy.
When Gomer brought forth the first child of her unfaithfulness Hosea named the child ‘Lo-ruchamah’, Hebrew for ‘Not pitied’ or ‘Not visited with mercy.’ Gomer’s second illegitimate child Hosea named ‘Lo-ammi’, ‘Not my people’.
Hosea believed his people had to suffer through a period when God was silent; when God seemed remote; or if not remote then at least inaccessible. God’s people had to suffer through a period when they appeared orphaned because their parent wouldn’t own them, so reprehensible had they become. The people had to suffer through a period when they were devoid of God’s comfort and consolation, like lost, disgraced children whose parent now says of them, “They can’t be mine; I don’t recognize them; there’s no family resemblance at all.”
Matters had to get worse for people to come to their senses; only then could matters get better. In short, God’s judgement was step one on the road to the people’s repentance and reconciliation. It was given to Hosea to discern that judgement wasn’t the last word; God’s mercy was the final word, together with the mercy-quickened repentance and reconciliation of God’s people.
Amos’s severity Hosea endorsed, only to find severity morphing and swelling into an even greater tenderness, a tenderness that has endeared Hosea to readers for 2800 years just because Hosea’s heartbroken tenderness mirrors the heart of God.
Years later Hosea trudged with heavy step and heavier heart yet with undeflectable resolve; Hosea trudged down to Square One where crude men taunted him about the woman who had become the talk of the town and at whom men leered. The woman, of course, was Gomer, his wife. Gomer had disgraced herself, degraded herself, and, not least, made a fool of herself. And she knew it. Having reached rock-bottom, she wanted to come home.
Could she come home? Whatever made her think she could? How presumptuous of her to think there was a home to come home to. With what some people would incorrectly call sheer good luck she found in her husband a mercy that was as constant as it was incomprehensible. Then she could come home, right away – except for one matter yet to be settled. She had sold herself to a pimp. She was the pimp’s meal ticket. He wasn’t going to give her away. Hosea asked, “How much? What’s my wife worth to you?” “Fifteen shekels,” the pimp replied. Fifteen? Only fifteen? Thirty shekels was the price of a slave. Gomer had lowered herself lower than the lowest? Yes. Gomer was dirt-cheap. Dirt is always dirt-cheap, isn’t it? The day Hosea parted with fifteen shekels he was publicly identified with his worthless wife. The cachet surrounding her became the cachet surrounding him. Her reputation was his; her disgrace his. But only one thing mattered: she was home again, home with him.
And so it is with Israel, says the prophet; so it is with the church; so it is with God’s people of any era. We, the church, are the bride of Christ. Bride? Our unfaithfulness has made the church a laughing stock to those who make no profession of faith. Yet God has purchased us not for half the price of a slave but at a price he alone comprehends. “He spared not his own Son,” cries the apostle Paul in amazement. To say he didn’t spare his own Son is to say he didn’t spare himself, didn’t spare himself anything – and all of this so that he might cry to you and me as he cried to Israel, “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? I am God and not man, the holy One of Israel, and I will not come to destroy.”
In the time that remains this morning we should summarize Hosea’s message.
I: — First, Hosea is preoccupied with having his people know God. The heart of his message is found in chapter 6, verse 6: says God, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
God didn’t want sacrifices and burnt offerings? Of course he did. They were part of the temple liturgy; they were instituted by God and the people were appointed to observe them. Since sacrifices and burnt offering were instituted and appointed by God the people could never be faulted for worshipping in accord with the temple liturgy. But Hosea’s point was this: liturgy is an outward vehicle given us to express our innermost self-abandonment to God. Liturgy is an outward vehicle for expressing our innermost offering of ourselves, our sacrifice, to God. Liturgy, however, is never an outward substitute for anything inward. Israelites were never to offer lamb or ram in the temple as a substitute for offering themselves. If liturgy – anyone’s liturgy in any era – is viewed as a substitute for the worshipper’s faith and faithfulness then liturgy is useless; worse than useless in fact, for then it affronts God and deceives us. Hosea insisted that the people’s worship in the temple be the occasion of their ever-deepening knowledge of God.
Now in Hebrew idiom ‘knowledge’ doesn’t mean ‘acquisition of information.’ In Hebrew idiom knowledge pertains to personal encounter; more profoundly, to know is to be so very intimately acquainted with an actuality as to find oneself profoundly transformed by such acquaintance. To know pain isn’t to acquire information about neurophysiology; to know pain is to be so very intimately acquainted with pain that one is different forever. To know hunger – really know hunger – isn’t to acquire information about gastrointestinal functioning; to know hunger is to be so very intimately acquainted with hunger that one’s encounter with it has rendered one forever different.
To know one’s spouse, in Hebrew idiom, isn’t to accumulate information about the person to whom we are married. To know one’s spouse isn’t merely to have intercourse with her. Rather it’s to meet her, encounter her so very intimately that one’s own life is forever different. In Hebrew idiom I know my wife only to the extent that encountering her non-defensively (that is, encountering her without trying to master her or manipulate her) has rendered me a different person (which encounter, in Hebrew, intercourse abets and intensifies.) In short, my knowledge of my wife is precisely the difference meeting her has effected in me. (If I’ve lived with her for 42 years and remain the same person then I don’t know her at all, regardless of how much information I’ve accumulated about her.)
Our knowledge of God, Hosea insisted, Hebrew that he was; our knowledge of God is the difference our engagement with God has effected within us.
When Abraham knew Sarah, Isaac was brought forth; when Isaac knew Rebecca, Jacob was brought forth. When you and I know God, what is brought forth? Hosea insists it’s ‘chesed,’ steadfast love. Hosea’s chesed, steadfast love, was so very steadfast that not even his wife’s fornicating could dissolve it. God’s steadfast love for us is so very steadfast that not even our repeated infidelities to him can shrivel it. Steadfast love, said Hosea, is what is conceived and brought forth when God’s people know him.
It’s plain that knowing God is what the church is first and finally about. “For I desire steadfast love and not (mere) sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than (mere) burnt offerings,” says the Lord. Liturgy is important, since God has appointed it. But God-appointed liturgy is a vehicle of that encounter with God through which we come to know him ever more profoundly; a vehicle of that encounter, never a substitute for it. And such knowledge of God – personal transformation through intimate acquaintance with God – will give rise to ‘chesed,’ steadfast love that aspires to honour Christ’s twofold summary of the Torah, love of God and love of neighbour.
II: — The second feature of Hosea’s message is blunt: corruption and betrayal are found everywhere. When Hosea looks out over his society he doesn’t indict this person or that, targetting the highly visible. Hosea indicts everyone. The people at large don’t know God; the society as a whole doesn’t bring forth ‘chesed.’ Everyone is guilty.
While everyone is guilty, Hosea continues, there are two groups who have especial responsibility for the deplorable state of affairs. One group consists of civic leaders and authorities. Entrusted with the public good, they have betrayed the public. “The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the landmarks,” laments the prophet.
When highly placed civic leaders or business leaders or financial wizards or drug-abusing sports stars are finally ‘found out,’ they appear startled that they are going to be prosecuted and punished. They maintain that they were doing nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that scores of others in their echelon haven’t been doing and are doing yet. Therefore, they insist, they are being singled out unfairly and targeted unjustly. In this connection the name, I imagine, that is on the tip of everyone’s tongue right now is the name “Conrad Black” or “Jian Gomeshi” or “Rob Ford”.
Cynicism appears to be the response that arises most readily whenever political leaders or business leaders or charity icons or sports stars are mentioned. The cynicism isn’t groundless. It’s not that the cynical person has a sour outlook rooted in a sour disposition. It’s rather that people have been let down over and over, with the result that betrayal and corruption are what they expect they are going to hear eventually concerning the people they have trusted.
Still, Hosea’s criticism of civic leaders is slight compared to his excoriation of the second group, the clergy. The guilt that the people and their public representatives bear is slight compared to the guilt that the clergy bear. “Like people, like priest,” says Hosea. He means that self-indulgent clergy can be expected to occasion self-indulgent people. Water doesn’t rise above its source; ungodly clergy will never yield godly people. He anticipates what James is going to say 800 years later: those who teach God’s people are going to be judged with greater severity.
It sounds bleak, doesn’t it; hopeless.
III: — But it isn’t bleak; it isn’t hopeless. The third and final element in Hosea’s message is glorious: God will speak through the prophet yet again and restore his people once more. Over and over, just when Israel’s future seemed bleak to the point of hopelessness, Hosea heard God promising to breathe life into his people again. As surely as Hosea said of his wife Gomer, “She may have disgraced herself and humiliated me, but she’s still my wife; we have a life together and she has a future with me more glorious than anything she has ever imagined” – as surely as this word was announced to Israel the selfsame word is announced today to the church, the bride of Christ.
What word exactly did God address to Hosea concerning Israel? – “I will betroth you to me forever…in steadfast love and mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.” God’s mercy and God’s faithfulness in turn will move the people to say to each other, in the words of Hosea, with hope surging through their hearts, “Come, let us return to the Lord….Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord….He will come to us as showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
And then Hosea heard God say in the anguish born of the heartbreak of unalloyed love, “How can I give you up, O my people? How can I hand you over?” Whereupon God pronounced Israel – and church – to be ‘Ruchamah,’ ‘visited with God’s mercy,’ and ‘ammi,’ ‘my people.’
Seven hundred and fifty years after Hosea spoke, Jesus Christ appeared. In the Nazarene the pardon of God and the patience of God and the faithfulness of God weren’t merely spoken afresh; in the Nazarene they were embodied. Our Lord, however, embodied more than God’s love and faithfulness. In his humanity Jesus embodied the human steadfast love and faithfulness that answers to God’s, the human steadfast love and faithfulness that you and I and all humankind are called to exemplify but don’t.
Then the one thing we must do this morning is seize our Lord in faith once more, and cling to him as we cling to none other. For in clinging to him we shall find his obedient humanness transmuting ours; we shall begin to exemplify the steadfast love and faithfulness that Hosea maintained to characterize God’s people. And we shall acknowledge afresh that Jesus Christ is husband to his bride, the church; he is the hope of humankind everywhere, the corrective for society’s leaders and, not least, the restoration of the church’s clergy.
For then our Lord will prove to be the one by whom God is glorified and his people are edified. And then too there will be vindicated a three-thousand year old prophet whose wayward wife came to her senses and came home; as did a prodigal son centuries later; as must every one of us today.
Victor Shepherd September 2016
A Little Note on Two Kinds of Knowing: Scientific and Personal
Hosea 4:1-6
I: — Although I’m not trained as a scientist I have never belittled science, and never belittled it for several reasons. One reason is that God mandates science. God commands us to subdue the earth, to have dominion over every creature (every creature, that is, except our fellow-humans.)
Another reason I don’t belittle science is that I relish intellectual enquiry. Intellectual enquiry, we should note, is one aspect of loving God with our minds.
Another reason is that I, along with everyone one else, have profited immensely from science. When I was still a teenager my grandfather used to say to me, “Victor, never let people tell you about ‘the good old days.’ They weren’t good.” We all know what he meant. Can you imagine what it would be like not to be able to have an inflamed appendix removed or a broken leg set? water not rendered fit for drinking? helplessness in the face of childhood disease? Yes, I’m aware that in a fallen world there is no scientific development that can’t be bent to the service of evil. The kitchen knife (unquestionably a product of technology) can be used murderously as readily as atomic power. But the fact that evil can co-opt any scientific development doesn’t of itself invalidate the legitimacy and glory of scientific investigation.
At the same time, we must recognize that while scientific investigation admits us to one aspect of the creation, it doesn’t admit us to all aspects; while it blesses us as only it can, it isn’t the only blessing wherewith we are blessed; while scientific investigation yields knowledge, the knowledge it yields isn’t the only kind of knowing. Furthermore, not only is scientific knowing not the only kind of knowing within the creation, the kind of knowing it is has nothing to do with knowing him who transcends the creation and is himself most profoundly what the non-human creation isn’t; namely, person.
Today we are going to probe both kinds of knowing, the kind that is peculiar to science and the kind that is peculiar to persons; and we are going to probe pre-eminently the knowing that is peculiar to the Person, the living God himself.
II(i): — Let’s start with scientific knowing. Knowing here arises as a subject investigates an object; the subject apprehends a thing; someone who is higher in the order of being investigates something that is lower in the order of being. Think of the scientific research into the properties and uses of the peanut. I assume that no one here today questions the assertion that human beings are higher in the order of being than peanuts.
(ii) Scientific knowing is acquired for the sake of using the object, controlling the object, manipulating the object; ultimately, mastering the object. Scientific investigation of the peanut is undertaken in order to learn all the properties of the peanut and thereby use the peanut as widely as possible: peanut butter, cooking oil, face-cream, suntan lotion, animal-feed, and so on.
(iii) In sum, the knowing peculiar to science presupposes objectivity, detachment; the scientific investigator stands over against the object, contemplates it from a distance, and manipulates it for the sake of using it.
II(i): — The knowing that is peculiar to persons is very different. In the first place, in knowing another person we don’t keep that person at a distance; we don’t maintain a resolute detachment, objectivity. Instead, knowledge of another person arises only through intimacy with that person.
(ii) Again, personal knowing is never gained for the sake of using another person. To use another person is first to “thingify” that person, reduce her to an object, and therefore not to know her as person at all. To use another human being is to manipulate, and we all recognize this as evil. As for mastering another human being; this amounts to a form of enslavement and is to be repudiated with horror.
(iii) What’s most important, to know a person isn’t to investigate that person and acquire information about her. Investigating someone and acquiring information about her “thingifies” her, rendering her a non-person. Most profoundly, to know a person is to be changed oneself by that person. In other words, to know someone else is to be changed oneself.
In 1923 the German Jewish thinker, Martin Buber, published his small book, I and Thou. (A book, I might add, that is surprisingly difficult, despite its easy-sounding title.) In his book Buber made the point that what we know of a person is the difference that person has made to our life. To know my wife isn’t to acquire information about her (she’s five feet tall, speaks French, and plays the piano); for me to know my wife is to have been altered myself through meeting her. If Maureen and I have lived together for 34 years and haven’t affected each other so as to make the profoundest difference within each other, then we simply don’t know each other, regardless of how much detailed information we have acquired about each other. Remember, to know a person is to be profoundly altered by that person. What I know of a person is the difference that person has made to me in the course of our meeting each other.
Now don’t go home complaining that what I’ve just said can be understood only by those with philosophical training. Although Buber gained a reputation as a philosopher, in fact he was a biblical thinker first and foremost. Buber grasped the logic of scripture as few others have. In other words, what Buber put forward he didn’t invent: it stands writ large on every page of scripture. If it’s writ large everywhere in scripture, why do we have such difficulty grasping it? We find it difficult just because we have never been schooled in the logic of scripture. Ever since the 18th century Enlightenment the western world has assumed that scientific knowing is the only kind of knowing there is. But it isn’t the only kind; and while it’s unquestionably an important kind, it’s not the most important kind. Knowing persons is far more important than knowing things, and knowing, the Person, God, is most important of all.
Remember, to know an object scientifically is to investigate that object and acquire information about it. To know a person, however, is to be affected by that person, altered profoundly, changed by that person, made different forever.
When scripture speaks of “knowing God’s mercy” it doesn’t mean that we have information about an aspect of God’s character. To know God’s mercy, rather, is to have intimate acquaintance with God’s mercy and to have been profoundly affected by God’s mercy, changed, made forever different.
IV(i): — Needless to say, it’s difficult for people like us who are far more exposed to scientific knowing than we are to personal knowing to grasp this point. How difficult it is is reflected again and again in our everyday conversation. For instance:
– Do you know Jane Smith?
– Yes, I know Jane; I know her well; I know what makes her “tick.”
– You do? Tell me what makes her “tick.”
– She listens to Beethoven by the hour. Beethoven does something for her. But she can’t stand Mahler. Mahler leaves her depressed. Also, she’s a vegetarian; she won’t eat meat because she thinks that eating meat is tantamount to cannibalism. She likes expensive clothes and wears them well. That’s understandable, however, since she’s been divorced twice and is looking for a man.
– I see. You know Jane Smith really well, don’t you.
No! A thousand times no! The speaker doesn’t know Jane Smith well; in fact the speaker doesn’t know Jane Smith at all. The speaker has 101 bits of information about Jane Smith. The speaker assumes that as more and more information about Jane Smith is acquired, Jane Smith herself is better and better known. But the person of Jane Smith isn’t known in this way. In fact, so far from being known, Jane Smith hasn’t even been met. The only person who knows Jane Smith is the person whose encounter with her has left that person different himself.
Let’s suppose that one day such a fellow does meet her, even falls in love with her. Little by little he comes to see how she has changed his life. He knows her now, profoundly knows her. One day a friend says, “What kind of clothes does Jane wear?” “Clothes?”, the fellow says, “clothes? I’ve never noticed. But you can’t imagine what she’s done for me!”
(ii) A minute ago I said that we have enormous difficulty grasping what it is to know a person. We have similar difficulty grasping how we come to know a person. Everyone knows how we come to gain scientific knowledge of an object: we act on the object, dominate it, master it. To come to know persons, however, is entirely different: we come to know a person by exposing ourselves to her, by exposing ourselves to her defencelessly. Domination of an object yields scientific knowledge of that object. Vulnerability before a person, on the other hand, defenceless self-exposure, yields personal knowledge of that person. Our vulnerability, defencelessness, before a person finds that person altering us; insofar as we are altered in the course of our encounter with her, we know her. The difference my wife has made within me in the course of meeting her; this is my knowledge of her.
Everyone here today will agree that God knows us. In fact God knows us better than anyone else knows us. But why does God know us? How? Does God know us better than we know him in that he’s a better scientific investigator of us than we are of him? No. God knows us person-to-person; which is to say, God can know us only by being defenceless himself before us. And defenceless he is, for who is more defenceless, more vulnerable, than someone crucified?
But haven’t I said that we know another person only to the extent that that person has profoundly altered us? If God knows us, then we must have affected him. Wherein have we altered God? Can we affect him in this way? Yes we can. At the very least we have broken his heart. Sinners that we are — defiant, disobedient, rebellious, ungrateful — we have broken his heart. Actually, we have affected him, made the profoundest difference to him, in many respects, so very intimately does he know us. We have provoked his anger and mobilized his judgement. Yet we have affected him even more; most profoundly, we have affected him so thoroughly as to have him delay the day of condemnation and extend the day of grace. According to the prophet Hosea God had said of us, in the face of our defiance and disobedience, “Lo-ammi, Not my people”, “Lo-ruchamah, Not pitied.” Then in anguished heartbreak God had said, “How can I give you up…! How can I hand you over…! My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender.” Finally God was heard to say once more, “Ammi, My people; Ruchamah, Pitied.” God knows us so very thoroughly not because he’s a practised investigator; God knows us just because he’s defenceless before us. We affect him most profoundly. What he knows of us is precisely the alteration we have effected in him.
Then what about us? Do we know him? How well do we know him? We know God only to the extent that he has made the profoundest difference to us. Only as we meet him defencelessly; only as we meet him without evasions, without excuses, without false faces, without calculation or self-deception; only in this way do we come to know God. We come to know him only as we approach him like the hymnwriter, crying, “Nothing in my hand I bring; nothing!”
V: — In the time that remains to us this morning I want to illustrate all that I have said so far with a few instances of personal knowing highlighted in scripture.
(i) Jesus exclaims, according to the testimony of the apostle John, “If you continue in my word…you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”(John 8:32) When Jesus speaks of “continuing in his word” he means “abiding in him”, since he himself is the word incarnate. And when Jesus speaks of “knowing the truth”, knowing reality, he is speaking of an intimate acquaintance with the truth as we expose ourselves defencelessly to the truth. And when he says that such radical, undisguised exposure to Christ the truth will make us free, he means that we are going to be released from everything that “hooks” us now and inhibits us from being the son or daughter of God we are meant to be. To know our Lord who is truth is to be altered by truth; and this is to be freed in such a way that we can now become what we were always created to be.
(ii) The apostle Paul speaks of “knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection.”(Phil. 3:10) The resurrection of Christ is the vindication of Christ himself, his gospel, his way, his mission, his promise. To know Christ and the power of his resurrection is to be intimately acquainted with our Lord himself and therein experience for ourselves the profoundest vindication of him and his gospel and his way and his mission and his promise. To know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection is to be affected by him in such manner as to have all the assurance we shall ever need that we belong to him because he first appointed himself to belong to us, all the assurance we shall ever need that his grip on us will ever be stronger than our grip on him, assurance that while he never lets us off he will also never let us go.
(iii) Finally, the apostle Paul says that one day we are going to know God even as we are fully known by God now.(1 Cor. 13:12) At present God knows us fully; we however, know him only partially — which is to say, our transformation through meeting him is only partial. To be sure, our knowledge of him is real; our knowledge of him is profound; our knowledge of him is immense blessing. Nevertheless, our knowledge of him remains only partial. One day, however, we are going to know God as thoroughly as he now knows us — which is to say, one day our transformation will be complete as we appear before him without spot or blemish. Don’t you long for it with an ache that will be relieved only on the great day itself?
On the day that we know God as thoroughly as he now knows us we are going to be changed; transformed, in fact, so as to need no further transformation.
In conclusion, what we know of a person, whether human or divine, is precisely what happens to us when we meet him as a person. It is the mission of the church to exalt such knowledge; and not only exalt, but exemplify it. For the church of Jesus Christ consists of those who know their Lord now, albeit partially, and want only to know him utterly.
Victor Shepherd
April 2003