Knowledge

“until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”  Ephesians 4:13

Knowledge – Do you know the President?  Well, most of us know about him, but few of us claim to know him.  But suppose you met the President at a fund-raiser.  Would you then say that you “know” him?  You could say that you were acquainted with him, but you would still recognize that there is another sense of “know” that does not apply.  How about his cabinet personnel?  They “know” him much better.  But do they really know him?  There are many levels of knowledge.  Unfortunately, English has only one word to cover them all.

Many languages have different verbs for “know” because there are many ways of knowing and the differences are very important.  For example, French has connaitre for knowing someone as an acquaintance but it uses savoir when knowing means detailed and intimate understanding.  It makes a difference, doesn’t it?  You better not mix up those two verbs when you tell someone about knowing your wife or husband.  In order to catch these differences in English, we have to add words like “know about” or “really know”.  In this verse, we face a similar difficulty, and this translation doesn’t really give us the true sense of Paul’s statement. 

The word here is epignosis.  The addition of those three letters at the beginning (epi) adds considerable strength to this word.  This is not a word of acquaintance or of casual identification.  This is knowledge that shows full participation in a very personal relationship.  This is not knowing about Jesus.  It is knowing Jesus from the deepest part of your being.  It is being in love with him. 

Before you start self-incriminations about how far you are from fully knowing Jesus, remember the direction of Paul’s statement.  “Until we get to the end of the line”.  To completely and fully know Jesus is the last stop.  It is the goal.  We are all traveling in that direction, slowly and with turmoil.  But God is the engineer on this train and He guarantees that as long as we stay on board, we will get there.  Last stop – completely in love.  The end of the line is really going to be worth the ride.

(to be continued)