“That They Might Know Thee”

Knowing, loving, and following God are more interconnected than we might realize.

I wrote yesterday that we keep God’s commandments because we love Him, and that keeping His commandments helps us love Him more. We can add knowledge to this virtuous cycle: Knowing God better leads us to love Him more and to follow Him more.

During the Last Supper, Jesus offered a prayer on behalf of His disciples, known as the Intercessory Prayer. Near the beginning of this prayer, He said, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

No wonder He had said in the Sermon on the Mount that those who don’t do His Father’s will don’t really know Him. (See Matthew 7:23, footnote a.) No wonder the bridegroom in the Parable of Ten Virgins had explained to the five foolish virgins that they could not enter the house because they “knew [Him] not” (Matthew 25:12, footnote a).

King Benjamin offered an explanation for this principle with a rhetorical question:

How knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?

Mosiah 5:13

The apostle John, who recorded the Savior’s Intercessory Prayer, later elaborated on this principle in an epistle: “Hereby we do know that we know him,” he wrote, “if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). And then, “Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him” (1 John 2:5). In John’s description, knowing, loving, and doing are fused into one: heart, mind, and strength united in allegiance to God. The ultimate result of this relationship with Him is emulation: “Now are we the sons of God,” he acknowledged, but we can become so much more: “it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2; see also Moroni 7:48).

Today, I will strive to know God better by serving Him. I will show my love for Him by following His commandments. I will remember that as I do these things, my love for Him will grow and my knowledge of Him will grow, until, by His grace, I am able to realize my full potential as one of His children.