Then and Now

“but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known” 1 Corinthians 13:12

Know Fully – The same verb two times.  The only difference is the verb tense, but what a difference it makes.  It’s the difference between what I will know and what God already knows.

Epiginosko is the intense form of the verb ginosko.  It means “to know completely, to be fully aware.”   The first time Paul uses the verb in the future tense.  I shall know fully sometime, but not now.  The second time Paul uses the verb in the aorist tense.  This is a Greek tense that means the action is completed and finished in the past.  And that’s the power of this verse.  Someday in the future I will know with the same depth that God has already completely known me in the past.  Both sides of this spiritual equation need some careful consideration.

Let’s start in the past.  God knows everything about me.  He knew it long ago.  Ever since He has known me, He has been fully and completely aware of all that I am.  There are no surprises about me waiting for God to uncover.  God knows me to the very depths of who I am.

No one in this world knows me this way.  I don’t even know myself this way.  Some of who I am is still hidden from me.  Some is unconscious.  Some is still working its way into my awareness.  But none of it will catch God off guard.  There is nothing, not one single thing about me, that God doesn’t know.  For those of us whose lives are riddled with unfaithfulness and disobedience, this is an overwhelmingly comforting revelation.  God really truly knows me and He still loves me!

And now the future.  The day will come when I will also know with this kind of depth.  Someday God will reveal to me who I really am – all the way to the bottom of me.  And in that same day, God will open my eyes and my heart so that I may also know Him intensely.  Beyond any of the tiny, earth-bound efforts I make today to know Him.  Beyond the limitations of my imagination, my emotional boundaries and my fragile dependence.  Some day I will be able to know Him with every cell of my being.  Some day the very atoms that make me will shout with joy, released from their broken world prison, free to shine with the Creator’s glory.  Not now.  Now yet.  But some day.

What hope lies before us!  What splendor awaits!  A day is coming when I will be caught up into the One Who made me and I will know Him without the veil.  That is worth waiting for!