True life is ABOUT KNOWING, not “knowing about”. Relationships, for instance. I can know about what a great relationship should look like, but if I don’t know a great relationship experientially, then it’s just a bunch of useless knowledge. Or food. I can read recipes and know all about good food, but if I never experience it’s flavor, aroma and textures, what is the point? Same with exercise. I can study about the benefit of certain exercises and what they will do for my body and health, but if I just know about it and don’t become familiar with it by actually doing it, then it does me no good at all.
Jesus was constantly dealing with people who were very well read in “knowing about” the Messiah. They “knew about” the prophecies and scripture and the law. But all of this knowledge didn’t help them a bit in experiencing who Jesus really was.
In John chapter seven, Jesus is at the Feast of Tabernacles. He lays low for the first half of the Feast. At the last half, he begins teaching. And by the last day of the Feast, he is no longer quiet. It says that “in a loud voice” he began to offer himself, not as just a teacher or a miracle worker, but as LIFE! He offers himself as the living water that will sustain, refresh, satisfy, quench, and flow out of them if they would come to him and taste what he had to give.
It would seem that such an offer would draw people to him. But it divided the people. Some wanted to believe who he was, but the rulers and Pharisees, “the educated and trained”, discouraged them, saying that the common people were deceived because they knew “nothing of the law”.
Nicodemus, one of the rulers who had met with and gotten to actually KNOW Jesus, said, “Does our law (what they were adhering to and claiming as their authority) condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?”
Their response? “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” They were stuck (among other things) on the fact that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, not Galilee, as had been prophesied. They are telling Nicodemus to “look into it” and discover this. But, ironically, what did these leaders miss? That Jesus, was, in fact, born in Bethlehem. They were so bent on “knowing about” the facts of the Messiah that they missed the truth about him, because they didn’t KNOW him. They had a “knowing about” box. But Jesus was more than and bigger than their box. He had more to give than a set of rules and regulations. He was giving himself, and they missed it.
I want more than just “knowing about” Jesus. I want to be ABOUT KNOWING Jesus. Truly knowing Him. That is where life is, at its very richest and fullest. And that is exactly where I want to be…
