Everyone is reevaluating their priorities. With all the upheaval in society, we have to ask, “What matters most?”
For us, Jesus Christ is the paramount priority. Our first desire is to know and be known by him. “To live is Christ . . .” Paul says (Phil. 1:21). In a time of resignation and reluctance, we enter a season of Recommitment in November.
Invocation
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Jesus, you said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). I know, and you know better, that my love for you has faltered. My heart and soul are bent toward self. My mind is easily distracted and my strength fails. But I know you are gracious. Forgive me. Show me loving kindness. Reform my heart and soul, mind and strength, that I may be fully devoted to you. Amen.
Word: 1 Corinthians 8:1-3, ESV
“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”
Meditation
In his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow, the Nobel Prize-winning social psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote something very interesting: “There’s a notion out there that self-awareness is a form of salvation, that if we know about our mental mistakes, we can avoid them…But it turns out self-knowledge is surprisingly useless; even when we know why we stumble, we still find a way to fall.” Kahneman is even brave enough to admit that his decades of groundbreaking research haven’t significantly improved his own mental performance. “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and poor planning as it was before I made a study of these issues,” he writes. Wow. If an expert like Dr. Kahneman hasn’t been able to effect change in himself through self-knowledge, what hope is there for laymen like you and me?
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Apostle Paul juxtaposes knowledge with love in this passage, subordinating the latter to the former. Knowledge, after all, is partial. There are so many things we can’t know, and that we don’t know, both when it comes to ourselves and to the world around us. And even those things which we think we know for certain can change. I was taught growing up that Pluto was a planet. But astronomers have since declared it to be nothing more than a large hunk of rock!
Nowhere is the “uselessness” of knowledge more apparent than in personal relationships. We convince ourselves that if (enter name here) just knew how alienating some of their habits are, they would change. It’s our job to inform them when they’re chewing with their mouth open, laughing too loudly, blindly defending the hurtful behavior of their family members, etc. Such nit-picking and nagging may never work—it may even have a destructive effect on the relationship—but that rarely stops us from trying.
The Gospel frees us from the illusion that if we only knew more, things would be better. This is because the Gospel is not about knowing; it’s about being known. It is not about loving so much as being loved. The two are related, and in precisely the way Paul suggests. You can know someone and not love them, but you can’t truly love someone without knowing them.
Imagine if I locked my dog and my wife in the trunk of my car (which of course I never would). After an hour, only one of them is going to be glad to see me. The dog’s love is unconditional, but it is ignorant. He doesn’t know what I’ve done. My wife’s love, on the other hand, is slightly more tenuous. She knows what I’ve done, and it can’t help but affect her feelings for me, at least for the moment. Perhaps we think God is like our dog, that He loves us as long as He doesn’t know what we’ve done. Or perhaps we think he is like our wife/husband, where He knows too much to feel good about us. The miracle of God’s love is that it is both. He knows us and He loves us.
So where are you putting faith in knowledge today, rather than the One who knows? Rest assured, it has not caught Him off guard. He loves you still. And there is nothing partial about it.
We pray: Heavenly Father, you know me fully and yet love me completely. Focus my heart, soul, and mind on You this day, the Author and Perfecter of my faith. Amen.
Benediction
May the love of Jesus draw us to himself;
May the power of Jesus strengthen us in his service;
May the joy of Jesus fill our souls;
May the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon us always. Amen.