FAITH’S KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST (1)

“Ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

—2 Peter 1:8

“There is much confusion about faith today. For some, faith is simply a vague feeling, but it has no content. For others, faith is a leap in the dark, a step out into the unknown and unknowable. For still others, faith is belief without evidence or belief in the face of all contrary evidence. An atheist, such as Richard Dawkins, derides faith in Jesus Christ as credible as belief in the “flying spaghetti monster” or the “tooth fairy”!

The first element of saving faith is knowledge. A believer knows not only about God, but a believer knows God in Jesus Christ. In fact, so precious is this knowledge that Christ calls it eternal life: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). We must stress this point in our anti-doctrinal age. We who believe know who God is and what God has done in Jesus Christ; and the more we know, the stronger our faith becomes. To claim faith without knowledge is to worship an unknown God as did the heathen in Athens (Acts 17:23) or to worship what we do not know as did the Samaritans (John 4:22). Faith is not ignorance.”

—Martyn McGeown