Who You Know

They say, "It's not what you know; it's who you know." Maybe. Maybe networking gets you in where, perhaps, your skills wouldn't. Maybe knowing someone important gets you in here or there. But when it comes to the essential question, it is not what you know or who you know.

The essential question, of course, is eternity -- where are you going to spend it? We can wrangle over the importance of a lot of stuff in this life, but if you lay less than 100 years of living against the eternity that follows, all of those 100 years pale in comparison. So that essential question is critical.

Of course, we all know this: works don't save. Well, we do, but most don't. Most believe -- every other world religion or philosophy, it seems -- that the way you come out okay in eternity is by being good in this life. "It's what you do." But Scripture is not ambiguous. "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Eph 2:8-9) The message, clearly, is "It's not what you do." Repeatedly (Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16, 21; 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 3:4-5). (Something repeated that often ought to leave a mark in our thinking.) It's not what you do.

"See," you will say, "it's who you know." Well, not yet. In his letter to the churches of Galatia Paul spoke about "you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." (Gal 4:9) Interesting correction. So Paul believed it was not as much knowing God as being known by God. He approached the same idea when he wrote, "For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Rom 8:29) That word is foreknown -- known before. Jesus referenced the same concept when He warned of those who thought they had a relationship with Him but He told them, "I never knew you; depart from Me." (Matt 7:23) It wasn't that they never knew Him; it's that He never knew them.

So it turns out that in terms of the most critical question of this life -- where will I spend eternity? -- the questions of "what I do" versus "who I know" are not nearly as important as "Who knows me?" In order to end up in the presence of God in eternity, God must first know us. And that's not merely, "I have a record of your existence." That's a living relationship. That's to know in a biblical sense. God must initiate the relationship and God must complete the relationship and, in the end, we will know Him (John 17:3), but it all starts with Him knowing you.