I made the point yesterday that the Christian is a man with the knowledge of God. But that’s not all. The truth of God is a living truth, a truth that begets life. Mere knowledge of God, even knowledge of God’s truth, isn’t an end in itself. Rather, a true and saving knowledge of God’s will is the foundation of Christian character and conduct.
You see, in revealing His truth to us, God is at the same time revealing His will to us. His revelation is His law and doesn’t accomplish its purpose when a man has simply understood it, but only when a man is led by it to believe and obey. God’s revelation calls us to know in order that we may do, and to do in order that we may be. So that as essential as Christian doctrine is, its goal is not merely to increase our understanding, but to redeem and radically transform our lives.
The light of God’s Word is knowledge, but it’s knowledge to direct our feet. It’s knowledge to shape our practice and change the way we think, the way we talk, and the way we live, and make them correspondent with what pleases our God.
You’ll remember how David eulogizes God’s truth in Ps 19.7-9, telling us how perfect it is, how right, how pure, how clean, and how true. But you should also remember that the whole thrust of David’s praise in that passage isn’t the excellence of God’s truth per se, but rather the excellence of the effect it has on the Christian’s life. David shows that the excellency of God’s truth is in the fact that it revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes. And even Ps 119, in which nearly every verse mentions the truth of God’s Word, it’s all about the positive, comforting, and joyful effect God’s truth has on the believing soul.
You’ll also remember James’s charge in Js 1, that we not be mere hearers of the Word, but rather doers, because the blessing, he says in v.25, is in the doing, which merely echoes what Jesus said in Jn 13.17, If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. So while the knowledge of God’s will may put us into the way of happiness, it’s only the practice of the will of God that results in happiness. The life-blood of Christianity flows in the veins of the obedience of faith (see Rom 1.5; 16.25-26).
It’s sad to see that so many in Christ’s church are content with a knowledge of God’s will that leaves their lives largely void of the fruits of that knowledge in practice. They speak of God well enough, and call upon God as well as the rest, but to them Jesus says in the words of Lk 6.46, Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
We would no more call a man a carpenter who only knows the trade but doesn’t work in it, than Jesus calls a man a Christian who knows the things of God but doesn’t apply them. It’s not the Bible in your head that blesses you, but the Bible so in your head that it fills your mouth with praise, your heart with gratitude, and your life with obedience.
Yet, so many rest in their knowledge. They learn so that they can dispute well but care nothing for living well. They learn of God but never learn from God. Their learning is a candle which they gaze at when they should be working by it; it’s a pattern they look upon when they should be imitating it.
Let us beware, then, of mere learning. And let us remember Lev 18.4, in which the Lord says, You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God; and Dt 29.29, in which Moses says, the things that are revealed to us by God belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of His law.
Make a point today to live out what you know of God’s truth, to apply it to your life. Let today, and everyday, be a day of building your house on the rock, and not on the sand (Mt 7.24-27). ––Check back tomorrow and I’ll tell you how.
