KNOWING GOD: GOAL OF ALL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

“Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness; neither shall evil dwell with thee” (PSALM 5:1, 4).

Among Christians of all ages and of varying shades of doctrinal emphasis there has been fairly full agreement on one thing: they all believed that it was important that the Christian with serious spiritual aspirations should learn to meditate long and often on God!

 

Let a Christian insist upon rising above the poor average of current religious experience and he will soon come up against the need-to-know God Himself as the ultimate goal of all Christian doctrine.

 

Let him seek to explore the sacred wonders of the Triune Godhead and he will discover that sustained and intelligently directed meditation on the Person of God is imperative. To know God well he must think on Him unceasingly. Nothing that man has discovered about himself or God has revealed any shortcut to pure spirituality. It is still free, but tremendously costly!

 

Of course, this presupposes at least a fair amount of sound theological knowledge. To seek God apart from His own self-disclosure in the inspired Scriptures is not only futile but dangerous. There must be also a knowledge of and complete trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Redeemer.

 

Christ is not one of many ways to approach God, nor is He the best of several ways; He is the only way, “the way, the truth and the life.”

 

To believe otherwise is to be something less than a Christian!

 

  1. W. Tozer