Knowing

 Knowing

January 29, 2025

In my last blog, we were taking about the nature of God being evident in nature. But how do you know? How do you know what is real and what the reality of God means for your life? Watchman Née in “The Normal Christian Life” says that knowing is the first step in living the normal Christian life. He lists these four steps as Knowing, Reckoning, Presenting yourself to God and Walking in the Spirit. So how do you “know” ?

Romans 6:5-7

5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

Looking at nature, you can perceive that God exists and you can see some aspects of His nature, but to truly know Him, you need to understand the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Watchman Née says that to truly know this takes a revelation of the Spirit. We can know the historical fact that Jesus died, but until we have the revelation that He died for us, and that indeed our old nature died on the Cross with Him, we cannot “know” the power of His blood to justify us. Justification is one of those complicated Biblical words, but basically it means that the blood of Christ covers over our sins so that God forgives them and can never set hem again. “Knowing” this enables us to enter into the Christian life having cut off all ties to the sins of the past. Baptism is the ceremonial acknowledgement of this fact that shows the world that our old man has died and been buried with Him, and raised in newness of life.

We also recently talked about faith and how it substantiates our hope. “Knowing” what it means for Christ to shed His blood for us, is having faith to make real in our own lives the freedom from sin and the ability to live the Christian life. Now this is just the first step, but a necessary one.  But us look at one more scripture.

Romans 6:8-11

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is neverto die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Here we see that “knowing” the power of Christ’s death empowers us to “live with Him”. “Knowing” this truth enables us to be “alive to God in Christ Jesus”. So let us endeavor to know Him and next time we will talk about “reckoning” and how you can begin to live in the power of His resurrection.