"Knowledge": Our Pursuit For Our Growth Part 3b Series

Would you believe a smoker who warns you about the dangers of smoking? Or, would you believe a drunkard who warns you about the error of drinking alcoholic drinks? Would you say that they really believed what they claimed to believe?

What about Christians who sing that God will make a way but still they worry a lot? What about those who say that God is the owner of their businesses yet they cheat on their taxes or does not give the right wages to their employees? Would you say that they really believed what they claimed to believe?

It’s what we do rather than what we say that reveals a lot about what we really believe. In other words, action speaks louder than...? 2 Peter 1:5 tells us, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge”.[1] Last week, we learned that to know is to obey. What we do reveals what we know. We already saw that the word “knowledge” here refers to practical knowledge. “The word does not mean a mere intellectual understanding of some truth, though that is included. It means a living participation in the truth”.[2] Adding knowledge to virtue is basically obeying what we already know from the Word of God. That’s why the opposite of knowledge is disobedience. This morning we will continue our study on adding knowledge to virtue. Let us pray first…

Some people say, “Ignorance is bliss.” It’s another version of “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” But we already saw that what we don’t know would hurt us, not help us. This brings me to my next point. To know is TO BE FREE. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is actually BONDAGE.

Peter wrote this letter to warn believers about false teachers who infiltrated the church: “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.”[3] Where do these false teachers bring us? Into bondage! That’s why we really need to know what and why we believe.

Now, how do we know that we are not in bondage? We tend to think, “That’s not me!” We tend to assume it’s someone else or everyone and anyone but us. But, the danger is that we could be in bondage yet we are not aware that we are in that sad condition.

2 Timothy 2:25-26 described it for us. Here Paul wrote that a servant of the Lord should be “correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” Note how our passage described people who are trapped in “the snare of the devil”. They were “captured by him to do his will.” So, when we disobey God, we are not doing His will. We are actually doing the devil’s will. If we are ignorant of the truth or we are disobedient to the truth, we are actually in bondage to the lies of the devil.

Paul also called them “opponents”. Opponents oppose, right? They are not called opponents for nothing. They oppose what? 2 Corinthians 10:5 tell us, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”. Note that the stronghold is in the mind.

When we disagree with what we heard from the Word of God, when we argue against it, we are opposing the truths of God. I am not saying that we just accept without thinking. We have to double-check with the Word so that we are sure that what we heard is what God really want us to hear. But be careful that studying what we heard or read is not a delaying tactic. Keep in mind that delayed obedience is disobedience.

Yet, when we think of alibis or excuses, when we try to look for a loophole so that we would not obey what we heard, that’s actually opposing the knowledge of God. When we jump into conclusion that the preacher is zeroing in on us or accusing us instead of asking why we felt the sting of the Word, we are going against it. When we immediately assume that what we heard applies to somebody else instead of searching our hearts to see how it applies to us, when we say to ourselves, “That’s not me!” we are opposing the truth. That’s a sign that we are in bondage. That’s not adding knowledge to virtue. So, are we in bondage?

Now, how do we escape from this trap? How can we be set free from this bondage? We have to accept correction. Teachers of the Word should be “correcting [their] opponents with gentleness.” In the Greek, the word “correcting” can be translated “disciplining”. It means “to chastise or castigate with words, to correct.”[4] It is the act “of those who are moulding the character of others by reproof and admonition.”[5] That’s why we are not to shy away from sharing the truth even if it hurts.