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The Revelation of God (Part 3) - Revelation and the Christian

God has revealed himself through the Bible and through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he takes that revelation and makes it experiential, personal to his children. Being saved is not simply saying that certain things are true and accepting certain doctrine as being correct. Being saved is “knowing” God. God’s revelation becomes experiential in the life of every believer. Notice Job’s reply to God, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me” (Job 42:2-4). He was saying that there were many things he knew about God and many things he did not understand.
Now notice verse 5: “’I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.’ Once he had simply heard of God but now he has experienced his presence.”

When Isaiah was confronted by his call to be a prophet, he cried out, "And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’… And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me’” (Isa. 6:5, 8). God had become very personal to Isaiah. God was not just an abstract concept. God was not simply a great moving force in the universe. God was a personal God to him. There is a general revelation of God and there is a special revelation of God, and to the child of God, that revelation becomes experiential, personal, in his or her heart and life (not subjective, but objective).

God reveals himself to us personally. When we are saved, Jesus Christ plants his life in us through the Holy Spirit. Paul exclaimed, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). God is everybody’s God, whether they realize it and acknowledge it or not, but in salvation he becomes ours and we become his in a personal way, meaning, when born again (John 3:3-6; 1 Pet. 1:3), we enter into a personal and dynamic relationship with him. As Christians, we are in Christ (Eph. 1:3-14), have become “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), and we are now “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).  There are many people who have spent their lives in church, they see the general revelation of God and have heard biblical revelation of God, yet they don’t “know” him, more importantly, they are not known by God in a personal, relational way.  It is only when he is received into our hearts, that God’s revelation becomes personal and experiential. More than that, is when we receive forgiveness of our sins. The guilt that drives, the sin that hounds and haunts us is cleansed, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). He transforms our evil tendencies. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17).

Now, let us not miss this vital truth concerning the revelation of God. We cannot fully understand the general revelation of God and we cannot experience the personal revelation of God without the biblical revelation. The biblical revelation explains it to us. There is not much we truly and fully understand unless we see them in the light of God's revealed Word.


Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Bible (ESV).

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