Bible Verse of the Day Tuesday December 12th, 2023

John 1:18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

As Christians, we all know the requirements: to be saved and know life eternal, we must know God. However, the question that gets asked the most today is: How do we get to know God? Throughout history, people have attempted to answer that question. The Greeks sought to gain wisdom, believing that wisdom was the pathway to God. We have modern-day counterparts to the Greeks today in the New Agers and mystics, but they still do not know God in all their gaining of wisdom and spiritual enlightenment.

The Jews took a different path; they sought to know God by keeping the Law, hoping their good deeds earned them favor with God and put them in the right relationship. But the Law is sometimes described as a mountain burning with fire, shouting, “Keep out; you can’t get to me this way.” Consequently, no one can know God through gaining worldly wisdom, and we cannot know God through trying to be good, which brings us to today’s passage. Our verse of the day tells us that Christ Jesus has made God known to humanity. He has revealed Him, put Him on display for the world to see, and made Him knowable.

However, there is a contrast brought out here. No one had seen God before, but now God is fully revealed. The contrast is that under the Law, God could not be fully seen or known. But now, in Christ, God is fully revealed and can be fully known.

So, the obvious inference of this text can be stated in the question, “Do we know God?” This question does not ask if we are religious or good people; the question before us is whether we know God. That’s the requirement: simply that we know God. The method is that we get to know God through Christ Jesus. We don’t know God through studying the Zen masters of the universe or coming to spiritual enlightenment, etc. Nor do we get to know God by trying to keep the Law and be good. We get to know God by coming to know Christ.

The one requirement that we have in this life is that we know God. Without that, we do not have eternal life; we have eternal punishment. So, Jesus came to reveal God, to make Him known. The method of knowing God is through the forgiveness of our sins, where we see that Jesus took the punishment for us. So, Jesus Christ came to reveal God and make Him known; He did that best on the Cross, where He died to forgive us, thereby removing the barrier to our knowing God.