Week 52 1 John 2:3
We can be sure that we know him (the Lord) if we obey his commandments.
One of the tests for knowing whether I genuinely know God is if I obey his commandments. The idea of having some sort of ‘personal relationship’ or ‘personal connection’ with God (of knowing-the-Lord) is out in the unknowability-ether. I don’t think anyone – not me you or anyone else – can know definitively if I-you-anyone-else knows God without some kind of testing device or mechanism (a Knowing Meter of some kind). John doesn’t say it has anything to do with whether I’m feeling convinced. The test is whether I’m doing what the Lord says I should be doing.
John gives a two-part quiz to test whether I know the Lord.
• Q#1: do I want to do what he tells me to do?
• Q#2: do I follow that up by actually doing what he tells me to do?
John’s idea is that if I do know the Lord then I’ll want to work at doing what he tells me to do. (I can negativize the rule but I end up at the same place: if I don’t really know God I won’t be doing what he tells me to do.)
When it comes to knowing-the-Lord John’s proposition is: knowing leads to doing.
Doing means I know. If I’m not doing then that’ll be proof enough that I don’t know.
Note: quote from 1 John 2:3 (NLT)