KNOWLEDGE OF THE LORD BY THE WORD AND BY COMPANIONSHIP
KNOWLEDGE OF THE LORD BY THE WORD AND BY COMPANIONSHIP
I was thinking yesterday of the difference between knowing a person by hearsay, and knowing such an one by companionship. I think there is a great deal of opinion, if I may so say, of our Lord, which one cannot aver from actual acquaintance. I mean that the word is the authority for the opinion and not personal knowledge of Him. I do not in any way lessen the value of the word. The word describes to me what He is, but when I come to know Him, my knowledge of Him confirms what I have read of Him in the word. If there were no word, there would be no definite or defined idea of what my knowledge personally would come up to, and if there were no personal knowledge there would be a ‘hearsay’, which had [p. 85] never been proved or confirmed. When what I read of Him in the word is confirmed by my personal knowledge of Him, through divine teaching I have a sense of what suits Him, so that I do not need the word for every act. Moses breaks the tables of stone without any word to that effect. Divine instinct told him to do so. He had knowledge of God and knew what was suitable to Him. There would be no acting contrary to the word, on the contrary, all would be in keeping with it, but then there would not be waiting for positive orders. If I know Him only by the word I am afraid to act without a text — to do anything without an express injunction. If I know Him well by the Spirit, His word gives me authority for all that my knowledge of Him reaches to. It defines what my knowledge apprehends. The word explains to me the One whom I know, but I act for Him not so much in obedience to a given word, though that could not be over-looked, but because I know and am authorised by the force and bearing of the word to adopt the course which would suit Him.
Do you understand the force of the saying, “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5: 5). If your faith reaches to the Son of God it puts you apart from and above all that is not of God.