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γνωστός (Gnōstos): God Has Made Himself Known · Reformed Thinking

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Imagine, just for a second, that you are an ancient philosopher.
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Like you're standing right there in the marble streets of Athens.
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Oh, yeah, Yeah. And for you to to know something
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is to just observe it coldly from a distance, right?
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Like studying a geometric shape or something.
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You look at it, you categorize it, and you master it.
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Right. It's very clinical.
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Very clinical. But then across the
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Mediterranean, there is this radically different culture for
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the ancient Hebrews to know. Something might literally leave
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you bruised or bleeding or, you know, bound in a lifelong
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unbreakable covenant. The word knowledge was, I mean,
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it was an absolute battleground. Yeah, the total collision of
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worldviews. So welcome to Reformed thinking.
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Today we are doing a deep dive into this massive stack of
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sources. We're investigating A lexical
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dossier that covers the ancient Greek Word family for known and
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knowledge. So we're talking about words
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like mystos, genusking, and eusis.
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Right, those are the big ones. Yeah.
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And our mission today is to track how this single linguistic
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concept just completely collided with Hebrew theology and how it
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completely rewired the way early Christians understood their
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relationship with God. And you know, for you listening
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right now, pay close attention to this because how you define
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knowing dictates your entire reality.
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Absolutely. It dictates how you pray, how
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you live, and how you view the sovereign Creator of the
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universe. Yeah.
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And that contrast between Athens and Jerusalem is well, it's the
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perfect place to begin, really, because in our modern context,
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we kind of treat knowledge as a commodity.
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Like downloading a file. Right.
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Yeah, right. We download data to our phones.
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We memorize trivia facts or, you know, we pull up a medical scan.
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If you break your arm, the doctor looks in an X-ray, points
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to that little jagged white line and says there it is.
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Yeah, very binary. It's.
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Completely binary. It's broken or not broken.
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You file that data away. Just move on with your day.
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We assume knowledge is just this accumulation of neutral
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information, but the ancient texts reveal a completely
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different landscape. Which is wild to think about.
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It is the ancients viewed knowledge as something that
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either like elevates your soul out of the material world or
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crashes into your daily existence with absolute
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authority. If you get the definition of
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knowledge wrong, I mean your entire theology collapses.
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Wow. OK, so to set the stage for this
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lexical investigation, we have to grasp what it meant to the
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average classical Greek thinker on the street.
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So let's start with the root terms Here.
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We're looking at nustos, which means known or familiar, and the
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verb yuske, which means to comprehend.
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But our sources are they're very careful to distinguish unisco
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from two other Greek concepts. The first one is aystunisti, and
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that sounds a lot like where we get our modern word aesthetics
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right. It is the root of that word,
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yeah. The Greeks used iced anesti to
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denote this instinctive physical perception.
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It's entirely sensory, so it happens without any necessary
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intellectual understanding attached to it.
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Oh, like a reflex? Sort of, yeah.
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Like if you touch a hot stove and pull your hand back in pain,
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that is iced Anesti. You perceive the heat, but you
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didn't necessarily comprehend the thermodynamic reality of the
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fire. You just know it burns.
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Right. And then the second word, the
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source is separate from true knowledge is doking.
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OK, dokane. Now I know dokane is related to
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the word doksa, which you know, is often translated as glory.
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But in a philosophical context it has a totally different
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flavor. It means having an opinion,
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right? Yeah, Dokane is having an
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opinion or an impression. You might hold a strong opinion
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about, say, an upcoming political event, or you might
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guess that it's going to rain tomorrow, But there's no
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guarantee that your opinion matches reality.
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It's just an unverified assumption.
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Yes, you were guessing. Ginishka, on the other hand,
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embraces things as they actually are.
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It grasps the hard truth. So the one who possesses this
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kind of knowledge has certainty, not just a gut feeling or some
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educated guess. OK, so Ginishka is verified
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reality, but the sources highlight something really
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fascinating about how the Greeks verified that reality.
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The Greek ideal of knowledge is inherently visual.
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For them, the eye is considered far more reliable than the ear.
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Which is so different from other cultures.
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It really is. Knowing is viewed as a mode of
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seeing. The Greek word for this is the
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harem, which is actually where we get the word theory.
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So knowledge is achieved by this visual inspection from the
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outside. And that visual nature of Greek
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thought, I mean, it really cannot be overstated.
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When a Greek philosopher wanted to understand something, they
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took a step back to observe it. The observer intentionally
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separates themselves from the object of knowledge.
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You'd get a better look. Right.
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The goal is to grasp the eternal, timeless realities
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behind the changing physical world.
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So think about the philosophy of Plato and his concept of the
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Forms. To Plato, the physical world,
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you can, you know, touch and smell.
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It's messy, it's decaying, it's constantly changing.
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Yeah, a physical chair is eventually in a rotten fall
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apart. Right, But true knowledge looks
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past that physical chair to observe the eternal, static,
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perfect form of a chair that exists in the intellectual
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realm. OK.
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Wait, let me try an analogy here to see if I am tracking with
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this visual detached concept. The classical Greek view of
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knowledge sounds a lot like a modern biologist dissecting a
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frog in a laboratory. Oh, that's a good way put it.
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Right. The scientist stands completely
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outside the subject. They are observing it coldly and
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objectively to master it's anatomical facts.
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They're not trying to make friends with the frog.
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No, definitely not. They're looking at it from a
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distance to extract data and take possession of those facts.
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The biologist in the lab captures the Greek mindset
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perfectly. The observer stands apart from
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the object, and because you're observing it from the outside,
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to know something in this Greek framework means to control it.
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Knowledge is a possession. Once you have observed the
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eternal truth, you've grasped it.
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You own it. Man, if truth is just a static
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eternal reality that you observe from a distance, that has to
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completely alter the way you approach religion.
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Because if God is just the ultimate eternal form, you
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wouldn't like pray to him for daily bread or expect him to
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part the Red Sea. Right.
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It turns religion into an academic intellectual exercise.
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When knowledge is primarily about objective observation, the
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highest virtue a human can achieve becomes what they call
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the contemplative life. So just sitting and thinking.
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Yeah. In Greek society, the
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philosopher is essentially the holy man.
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Piety is defined as detached theoretical reflection.
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You don't interact with the divine in a messy, historical,
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physical way. You just sit back, detach your
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mind from your physical body, and contemplate those eternal
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forms. It's clean, it's very clean,
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it's academic, and it operates completely separate from the
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grit and pain of daily human history.
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That makes a lot of sense when you look at the architecture and
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art of ancient Greece. It's all about the mind
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elevating itself above the dirt, searching for perfect symmetry
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and proportion. But this detached intellectual
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pursuit of static truth, It didn't just stay in the
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academies of Athens as the centuries passed.
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The sources show this concept mutating into something far more
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esoteric and honestly, bizarre. Which brings us to the Gnostics.
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Yeah, the Hellenistic Gnostic view takes this Greek concept of
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knowledge and just twist it into a completely different religious
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system. In Gnosticism, gnosis is no
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longer rational thought or methodical investigation.
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So no more dissecting the frog. No, it's not about looking at a
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frog in a lab or studying geometry.
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It becomes an esoteric, mystical illumination.
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And crucially, this illumination is given by God to a very select
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few. So they threw out the scientific
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method entirely. It wasn't about observing the
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world anymore. They rejected the material world
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entirely. The object of their knowledge
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changed dramatically. In the classical Greek view, you
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could at least investigate the natural world to find the truth
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behind it, but the Gnostics believe the material universe
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was inherently flawed. Like beyond repair.
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Right. In many Gnostic systems,
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physical matter was actually created by a lesser evil deity
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called the Demiurge. Therefore, the object of their
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true knowledge was a supreme God who was completely alienated
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from the material universe. See the classical Greeks,
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specifically Plato. They wanted philosophers to use
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their knowledge to shape the world.
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Like Plato wrote extensively about using knowledge to build a
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better city state to govern people well.
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But the Gnostics didn't want to shape the physical world at all.
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They wanted to escape it all together.
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Yeah, the focus of Gnosticism shifts entirely to the tragic
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history of the human soul. They believe the soul was a
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literal divine spark that had tragically fallen from the
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spiritual realm and become trapped in the prison of
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physical matter. So your body is a prison.
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Your physical body was a tomb, so nusis becomes the literal
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supernatural force that liberates the soul from that
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tomb. The sources describe this
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knowledge almost like a divine fluid or a magical substance
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that grants immortality and frees the person from the grim
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fate of the physical world. Wow.
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OK, so if the classical Greeks were like scientists dissecting
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a frog to gather data, it sounds like the Gnostics were treating
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knowledge like a magical cheat code in a video game. 100%.
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Right. If you learn the right secret
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passwords, you bypass the physical universe entirely.
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You don't have to play the game of human history, you just enter
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the cheat code and jump straight to the spiritual end screen.
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The concept of a magical cheat code is highly accurate for
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Gnosticism. You learn the secret names of
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the angels. You learn the hidden passwords
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to get past the planetary spheres after you die and your
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soul gets to escape. And, you know, we need to
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recognize the massive danger inherent in this worldview.
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Because it devalues real life. Absolutely.
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When knowledge is treated as an esoteric substance that elevates
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you into a divine state, the physical body is utterly
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despised. Human history is viewed as a
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mistake. Marriage, eating, working,
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suffering, raising children, all the physical, tangible realities
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of life are viewed as a humiliating trap in the gnostic
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system. Ignorance isn't just a lack of
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facts. Ignorance is an evil trap
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keeping you locked in the physical realm, and only secret
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spiritual knowledge can break the lock.
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So the goal is literally to memorize the secret handshakes
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of the universe so your soul can just eject from your rotting
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physical body the moment you die.
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It's total escapism. You don't care about justice in
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the city state, you don't care about feeding the poor because
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the physical world is just a garbage dump you're trying to
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flee. It is total escapism, yeah, and
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this mystical anti physical escapism was highly popular in
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the culture surrounding the early church.
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It it was the religious air everyone was breathing in the
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Hellenistic world, the desire to shed the physical body and
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ascend to a purely spiritual plane was a dominant cultural
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force. But when the first Christian
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started talking about knowledge, they were pulling from a
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radically different, much earthier tradition.
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And that brings us to the Hebrew shock.
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Yeah, the Hebrew concept of knowledge introduces a complete
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paradigm shift. To understand this, we have to
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look at the Hebrew word yada. So several centuries before
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Christ, ancient Jewish scholars translated their Hebrew Bible
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into Greek. This translation is known as the
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Septuagint, and when they came to the Hebrew word yada, they
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chose the Greek word genisco to translate it.
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But the concepts behind those two words were worlds apart.
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They were using a Greek word that meant visual detached
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observation, but they're using it to describe a Hebrew reality
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that was anything but detached. The contrast is staggering, and
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we remember how the Greeks prioritize the eye.
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For the Greeks, knowing was seeing.
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But the Hebrew concept of knowledge is not tied to the
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eye, it's tied to the ear. It's about hearing and obeying.
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Going from observing a static object to listening for a spoken
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command changes everything. When you observe a statue,
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you're in control. But when you are listening for a
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command, someone else is in control, the speaker has the
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authority, and your job is to respond.
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That shift in authority is central to the Hebrew worldview,
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and the word yada covers brutal physical realities that would
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make a Greek philosopher recoil. I mean, the Greek word Guinness
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go is usually reserved for clean intellectual comprehension, but
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our sources show that the Hebrew yada is used for experiencing
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physical blows as seen in First Samuel 14.
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Wow, knowing a physical beating. Yeah, and it's used for
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experiencing severe sickness in Isaiah 53, describing the
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Suffering servant as one acquainted with or knowing
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grief. It's used for experiencing the
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pain of childlessness, and famously it's used for sexual
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intimacy as in Genesis 4 where it says Adam knew Eve, his wife,
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and she conceived. Yada is never a detached
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observation. It is a lived, visceral physical
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experience. Let me put it this way.
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Comparing the Hebrew view of knowing to the Greek view is
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like comparing a marriage covenant to reading a medical
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chart. Yes, you don't know your spouse
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by standing across the room and reading their medical chart.
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You don't observe them like a specimen in the lab.
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You know them through mutual commitment, through physical
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reality, through arguments, through shared suffering, and
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through lived experience. You know them by doing actual
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life with them. The marriage covenant is the
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ideal framework for this because in the Hebrew mindset, God is
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not a static, timeless principle waiting to be observed by a
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clever philosopher. God is a driving, active,
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sovereign will in history. He is actively parting seas,
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sending plagues, demanding justice, blessing the obedient,
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and judging the wicked. Therefore, knowing God means
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acknowledging His absolute claim on your life.
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It means fearing Him and obeying His commands.
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You cannot know him while remaining detached.
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If God is an active agent moving through history, then you can't
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just be an academic observer. You are swept up in his actions.
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Right, the creature cannot objectively dissect the creator.
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The Creator acts in history and the creatures only valid form of
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knowledge is obedient submission to those sovereign acts.
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But there's a massive theological pivot that occurs in
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the Hebrew text right here, and it shapes everything that
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follows. Oh, I'm trapping with you.
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What happens when God is the one doing the knowing?
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When God is the subject of the knowing, when God is the one who
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knows someone, it implies sovereign election.
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For God to know a person or a nation means he sovereignly
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chooses to make them an object of His specific concern and
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grace. We see this explicitly in Amos
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3.2 where God speaks to the nation of Israel and says you
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only have I known of all the families of the earth.
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Now God is omniscient. He obviously knew that the
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Egyptians and the Babylonians existed.
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He wasn't lacking data about other nations, right?
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So when he says you only have I known, he means he had
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specifically elected Israel out of all the nations to be his
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covenant people. So God's knowledge isn't just
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him gathering data in a giant cosmic spreadsheet.
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His knowledge is an active, predestining choice.
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He knows the people, and by the very act of knowing them, he
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calls them into a covenant. The initiative is entirely on
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God's side. We also see this in #16.5.
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Moses says the Lord will show who is his and who is holy.
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In the Greek translation of that verse, it literally reads the
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Lord knows those who are His. God's knowledge separates His
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people from the rest of the world.
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So when the New Testament writers stepped onto the world
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stage in the 1st century, they faced A monumental task.
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They had to translate this earthy, obedient, electing
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Hebrew concept into a Greek language that was completely
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saturated with rationalism and Gnostic mysticism.
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They were walking into a culture that thought knowledge meant
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either doing geometry or casting a magic spell to escape the
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body, and the New Testament writers had to use those exact
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same Greek words to explain a God who demands physical
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obedience and sovereignly Alexis people.
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They were essentially hijacking the Greek vocabulary and
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smuggling in Hebrew definition. They hijacked the vocabulary
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completely. The New Testament writers adopt
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the Old Testament view without hesitation.
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Knowing God requires acknowledging His sovereign will
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and acting on it in the physical world.
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The source dossier points to Romans 2.18, where knowing God's
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will is directly linked to being instructed by the law and
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approving what is excellent. It's intrinsically tied to moral
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action. You do not know God if you do
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not obey Him. But early Christianity spread
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rapidly among pagans. These were Gentiles who had no
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background in the Hebrew Bible. They didn't grow up reading
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about Moses or Amos, so how did the concept of knowing God shift
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when it collided with the Gentile world?
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When dealing with pagans, the concept expanded to include the
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intellectual recognition of monotheism.
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Pagans were coming from a culture filled with thousands of
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gods, local deities, and temple idols.
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For Gentile, knowing God meant specifically rejecting those
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false idols to acknowledge the one true Creator.
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We see this clearly in Paul's letter to the Galatians.
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In Galatians 4.8, Paul writes formally, when you did not know
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God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.
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And in First Thessalonians 1.9, Paul describes their conversion
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by saying they turn to God from idols to serve the living and
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true God. There's an intellectual
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component there, learning that there is only one God, but it's
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an intellectual component that demands an immediate, radical
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change in physical behavior. You don't just add Yahweh to
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your shelf of statues. You smash the idols.
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You stop going to the Pagan temples.
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The sources actually highlight a specific compound word here that
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became heavily utilized in the early church epignesis.
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Yes, epignesis became a technical term for the decisive
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turn to faith and conversion. It wasn't just learning a new
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piece of trivia about a Jewish deity.
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It was the total reorientation of your life.
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It is the full experiential knowledge that brings you into
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the covenant fold. Let's look closely at Paul's
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brilliant maneuvering here, Specifically in his letters to
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the Corinthians and the Galatians, Paul is dealing with
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people in Corinth who are acting just like Gnostics.
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They're bragging about their superior spiritual knowledge.
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They think they have the cheat codes to reality.
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The church in Corinth was incredibly arrogant.
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They thought their nooses gave them the right to act however
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they wanted. Specifically regarding the
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controversy of eating meat that had been sacrificed to Pagan
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idols, the knowing ones in the church argued we have knowledge,
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we know that idols aren't real, and there was only one God.
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Therefore, we can eat whatever we want, even in a Pagan temple,
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and it doesn't matter. They were using their
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intellectual data to justify careless behavior, completely
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ignoring how it might hurt the conscience of other Christians.
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But Paul subverts them entirely in First Corinthians 8.
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He starts his argument by saying Now that you know God, but then
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he stops himself mid sentence to correct his own grammar.
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He pivots and says, or rather are known by God.
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And that grammatical self correction is one of the most
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significant theological pivots in the entire New Testament.
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Now that you know God, or rather are known by God, Paul refuses
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to let them take credit for their knowledge.
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The theological weight of Paul's phrasing there is incredible.
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Our human knowledge of God is completely secondary.
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It's entirely dependent on God's sovereignly electing to know us
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first. We didn't discover God by
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investigating him with a microscope or solving A
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philosophical puzzle. He chose to look at us.
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We have to unpack this divine initiative because it goes to
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the absolute core of the biblical worldview.
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Human beings, left to their own devices, are willfully blind to
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the truth. The source material references
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Paul's argument in Romans, one which brings a devastating
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picture of human nature. Paul writes that humanity
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actively suppresses the nostos of God, the knowable reality of
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God's existence and power in creation.
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So it's not innocent ignorance. Not at all.
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Men do not lack evidence for God.
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They actively hate the evidence. They exchange the truth about
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God for a lie. Therefore, any authentic human
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knowledge of the divine is the direct result of God's
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sovereignly breaking through that willful blindness.
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When Paul corrects himself in Galatians, in Corinthians, he is
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destroying their pride. He's telling the arrogant
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Corinthians, you didn't figure this out because you possess a
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superior intellect. You only know anything true
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about God because God sovereignly decided to know you,
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to elect you, and to drag you out of your deliberate, willful
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ignorance. Spot on.
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He takes the Gnostic pride in human discovery and crushes it
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with the Hebrew reality of divine election.
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Human knowledge of God is just the grateful response to being
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chosen by God. And no one mastered this tension
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between the Greek vocabulary and the Hebrew reality better than
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the author of the Fourth Gospel. Oh, we have to talk about the
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Apostle John, the Johannian subversion, because John's
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Gospel and his epistles read almost like a completely
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different language compared to Paul.
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But John is doing something equally radical with the word
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knowledge. John actively uses the
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vocabulary of the Gnostics. He uses the verb genusca
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constantly, but he uses their own vocabulary to aggressively
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dismantle their theology from the inside out.
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For John, knowing God is not a side issue is the whole point of
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existence. He records Jesus saying in John
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17.3 and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only
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true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
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Since John says eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son,
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how does this prevent Christianity from devolving into
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just an intellectual test? If knowing is the sole
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requirement for eternal life, doesn't that just mean you have
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to pass a theology quiz after you die to get into heaven?
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That is the trap of reading John with a Greek dictionary instead
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of a Hebrew. 1 John protects against this intellectualism by
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defining the relationship between the Father and the Son
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as one of active, mutual love and physical obedience.
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To know God in John's gospel is not a mystical escape from the
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physical body. It's anchored completely to the
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physical, historical person of Jesus Christ.
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Right, because the Jesus that John knew had a physical body.
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He sweated, he bled, he wept, he washed his disciples dirty feet.
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The Gnostics hated the idea of God taking on physical flesh.
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It disgusted them. But John leans all the way into
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it. John ties knowledge inextricably
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to a gate to self giving sacrificial love.
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In his first epistle, John is ruthless about the connection
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between knowledge and physical action.
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He writes that you cannot claim to know God if you do not love
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your brother. Love is the very criterion of
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knowledge. So you can't fake.
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It no. If you say I know him but you
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hate your brother, you are a liar and the truth is not in
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you. The Gnostics claim to have high
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spiritual knowledge while ignoring the physical needs of
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the people around them, John says.
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That kind of knowledge is entirely fake.
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The test of true knowledge isn't did you memorize the Catechism
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facts? The test is does your daily
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physical life mirror the obedience and sacrificial love
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of the historical Jesus? To be brought into the knowledge
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of God means your life must reflect the reality of God's
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love in the dirt and grime of everyday life.
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And John does something fascinating with the dynamic
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between believing the Greek word pistuner and knowing yunuskane.
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In the Gnostic systems, faith was viewed as a lower stage of
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religious development. Faith was for the beginners, the
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simpletons, the uneducated masses.
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Once you achieve true enlightenment, true gnosis, you
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discarded faith. Like taking off training wheels
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on a bicycle once you learn how to balance.
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John rejects that entirely. In John's writings, faith is not
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a lower stage to be discarded. Faith is the necessary
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continuous action that blossoms into true knowledge.
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Faith alone is the doing of the will of God, which is followed
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by knowing you don't graduate past faith.
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Faith is the engine that constantly drives knowledge
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forward. Let me summarize this whole
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progression because it is staggering when you lay it all
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out. Greek knowing is observing a
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frog in a lab from a distance. Gnostic knowing is learning a
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magical password to escape the physical body.
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Hebrew knowing is experiencing A visceral covenant, And Christian
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knowing is being sovereignly chosen by God to enter a
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physical life of active, obedient love modeled after
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Jesus. That progression perfectly
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captures the lexical data. But history shows us what
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happens when the church loses this robust, active Hebrew
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definition of knowing. To see that disaster unfold, we
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look at the historical battles over one specific compound word,
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foreknowledge. The theological battleground of
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Preginshkar. So the verb preginshko means to
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know beforehand, and the noun form is prognosis.
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What did this word mean to the average person in the secular
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Greek world? In secular Greek culture,
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Preginisco meant simple prediction or foresight.
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It meant human cleverness, anticipating an event or even
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astrological divination, a medical doctor making a
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prognosis about how a disease would develop, or an astrologer
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predicting the future based on the alignment of the stars.
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It was entirely about seeing an event before it happened on the
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timeline. It was an observational
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foresight. But when we read that word in
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the New Testament, like in Romans 8.29 for those whom he
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foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his
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Son or first Peter. 1.20 Talking about Christ being foreknown
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before the foundation of the world, it carries a totally
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different weight than a doctor's prognosis.
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It carries the heavy Old Testament weight of sovereign
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election. Remember how we discussed in
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Amos that God's knowing someone means he elects them?
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God's foreknowledge is not him looking through a crystal ball
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into the future to see what will happen.
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It is his sovereign forward nation.
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It is his prior love and determination to set His
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affection on his people before time began.
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He isn't anticipating an event. He's declaring an eternal
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covenant. So God isn't reacting to the
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future, he is authoring the future.
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But the tragedy of the early apologists is that they lost
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this Hebrew root. The sources show us what
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happened with figures like Justin Martyr in the 2nd
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century. Justin was a Christian
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philosopher trying to defend the faith against Greek fatalism and
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Stoic determinism. The Stoics believed the universe
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was locked in a rigid, predetermined fate driven by
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physical elements and the stars. Justin wanted to prove to his
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Pagan neighbors that human beings possessed free will and
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were morally responsible for their actions.
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So to win this philosophical debate against Stoicism, Justin
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stripped Priginowska of its biblical electing depth.
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Let me make sure I'm tracking with a historical shift here.
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It seems like Justin Martyr basically panicked.
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He surrendered the biblical definition of God's sovereign
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will just to win an argument against the Stoics.
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He let the Greeks define the terms, and in doing so he lost
25:54
the theology of election. It is a painfully accurate
25:57
assessment. Justin redefined foreknowledge
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as mere prescience. He taught that God simply looks
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down the corridors of time, sees what humans will freely choose
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to do on their own, and then bases his divine plan on their
26:08
independent human choices. Justin completely abandoned the
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Old Testament route of active sovereign election and replaced
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it with passive Greek prediction.
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Detail for us how catastrophic it is when we read the Bible
26:20
using a Greek dictionary instead of a Hebrew one.
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What happens to the Christian worldview when we accept Justin
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Martyr's definition of foreknowledge?
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When foreknowledge is reduced to psychic prediction, God becomes
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a passive observer rather than the active electing author of
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salvation. God is suddenly sitting in the
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grandstands of heaven, helplessly watching human
26:40
history unfold, rather than being the sovereign Lord who
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decrees the end from the beginning.
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By adopting the Greek definition of prognosis, the early
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apologists accidentally turned God into a cosmic spectator who
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is entirely dependent on human choices.
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It rips the foundation out of the biblical doctrine of grace.
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If God only chooses us because he foresaw that we would choose
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Him, then grace is no longer God's sovereign initiative.
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Grace becomes nothing more than God's reaction to something a
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human accomplished first. That is a total theological
27:12
collapse, all because they misunderstood one word.
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They forgot the visceral electing reality of the Hebrew
27:17
yada and went right back to the Greek observer standing outside
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the laboratory looking in. They made God the observer.
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It proves that vocabulary determines theology.
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If you lose the ancient definition of the word, you lose
27:28
the biblical character of God. To wrap up our investigation
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into this massive lexical family, let's look at a few
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rapid fire compound words that show how this root concept of
27:38
knowledge touches every corner of human existence.
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The sources highlight several fascinating variations.
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The first variation is kataganusku.
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This word means to note, to despise or to condemn.
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It is used powerfully in First John 3.20 to describe the
27:54
terrifying reality of self judgement.
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John writes whenever our heart condemns us.
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That word condemns is Kataginusku.
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We have all felt that right, that 2.0 AM anxiety where your
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brain is wide awake, putting your past mistakes on trial and
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finding you guilty. Your own conscience is
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weaponized against you. That is Kataginsku.
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But John immediately counters this terrifying self
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condemnation by reminding the reader of a higher reality.
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He writes that the God is greater than our hearts and he
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knows Guskal things. God's comprehensive electing
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knowledge overrules our internal condemnation.
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Our flawed self knowledge condemns us, but God's sovereign
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electing knowledge pardons us, which leads perfectly into the
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next word. Singdemo means agreement,
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forbearance, or pardon. It literally translates to
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knowing with the apostle. Paul uses it in First
28:43
Corinthians 7.6 to demonstrate a pastoral concession when giving
28:47
advice on marriage and singleness.
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Paul says. I say this as a concession, not
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as a command. It is a pastoral knowing with
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someone. It implies a patience and
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flexibility that results from understanding human weakness
28:59
rather than laying down a rigid, strict command.
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I love that concept. It is empathy and grace built
29:05
directly into the word knowledge.
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You know someone struggles so you walk alongside them with
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forbearance. Then we have the word no.
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No me means disposition, resolve, or will.
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It is fascinatingly used in Revelation 17.17.
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The text is describing the kings of the earth who give their
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power to the beast, the enemies of the Church.
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But the verse says that God places His nummo, His specific
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will and resolve, directly into the hearts of these Pagan kings
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to accomplish His historical purposes.
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So even the absolute worst enemies of God, the Pagan
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empires actively persecuting the Church, are unknowingly
29:37
operating under the hidden umbrella of God's act of
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resolve, God's nummiest during human history, even through the
29:44
actions of the wicked. The sovereignty displayed in
29:46
that word is absolute. And finally, we have Nurise,
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which means to make known. It is used frequently in the
29:52
letters of Paul for God declaring His secret historical
29:55
plan of salvation to the world. It is the act of revelation of
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the mystery of Christ to the nations.
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Viewing these variations is like looking at a prism.
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The single beam of biblical knowledge hits the glass and
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splits into all these different colors.
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It splits into the dark, heavy color of our internal guilt with
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Katadinsko. It splits into the warm color of
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the pastoral patients we show others with Singimu.
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And it splits into the blinding, unstoppable light of God's
30:20
hidden resolves during human history with Nummi.
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The prism analogy brings all these lexical variations
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together perfectly. It shows the sheer scale of the
30:29
biblical worldview. Knowledge isn't a stagnant pool
30:32
of trivia facts. It isn't a password you memorize
30:35
to escape the universe. It is an active, rushing current
30:38
that convicts us of sin, forgives us by grace, and
30:41
sovereignly drives all of human history forward toward its
30:45
decreed conclusion. So what does this all mean for
30:48
us today? Let's summarize the core take
30:50
away from this entire lexical investigation.
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According to the ancient sources, true biblical knowledge
30:56
is entirely distinct from Greek theoretical observation.
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It has nothing to do with Gnostic magical escapism.
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True knowledge is a gritty, historical, physical, obedient
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response to a sovereign Creator who initiated contact first.
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He knew us before we could ever know Him.
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And because He knew us first, our knowing Him is defined by
31:14
obedience. It is defined by physical action
31:16
in the real world and by sacrificial love for our
31:19
brothers and sisters. It's a total claim on every
31:21
aspect of your human existence. Which leaves us with a massive
31:24
challenge to chew on as we finish this deep dive into the
31:27
sources. If knowing in the biblical sense
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requires being actively involved, experiencing the
31:34
visceral reality of a covenant, and obeying the claim it places
31:37
on you, what areas of your own life are you currently treating
31:41
like a detached Greek philosopher when you should be
31:43
engaging as an obedient participant?
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Are you analyzing your faith from a safe academic distance,
31:48
or are you living it out in the dirt and reality of human
31:51
history? Think about that, we will see
31:53
you next time.