Five Levels of Knowing God
There is a question behind the question that most believers never ask.
There is a question behind the question that most believers never ask.
We ask, “Do you know God?” when the more searching question is, “How do you know him?” The first question is binary. The second is a journey. And it is a journey most Christians begin but few follow to its depths, not because the path is hidden, but because they mistake the entrance for the destination.
The Scripture is honest about this. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” said God through Hosea (4:6). The word rendered knowledge there is the Hebrew da’at (דַּעַת). Not academic information. Intimate, experiential knowing. The same word appears in Genesis when Scripture says Adam knew his wife. It is relational to its core. What Hosea mourns is not ignorance of doctrine. It is a people who have religious activity without relational reality, who know about God but do not actually know him.
There are five levels of knowing God. Each is a grace. Each is real. But God is always calling us further in.
Level One: Knowing About God
This is where every genuine journey begins, and it is not to be despised. We hear sermons. We read Scripture. We take notes, collect truth, repeat back what we have received. We learn that God is Creator, all-powerful, wholly loving. This is the on-ramp, and every on-ramp serves a purpose.
Young Samuel is the picture here. He served in the temple. He ministered before the Lord. He was surrounded by the sacred: the lampstand, the ark, the morning prayers of Eli. And yet Scripture says with quiet precision, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:7). The Hebrew is yada’ (יָדַע) again, that word of deep knowing, and Samuel did not yet have it. He was in proximity to all the right things, and still the living voice of God was unrecognised.
Cornelius is another portrait. Acts 10 describes him as devout, generous, prayerful, a man who feared God with all his household. He had the map. Yet he still needed the Gospel declared to him, still needed revelation to break through the shell of sincere religion. Information had done its job. It brought him to the door. Revelation would open it.
The danger of the information level is not that it is wrong, but that it is comfortable. It gives the feeling of progress without the cost of surrender. You can underline a verse without letting it underline you. You can study the fruit of the Spirit while remaining impatient with your family. You can admire the Sermon on the Mount and postpone forgiveness. Information keeps us busy enough to mistake busyness for intimacy.
Let the facts you know become the floor you stand on, not the ceiling you stop at.
