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Matthew 11:27:
27All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
When, in Romans 1:20 we read that "The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made," and in Matthew 11:27 that "No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him," these two do not contradict each other, only seemingly so.
There is knowledge of God that can be obtained in all sorts of ways by every man; and this was not only so in Paradise, but is still so in this fallen world, even in that part of the world which is darkened by the curse of heathendom. "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handiwork." Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no language nor country, there is no people, even unto the world's end, that do not hear the voice of the heavens. And not only does nature, which pulsates with life, pour forth speech for every one who does not purposely stop his ears; but there is also a speech of God, which goes forth to all peoples and nations, in the conscience. Not of the first created human pair in Paradise, but of the heathen in the corrupt ages of the Caesars, Paul testifies that they "shew the work of God's law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another" (Romans 2:15). The form in which the knowledge of God and the knowledge of God's will expresses itself among the heathen, may be idolatrous and oftentimes offensive, yet the impulse from which their idolatry and their offensive practices proceed, is never anything else than the wrong interpretation of the speech of God in nature and in the conscience. This is the seed of religion, the innate knowledge of God and the given knowledge of God, which was ever confessed by our fathers. And this was not confessed in order to glorify man who fell, but in order, on the contrary, to render the sinner inexcusable before God. Fallen humanity as such, and every individual sinner therein, stands so deeply guilty before God for the very reason that he whose eye is but fully open and whose conscience reacts in a pure way, perceives the eternal power and Divinity of the Lord Jehovah in his own inmost self and around him everywhere in nature and in history.
But how, then, is it to be explained that in the face of all this, Christ emphatically testified that "no one knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him?"
It does not say that no one can have any knowledge of God save through the Son, but that no one knoweth the Father, save he to whom the Son has revealed Him.
Of Satan and his satellites it is clearly stated, that they know God and tremble. And this can not be otherwise. For Satan's fall was nothing else than rebellion against God, evil lust to dethrone God and to put himself in God's place; and how could this have been conceivable, if he had not known God's existence and God's omnipotence? But, with equal certainty, every one feels that Satan, though he knows God, has never known the Father.
He who knows the Father is comforted and reconciled; Satan, on the other hand, as often as he thinks of God, trembles. The knowledge of the Father maketh rich, gives peace and eternal rest; the knowledge which Satan has of God, makes him tremble. And yet, this is the difference between Satan and a great sinner on earth that, a criminal on earth can take a sleeping potion in order to quiet his conscience and to forget God, but this is the very thing that Satan can not do. For him this sleeping-draught of sin is inconceivable. His sense of God's Almighty Presence speaks loudly to him from moment to moment, and for this reason Satan trembles. The miserable estate of the lost in the place of outer darkness is explained by this same thing. Here on earth the ungodly can put his conscience to sleep and in the midst of sin live ordinarily without any anxiety. There are others whose conscience is so seared, that only now and then, in moments of intense emotion, they feel the anger of God, and for the rest of the time without God, and also without dread of God, they live on in their sin just because they close their eyes and stop their ears.
But when once this life is ended, and they enter upon eternity, this too will end; then their eyes also will fully open so that they will never be able to close them again, and their ears will be unstopped so that they will never be able to stop them again; and with open eye and ear to be eternally subject to the Almightiness of God, will be their miserable destiny.
If, then, it is written, that no one of us can know the Father, except the Son reveal the Father to us, it is evident, that this does not point to the general knowledge of God which is within reach of every man, but very definitely to that knowledge of God's eternal compassions which the sinner cannot share until reconciled in Christ, and having become a child of God he has learned to know God as his Father and himself as this heavenly Father's child.
Hence there is no mention here of a doctrine which is learned by rote, of a revelation in words which we make our own; no, there is mention here of a knowledge which the spiritual experience of being redeemed and reconciled brings us.
There certainly belongs to this also a revelation to our understanding. We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true (I John 5:20). All revelation begins with the Word. When Christ appeared, He went through the land preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Gospel itself is the glad tidings of salvation that is to come and of redemption that is proclaimed.
But this preaching, these tidings, these words of the Gospel by themselves, do not suffice. These can be learned by heart and committed to memory without imparting to us any closer understanding of the knowledge of the Father.
This doctrine by itself, though it be embraced without reservation or resistance, never brings us further than to say, ''Lord, Lord." It is then as in the days of Hosea (8:2), when all the people said: "Lord, we thy Israel, know thee," even while the anger of the Lord was kindled against them just because they did not know Him.
Even if this doctrine, this message, this word of the Gospel has been carried into the world first by the Apostles and after that by the Church and the Bible, this by itself can never bring the knowledge of the Father.
This knowledge only comes, when the glorified Christ through the Holy Spirit brings the riches of His reconciliation to us, seeks us out as sinners and makes us children of God. And only then, when Christ has made us children of God, has the knowledge of the Father become our blessed and glorious possession.
And yet, even this does not say enough.
Christ does not come to us only in the work of redemption. He is the Eternal Word which before all things was with God and was God. All nature, together with the speech of God which it contains, has been created by Him. He is the Word; without Him no speech goes out from nature. Taken apart from the eternal Word, nature would be dead and dumb, and would have nothing to say to us.
More still.
Not only has nature been created by the Eternal Word of God and animated with a language, but we ourselves also, as a race, in the midst of nature, have not come into this world apart from Christ. Furthermore, the scope of our human nature is from Him. We, too, have been created by Him. And especially our whole spiritual disposition, and our ability to overhear and to understand nature, has been implanted in us by Him.
And the same is altogether true of our moral nature. Our conscience has come to us from Christ. He himself is the conscience of mankind. The fellowship, which our heart has with the moral world order, our perceptions of good and evil, of right and wrong, of what fills one with horror and enchants one through beauty, of selfishness and love, of light and darkness—have all come to us from the Eternal Word.
Hence it must not be taken to mean that we knew God apart from Christ, and that in and by Christ alone this God, Whom we already know from other sources, is revealed to us as our Father. No, the broad foundation of the knowledge of God on which is reared the knowledge of the Father, comes to us from the Eternal Word. The knowledge of the Father is not a flower wafted down to us from heavenly regions and fastened by Christ to the withered stem of our human nature; but the barrenness of our human nature has been animated by Him with new life, and so, the knowledge of the Father has been engrafted upon the knowledge of God which came to us through nature and upon the knowledge of God which came to us through the conscience by virtue of our creation from the Eternal Word.
Thus there are not two kinds of knowledge without an internal relation, externally standing side by side and linked together; but there is one knowledge of God, from the Eternal Word, that through nature and the conscience springs up within us, and now in and through the Messiah's work of Redemption is elevated and carried up to the knowledge of the Father.
Hence, it is a maiming of our faith which bitterly avenges itself when he who is converted contents himself with the work of Redemption as though this alone comprises the glory of the Christ, in order from now on to leave to the world the knowledge of God that comes from nature and from the conscience.
No, he who reconciled in Christ as child of God kneels before his Father in heaven, must let the light that has appeared to him in Christ operate reflexively upon the speech of God in nature round about him, and in the nature of his own human existence, both of which have their origin in Christ.
It is for this reason that the Gospel of John begins with centering our attention upon this tie with Christ that has been laid already in the creation of our world, in the creation of our own nature, and in the creation of our own person.
And then the result is that both this speech of God in nature and this speech of God in our conscience, thanks to our reconciliation in Christ, obtain for us an altogether different sound, increase in clearness and in meaning, and are now heard by the opened ear in a purity, which to our perception unites the life of grace with the life of nature in glorious harmony, and turns the whole world, and all of history, including our own life, into one mighty revelation of the Father, Whom we worship in the Face of His Son.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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