"You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder." James 2:19 (CSB)
I have mentioned before how I enjoyed studying theology, even before being brought to faith in Jesus by God's grace. I was attempting to compensate for my lack of knowing God with knowing about God. By His grace, I am no longer in that place. I have even greater joy in learning now, and a lot of the truth I learned in the past is now full of real sweetness that it is as if I am just learning it for the first time - in many ways this is precisely what is happening. It's like when someone is looking for their keys and they look at the exact place where the keys are laying and somehow "look over them", then all of a sudden the keys "appear" as if they weren't there moments ago. This is the difference John Owen describes in "The Mortification of Sin" as he contrasts "matter" of knowing and "manner" of knowing. I'd simply want to share Owen's thought with you:
"The difference between believers and unbelievers as to knowledge is not so much in the matter of their knowledge as in the manner of knowing. Unbelievers, some of them, may know more and be able to say more of God, his perfections, and his will, than many believers; but they know nothing as they ought, nothing in a right manner, nothing spiritually and savingly, nothing with a holy, heavenly light. The excellency of a believer is, not that he hath a large apprehension of things, but that what he doth apprehend, which perhaps may be very little, he sees it in the light of the Spirit of God, in a saving, soul-transforming light; and this is that which gives us communion with God, and not prying thoughts or curious-raised notions."
Comments