Treasured Knowledge

The first series of reflections will stem from a study of God's attributes I'm currently doing, specifically those attributes theology calls "communicable" - those attributes God shares with us in some significant capacity.

God's knowledge astounds me. It can neither grow nor diminish, expand or shrink, or become in any way. Omniscient. God has always known everything there is or ever will be to know - quite the position of authority from an intellectual perspective! However, my new favorite verse about God's knowledge reveals something highly personal about God's knowledge - and particularly how it gets relayed to us.

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. - II Corinthians 2:11

The Spirit of God - the Holy Spirit - knows the thoughts of God. He's always taking them in, searching them Scripture tells us ( I Cor. 2:10). But we know things too, like who the first President was and where the Nile River is and why water turns to ice. We aren't talking about this basic form of knowing. Ginosko, the word Paul uses here for 'knows', has a much richer meaning. The word implies a thrill, a sense of enjoyment or pleasure experience by the being who knows when He looks upon the object of his knowing. Plain and simple: the Holy Spirit here relishes and enjoys knowing the thoughts of God. He treasures what He knows and rejoices over it. The Holy Spirit is a total scholar - a lover of knowledge. Since the Holy Spirit is a member of the Triune God, all three members of which share the same nature, then God as a whole treasures knowledge and rejoices over it. God's omniscience isn't a "been there, done that" kind of deal, it's a valued possession worth searching continuously, which we've already said the Spirit does.

How the Spirit works with us on this causes even more awe! The Spirit guides us into all Truth (John 16:13), but life experience shows us that this process does not happen immediately, continuously, or even in the same order from person to person. The Spirit reveals to us over time, and when we're ready, what we need to know. I always thought of this kind of like security clearance levels in the CIA - the further up you are, the more you get to know. However, this sounds cultist and hierarchical. More accurately, this beautiful word and verse reveal to us that the Holy Spirit wants us to share in the joy of the knowledge of God. He shares with us what will lead us to glorify and worship God, what will drive us to rejoice over Him. The Holy Spirit teaches us the methods that will make us into God-scholars, but more importantly, God-lovers. For some of us (nerds like me), this will mean a love of the language of Scripture. For others, it will mean other means of study. There's no one way to study Scripture, but there is one goal: a knowledge body that enhances and drives our love and worship of the Awesome God.

May God meet each of us in His Word today, and may we learn something that blows us away. May we each come to relish in our knowledge of God, and thereby hunger for it all the more. Amen.