1 Corinthians 15:34

1 Corinthians 15:34

Who then are these Corinthian disciples, that they have not so much as the knowledge of God? Plainly enough our Apostle is not charging them here with ignorance, but with some lack of the Divine illumination which ought, if they are true disciples, to be in them. They certainly know God in the traditional and merely cognitive way.

I. We shall best understand the point assumed in this impeachment if we raise the distinction between knowing God and knowing about God. Doubtless it is much to know about God about His operations, His works, His plans, His laws, His truth, His perfect attributes, His saving mercies. This kind of knowledge is presupposed in all faith, and constitutes the rational ground of faith, and so far is necessary even to salvation. But true faith itself discovers another and more absolute kind of knowledge a knowledge of God Himself; immediate, personal knowledge, coming out of no report or statement, or anything called truth, as being taught in language. It is knowing God within, even as we know ourselves.

II. We have every one two kinds of knowledge relating to ourselves. One is what we know mediately about ourselves, through language, and one that which we have immediately as being conscious of ourselves. Under the first we learn who our parents were and what others think of us, what effects the world has on us, what power we have over it, and what is thought to be the science, it may be, of our nature as an intelligent being. Under the second we have a knowledge of ourselves so immediate, that there is no language in it, no thought, no act of judgment or opinion; we simply have a self-feeling that is intuitive and direct. Now, we were made to have first such an immediate knowledge of God as of ourselves, to be conscious of God, only this consciousness of God has been closed up by our sin, and is now set open by our faith; and this exactly is what distinguishes every soul enlightened by the Spirit and born of God.

III. But there is an objection to this mode of conceiving holy experience as implying an immediate discovery of God. What is the use, in this view, some will ask, of a Bible or external revelation? what use of the incarnation itself? Are not these advances on our outward knowledge superseded and made useless when we conceive that God is offered to immediate knowledge and experience? In one view they are, and in another they are not. Does it follow that, because we have an immediate knowledge of heat, we have therefore no use at all for the scientific doctrine of heat, or the laws by which it is expounded? Suppose it is a part of our interest in this article of heat that we be able to generate more of it, or use it differently and with better economy. So far we have a use in knowing about heat, as well as in knowing heat. In the same way it is of immense consequence to know everything possible about God, that we may find out the more perfectly how to know God.

H. Bushnell, Sermons on Living Subjects,p. 114.

References: 1 Corinthians 15:34. Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 81. 1 Corinthians 15:35. Ibid.,3rd series, vol. i., p. 28; W. J. Woods, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 398; W. J. Keay, Ibid.,vol. xvii., p. 213.