Tuesday, June 2, 2015

KNOWLEDGE ENCOUNTER of a 2nd KIND



KNOWLEDGE ENCOUNTER
OF THE 2nd KIND
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As I confessed in the blog series “LOSING TO WIN” I was a church leader ignorant of God’s method of overcoming sin?  The Bible never hid that information from me.  On the contrary it repeatedly announces the method on almost every page, especially in the New Testament.  I knew that knowing Jesus was God’s means for curing the troubled heart but I also knew that when painful emotions and mental anguish flood the heart they normally churn up unhealthy desires which spilled out as sinful conduct.  Unfortunately I somehow missed the Bible’s specific instructions on applying God’s Cure.  I think I must have tried all the various methods known and used by the Christian community but found them as effective as using a net in stopping the flood.  
My failure boiled down to an incorrect assumption that Biblical references to “knowledge” mean mental acuity.  Identifying it as such I overestimated the value of intellectual attained remedies.  Yet it makes perfect sense that if the Bible’s message is addressed to the spirit of man rather than his brain then knowledge of the method should also be a spiritual kind.  Since we only truly know Christ spiritually then the knowledge itself must be spiritually as well. Here is what I found.
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CONFUSION OF KIND
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Our abiding consciousness of the life of God within us, not thinking about Him but knowing the One Who is alive in us, is our means of freedom from self-destructive habits.  It is a kind of knowledge which is unattainable by intellectual study or scientific research and yet Biblical.  The Bible which directs us to the remedy, remaining ever conscious of God (to believe in Him) also directs in how it is done.  It describes a knowledge encounter of another kind…spiritual rather than academic.  Jesus seems to be describing just such a method in John 8:31-32 because He ends His explanation with a promise of freedom. Yet His description of the method is so utterly confusing that not even professional Bible scholars can untangle it.    
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“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”  John 8:31 + 32   
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It appears Jesus requires us to hold His teaching before we know what that truth will be then it will set us free.  It left me wondering. “How can God expect me to hold to a teaching I don’t know yet?”  
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Checking the commentary in the margin of my Bible I found no indication of a method being presented here. Other Bibles like, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, at least describe “the truth” as something other than a philosophical general knowledge.  It calls it, “a saving truth.”
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The NIV Study Bible, published by Zondervan identifies a goal but no method either.  It does hint at two kinds of knowledge though.  In its comment on the word “free” it says it is a, “Freedom from sin, not from ignorance.” 
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Those brief notations actually create less confusion than the more expansive commentaries.  Some of them propose that “the truth” spoken of is a universal truth that becomes a personally held, self-evident, truth.  Others see it as two different types of truth, one that is a teaching to be held on to and the second one which is actually “the truth”.  Still others believe “the truth”, itself, changes from the one that is held at the beginning into another that is known later.  This is essentially what J. W. Shepard proposes.  He suggests that what is to be known is an evolutionary or “progressive” developing kind of “the truth”.  While I figured it could be one of those or a combination as Zondervan’s Commentary on the Whole Bible asserts.  It argues that “if” we can hold on to “the truth” during a trial of our faith we prove ourselves to be an authentic disciple.  It goes on to tell us that unfortunately we will never know what “the truth” is until it does in fact “set you free”…or not.  Nonetheless we should hold on to whatever it is. 
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Seriously, these explanations are just too confusing.  What’s more they are worthless nets in the flood.  They fail to be helpful because like me they see only one kind of knowledge, the intellectual kind.  They glance past the one essential fact in freedom from destructive habits and sin…our spirit aware of God’s Holy Spirit within.  Just “think about it” for a minute; If God-consciousness is not a mental acknowledgment what is it?  Holding to God’s teaching and knowing the truth are both impossible requirements for mankind without the Holy Spirit of Truth within. (John 14:17, 15:26, + 16:13)  The reason is God’s Spirit alone knows God.  If we are to recognize God it must be a somewhat spiritual knowledge.  Mentally it can be an intuitive impression accepted by faith but known spiritually.  Any real knowledge of God must factor in the Spirit of Truth alive within.  (Roman 8:9)  When we allow for the reality of the indwelling Spirit of God the steps to our freedom from destructive habits become obvious.  To clear away the fog let’s go back over what Jesus said, step by step, with the spirit’s God-consciousness:
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1)    “If you hold to my teaching,” – The only way human-beings can exert enough spiritual energy to hold the teaching of Christ is if the Holy Spirit empowers us.
2)    “…you are really my disciples,” – Only those who have the Holy Spirit in them qualify as disciples.
3)    “Then you will know the truth,” – Individuals with the Holy Spirit inside have the possibility of conscious recognition of the truth, which is God’s Spiritual present within us.
4)    “…and the truth will set you free.” – It is the recognition of God’s Spirit, inside us that will set us free.


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The awareness of God within is not an intellectually generated illusion.  It is spiritual perceived “knowledge” of God within us.  It is our spirit conscious of the Divine Spirit within which sets us free from vain thoughts and harmful emotions.  At the moment of this spiritual recognition we have “everything we need for life and godliness.” (2Pet. 1:3)  Our spirit, intuitively recognizing our union with God not only (a)frees us to set our desires aside but (b)gives us His power by which we can yield to His desire…His will.  It is not regular mental knowledge activated in this kind of knowledge of God but a purely spiritual knowing.
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INTELLECTUAL BIAS
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The confusion between intellectual knowledge and spiritual knowledge is more or less a peculiarity of Western Christianity.  We hear claims of increased manifestations of spiritual activity among less westernized Christian communities.  I submit that by-in-large the reason is the Western World tends to approach life, even spiritual life, from a postmodern mind-set.  Therefore we can easily overlook the spiritual part of human nature.  Less-westernized Asian Christians don’t seem to exhibit as much of this bias.  Watchman Nee, for example, speaking unapologetically of spiritually derived knowledge said,
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“The spirit is that part by which we commune with God and by which alone we are able to apprehend and worship Him.  Because it (the spirit of man) tells us of our relationship with God, the spirit is called the element of God-consciousness.”
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Nonetheless in this country it is normally assumed that knowledge is exclusively intellectual.  However from the earliest Hebrew tradition “knowing God” was understood to be other than an intellectual capacity.  At the end of his trial, Job recognized that the knowledge he had of God through “hearing” about Him was inferior to “seeing” Him.  “My ears had heard of you” Job said to God “but now my eyes have seen you.’ (Job 42:5)  The sighting he spoke of was not a retinal image because “No one has ever seen God.”(John 1:18a)  The reference to visual perception repeated throughout scriptures is obviously speaking of our spirit’s recognition, perception, and/or consciousness of God’s Spirit…knowledge of God.  Because the earliest Biblical scribes had the attitude that God’s nature was so far beyond our intellectual comprehension they used terms like “knowledge of God” without concern that it would be mistaken for anything other than spiritually knowledge. (Job 36:24)    
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Today, because of our intellectual bias, we use code phrases to approximate the difference between intellectual and spiritual consciousness.  We ask or say things like; “Do you know God or do you just know about God?” or “Have you experienced God in a personal way?” or “Do you hear God’s voice speaking to your heart?” It is our intellectual bias that makes this type of clarification necessary.  Now-days words that actually do draw a distinction between spiritual and intellectual knowledge are awkward and actually less clarifying.  “What do you mean?” would be the expected response to the question “Is your spirit conscious of God?”  However the New Testament deliberately does translate the distinction.  It makes the differentiation between spiritually discerned knowledge and cognitively learned knowledge by use of specific phrases…“knowledge of God” or “knowing God”.  An exception is made when discussing “knowledge” that contains both kinds, information about God as well as firsthand experience of God.  In those instances, with very few exceptions, they simply use the word “knowledge”.   
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TRANSLATOR’S DILEMMA
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I also wondered why the Bible didn’t simply use two different words when speaking of the two different kinds of knowledge.  The spirit’s kind of knowledge should have been called “consciousness of God” to differentiate it from the intellectual kind of knowledge of God. I discovered that the earliest translations actually did use the more precise term, God-consciousness.  Two interesting linguistic factors influenced the use of today’s less precise wording.  The first factor is that the earliest translations were in Latin.  The Latin translators used the Latin word “conscius” for the specially formulated Greek word, knowledge of God.  Quite literally all references to this kind of knowledge could have been more precisely translated God-consciousness. The less precise, Knowledge of God and other forms of knowing God were introduced in 1611 with the publication of the King James Version of the Bible which set the trends for English Bible translations thereafter. The reason the English translators did not use “spirit-consciousness” or “God-consciousness” was the fact that the Latin word “conscius” was not absorbed into the English language until the 1630s.  Quite simply the word did not exist in English.  The English translators were forced to use the closest word in use at the time, which was the word “knowledge.” 
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The second factor is that even when the original Greek text actually uses two different words to mark a distinction between spiritual knowledge (God-consciousness) and carnal knowledge the English does not.  The Greek specifically added the prefix “epi” to the word “knowledge” to identify the specific kind of knowledge, “epiginosis”, which designates a specific spiritual God-consciousness, a spiritually aware kind of knowledge.*  The English translators had no choice but to settle on the present phrase, “knowledge of God”, to represent this spirit kind of knowledge.
*The synonym glossary The Discovery Bible by Moody Press under Comments and Summaries states: “…(epignosis, ‘true knowledge’) adequately;  to come to a ‘fuller, clearer, and more thorough knowledge’”. Dictionary of New Testament Greek Synonyms by Zondervan’s comment on epignosis states that it is; “an adequate or valid knowledge; an intensified form of ginosko.”  Ginosko, the verb form, “to know”, as defined by The Handbook to the Grammar of the Greek New Testament published by Religious Tract Society, London is, “the knowing comes from ‘an active relation between the one who knows and the person…known.’”   

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 The apostle Peter using his rough “Galilean fisherman” Greek used the “epi” very consistently.  Apparently Peter, as a pastor, was more determined to highlight the difference than the others. Yet of the 18 times the phrase appears in the New Testament 15 of those specify this unique knowledge of God.  Our intellectual bias has further contributed to our present-day failure to distinguish between spiritually discerned recognition and mentally acquired information.  The result is we can read the nuanced wording and miss the point like I did for so many years.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
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The reason this distinction matters so significant is that our key to overcoming self-destructive behavior is hidden in that difference.  To demonstrate the clarifying value of the more precise designations I have insert them into the text of 2 Peter 1:2, 3, 5, & 8 written to the recipients of God’s Holy Spirit. These selected verses not only use both terms but like John 8:31-32 describe God’s method of freedom:
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“Grace and peace be yours in abundance through GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS (the knowledge of God) and Jesus our Lord.  His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS (knowledge of him) who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:2-3 
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“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, (and) INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE (knowledge).”  2 Peter 1:5  
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“For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS (knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ).”     2Peter1:8(Capitals added)
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The most amazing thing about what God is funneled through our God given capacity for God-consciousness is the capacity to know Him…spirit united to Spirit.  Furthermore that knowledge allows us to escape our evil desires and live the life of victory over sin that Peter outlines below;
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“Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may PARTICIPATE IN THE DIVINE NATURE and ESCAPE THE CORRUPTION in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:4 

The diagram illustrates the intended effect God-consciousness produces in us.  It shows our spirit aware of God’s union opening us to His life, free from not only the guilt of sin but from sin’s power as well.  Furthermore our spirit’s recognition of the indwelling Holy Spirit (God-consciousness) is the opening that allows us to participate in the Divine nature and escape the corruption of our desires.
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Being aware of God’s presence within is too important for living a Christian life free from sin to that to lose it in translation, intellectual bias, or some unresolved confusion about God’s method is tragic.  Please don’t let God-consciousness become only a matter of intellectual knowledge…especially as time itself is winding down.  Of all times, this is the time to continually ask God to give us God-conscious.  His blessing is yours ask for it.
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I may reinforce this presentation in a future blog, if God wills, using accounts of my personal life.  However, if not, I have already presented the general principles in the LOSING TO WIN series. Of course I naturally think the whole series is valuable but perhaps THE INTERNAL SEARCH posted 4/24/2015 will be most instructive.  As always, I would be honored to respond to your feedback.