THEOLOGY THURSDAY
BY DAVE HOLZHAUER
Have you ever heard the phrase “if it was a snake, it would have bit you”? It’s an idiom that humorously expresses how the thing we were looking for was right in front of us the whole time. Sometimes things are so obvious that they get glossed right over, unnoticed by their seeker. While the phrase is most often used when looking for physical objects, it’s just as true when looking for answers.
The Christian life can be said to be a series of questions and answers. While the order can and will vary, the question will inevitably come up “what is my end goal?” Maybe not in those terms; instead, the question probably is couched in a much wiser and more elegant fashion. But the basic gist is the same: what does God have to offer me? Good, Christian answers would say that God offers eternal life, a relationship made right, or Heaven. All correct answers, but let’s define our terms. What do any of those answers mean?
I think we find our definition of terms in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John. This chapter chronicles a prayer Jesus made to God just before he was betrayed and the conveyor belt of events becomes a freight train. While I won’t quote the whole chapter here, I encourage you to read the entirety for better context.
“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17: 1-5, ESV)
The answer of what eternal life is is very simple, very easily missed or glossed over: "that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Full stop. Seems kind of anticlimactic.
But I think that is because of how we often understand the word "know": we understand it to mean "have or collect information about". It's limited to exclusively reeling off facts about someone. The Bible isn't limited like this; ginosko has the connotation of first hand experience of who someone truly is. It includes how they act or respond when the situation is far less than ideal or, antithetically, when something really great happens. Not everyone is a gracious winner.
In essence, Jesus is inviting us to test one of the central claims of Scripture: that God is the infinitely most desirable person/thing/being. If we decide that God really is as valuable as he claims, then Jesus offers the most life giving and eternally satisfying gift: first hand knowledge of the most infinitely desirable being. Just right there, right in front of the seeker.
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