The Root of All Vital Christianity
J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) was a British scholar, Bishop, and author. Ryle excelled as a scholar and was converted late in his school days. Young Ryle had plans to pursue a career in politics before financial ruin forced him to consider other options. He then joined the church, and later celebrated the disappointments in his life that led him to this final calling. Ryle went on to write multiple books, the most widely-known of which is his commentary series, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels. Before his retirement and death in 1900, Ryle became the first Bishop of Liverpool.
This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
John 17:3
To know God on the one hand—His holiness, His purity, His hatred of sin—and to know Christ on the other hand—His redemption, His mediatorial office, His love to sinners—are the two grand foundations of saving religion.
This verse is mercifully given to us by our Lord as a description of saved souls. “The secret of possessing eternal life—of being justified and sanctified now and glorified hereafter—consists simply in this: in having a right saving knowledge of the one true God and of that Jesus Christ whom He has sent to save sinners.” In short, our Lord declares that he who rightly knows God and Christ is the man who possesses eternal life.
Of course, we must distinctly understand that mere head-knowledge, like that of the devil, is not meant by our Lord in this verse. The knowledge He means is a knowledge that dwells in the heart and influences the life. A true saint is one who “knows the Lord.” To know God on the one hand—His holiness, His purity, His hatred of sin—and to know Christ on the other hand—His redemption, His mediatorial office, His love to sinners—are the two grand foundations of saving religion.
God out of Christ is a consuming fire. God not worshipped in Christ is an idol. All hopes of acceptance out of Christ are vain dreams.
Right knowledge, after all, lies at the root of all vital Christianity, as light was the beginning of creation. We need to be “renewed in knowledge” (Col. 3:10). We must know what we believe, and we cannot properly worship an unknown God. The two great questions to be considered are, Do we know God and do we know Christ aright? God known out of Christ is a consuming fire and will fill us with fear only. Christ known without God will not be truly valued; we shall see no meaning in His Cross and passion. To see clearly at the same time a holy, pure, sin-hating God and a living, merciful, sin-atoning Christ is the very ABC of comfortable religion. In short, it is life eternal to know rightly God and Christ. “To know God without Christ,” says Newton, “is not to know Him savingly.” Traill remarks: “The secret moth and poison in many people’s religion is that it is not Christianity at all. God out of Christ is a consuming fire. God not worshipped in Christ is an idol. All hopes of acceptance out of Christ are vain dreams. A heaven out of Christ is little better than the Turk’s paradise.”
The Greek of the phrase “that they might know,” would have been better rendered “to know.” It is the same phrase that is so rendered in John 4:34: “My meat is to do the will.” Literally this is, “My meat is that I may do the will.”
Godly people are often described in Scripture by one single phrase: “They know God.”
Let us learn that knowledge is the chief thing in religion, though we must not make it an idol. Most wicked men are what they are because they are ignorant. Godly people are often described in Scripture by one single phrase: “They know God.”
The argument that Arians and Socinians have always loved to found on this verse appears to me extremely weak. Their idea, that our Lord did not lay claim to divinity because He speaks of the Father as the “only true God,” is foolish and unreasonable. Chrysostom, Cyril, Toletus, and others remark very sensibly that the word “only” was not meant to exclude the Son and the Holy Ghost, but only those idols and false gods with which the heathen religions had filled the earth when Christ appeared. The very fact that eternal life consists in knowing not only God, but Christ, goes far to prove Christ’s divinity.
Manton remarks that the expression in this verse had a two-fold object: firstly, to exclude the idols and false gods, and secondly, to show the order and economy of salvation.
Let us note that this is the only place in the New Testament where our Lord calls Himself “Jesus Christ.”