Choose to Know Him
April 1, 2006
“I know whom I have believed. II Timothy 1:12
When the great Princeton scholar James Alexander lay on his deathbed, his wife incorrectly quoted 2 Timothy 1:12, “I know in whom I have believed.” Gently, he corrected her for adding the word “in.â€Â Even then, he wanted to make it clear that, in addition to possessing an accurate understanding of the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, he knew Him in a deeply personal way. He saw his impending death as the door through which he would be ushered immediately into the presence of the One he had come to love and know so well.
I’ve talked and prayed with a number of people on death’s door, and have witnessed emotions ranging from terror to anticipation. Even among Christians, I’ve seen some die more triumphantly than others. Believers who show the most confidence at death are those with a deeply personal relationship with our Lord Jesus. Like St. Paul, they can honestly say, “I know whom I have believed.” That calls a question for us all to answer, because, as St. Paul wrote in Philippians 2:11-13 if we internalize the eternal Truth that Jesus is Lord, we are then compelled to work our own salvation out before God, with fear and trembling. The remaining issue, then, is if He is Lord, and we have worked out our own salvation, then we have done so by coming to know Him personally. And, my beloved in Christ, I would submit for our Lenten meditations this thought: that the reverse is also true. If we do not know Him personally, He is not Lord to us and we do not know whom we have believed. If, however, in the quiet of examen in our hearts, we cannot emphatically say we know our Lord personally, we can trump that uncertainty easily by our own action and choice, thanks be to God.
To develop intimacy with the Savior, we simply choose to spend time with Him…in our Bibles, expressing our love to Him in prayer, and being doers of His Word, as empowered by God the Holy Ghost. As we hollow out the spaces in our lives for the Lord to work and dwell, we can learn to follow the Spirit’s prompting and instruction, renewing our minds, so we too will be able to say, “I know whom I have believed.”
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