Knowing and Unbelief
Most assuredly, I say to you, When speaking what We know and testify of what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. John 3:11
"The biggest problem with making God number one on the priority list," admits Jon Hauser, "is that we’re never really done with God. He keeps getting out of the God box, asserting a right to every area of our lives."
A similar "problem" exists with assenting to Christ's omniscience on eternal things as asserted in John 3:11. Once we take direction from the First Citizen of Heaven because He has come from there and returned there, His authority won't stay put in our God box, won't limit itself to matters relating to the next life.
The same inexorable logic applies elsewhere. If we admit Christ knows whereof He speaks in Heavenly matters, what of intermediate future concerns? After all, He, the same yesterday, today, and forever has inhabited our future before we arrive at it. He, to borrow the image from CS Lewis's Mere Christianity sees the parade from beginning to end all at once, whereas we see it from a single vantage point?
To be sure, there is comfort here. He has, He assures in Ephesians 2:10, preordained good works that we should walk in them. He has, he tells the justly exiled in Jeremiah 29:11 knowledge of the plans He has for His people, to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us a hope and a future.
Less comforting is the second half of the John 3:11 witness, that He Who inhabits the future in every detail is equally aware of the hardness of the human heart. He is able to call out unbelief with authority.
He knows, likewise, the secondary gains to which we cling in our unbelief, justifying this or that sin, this or that attitude toward our brother or our sister as the comfort we would prefer in our fear and our anger, the comfort we would prefer to laying these concerns before the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. If we would rest in His omniscience, we must yield to its implications that His being in control means we are not.
"The biggest problem with making God number one on the priority list," admits Jon Hauser, "is that we’re never really done with God. He keeps getting out of the God box, asserting a right to every area of our lives."
A similar "problem" exists with assenting to Christ's omniscience on eternal things as asserted in John 3:11. Once we take direction from the First Citizen of Heaven because He has come from there and returned there, His authority won't stay put in our God box, won't limit itself to matters relating to the next life.
The same inexorable logic applies elsewhere. If we admit Christ knows whereof He speaks in Heavenly matters, what of intermediate future concerns? After all, He, the same yesterday, today, and forever has inhabited our future before we arrive at it. He, to borrow the image from CS Lewis's Mere Christianity sees the parade from beginning to end all at once, whereas we see it from a single vantage point?
To be sure, there is comfort here. He has, He assures in Ephesians 2:10, preordained good works that we should walk in them. He has, he tells the justly exiled in Jeremiah 29:11 knowledge of the plans He has for His people, to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us a hope and a future.
Less comforting is the second half of the John 3:11 witness, that He Who inhabits the future in every detail is equally aware of the hardness of the human heart. He is able to call out unbelief with authority.
He knows, likewise, the secondary gains to which we cling in our unbelief, justifying this or that sin, this or that attitude toward our brother or our sister as the comfort we would prefer in our fear and our anger, the comfort we would prefer to laying these concerns before the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. If we would rest in His omniscience, we must yield to its implications that His being in control means we are not.
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