Do You Know God Intellectually Or Do You Know God Personally?
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” - Matthew 23:25
From the time I was a little girl, I’ve always loved to learn. When I was two years old, my dad would spend hours with me, teaching me numbers, letters, colors, and all the football teams in the SEC (priorities right?). Growing in knowledge is something I enjoy doing and try to do as much as I can. But while having a lot of knowledge is considered impressive and admirable in our culture, I’m learning that knowledge should be viewed differently when it comes to our walk with Christ.
What I mean by that is that knowing about God isn’t enough. You can study all of the theology you want, learning the Greek and Hebrew translations of Scripture and memorizing as many verses as you can remember. But if you’re just acquiring biblical knowledge for the sake of knowing, you’re missing the point.
Our Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to just know Him intellectually. He wants us to know Him personally. He wants us to not only know what Scripture says, but see that Scripture comes to life in the way He interacts with us, guides us, and loves us on a daily basis. He wants us to point others to Jesus, not just by telling them about Jesus, but by showing them His love by applying what we’ve learned from reading God’s Word.
If we’re not careful, we will end up just like the Pharisees did in Jesus’ time, focusing so much on knowing the law and appearing righteous on the outside that we lose sight of the fact that following Jesus means experiencing transformation from the inside out.
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Teddy Roosevelt, who said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I believe that’s advice we should all be applying to our Christian walk every single day. The people we interact with on a daily basis aren’t going to care how much we know about theology or how much Scripture we have memorized if we’re not showing them love, grace, compassion, kindness, and respect. Remember, the greatest commandments Jesus gave were to love God and love others, not know about God and show others.
Jesus said that people will know we are His disciples by our love, so may we make a priority not to solely take in knowledge about God, but to spread the love of God to those around us by applying His Word and His truth as we grow in our personal relationship with Him.