May 13, 2025 - 1 Corinthians 8:3 - "Known of God"

1 Corinthians 8:3

"But if any man love God, the same is known of Him."

What a profound and humbling truth is declared in this brief verse. In a chapter where Paul addresses knowledge and liberty, he draws our attention from mere intellectualism to what is the true knowledge of God. He does not say, “If any man knows God,” but “if any man love God, the same is known of Him.” This distinction reveals the sovereign origin and grace-filled nature of our love to God: it is not man’s knowledge of God that secures salvation, but God's eternal knowledge of man in Christ.

Love to God is not natural to fallen men. By nature, “there is none that seeketh after God” (Romans 3:11). The heart of man is enmity against God (Romans 8:7). So how then can a man come to love God? The answer does not lie in man’s "free will", which is a myth, but in God’s sovereign grace. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). If any man loves God, it is the sure evidence that God has first set His love upon him in eternity, chosen him in Christ, and quickened him by the Holy Spirit.

To be “known of God” is not mere awareness. God, being omniscient, knows all men in the sense of awareness. But this knowledge is a special, relational, covenantal knowing. It is the same word that the scriptures use of the most intimate relation between husband and wife, so the bride of Christ is known of Him in the most intimate way, even to the point of laying down His life for her. It is the same kind of knowledge Christ spoke of when He said, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14). It is the knowledge of love, of union, and of sovereign everlasting purpose.

This knowledge is founded in Christ exclusively. God knows His people in Christ. Christ is the federal Head and Surety of the elect, the One in whom God has loved them with an everlasting love. “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). To be “known of God” is to have been eternally joined to Christ by the Father’s decree, justified by His obedience and blood shed unto death at the cross, and preserved by His intercession (Hebrews 7:24-28).

When Paul writes that the one who loves God is “known of him,” he is not exalting man’s love, but magnifying God’s work in Christ. Any true love to God is the fruit of being in Christ, for “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Christ, the Eternal Son, came to make known the Father to His elect. He came, not to make men savable, but to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). His death was not a general offering, but a definite redemption and reconciliation, a covenant fulfillment. “I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15).

To be “known of God” is to be kept. Paul writes later in Galatians 4:9, “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God…” He corrects himself, shifting the focus from our weak apprehension of God to God's eternal embrace of His people. It is God’s knowledge of us in Christ that assures our salvation, not our knowledge of Him (John 17:3).

“The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). That knowledge is bound up in the Person and work of Christ, sealed in His blood, and revealed by His Spirit. What comfort this brings to trembling believers! When our love falters, when our understanding fails, our hope does not rest in our grasp of Him, but in His eternal, unchanging grasp of us in Christ. Therefore, child of God, if there is in your heart even the faintest love for the Lord, know this—it is because He has known you. Christ has redeemed you, the Spirit has called you, and the Father has accepted you in the Belived (Ephesians 1:6). You are “known of God.” And this knowledge is unto salvation, unto eternal life, unto everlasting communion.

Let us then rejoice, not in ourselves, but in Christ, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:14). Let us love Him because He first loved us. And let us rest in the unspeakable assurance that we are, by sovereign grace, eternally known of God in His Son.