In our current series we’ve been going through an old list of questions and answers contained in the Westminster Larger Catechism published in 1648. In previous weeks we’ve started looking at how God created humans. We’ve seen that God created humans male and female; with living, reasoning and immortal souls; and in God’s image. This week I want you to see that God created humans with a knowledge of him.
In Genesis we learn that the first man God created, Adam, was not oblivious as to who had created him. We read: ‘The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”’ (Genesis 2:15-17). God moved Adam and spoke to Adam. There was no doubt in Adam’s mind that God existed just as you don’t doubt anyone who moves you and speaks to you.
And people are still created with a knowledge of God’s existence. Paul teaches us: ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse’ (Romans 1:20). No human has the excuse that they don’t know there is a God – God has created us all with knowledge of him.
So why don’t people acknowledge God if they know he exists? Paul says that we are sinful creatures who refuse to worship the God who we know: ‘For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen (Romans 1:21;25).
So how can you have proper knowledge of God again? Through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that Christians have put on a new self ‘which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator’ (Colossians 3:10).
Have you put on a new self so that your knowledge of God is renewed and you are able to think of him rightly?
Joel Radford.
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