THE NEED TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND GOD
The Bible is the most precious book in the world because it reveals God and His eternal plan. Mankind is an important part of that plan and Christians need to have a thorough understanding of what is written in the Bible in order to live worthy lives and participate in God’s plan. The Word of God in the Bible says that God’s people need to understand the Triune God (2Peter 3:18). This verse is a command that Christians should follow wholeheartedly. It means that God’s people must understand God more and more over time from the day we personally believe in God. In addition, the word knowing also means that Christians must understand God clearly and thoroughly. In this Bible verse, it only mentions knowing Jesus Christ, but because He is one with God and with the Holy Spirit, we can understand that God wants us to know about the entire Trinity (Colossians 1: 15). It is a lifelong invitation to intimacy with the divine. It implies not just head knowledge, but experiential, relational understanding. Over time, it will pull us from superficial faith into something profound and participatory. The meaning of the word knowing above is completely consistent with God’s words in Ephesians 1: 7-10. In verse 9 we can clearly see that God wants us to understand the mystery of His will, that is, to understand it in detail, not to understand it vaguely or just to understand it perfunctorily. Therefore it is because of God’s will that He gave mankind the Bible so that we Christians can understand God Himself and His eternal plan related to us who live on this earth. It is also because of God’s will that we have this article to share the understanding of God that the Bible has revealed to all of us who love God and want to follow His commandments in the Bible.
Since it was God’s will to reveal Himself and His eternal plan to mankind, He did not hide anything from His servants, the prophets. God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, inspired them to write the Bible so that people could read and understand His eternal plan (Amos 3: 7, 2Timothy 3: 16-17).
When we Christians have a desire to learn about God, there are two main things that we must do at the same time every time we sit down to meditate and study God’s word in the Bible.: The first is to pray for the Holy Spirit to enlighten us in learning about God, and the second is to rely on the Bible so that our understanding of God is accurate (Psalm 119: 18). The first method, which is prayer, is something that each of us must do regularly in our daily lives, especially when we sit down to meditate on the depths of God’s words. In this article, we only present what the Bible has revealed so that we can together understand God Himself and His eternal ways for all mankind.
Another very important thing that we need to pay attention to is that in God’s principle, in order to be saved, Christians must know how to do God’s will, as affirmed in 1John 2: 17 and John 17: 3. One of God’s wills, as we mentioned above, is that God’s people must understand more about Him and His eternal plan. Therefore, we Christians should have a sincere desire to learn about God Himself so that we can be counted among those who know how to do God’s will and be saved for the eternal life.
The natural reaction of a person when he loves someone is to learn about that person in details so that he can express his love properly and please that person. This is understandable to everyone, such as children loving their parents or the love between a man and a woman. Likewise, when a Christian declares that he loves God, he must naturally want to learn about Him so that he can love God in a way that pleases Him. But surprisingly, although Christians often say that we love God, we are very indifferent to the Bible and do not pay much attention to studying God’s words carefully to understand Him better. Therefore Christian’s attitude and heart towards the Bible is the measure by which each person can personally recognize how much he or she loves God. When God is at the highest position in our love, Christians will learn about Him more carefully and in detail than they learn about any person in this world (Hosea 6: 3). That will help us understand God more, can get closer to Him, and from there we can understand everyone around us clearly. That happens because in the Bible, God has taught Christians very carefully and in detail about our relationship with God and with people (Psalm 119: 105), because the law of the Bible is only summarized in two things, which are to love God and to love others (Mark 12: 30-31).
(to be continued)