Knowing Part V

The LOGOS
John 1:1-2 In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word (logos) was with God, and the Word (logos) was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
John 1:14 The Word (logos) became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, {14 Or the Only Begotten} who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

When John said “Wisdom (logos) became flesh” he created a new understanding of this word, logos which would cause one of two things to happen in the reader:
The reader can walk away in disbelief and claim that John is talking nonsense, or can read on and listen to the story and perhaps believe that this LOGOS is the foundation of the world. Proverbs 3:19 The LORD aby wisdom founded the earth, By understanding He bestablished the heavens. This wisdom must be the cornerstone of all our knowledge. We must cause all of our knowledge and means of attaining knowledge to fall under submission to the LOGOS.

1 Peter 2:7 “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,"1

The stone that the builders rejected:
1 Corinthians 1:21-24 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Rejected Stumbling block:
We are all building our knowledge upon some cornerstone. For the Jews, their cornerstone was signs or miracles. For the Greeks, it was philosophy. For contemporary America, it is science and reason. All of these may be helpful tools for attaining knowledge, but it must be built upon the cornerstone of the LOGOS.
For us, it is Jesus Christ Himself who is our cornerstone. He is the foundation for our knowledge. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom-logos”

There is no proof for Christ, for God, or for the Bible. Your only response is either belief, or disbelief. It is a matter of divine revelation accepted on faith.
John 1:18 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God,1 who is at the Father's side,2 he has made him known.
It is the same with all men everywhere who must make a decision about what will be their cornerstone. They have no proof that theirs is right, only belief, or disbelief. We must trust God to reveal the truth to us.

The certainty we have:
2 Timothy 1:12 I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.1
The location of our certainty is not in the competence of our own knowing (as by pure reason, science, or any test that proves it), but in the faithfulness and reliability of the one who is known.

IF the biblical depiction of the human situation is true (fallen and finite) and
IF the supreme reality is a personal God whose we are and to whom we are responsible
THEN there is something quite absurd about the posture of those who claim infallible certainty about God by means of their own reason/means of knowing and on the strength of their own rational powers.
We do not make that type of claim about other people we know, how much more absurd to do so about God!!!

So why do we use our own competence of knowledge? We attempt to be the end all/be all of knowledge. We tend to think that we decide what is true or false. Sometimes we are right, often we are wrong. We may be wrong because of false premises that we chose to accept causing our conclusions to be wrong or whatever. I am convinced that we can only be sure of the knowledge we have if we are either outside of space and time, or are told by a trustworthy Informer what is true or real. When we reject the truth revealed to us by our trustworthy Informer, we are not honoring Him and his knowledge and who He is or his power or His being God, but we are exalting ourselves as being smarter than God and inevitably become fools. In closing, Romans 1:20-22 says, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that we are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man…”

The knowledge we have of God, and the certainty we have in Him is relational. It is a relational knowledge by which we know God, not scientific. “for I know whom I have believed.” “Knowledge of the Holy One IS understanding”

“I have called you friends, for everything I have learned from my Father I have made known to you” John 15:15
Jesus and our relationship with Him is the foundation of our knowledge. We can use reason, science, doubt and other tools, but they must be submitted to Him.
To look outside of Jesus and His gospel for a starting point (reason, science) for the demonstration of the reasonableness of Him is a contradiction and implies that we look for the LOGOS elsewhere than in the incarnate Logos, Jesus.

We are not talking about a blind leap of faith, but a personal response to a personal calling from a personal God, Jesus. When Jesus told his disciples “Follow Me”, he did not first demonstrate the reasonableness of His existence or His calling. He did not even tell them where they would follow Him. Our undeniable indisputable faith is not based on us, but on the reliable, personal God who extends to us a call “follow Me”. He is our cornerstone. He simply said, “follow Me”. Jesus has entered the room, how will you respond?