In Sean Covey’s Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Teens, he shares a story about King Louis the 16th of France and his young son, Louis the 17th:
“King Louis had been taken from his throne and imprisoned. His young son, the prince, was taken by those who dethroned the king. They thought that inasmuch as the king’s son was heir to the throne if they could destroy him morally, he would never realize the great and grand destiny that life has bestowed upon him.
They took him to a community far away, and there they exposed him to every filthy and vile thing that life could offer. They exposed him to foods the richness of which would quickly make him a slave to his appetite. THey used vile language around him constantly. They exposed him to lewd and lusting women. They exposed him to dishonor and distrust. He was surrounded 24 hours a day by every thing that could drag the soul of a man as low as one could slip. For over six months he had this treatment – but not once did the young boy buckle under pressure.
Finally after intensive temptation, they questioned him. Why had he not submitted himself to these things – why had he not partaken? These things would provide pleasure, satisfy lusts, and were desirable; they were all his. The boy said, “I cannot do what you ask for I was born to be a king.”
The boy knew who he was, and therefore it shaped how he responded and how he behaved. However true this story is, there is a Christian lesson for us. What we know shapes how we respond and behave. Today I want you to know that God knows you.
Last time we explored these same verses in Galatians to study the topic of knowing God. This time we are focusing on the topic of God knowing us. Paul says, “But now that you know God – or rather are known by God…”
Knowing God and being known by God refer to the same thing – being saved and belonging to God. They refer to the same thing, but from different perspectives you might say. From my side, as one who knows God it means I know God as my Savior, that He has saved me. That’s the way I know Him. From God’s side, He knows me as someone who is saved, who is His child and who belongs to Him. Whether we say in one breath, “I know God,” or in the next breath, “God knows me,” it is referring to the same thing: we are saved.
Application: Does God know you? Does God look at you and say, “I know you. I know you as one that I have justified and as one who will spend eternity with me”? Or would God say to you what Jesus said in Matthew 7? Turn to Matthew 7:21-23 with me….READ….. Do you see it? When Jesus turns them away to eternal judgment He doesn’t say, “You were never saved,” or “You never belonged to me,” although that is obviously what he means. Jesus says to them, “I never KNEW you. Away from me…” There are those whom Jesus knows – they will be with Him in eternal blessedness – and there are those whom He does NOT know – and they will be in eternal judgment. So my application question again is, “What will Jesus say to you on that day? Does Jesus know you?”
At this point your theology might start popping up here and we might remember that God “knows” everything – that’s what it means to be “omniscient” and have perfect knowledge. There is literally nothing that God doesn’t know. So how can Jesus – as God in the flesh – say “I never knew you?” It’s because the idea of God knowing us doesn’t refer to whether God has all knowledge about us – instead it conveys the type of relationship people have with God. There are two types of people in the world: those God knows and those He doesn’t. People who are known by God have a relationship with Him that is not shared by people whom God does not know. People God does not know are alienated from Him, hostile towards Him in their thinking, under His wrath and judgment for their sin, still seen by God as guilty for their sin, belonging to the devil and this world, and much more.
This is an entirely different relationship than the one God has with people He knows. God knows me as someone who believes Him, who is His son, as one He has justified, and someone who belongs to Him. He knows me as someone He loves, one to whom He has given His Spirit, and one to whom He is going to give all things. He knows me as someone who walks in His commands and who confesses His Son.
KNOWN TO OBEY
Does God know me? Does He know me as someone who obeys Him? Being known by God means obedience. To say that God knows me means that He knows I am someone who walks in His righteousness.
- Turn to 2 Timothy 2:19 with me, “The Lord knows those who are His, and everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” See the connection? See the connection between God knowing who is saved and that they are the ones who turn away from wickedness? That means they turn to righteousness. God knows everyone: the question is in knowing God do you turn away from wickedness because you know Him and does He now know you as someone who believes in Him and turns from evil?
- Turn to John 10:27 with me, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.” Those who are Jesus’ sheep are known by Him as those who listen to His voice – obedience.
- Turn to 1 Corinthians 8:3 with me, “But whoever loves God is known by God.” God knows those who love Him. What is the greatest command? Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind.” Is loving God just fuzzy feelings, goosebumps on your arms, tingling feelings? Jesus told us what loving God looks like in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commands.” So we are back to obedience – God knows those who obey Him. He knows those who believe Him and obey Him as those genuine believers who believe Him and follow His commands. They are the ones who actually love Him, believe in Him and follow Him.
Then look at Galatians 4:8-10 again with me….READ. You can see the connection here between being known by God and leaving our former life behind. In Galatia there were Jews who followed the Law coming to Christ, Gentiles who followed the Law also came to Christ, and pagan Gentiles were coming to Christ too. Pagan Gentiles used to be enslaved to “those who by nature are not gods” (v8). But in verse 9-10 we see they are somehow “turning back” to weak and miserable forces they left behind.
Here’s the thing, the whole problem in the Galatian churches that prompted Paul to write this stern letter was not that the believers were being pressured to go back into paganism. No, they were under pressure from Judaizers who were trying to get all of them to follow the Law of Moses.
So here’s the question: how is it that Gentile Christians would be turning back to their former ways of paganism if they started following the Law of Moses? The Law of Moses was not “just another” religion – it came from God Himself! So how is it that a Gentile Christian in Galatia, who left paganism behind to follow Christ, and who was no longer a slave to idols – how could he be returning to those old ways if he now began to follow the Law of Moses?
The answer is in verse 3 where we studied the meaning of “elemental spiritual forces of the world.” That was the word “stoicheon,” which means rudiments, ABC’s. It’s the same word here in verse 9, “weak and miserable FORCES.” We learned in verse 3 that Paul was saying that all religions prior to Christ’s coming – including the Law of Moses – were mere ABC’s of religion, the stoicheon of ultimate religion. They were all the first steps of religion that laid the foundation for the coming of Christ. All religions on some level prepared humanity for Christ’s coming. While the Law of Moses was unique from all other religions in that it alone came from God, and all other religions served demons (1 Cor 10:20), nonetheless all other religions had things in their structures and concepts that overlapped with the Law of Moses. These things were the rudiments of religion – the stoicheon of religion.
Think of what paganism shared with Moses : the existence of a god, that god or gods are the explanation for reality, that humans are faulty and anger deities with their sins, thus the need for sacrifice to a god, the need for someone to mediate between man and god as a priest, the need for worship and honor given to a deity, the need for people to speak for the deity, the need for seeing deities involved in the going-ons of humanity and so much more.
When Christ came people from pagan religions would have a basic religious concept from their pagan experience that would make them able to understand as they heard the gospel preached to them. They would be able to understand things like Christ is the one who fulfills all those religious concepts and is the true substance of religion:
- He is the Creator and the source of their reality,
- He is the one who mediates permanently and successfully between the one true God and them as humans,
- all the sins they commit as pagans He took on himself on the cross, so He didn’t just offer the greatest sacrifice – he WAS the greatest sacrifice that propitiated an angry God and successfully reconciles man to that God,
- He was the one and only sacrifice necessary to accomplish fellowship between man and god.
What they would learn as brand new was their religion was aimed at a false god, that they were ignorant of the true God, that their religion was unable to save them from this one true God, and that the true Son of God did not come from their religion but from the religion of the Jews. That was the nation that the Savior came from because that is the nation that had the true God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the God of Israel!
So here’s how it ties into verses 8-10…..the Law of Moses was mere religious stoicheon, mere religious ABC’s, just like pagan religions. So when Judaizers were trying to compel those Gentile believers to start following the Law of Moses, it would be going back to the ABC’s, the stoicheon, and in some sense equivalent to going back to paganism. Turn to Colossians 2:17 and Colossians 2: 20 with me….. In verse 20 that is the same Greek word “stoicheon.” We have DIED to the stoicheon. Paul says if you go back to the Law of Moses you will be going backwards into what was merely the foundation of what would come later.
That is bad enough, but on top of that the Law is said to be done and over with, non-operational since Christ’s death. We are said to have died to the Law in Christ, a phrase that ALWAYS means to live apart from – just like when Romans 6 says we have died to SIN, which we are to live apart from. We are dead to the Law because we are alive in Christ.
APPLICATION: Going forward with Christ is not done by going backwards and following the Law. Following the Law would be returning to the elemental spiritual forces of the world that were left behind when Christ came.
APPLICATION: In a broader application, going forward with Christ means leaving behind your old ways. Give them up. Stop your sins.
Here’s where we land: to be known by God is another way of saying you are saved. God knows you as someone He has saved because He knows you as someone who believes in His Son Jesus Christ. God knows you. Does God know you? And being known by God also carries with it the idea of obeying God. All of this is coming up in the specific context of Galatians, where the believers were being instructed NOT to give in to the pressure they were under to follow the Law of Moses. In other words, a person who knows God and is known by God, knows they don’t have to follow the Law, and that God commands them not to.
Do you know this?
Does God know you?