What it is to “know” God

Author’s Note: This article begins a series of study through John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. The desire is to read through the institutes in a devotional manner, learning from Calvin’s wisdom as well as his pastoral heart. Quotations, unless noted otherwise, are from the McNeill edition of the Institutes.

Calvin notes, as a matter of great importance, the relationship between man’s knowledge of God and his knowledge of self. You cannot have one without the other, though it is not possible to discern which comes first. As we look upon ourselves our thoughts should immediately turn to thoughts of him. Likewise, we cannot think about God apart from consideration of his creative activities (he made us) and his ongoing governance of the universe in which we dwell.

Paul tells the men of Athens (Acts 17:28) that in God “we live and move and have our being.” For this reason alone we cannot know God until we know ourselves. In consideration of our poverty we understand the “infinitude of benefits reposing in God” provides. As we consider our own sins and weaknesses they are rightly contrasted with the holiness and strength of God. Simply put, when we are happy and content with ourselves we do not seek God or knowledge of him. Yet when we take stock of who we really are we look heavenward for help. “We cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.”

Likewise, we cannot know ourselves until we know God. The issue here is a matter of standards. Apart from knowledge of God we tend to measure ourselves against others; most often those with serious moral deficiencies. In comparison to those we are able to think of ourselves with high esteem. When we come to some understanding of who God is (particularly and understanding of his holiness) our standard changes to one by which our self-estimation is not so favorable. Yet it is only by comparing ourselves to God’s standard that we gain any true knowledge of who we are. “It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.”

Calvin uses an illustration involving our eyesight that is particularly helpful. As we look at things on the earth we see them quite clearly and may come to hold the quality of our eyesight in high regard. Yet, if we were to look up to the sun we would quickly be blinded by its radiance and realize the limitations of our sight. “The power of sight that was particularly strong on earth is at once blunted and confused by great brilliance.” This experience parallels the way we think about our own moral goodness. When compared to earthly things we do rather well. The moment we gaze heavenward for comparison the results are drastically changed. “…then, what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness.”

The connection between knowledge of God and knowledge of self, Calvin argues, is responsible for the two-fold reaction that is common in Scripture from those who encounter the living God. Saints who experience the presence of God are commonly stricken with both “dread and wonder,” he writes. While the normal state of a man is to be “firm and constant,” exposure to the presence of God inevitably overwhelms them. (e.g. Judges 13:22: And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.”; Isaiah 6:5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”)

Knowledge of God as holy and infinite coupled with knowledge of self as sinful and finite leaves us with the dual experience of dread and wonder. Perhaps the most extended example of this in Scripture occurs in the book of Job. Late in the book Job begins to think too highly of himself and to believe that he is justified in his complaint against God for the calamity he has experienced. Job’s fundamental problem is two-fold: he has forgotten who he is and he has forgotten who God is. Appropriately, God instructs Job on both matters (Chapters 38-41) in a section that begins with the terrifying question “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2)

What is most illuminating about this exchange, for our purposes, is Job’s response to God in Chapter 42. Having encountered the holiness and power of God Job can only answer, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). Job thought he understood who God was, but not until he saw him (answering out of the whirlwind) was he filled with the result of knowing God: dread and wonder.

The result of these emotions is one of Calvin’s favorite topics: piety. Knowing God involves far more than simply believing that he exists. Knowing God involves the kind of dutifulness in religion that Calvin called piety. “I call piety that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.” To know God is to know who is he (in relation to us), what he has done
for us, what we are required to do in response to him, and, knowing God involves the performance of those duties. The recognition that we are his handiwork results in the kind of all-of-life devotion Paul commands in Romans 12:1;  ”I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

This section offers one of the most beautiful passages of the Institutes’ early pages:

…it will not suffice simply to hold that there is One whom all ought to honor and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of every good, and that we must seek nothing elsewhere than in him. This I take to mean that not only does he sustain the universe (as he once founded it) by his boundless might, regulate it by his wisdom, preserve it by his goodness, and especially rule mankind by his righteousness and judgment, bear with it in his mercy, watch over it by his protection; but also that no drop will be found either of wisdom and light, or of righteousness or power or rectitude, or of genuine truth, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause.

Knowledge of God keeps us from idolatry because if we know him we can imagine no greater God. Knowledge of God keeps us from fear and worry because if we know him we know their is no safer one in whom to trust. Knowledge of God restrains sin in our lives because we fear his wrath and desire, out of love, to obey him and serve him faithfully. “Here indeed is pure and real religion: faith so joined with an earnest fear of God that this fear also embraces willing reverence and carries with it such legitimate worship as is prescribed in the law.”