369. 1 Corinthians 8:1-3

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1 Corinthians 8:1-3

There is a difference between knowledge that puffs up and love that builds up. But there is also a difference between knowing in a way that allows one to imagine one knows something and knowing "as [one] ought to know." To know as one ought to know, as distinct from knowing in a way that puffs up, or allows one to imagine one knows something, is to love, or, if you will, to know as love knows. But if one loves God, or knows God as love knows God, one is known by God, i.e., one acknowledges and affirms that one has always already been acknowledged and accepted by God, which is what it means to be known by God.

If this is the way Paul reasons, however, vs. 3 would have better read: "But if one loves God, one knows, i.e., acknowledges and affirms, that one is known by God." In other words, what depends on one's loving God is not one's being known by God, which depends utterly and completely on what God Godself is and does, but rather one's knowing that one is known by God, and so one's knowing God as one ought to know God.

20 July 1999