Think for a minute with me about the greatest gift you’ve ever received. What was it? When I was a freshman in high school I received a ball signed by the 1996-97 Jayhawks. As a huge Kansas Basketball fan, that ranks right up there. But, I don’t know if I would call that the greatest gift ever. For that high distinction I would have to go with my knowledge of God. That may sound a bit clichéd for a preacher to say, but hear me out.
What we believe about God is the single most important belief we have, including whether or not we even believe he exists. Everything in our lives rests on the foundation of what we believe, what we know, about God. Jesus himself confessed that knowledge of God is what constitutes eternal life. Surely then, the greatest gift we could ever get would be something that helped us know God as fully as is possible, yes?
In the previous four parts of this series we’ve seen how God the Son stepped down out of glory and moved into the neighborhood; we’ve endured the light he shines so that we can live; and we’ve actually started trying to walk in that light so we can become ourselves. What’s next?
What’s next is that he gives us the greatest gift of all. He gives us the gift that enables us to fully receive the rest. And what is this incredible gift? Knowledge of God, of course. Without a proper knowledge of God we can’t take part in any of the rest of Jesus’ transformation work. It is the foundational bedrock for the rest of what Jesus moved into the neighborhood to do.
Look how John sets this idea up in his prologue: “We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift.” One of the spin off series from HGTV’s popular House Hunters is called Buying Alaska. It’s the same series but set entirely in the Last Frontier. Many of the houses featured in the show are entirely off the grid. If the homeowners want modern amenities, they’ve got to make them happen all on their own. This do-it-all-yourself spirit is part of what makes the show so attractive. There’s something in all of us that wants to be the sole source of everything in our lives. But, as John observes here, the truth is that everything we have comes by way of someone else. Chiefly, we live off his generous bounty.
Acknowledging this doesn’t mean we aren’t still doing a lot of work. It simply means we are aware of the real power source. Remember? He’s the Creator and thus everything we sometimes count as ours is first his. This is common grace we all receive. And an important part of this common grace is sometimes called general revelation, which is simply the term used to describe the basic awareness all people are able to gain of God’s existence and character by observing the natural world. Yet even baseline awareness of God is only available because he made it so. Everything we know of God we know because God revealed it to us.
Well, if history is any indicator, in spite of the fact that we are able to know something of God by way of general revelation, we’re not so good on living out the implications of that knowledge. As a result, when in the course of human history we became ready to handle a bit more detailed knowledge of God, he revealed this to us through the Law of Moses. But, far from being the end game in God’s quest to reveal himself to us, this was like a basic multiplication course en route to graduate level calculus. For the purposes of any higher work in mathematics, graduate calculus is obviously better, but this doesn’t negate the importance of multiplication. The calculus rests on the foundation of the multiplication and in fact won’t make sense without it. We need more than the Law of Moses to come to a saving knowledge of God, but without it, Christ would have been unintelligible.
When the time was right, then, Jesus came to offer us the full thing. He came to take us from law which operates on the principle of “do it or else” to grace and truth which move us forward to “here’s what’s right, but if you flub it I’m going to give you another chance because I love you and want you to succeed.” And when we come to knowledge of this God who is full of grace and truth, the life and light Christ came bringing to this world are packaged with it. Knowledge of this God is what will transform our lives. When we know the God who is the fullness of grace and truth, eternal life becomes not merely a possibility, but a certainty. There’s only one catch here: we can’t know this God except through Christ. We know God through Christ.
This is what John powerfully declares at the end of his prologue: “No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made him plain as day.” We know God through Christ. And through this knowledge we are given the opportunity to live, to walk in the light Christ shines, to become fully ourselves, to know God. This is the best gift ever. It is the gift God moved into the neighborhood to bring us. My hope and prayer for you is that you will receive it in full. May you come to know fully the God who is full of grace and truth through his clearest expression: Jesus Christ. May you come to know him fully and be transformed. Blessings.