To Know God Is Eternal Life

George M. Ella | Added: Jan 29, 2026 | Category: Theology

To understand God’s activity in establishing a People for Himself, we must study Christ’s work in revealing a universal, practical knowledge appertaining to salvation which fills the earth historically, geographically and spiritually. Whether we are thinking theologically, ecclesiastically or educationally, we find the knowledge we need leading to redemption in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. When Isaiah says that ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’, and Habakkuk echoes this (2:14) these prophets are speaking of the worldwide spread of the gospel and the way God reveals Himself to His chosen flock.

It is the gospel that reveals God’s knowledge to us and causes us to know God. Furthermore, Paul sees the knowledge we have been given of God as the link between the first physical creation of the earth and the second spiritual creation of the rebirth, telling us in 2 Corinthians 4:6, ‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ’. The purpose of the first birth was for God to choose out those who are made knowledgeable of their salvation through Jesus Christ. To know God is thus to have that knowledge to which all knowledge points. This is the awareness of God and His purpose in creation in choosing out a people for Himself. ‘Knowledge’ is not that which is knowledgeably gained by man but that which is given Him through knowing God that he might serve Him righteously. Such knowledge is a gift of God’s grace alone.

Those who misunderstand what I am saying here, will cry, ‘George, you are a gnostic’. This would show a wrong understanding of the situation. A gnostic feels he can climb up to God via his own knowledge, his inherent duty-faith gained through accepting the teaching of a ‘well-meant’ gnostic, Fullerite, Arminian, free-willer or any other perverter of true knowledge and denier of God’s sovereign revelation. A Christian believes that the only knowledge worth knowing is that freely imparted to Him by God. This can only occur when God reveals Himself to those whom he has chosen to receive that knowledge. Proverbs tell us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and fools despise wisdom and instruction. Indeed, they hate the only true knowledge which comes through knowing the Lord and following His counsel.

One pioneering student of the doctrine of the knowledge of God was the Scotsman John Durie (c. 1599-c.1680). His age had the advantage over ours of having theological-minded scientists who sought to synthesise all knowledge rather than simply catalogue different aspects of knowledge into separate branches, as if the one had no connection with the other. If one reads The Hartlib Papers gathered by Samuel Hartlib and John Durie one comes across many such men and women. We Reformed evangelicals have been wrongly brought up to believe the so-called ‘doctrines of grace’ whereas ‘grace’ is not split up into doctrines. We have one all-inclusive, grace-revealing doctrine of salvation, given us through knowing God. Indeed, many modern Christian leaders continually lag behind true scientific knowledge. In their educational activities, whether secular or Christian, they isolate Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine, History and the Arts from one another just as they isolate forgiveness of sin, justification, adoption, righteousness, sanctification and atonement. They create separate disciplines of these broken-off pieces of knowledge and overlook the fact that, separated from the essentials which bind them, they can never be appealed to as true knowledge and a means of discovering the Knowledge of the Lord and all His works. This knowledge is essential to understanding one’s own place in the world and God’s electing purposes as the Only-Wise-God who is the sum of all knowledge.

So, most scientists, theologians and church leaders today are inferior to true scientists in their knowledge-engineering as the Knowledge of God through Jesus Christ is the only way to true knowledge. To know God includes knowing oneself and everything else worth knowing which the Lord has provided for our salvation. Christ tells us that the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven are known to His flock, but to no others. 1 John 5:20: tells us that only God’s flock can say:

And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

This means that there is no such thing as bad knowledge as all knowledge is good in the hands of those given the ability to use it in God’s service. A misuse of God’s revealed knowledge is sin indeed. It crowns ignorance and thus strives to dethrone God.

This is one reason why many 16^th and 17^th century theologians, scientists and educators such as Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) distanced themselves from those theologians who relied on Systematic Theologies to describe God’s actions in eternity and time. They rejected the idea of splitting up the doctrine of salvation into exclusive compartments. These cannot be understood unless they are kept synthesised in one whole. This is one complaint a true seeker of knowledge has against the many so-called Christian Creeds or Articles which deal with election, forgiveness of sins, atonement, sanctification and perseverance as if they were all extras to the person and work of Christ instead of being His very essence. One only has to think of the electing mercies of God in Christ to see how many so-called Reformed Creeds tend to leave out election in particular outside of Christ’s work in general though the Bible makes it plain that we are elected in Christ. One cannot divide the indivisible. This would lead us to the fatalism of Zwingli expressed in his 1530 De Providentia and the teaching of Calvin that God is the author of sin as in his letter to the Genevan Council dated 6 October, 1552 repeating what he had written in his 1551 Institutes.

It is not surprising that Francis Bacon felt that all theologians should be trained as practical scientists and all scientists trained as practical theologians. The two belong together. This we find in the works of such as William Romaine, James Hervey, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle and Carl Linnaeus who allied science with the Scriptures. Most of the founders of the Royal Society sought to combine the two. Many scientists, theologians and philosophers such as Kant, Feuerbach, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume have been associated with Bacon in striving to think universally and not in studies of a cataloguing nature but they have all failed as they have all concentrated on but a fraction of Bacon’s teaching on knowledge and de-synthesised his findings making them useless as a pathway to essential knowledge. This essential knowledge, Bacon, taught, was to be found solely in the Word of God.

It is thus an impossible task for fallen man left to himself, to understand or accept any knowledge of God until it is revealed to him. Here we must not deal with man’s fallible, fallen nature, but with God’s infallibility, omniscience, omnipresence and His immaculate nature in His never-changingness. Again, this is not understood through man’s climbing up the alleged evolutionary ladder but it is through God’s descending down to meet man in his totally fallen state and lifting him up to see and know the God-Only-Wise

The method of cataloguing Christian doctrine into what is called ‘Systematic Theology’ was the method of the rationally minded Roman Catholic Institution who claimed to be the heirs of God’s spiritual, physical and territorial rule and that Aristotle was their prophet. This led to their pagan system of analysing knowledge. Calvin did us no service in collecting the scattered and very different views of the knowledge of God from the works of His contemporaries and making a list of them as a didactic catalogue of what one should believe in his Institutes. Or rather we should blame certain allegedly Reformed churches for following Calvin blindly. The gospel cannot be divided and must be taken in its wholeness as the knowledge of God given to those freely who have hitherto had no knowledge of Him.

Solomon the Wise told his son:

My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee.

Wisdom is very often personified in the work of the Messiah in the Old Testament, a teaching continued in the New. Paul tells us that Christ is ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Indeed, the entire Bible points to the Messiah, the Son of God, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as the Giver of saving knowledge. So, I leave my readers with the departing words of Peter in his second epistle:

‘Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever, Amen.’  

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