It is never possible to know another person without that person willingly revealing themselves by means of their words and their actions. It doesn’t matter much the amount of time two people spend together; they remain unknown and strangers in the same space unless they are willing to reveal to each other who they are. No amount of testing on the brain, no number of hours of observation can reveal who a person is. This can only happen through the willingness for self-revelation. This is the way of relationship. The truth about another cannot be discerned—their motivations, their purposes, their loves and hatreds—unless they are willing to talk about them and act consistently with what they have said. Even the beauty or ugliness of another is ultimately revealed in their speech and actions. Jesus said, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”[1] Goodness or evil, beauty or ugliness, reside in the recesses of the heart and not on the surface of the flesh, and are revealed through what proceeds out of the mouth.
This, of course, is true the other way around as well. If I really do not want to know another person, If I don’t care to find out who they really are, I will not listen to what they say or pay attention to what they do. If I am unwilling to receive or accept what they reveal of themselves to me, I cannot know them.
This is true with God as well. Apart from His willingness to reveal Himself to us, we cannot know Him. Unless we are willing to receive that revelation, we cannot know Him. He has spoken to us, through creation, through history, through His people Israel, and most specifically through His Word. When Moses was desperate to know God and His ways, what did God reveal about himself? Moses cried, “Please show me now Your ways, that I may know You in order to find favor in Your sight…Please show me Your glory.” And God responded, “I will make all My goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you My name ‘The LORD’….And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”[2] It was as if Moses said, “O Lord, show me Your glory, Your unspeakable beauty!” and as if the Lord responded, “I will make all My goodness pass before you. I will let you see all of what My beauty consists of, and I will also do it by proclaiming to you My name, which is Yahweh—I am who I am with absolute sovereignty and freedom to do all that pleases Me.”
When Moses pleads to see Him, to see His glory, to know Him, God reveals all His goodness for him to see. Yet, this is the very thing we most call into question about God. Is He good? Is He good absolutely, without blemish? Is He absolutely free and unthwartable to be gracious to whom He pleases, and when He chooses to do so, does He do that with perfect wisdom and blazing purity? Can He really satisfy me? Are His ways really good? While wandering in the wilderness, Israel followed this line of questioning repeatedly:
They spoke against God, saying,
“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”[3]
Will He really be good and provide for us? For us, on this side of the cross, Paul says it this way, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”[4] He is good! He didn’t even spare His Son for us. Why won’t He keep His promises to us? He is good! And His goodness is His infinite beauty.
The Lord’s goodness, His moral perfections—who He is and what He does—is a beauty that is gripping and breathtaking. The Lord’s beauty is absolute and perfect and the one thing to seek and behold forever.[5] And we will be held accountable regarding whether we will be conformed to it or not.[6] This beauty is so pure and powerful that people are undone by it[7] they fall to the ground as dead.[8] It is a light so bright it is unapproachable.[9] This is goodness. The goodness of the Lord. So beautiful and attractive that I can’t bear the thought of turning my eyes away, but so pure and powerful I am exposed and can’t stand before Him. He has not kept this goodness from us. He has revealed it through His word and His Spirit, and in these last days through Jesus, His Son:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.[10]
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.[11]
This beauty, this goodness is most definitively revealed to us through His Word. God has spoken and continues to speak through that word.
Psalm 119 is the beautiful, poetic heart-cry of the lover of God who, like Moses, longs to know His ways and see His glory. The composer declares, “You are good (righteousness), and do good (justice); teach me Your statutes.”[12] The families and nations of the world are just the opposite. His statutes teach us, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”[13] The longings and cries for justice in these days have been loud, but where is the equal longing and cry for righteousness? How will true justice be done when so few want God and His righteousness? Righteousness and justice pretty much cover how we were intended to live life in this world. Without righteousness there is no justice. But our world is ashamed of the words of perfect goodness and beauty, and often many of us in the Church are ashamed as well, preferring rather to trust in the words of an evil and adulterous generation.
The poet of Psalm 119 responds to God’s perfect goodness by pleading to be taught how to be conformed into and obey that goodness. This psalm is the pulsating heartbeat of the fallen longing to know and live restored to the God of their life:
Teach me Your word, help me obey it so I will walk in goodness. I will store it up in my heart (v. 11)
I will meditate on them all day (v. 97)
Open my eyes so that I will see the beautiful reality they are pointing me to (v. 18)
I’m just a sojourner here and I don’t know how to navigate this present evil age, so please don’t hide Your commandments from me because my soul is consumed with longing for them (v. 19-20)
In fact, Your commandments are my songs in this house of my sojourning (v. 54)
They make me wiser than my enemies and give me more understanding than my teachers and the aged, so I love Your law (vv. 97-100)
but I hate every false way (v. 104)
because You made me, fashioned me with Your own hands, I need to learn and understand your commandments so I can live (v. 73)
Your testimonies are so beautiful and life-giving I delight in them more than all riches, more than silver and gold (vv. 14,72)
Your word is firmly fixed in the heavens and therefore will never change (v. 89)
I weep streams of water because people don’t keep Your law (v. 136)
and with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that You are the Holy One of God.”[14] This psalm is the heart-cry of the one who wants to know Jesus, the Word of God made flesh.
Hear how Jesus refers to Himself and His words:
I am the way, and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.[15]
Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.[16]
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? … For whoever is ashamed of Me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.[17]
And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told Me.[18]
If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.[19]
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.[20]
Do not think we are loving others by jettisoning the commands that make us uneasy. Jesus is the word of God spoken from Genesis to Revelation; “and blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.”[21] There has been much spoken that may make us cringe and feel ashamed to own in this evil and adulterous generation, but we must remember we (followers of Jesus) are recovering from deep fallenness. Jesus is all the Father’s goodness passing before us. Let us worship and bow down.
Jim Bloom and his wife Raquel are members of InnerCHANGE (an apostolic order among the poor), and have been serving in Minneapolis, MN for the past 26 years. He has served in the roles of team leader and US Director and now serves on the InnerCHANGE Horizons team, which is focused on new team starts and mentoring new team leaders. Find out more about InnerCHANGE here.
[1] Luke 6:45, emphasis added
[2] Exodus 33:13, 18–19
[3] Psalm 78:19
[4] Romans 8:31–32
[5] Psalm 27:4
[6] Colossians 3:5-11
[7] Isaiah 6:5
[8] Daniel 10:9; Revelation 1:17
[9] 1 Timothy 6:16
[10] Hebrews 1:1-2
[11] John 1:1
[12] Psalm 119
[13] Psalm 14:1-3; Romans 3:10–11
[14] John 6:68–69
[15] John 14:6
[16] Matthew 24:35
[17] Mark 8:36–38
[18] John 12:50
[19] John 14:15
[20] 1 John 5:2–3
[21] Luke 7:23
