God Reveals Himself

The first thing to be said is not so obvious as it might appear. The Bible makes it plain that God reveals himself. He does not simply reveal information about himself. Put another way, what we find in the Bible is not an accumulation of data about God, but rather a living God in living relationship with living people. These people have not lifted themselves by their own bootstraps into the presence of God. They testify that God has taken the initiative and sought them out. Their job is to respond, but the initiative lies with him. He reveals to them not just ideas or information, but himself. As a matter of fact, this is the only way in which it could possibly be done so that a relationship between God and man could result.

Look at it this way. A new high school student moves in next door. "On your own hook" you can discover a good deal about him: he is fifteen, has brown hair, goes to the same school you do, rides a bicycle expertly, has a dandy first baseman's glove, and gets perfumed letters, in tinted envelopes, written in delicate female script, about twice a week. All these facts you can discover by a little patient sleuthing.

And yet, do you really know him?

Of course not.

And how can you come to know him?

Only, in the last analysis, if he chooses to make himself known to you, if he is willing to take the initiative of entering into a relationship with you so that in that relationship he reveals himself to you. If this happens, you will not simply know things about him, you will know him. You and he will have met in living encounter.

This is something like the claim which the Bible makes about God. It says that God is known in the same kind of living encounter by which we come to know a living person. Unless he reveals himself he remains forever hidden from us. We cannot truly know him if all we have is information about him. We can't enter into relationship with information about God; we can enter into relationship only with God himself. So the Bible is not a textbook of doctrinal statements (though doctrinal statements can be derived from it) -- the Bible is an account of an encounter between God and his people.