True or False: Experiencing God is more important than knowing about Him. What do you think? I recently saw a statement which I wish I had written down and didn’t. It jabbed at those who prioritize theology over spiritual experiences, essentially saying “You can keep your dead religion, and I’ll enjoy my Spirit-filled life.” Is this a proper approach to the Christian life?
I don’t think so. This view betrays a faulty understanding of the place of knowledge in our relationships with God. Right ideas about God are minimized; “real relationship” is elevated. Does this paradigm work? Do we need to choose between right ideas (focus on the mind) and true relationship (focus on the heart)? The fault in this approach is that it assumes theology and spirituality are opposites, when in fact they are inseparable. Right theology forms the groundwork for any authentic experience of God. To contrast experience with theology is akin to dividing the enjoyment of food from food itself. Just as we cannot enjoy perfectly seared steak or patiently smoked chicken without actually having the food in front of us, we cannot enjoy the benefits of relationship with God if we are devoid of theology. Relationship with God happens within the context of truth about Him.
Short-Circuiting Christianity
Prioritizing spiritual experience over biblical theology is a short-circuited approach to God. It assumes that we can overcome our lack of knowledge if we have sufficient zeal. It makes us think that as long as we’re well-intentioned, as long as we’re putting our whole hearts into pursuing Him, it doesn’t really matter what we’re doing. Zeal is more important than knowledge.
This is similar to saying that it’s more important how fast you’re driving than necessarily which direction you’re going, thinking that if you really put yourself into pursuing God, you’ll end up where you need to be. This is a deficient approach to Christianity. The apostle Paul specifically says of the Jews that the reason they weren’t saved is that their zeal was not according to knowledge. They were earnestly pursuing salvation, but they sought in through the wrong means. They missed the gospel because they were more focused on what they were doing for God than they were focused on what God was offering them in Christ. Their faulty knowledge resulted in dead spirituality.
A phrase that was trendy in my teenage years (and is still making its rounds) is, “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” This puts forward the idea that relationship with God is the main thing, and “religion” gets in the way. Orthodoxy (a tradition of belief) and orthopraxy (a tradition of practice) are abandoned for the sake of relationship. But this falsely supposes that the deepest relationship with God is to be found outside the bounds of historic faith. Long-standing beliefs are jettisoned for a pursuit of immediate thrills. This again illustrates the false contrast that is often made between accurate knowledge of God and genuine experience of God.
A Simple Test
While I think most of us recognize at face value that information about God is important to relationship with Him, we often don’t follow through on living according to that principle. Our view of this is revealed when we ask a simple question. When we say, “I want to grow in my relationship with God,” what do we think of as the path toward growth? What do we think we need more of for that relationship to grow? Do we think we just need to pray more, to be still more, to fast more? What should we apply ourselves to if we want to grow closer to God?
I posit that our thoughts should center on Scripture. We ought to look to the word of God as the central component to our spiritual growth. Spiritual disciplines such as prayer and fasting are certainly important. We need to pray to ask God to grow our understanding. Fasting is appropriate as an aid to growing in godliness. These disciplines are essential to Christian growth, but not without a focus on God’s word as the primary catalyst for change. Scripture is what reveals God. It reveals our sin and leads us to grow and change. It reveals God’s provisions for change. We need to be Scripture-centered, Bible-minded people if we want to experience true, lasting spiritual growth.
We need to understand that information about God (truth understood through Scripture) precedes relationship with Him. Right theology precedes true relationship. We will not experience God (truly) apart from His revealed Word. We will not be led by the Spirit if we aren’t familiar with God’s Spirit-inspired Scriptures. We will not experience authentic relationship with the true God if we ignore the Bible that tells us about Him.
We need to know our Bibles—not just in a general sense, and not just so we’re familiar with some chapters and verses and some isolated ideas. We need to know the Bible as a whole—the big picture of Scripture. Theology is not some exercise divorced from Scripture; Biblical theology is formed through reading and believing the word of God. We need the kind of theology that arises from a familiarity with the word of God, through wrestling with the concepts of Scripture and fitting them together in a way that makes sense and explains the gospel comprehensively and sufficiently. We need a holistic theology built upon the clear teachings of Scripture. Theology in truest and best sense is not an organism divorced from Scripture, or even distinct from Scripture. The best theology is one that arises solely from Scripture itself, text built upon text, filling out our understanding, buttressing our faith. We need to soak ourselves in the Word of God, submitting ourselves to its truth claims.
We need the Bible to lead us to God. We do not come to Scripture as some mystical means to God, as if reading God’s word provides God the opportunity to speak to us apart from His word. No, God speaks to us in and through His word. The Bible itself is the channel to relationship with God. If we want vibrant relationship with God, we need to be familiar with Scripture. We need to know its arguments, understand its truth claims, see the “Big Picture.” We need to see Christ in it.
Back to the Point
Is experiencing God more important than knowing about Him? Yes. All the knowledge in the world does us no good if it does not result in a deeper relationship with our God and Father. God isn’t after smart people. He isn’t after intellectual snobs or arrogant scholars. He’s after the broken and contrite, the humble, the one submitted to Him. He wants us, not just our minds, but all of us! We must be certain that we are living as Christians in actual relationship with the Living God. Experiencing God is what the Christian life is all about. Experiencing His salvation, His blessing, and ultimately, His presence. Christianity is only dead religion without God.
But we need to think a little deeper on this one. The companion question to “Is experiencing God more important than knowing about Him?” is this: “How do we experience God?” If we want vibrant relationship with the true God, what are we to do? This takes us to the other side of the initial question: knowledge of God. The issue with the question is that is supposes that relationship with God can be had without knowledge of Him. And that is, quite simply, an impossibility. We cannot have relationship with the true God unless we have right knowledge about Him. Why do you think He revealed Himself in a book? Because there is information about Himself that must be comprehended before relationship with Him is possible. We need more than just knowledge; we need relationship with God. But we will not have relationship with God until we have right knowledge about Him.
We have two dangers here. We can get all our ideas right and never follow through. We can have perfect theology and not have relationship with God, never actually acting on what we say we believe. This is dead tradition, certainly not the fullness of biblical Christianity. On the other side, we should not think that we can be Christians of substance while ignoring God as He has spoken to us in His word. If we want to know God, if we want to please God, if we want relationship with God, if we want to experience His power and His presence and His blessing in our lives, we need His word. We need right knowledge of Him from His word. Relationship with God comes in the context of right ideas about God. True relationship with God comes through the word of God as we study it, submit to it, believe it, and live it out.
What Knowledge?
What kind of knowledge do we need? Let’s start by asking a basic question: “Who is God?” What is it we are to believe to be true about God if we are to have relationship with Him? There is only one God. And that God is the one who has revealed Himself in Scripture. When our ideas about God don’t line up with Scripture we are in danger of idolatry. We can only be confident that we are worshipping the true God if our ideas about God are those ideas that He has given to us through His word. More to the point, God is the only one qualified to tell us about God. If we want to know God, we need to listen to God. And we hear from God through Scripture. If we want accurate information about God and thus to have relationship with the God who actually exists, then we need to submit to the word of God. And we need to know the word of God.
Is my relationship with the true God if my idea about Him is that He is unjust, impatient, and temperamental, just waiting for a chance to pounce on helpless sinners? Is my relationship genuine if I think of God as unconcerned about sin, accepting anyone and everyone regardless how rebellious they are against Him? Is my relationship with the true God if I fashion Him in my own image, imagining that He is just like me, loving what I love and hating what I hate? These false views of God—this false knowledge about God—is tantamount to idolatry.
Certainly, we can feel good while holding one of these views of God. We can have emotional experiences imagining this sort of god. We can sing to him, pray to him, worship him, yet our worship is not of the one God who actually exists, who made all things, sustains all things, and has made plain to us in His word exactly who He is, what He has done, what He wants from us, and how He desires to be known and worshipped. If we want to experience the true God, we must know Him. Relationship with God happens exclusively within the confines of Scripture.
That feels constricting. It feels like a limitation on our spirituality. But it is not a limitation, other than to limit our ideas of God to that which He has told us about Himself. We willingly bind ourselves to Scripture alone to lead us to God, because only in doing so can we be confident that our worship is of the one and only God, the true God. Where else can we go? He alone has the words of life. All ideas of God that arise from outside of Scripture (or arise from our own imaginations) are at best ignorant and at worst outright heresy.
What about experiencing God’s grace in the gospel? How important is knowledge in our salvation? It is true that we are not saved by getting our theology straight; we are saved by faith in Christ. But is faith just a general “good feeling” toward God? Is the gospel just a collection of nice thoughts God has toward man? Is it just God’s desire for relationship with us however and wherever it can be found? Certainly not. The gospel is a specific set of truth claims, claims that must be held if we are to be saved.
In one sense all we need to do is believe. But in another sense, there are certain things that God calls us to believe when we submit ourselves to Him. These things are clear in His word; to reject these things is to reject the gospel. Here are a few of what I believe are the essential truths of the gospel. To reject these things is to reject the biblical gospel, and thus to reject the true God.
- The belief that God created all things by His word.
- The belief that Adam sinned and brough the curse of death on all humanity.
- The belief that all of us died spiritually in Adam.
- The belief that we are all born sinners in need of salvation.
- The belief that we will all be judged for our actions, whether we submit to God in faith or rebel against His authority.
- The belief that salvation can only be experienced through Christ, though His righteous life, substitutionary death, and glorious resurrection.
- The belief that salvation is made available by God’s grace alone.
- The belief that salvation is received by faith alone.
- The belief that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
- The belief that those who receive the gospel will experience eternal life in God’s presence.
- The belief that those who reject God will experience eternal death in hell, apart from God’s blessing and under His divine judgment.
And the list could go on. Yes it’s true in the simplest sense that all we must do to be saved is believe in Christ. But a Christian of any maturity, studying God’s word and growing in it, will come to an understanding of the gospel that is quite similar to this list. This is that which is described in the New Testament as “the faith”—that set of truth claims which we profess by faith.
Close to Home
As we think more on what the gospel is, I’m struck thinking that many of us may not understand the gospel as we ought to. What is the gospel? Or more to the point, what is the basis of my relationship with God? Why am I confident that God looks favorably on me, that I have been redeemed from sin and am being cleansed from it?
It seems that our understanding of the gospel is most often that God expects us to do the best we can, and He’ll do the rest. We think we are saved because we are moral people. We are patient, kind, generous, and friendly. But does God want moral people? No, God doesn’t want people who are merely moral; He wants righteous people. Moral people perform well on the outside, trying to mask the corruption inside. Righteous people have been transformed by God’s grace and produce good works as a result. God wants us to be moral; He does not want white-washed tombs. Doing good is meaningless if we have not been made good through the Spirit’s regenerating work in our hearts. If our confidence before God is in ourselves (I’ve been obedient, I’ve been faithful, I’ve believed), we have yet to apprehend the gospel. So often our confidence before God is in ourselves (our morals, our choices, our obedience) and not in Christ and Christ alone.
The reason why this view of the gospel is so toxic is that it trusts our behavior as the basis for God’s favor. But that is certainly not the biblical gospel. Nowhere is the gospel described as a mutual agreement between us and God where we do our best and God makes up the difference. God doesn’t want us to try the best we can; He wants us to surrender. God has provided everything for us in Christ. Christ is the source of God’s blessing. We receive God’s blessings by faith, not by works.
What I want you to remember is simply this. If you want true relationship with God, you’d better be after right knowledge of Him. If you want to experience Him, you’d better give yourself to understanding Him as He has revealed Himself in His word. Don’t settle for a vision of God that makes sense to you, fits in your little boxes, and is compatible with your approach to life. Accept God as He has revealed Himself in His word. God, as He has revealed Himself, is more glorious, more loving, holier, more generous, more gracious than we can imagine. We do not need a god of our own imagination; we need the God of Scripture. If you want to experience God, go after right theology. Go after Scripture. Get familiar with it. Study it, understand it, read it, memorize it, and live it out. The greatest experience of God comes to those who are intimately familiar with His truth. Vibrant relationship requires—and results from—accurate theology.