Fully Know, Fully Loved

I heard a sad and poignant story some years ago about an elderly couple, and it has some bearing on what we’re going to be talking about today, so let me share it with you.

There was an elderly couple (I don’t know their names, or even if they’re real) that had made a longstanding tradition of a monthly picnic lunch in the park.

It was the husband’s job to prepare sandwiches for their dates, and he did so faithfully for many years, cutting slices from a fresh loaf of bread that he’d get at the bakery the day of their date.

One time, after they’d been having their picnic dates once a month for more than 30 years, they were sitting in the shade of a tree at the park when the husband opened the picnic basket and handed his wife a sandwich, taking the other for himself.

She opened the sandwich and saw that her husband had made it with both heels from the bread loaf. Just as he’d always done. For more than 30 years.

More than 360 picnic dates had taken place, and she’d gotten a heel sandwich. Every. Single. Time.

Finally, she’d had enough. “Why do you always give me the heels?” she asked. ”I can’t stand the heels. They’re tough, and I hate the consistency when I chew them.”

Her husband was shocked. Not just by the sudden flash of anger in his beloved wife’s eyes, but also by the fact that this special tradition they’d made together was now being challenged.

“But I’ve made you sandwiches like this for more than 30 years,” he said.

“Yes,” his wife replied. “And for 30 years, I’ve eaten them, even though I hated them. But now, I just want to know why you’d keep doing this. I thought you loved me!”

“I do love you,” he replied. “And I also love the heels on a loaf of bread. That’s why I gave them to YOU, to show you how much I love you.”

I told you it was a sad story. Also, a little bit sweet. Probably made up, too. But it’s a great story to open the message today, because it speaks of the fact that even among those closest to us, it’s rare for us to be truly KNOWN.

Even in the best marriages, people report learning new things about their spouses deep into their relationship. Like the fact that she doesn’t like the heels of the bread. Or that he DOES.

And in the passage that we’ll read today in our continuing study of the Book of Galatians, we’re going to see the Apostle Paul despairing over the fact that he might have been wrong in what he thought he knew about the people in the churches he and Barnabas had planted there in their first missionary journey.

When Paul and Barnabas had left Galatia, they’d thought they knew the spiritual condition of the new believers in those churches.

But when men came from Jerusalem preaching that faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work at the cross was insufficient for their salvation — that they also had to follow much of the Mosaic Law in order to be truly saved — the Galatians began to listen to and follow their false teaching.

Paul heard about what was happening in Galatia, and it broke his heart. He was perplexed at how easily his brothers and sisters in Christ there had been led astray.

And he was eager to remind them of the one true gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And over the past 13 weeks or so, we’ve seen Paul argue strenuously for the supremacy of this one true gospel.

But in today’s passage, he takes a break from all the doctrine he’s been teaching to remind the Galatians of his love for them and their love for him.

He reminds them about what they’d come to know about one another. And, more importantly, he reminds them that they’re known by God.

And that last thing, especially, has some significant implications for US. Let’s look at this passage together, and then we’ll explore some of those implications together.

We’re reading verse 8 through 20 of chapter 4 today.

Galatians 4:8–20 NASB95

8 However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years. 11 I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain. 12 I beg of you, brethren, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have done me no wrong; 13 but you know that it was because of a bodily illness that I preached the gospel to you the first time; 14 and that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition you did not despise or loathe, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus Himself. 15 Where then is that sense of blessing you had? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. 16 So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? 17 They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them. 18 But it is good always to be eagerly sought in a commendable manner, and not only when I am present with you. 19 My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you— 20 but I could wish to be present with you now and to change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Remember who you were. That’s how Paul starts this passage. He’s reminding the Galatians that before they’d come to saving faith in Jesus, they hadn’t known God. And they’d been slaves to “the elemental things of the world.”

The Jews had put their trust in the Law. The Gentiles had placed their trust in idols of stone or wood. And in both cases, the object of their trust was unable to save them.

All the Law could do — all the idols could do — was to expose their sinfulness and bring condemnation.

And today, though it would be hard to find people in the West worshiping idols made of stone or wood, folks put their trust in all kinds of things that aren’t God — politics and politicians, the stock market, themselves.

And Paul’s point, which is still relevant today, is that we who’ve turned to JESUS in faith have placed our faith in the God of the universe, in Him who created all things.

So, why would we ever turn back to those things that aren’t God, those things that enslaved us without giving us hope for salvation? Why would we ever allow those things that aren’t God to capture the faith that’s due only to Him?

“But now you’ve come to know God,” he says in verse 9. Now, he says, remember who you ARE in Christ Jesus. You’ve come to know GOD through His Son and the indwelling Holy Spirit.

For Paul, “knowing God” wasn’t simply a matter of knowing the facts about Him and about Jesus.

“Paul’s concept of knowledge was more closely related to the Hebrew verb yādaʿ, which is frequently used in the Old Testament to refer to the kind of personal intimacy associated with sexual intercourse, as in [Genesis, where Moses writes], “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.” ‘To know’ God in this kind of experiential intensity implies a divine-human encounter in which the total self, not merely the mind or thought processes, is claimed and transformed.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 313.]

What this means in the context of Paul’s argument for the supremacy of salvation by grace through faith is that not only are we unable to keep God’s commandments perfectly, we’re also unable to love Him without the aid of His grace.

And furthermore, nobody finds God unless He, in His grace and mercy, finds them first.

“We are like blinded rats lost in the labyrinth of sin until by God’s amazing grace we who were all lost in the maze of self-justification are truly and everlastingly ‘found.’” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 314.]

But Paul catches himself quickly. It’s not so much that WE know GOD, but that HE knows US that makes the difference.

What a wonderful thing it is to be known by God. Let’s talk for a moment about what being known by God implies.

It implies that He knows us better even than we know ourselves. He knows our struggles, our victories, our frustrations, our hopes.

There’s nothing you’ll ever go through that God isn’t already intimately familiar with. He sees, and He understands your fears and worries, and He says, “Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

To be known by God implies that He knows how we handle questions about our faith, how we respond when doubts creep in. And He’s not threatened or put out by our doubts, nor by the weakness of our faith sometimes.

When Jesus met the man whose son was possessed by a spirit that made him mute and caused him to have seizures, the father asked Him if He could do anything to help his son. Jesus replied that “All things are possible to him who believes.”

And the father’s response should be our own whenever we’re struggling with faith: “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

Jesus didn’t shake his head and turn away from the man who was struggling with his faith. No, instead, He healed the man’s son, which most assuredly helped the man overcome his struggle.

It’s not as if the man’s struggle came as a surprise to Jesus. Nor does your own struggle with faith come as a surprise to God. He KNOWS you, after all. And if you’re truly seeking Him, He WANTS to be found.

To be known by God also implies that He makes each one of us the center of His attention. He’s not too busy to spare time to think of us. He’s not distracted by other duties as to be unaware of what’s happening with any one of us at any given time.

If His eye is on the sparrow, how much more, then, must it be on we who were created in His image, for fellowship with Him?

To be known by God implies that, even when we were still His enemies, God loved us. It implies that even though He is high and lifted up, God still stoops down to bless us.

That the God of the universe — He in whom all things hold together — He whose breath gives all things life — He who rules over all of His creation — that this holy and awesome God would even CARE to know us makes Him different from all the other gods of all the other false religions.

He’s personally invested in saving those whom He’s chosen to become part of the family of God. Indeed, He invested the very life of His unique and eternal Son, Jesus, to purchase our freedom from sin and death.

To be known so completely — and STILL LOVED — is one of the amazing things about salvation. There will never come a time when God says, “Whoa, wait a minute! I didn’t know you were like THAT!” He already knows all the good and all the bad, and He loves you anyway.

So, Paul wonders at the end of verse 9, if you’re known and loved by the merciful and gracious Creator of the universe — the one who promises eternal life — why would you ever want to go back to the things that offered only condemnation and death?

Why would you ever put your faith in ANY of the worthless things that people trust to save them?

And it wasn’t just the Galatians who had this problem. We have it, too. We trust in the God of all comfort and peace for salvation, but we chase after financial success as if we think money will bring us satisfaction and contentment.

We trust in the God of all hope for salvation, but we turn to broken and sin-twisted political systems in the false hope that they’ll somehow solve the world’s problems.

We trust in the God who sees us and is with us for salvation, but we look for completion in husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, even to the point sometimes of joining ourselves to others who don’t follow Jesus.

But faith in God through Christ Jesus means leaning on Him always and completely. It means trusting that He knows our circumstances — that He knows who we are and what we need.

And it means trusting that His plan for us is to BE our answer to loneliness, financial difficulties, worries about the state of the world, or anything else that threatens to turn our attention from Him.

But what the Judaizers in Galatia had taught was already turning the Galatians’ attention from Jesus and putting it back on themselves.

Instead of being focused on the finished and effectual work of His life, death, and resurrection, they were now focused on their own ineffectual works. Look at verse 10.

“You observe days and months and seasons and years,” Paul says.

The Galatians seem to have been observing the Sabbath and the annual Jewish feasts. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

The motive is the problem. They were doing it out of a hope that they would be justified — made acceptable to God — by the keeping of Sabbaths and the feasts and so on. And THAT belief nullifies the gospel of salvation by grace through faith.

Furthermore, in Matt 11:28, Jesus describes HIMSELF as our Sabbath. HE is our rest. HE is the fulfillment of all the promises of Sabbath: rest, comfort, peace, satisfaction, and so on. HE is our spotless Passover lamb. HE is our Jubilee.

What, then, were the Galatians hoping to achieve by taking upon themselves these Jewish traditions? They already HAD Jesus. What could these other things do for them?

And with that question in mind, Paul begins to wonder if he ever really knew these people at all.

He wasn’t concerned that the Galatian believers could lose their salvation by following the false teachers.

But he didn’t have divine insight into their hearts, either. And there was a chance that some of the people he was calling “brothers” and “my children” actually still were unsaved, because they’d never truly given their lives to Jesus.

Now, Paul bares his heart to his Galatian readers. “I beg of you, brethren,” he says. As their spiritual father, he turns from rebuke to reestablishing the relationship that’s been damaged by the false teaches in Galatia.

He reminds them of their love for one another.

And he commands them to become as he is — in other words, free from bondage to the Law.

He’d already given them the example while he was there with them, when he became as they were, living among them as a Gentile so he could gain their trust and teach them about Jesus.

Paul talked about this approach to ministry in his first letter to the Corinthian church.

1 Corinthians 9:19–23 NASB95

19 For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. 23 I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.

John Stott describes it this way: “In seeking to win other people for Christ, our end is to make them like us, but the means to that end is to make ourselves like them. If they are to become one with us in Christian conviction and experience, we must first become one with them in Christian compassion.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Ga 4:12, quoting Stott.]

Paul reminds his readers here that they’d taken him in with much compassion when he’d visited them.

We don’t know what the bodily illness was that he writes about in these verses. But whatever it was must have been repulsive in some way, because Paul says they didn’t despise or loathe him for it.

Whatever the condition was, it seems to have required him to spend time in Galatia, instead of just passing through. The Galatians had treated him with compassion.

Indeed, they’d treated him like a messenger from God. They’d have done just about anything for Paul. And he’d shared the gospel with them.

They’d become connected during Paul’s time there. But now, they were losing that connection, because they’d been listening to the false teachers.

Now, instead of recalling the blessing they’d been for one another, they were being encouraged to look on Paul with suspicion — even, perhaps, thinking of him as an enemy.

So, what had happened to that sense of blessing?

The Judaizers were seeking fellowship with the Galatians to make the Galatians dependent upon them and their teachings. They were seeking to shore up their false position as apostles by bringing the Galatian churches in line with their teaching.

This wasn’t a commendable reason for fellowship. What Paul wanted for the Galatians, on the other hand, WAS commendable. He wanted them to grow in the grace of God.

And he wanted them to grow in God’s grace not just when Paul was around but also in his absence. He wanted their knowledge of God to be strong enough that they’d shut out the false teachers and turn from their false teaching.

And we can see the depth of his concern in the last couple of verses of this passage.

In verse 19, Paul compares himself to a mother undergoing the pains of labor in childbirth. He’d already labored for the Galatians to be born again.

But now, he felt as if he were experiencing those pains again as he labored to rescue the Galatians from the destructiveness of the Judaizers’ false gospel.

In other words, Paul had labored amid much pain to bring the Galatians to a saving knowledge of Jesus. And now, he would continue to labor on their behalf to help them be transformed into the image of Christ.

Still, he was perplexed by their abandonment of the one true gospel. He was befuddled, mystified, bewildered, by it.

And he wanted nothing more than to go BACK to Galatia, where he could get to know the Galatians all over again, where they could get to know him again, and where he could help them to truly know the God who already knew them.

As a pastor, I can understand Paul’s desire for his spiritual sons and daughters to truly know God. I want the same thing for each one of you.

As a pastor, I can appreciate his frustration with the Galatian churches. I, too get frustrated when it seems my teaching has fallen on deaf ears.

But as a follower of Jesus who sometimes struggles with faith in parts of his own life, I rejoice that I’m fully known AND fully loved by God.

Let me encourage you this week to take great comfort in the fact that you’re fully known by God.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, let me encourage you thank Him for loving you just as you are, even as the Holy Spirit transforms you into the image of Jesus.

And let me encourage you to know HIM as you are known. He hasn’t withheld anything about Himself that we need to know or understand. The God of the universe IS knowable. He has revealed Himself to us in His Word and in His Son.

And for that, we should all rejoice.