Why Knowing About Jesus is
Not Enough
How a once aggressively
atheistic Molecular Biophysicist came to actually know God
Monday, January 19, 2015
Jeff Lampl
Jeff Lampl
“I
want to know Christ”
Philippians 3:10
I
recently read these words from Molecular Biophysicist turned Theologian Alister
McGrath. I think many of you will
identify. Jeff
“What
spoke most powerfully to me that morning was Paul’s distinction between knowing
about Jesus Christ and knowing Jesus Christ. Many
readers, no doubt, will feel this is blindingly obvious. But everyone has to
discover it sometime, and that day I grasped the importance of
“spirituality” for nourishing my relationship with God. . . .
“(I
needed to) not approach him through a depersonalizing framework of abstract
ideas. As a result, hymns like Isaac Watts’s “When I Survey the Wondrous
Cross”—which I had seen as sentimental emotionalism—took on new meaning as
I was able to share and enter into the experience of adoring Christ.
Paul’s
words “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his
own” (3:12) gave me a framework for growing in my faith. The idea linked
together my own responsibility to try to do my best, however limited, and God
graciously supplementing my weaknesses and inadequacies. It was because Christ
had taken hold of me that I was enabled and encouraged to take hold of him and
let him lead me onward and upward through life. Previously, I had tended to see
my faith as something I needed to sustain; now I realized it could sustain me.
“I
began to think of my faith as being grasped and held by Christ, and adjusted
every aspect of my life accordingly—my mind, heart, imagination, and hands. I
made a connection—perhaps a naive one, but one that spoke deeply to me—with
the powerful image of Christ knocking on the door of the church at Laodicea,
asking to be welcomed (Rev. 3:20). When I became a Christian, I had invited
Christ into my mind, but that was where it had stopped. I realized that I had to
allow every “room” of my life to be filled with the life-giving and
life-changing presence of Christ. . . .
“I had
previously seen the sermon as the heart of a church service; I began to realize
how worship nourished and enriched my faith. No
longer did I have to actively work at my faith. It was as if it developed a life
and strength of its own, supporting me. The phrase “wings of faith”
suddenly became meaningful”**
**Excerpted
from Christianity Today, Jan-Feb 2015
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more:
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