“All Shall Know Me”
They shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother,
saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the
greatest-Heb. 8:11.
“They all, from the least to the greatest, shall know.” There is to be no
distinction of rank or age, or endowment, which shall result in some of the
people of God having a position from which any of the others are altogether
shut out. The writer is, of course, contrasting in his mind, though he does
not express the contrast, the condition of things of old, when the spiritual
aristocracy of the nation received communications which they then imparted
to their fellows. In the morning dawn the highest summits catch the rays
first, but as the sun rises it floods the lower levels, and at midday shines
right down into the depths of the cavities. So the world is now flooded with
the light of Christ; and every Christian man and woman, by virtue of their
Christian character, does possess the unction from the Holy One, in which
lie the potency and the promise of the knowledge of all things that are
needful to be known for life and godliness. This is the true democracy of
the Gospel-the universal possession of the life of Christ by the Spirit.
Now, if that be so, then it is by no means a truth to be kept simply for the
purpose of fighting against ecclesiastical or clerical encroachment and
denials of it, but it ought to be taken as the candle of the Lord, by each
of us, and in the light of it we ought to search very rigidly and very often
our own Christian character and experiences. Do you know anything about that
inward knowledge of God which comes from friendship with Him, and speaks
irrefutable certainties in the heart which receives it? “If any man have not
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” [Rom. 8:9]. If you owe all your
knowledge of, and your faith in, the great verities of the Gospel, and the
loving personality of God, to the mere report of others, if you cannot
verify these by your own experience, if you cannot say, “Many things I know
not; you can easily puzzle me with critical and philosophical subtleties,
but this one thing I do know, that whereas I was blind, now I see” [see John
9:41]-if you cannot say that, I pray you, examine yourself whether your
religion is not mainly a form, and how far it has any life in it at all.
In Celebration of Life in Him,
Dr. Jim DeBruhl, gembeaux@bellsouth.net
" Everything is wrong until God makes it right,"
