Do we need great knowledge to know God?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘God’s Glorious Plan for Creation’ (2007).

It depends on what you mean by 'great knowledge'.

You'll remember the story of the dying thief, who was crucified next to Jesus (see Luke 23:39–43). In the final hours of his life on earth, as he hung on that cross, he came to repentance, realized that Jesus was innocent, realized that Jesus was the Son of God, realized that Jesus, though he died, would come again in his kingdom, repented and said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And our Lord replied instantaneously, 'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.' It didn't take a lot of knowledge, did it? Notice what Christ said to him. He didn't say, 'Try and do some better works.' He was hanging on a cross. He hadn't got a few hours more to do any works; he was nailed hand and foot anyway. It was repentance and faith in Christ. And Christ assured him, 'Today, you will be with me in Paradise.' You don't need a lot of knowledge to receive that assurance from God and from Christ.

This is what I feel very strongly: if at this moment you don't have the assurance that you are saved, that your name is written in heaven, and that if you died this moment you would be with Christ in heaven; well, you could have that assurance. You don't need a vast amount of knowledge. Christ says it. You could have it. The tragedy is so many people think they can't have it, but they're trying their very best by their good works to please God. But it doesn't come that way. Listen to Christ and that dying thief. In spite of all his crimes in the past, now he repents and puts his faith in the Saviour and the Lord says, 'Today you will be with me in Paradise.'

I meet folks who tell me that you can't know you're saved and going to heaven. That is so contrary to God's word that it makes me feel a bit angry—to keep people back from knowing for sure that God's word tells them they can know, if they put their faith in Christ. It seems to me a very serious injury to do to people. We can know. In one of his letters, the Apostle John writes 'I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life' (1 John 5:13). God wants us to know. Not vast knowledge and being able to cite the whole Bible off by heart, but he wants us to know this, to know the gift of God.

Do you remember the story how our Lord met the Samaritan woman at a well (John 4:7–42)? What a brilliant story. Our Lord went up to Samaria and sat on a well and there came out a woman to draw water. She was a Samaritan and he was a Jew; and such was the religious divide between Jews and Samaritans, they pretty well hated each other. The Jews had gone along and knocked down the temple of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim. That didn't please the Samaritans, and the Samaritans went along and took a sack full of old dead men's bones and scattered them in the temple at Jerusalem. That didn't please the Jews. And the rabbis in Judaism taught that a Samaritan woman spreads uncleanness wherever she went. Fearful lie, of course.

So our Lord went and sat on a well in Samaria and there came this Samaritan woman to draw water, and our Lord said to her, 'Give me a drink.' She was so startled that a Jew should even talk to a Samaritan woman, she nearly fell down the well herself! 'How is it that you, a Jew, should ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan?' (Jews didn't have any dealings with Samaritans and wouldn't use the same cups as Samaritans.) Our Lord said to her, 'My dear, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's speaking to you, you would ask of him and he would give you living water.' Christ says the same to us today. Do you know the gift of God, what it is that God is trying to give you, what Christ is trying to give you? He's trying to give you what here he described as living water—the gift of forgiveness, the gift of eternal life, the gift of the Spirit of God. Christ wants to give it to you. If only you knew the gift that he wanted to give you, you'd ask for it and ask for it today.

Do you thereafter need all the knowledge? Well no, in a sense you don't need all this great knowledge to get to heaven. There are in the Body of Christ some gifts that are teachers and teachers have to know a lot. If you're not a teacher, you don't have to know so much but do read the Bible as you can, in your way. And ask the Lord Jesus as you read it, to talk to you.