Video Transcript: Knowing by Faith

Hi, I'm David Feddes, and this presentation is about KNOWING by faith. Let's  start simply by asking the question, What is faith? People have different ideas  about faith, and there's quite a variety. Is faith a feeling? An emotion? For some  faith is kind of a guess, your best guess at what might be true, or maybe even  just an opinion. You have your opinion about spiritual things, I have my opinion  about spiritual things, and each of our opinion is our faith. Others speak of faith  as a leap, maybe even a blind leap, where you have no idea what the facts of  the matter are, but you just take that leap of faith. Faith is considered by some to be a wager, where you look at what's at stake, and there seems to be more to  gain from believing than not believing. And so you make that wager. Others view faith as a fantasy or a way of dreaming or picturing. Some see it as visualization. If you really psych yourself into picturing something in your mind, that something is much more likely to happen, faith might be a wish, something you want to be  so. Others think of faith as a decision, making up your mind, a choice, a  commitment. For still others, faith is a value, something that I hold kind of dear,  and you may have a different value that you hold dear, a tradition. We  sometimes speak of faith traditions. Now there's maybe a little bit of truth in  some of these ideas, but when we think about those things, we sometimes get  the notion that faith is the opposite of knowledge. If you knew, you wouldn't need faith. The saying sometimes goes and faith is very, very different from  knowledge, in the opinion of many, but real faith is knowledge. Real faith is  knowledge of reality, and that's what I'd like to talk about with you today. The  book of Hebrews 1 shows that faith is substantial proof of unseen realities. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,  according to the King James version of Hebrews 11:1, verse 1. Now, when we  read about things hoped for there too, it's not just a wish, but in the Bible, Hope  is what you're expecting, what you're antic anticipating, what you figure on  happening, not just something you kind of wish might happen in the future, and  faith is the substance the having by faith of what you hope for. Other translations say faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. Another translation Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what  we cannot see. So when we look at that, we see that faith has to do with things  that are substantial reality, knowledge. What is true faith? According to the  Heidelberg Catechism, which is a great summary of what the Bible teaches  about faith, what is true faith? True Faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true, all that God has revealed to us in Scripture. It's also a  wholehearted trust which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel that God  has freely granted, not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation. These are gifts of sheer Grace granted solely by  Christ's merit. So in faith, there's an important element of personal,  wholehearted trust that God creates within us. But notice also that faith is a sure knowledge of what is true, a sure knowledge. And in saying this, the Catechism 

is not going beyond the Bible. It is following the bible in calling faith sure  knowledge. Proverbs 2 says, you will understand the fear of the Lord and find  the knowledge of God, for the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come  knowledge and understanding. Doesn't say guesswork or educated opinions.  From his mouth come knowledge. Jesus says to you, it has been given to know  the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. So  there's a God given knowledge, a Christ given knowledge that some have and  that they know. By John 1:18, says, no one has ever seen God, the only God  that is Jesus, who is at the father's side, has made him known. And so there's  this emphasis all through the Bible, Jesus himself says that he came to make  God known. We see that very clearly in that prayer that He prayed to His Father  the night before he went to the cross, Jesus said, This is eternal life. That they  may know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, O  righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and  these know that you have sent me. I have made known to them your name, and  I will continue to make it known that the love with which You have loved Me may  be in them, and I in them, Jesus came and prayed that we might know God, and in knowing God, know that we have eternal life. The apostle Peter, great follower of Jesus, said much the same thing in his letters. In II Peter, he starts by saying,  May Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of  Jesus, our Lord, His divine power, has granted to us all things that pertain to life  and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to His own glory and  excellence. And at the end of his letter, he says, but grow in the grace and  knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, the apostle Paul, says Paul a  servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, a faith and knowledge resting on  the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the  beginning of time. So Paul connects faith and knowledge, and says, God doesn't lie. So when we believe God, we have knowledge. And shortly before Paul was  killed for his faith, he wrote, I know whom I have believed. To believe is faith,  and he knows the one he has believed by faith. The apostle John Jesus' dearest friend, wrote an epistle, and he said, I write these things to you who believe in  the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.  We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin. We know that we  are children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.  We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who is true, even in His  Son, Jesus Christ, He is the true God and eternal life. You hear that no true, no  no true. It's knowledge of truth. So let's think a little bit more deeply about  knowing by faith and some of the elements of that. And the point that I want to  make in this talk is that faith overlaps with other ways of knowing. It's similar to  these other ways of knowing in certain ways, and at the same time, it goes 

beyond them. One way we know things is simply by the givens that we accept  without proof. We just take them as our starting point and kind of as a standard  for evaluating other things that we believe. And faith does something like that.  Another way that we learn many things and come to knowledge is credulity. That word sometimes has kind of a bad flavor to it, but it just means believing what  you're told, and about 99% of what we know comes through believing what  we're told, accepting testimony, listening to others and accepting the knowledge  they have, and embracing that knowledge for ourselves. A third way that we  know things that faith has something in common with is through our faculties, we have a variety of abilities that give us input and give us knowledge of things  around us or even things within us, sometimes faculties such as seeing or  hearing or tasting or touching, or faculties such as remembering or drawing an  inference. We have different mental faculties, and when these faculties are  working properly in the right kind of environment, they give us knowledge. And  faith, too involves a faculty that works properly and gives us knowledge in the  right setting. And finally, we're going to talk about how relating gives us  knowledge personal interaction. We know a lot about other persons simply by  our dealings with them and their dealings with us and our conversations and  communication. And so it is with God to know God involves personal interaction. So let's look at each of these four all knowing starts with accepting some things  as Givens, these presuppositions, these assumptions, these first principles,  require no proof. They're basic for knowing other things, and they're a standard  for evaluating other ideas. I'll give you a few examples of Givens or first  principles that many people accept without any proof, we accept that the world  is real. Has anybody ever proved that to you? Has anybody ever proved that  you're just not dreaming the whole thing all the time? No, but you take it as real.  Another first principle My senses are experiencing real things, another first  principle my mind can know truth. I can actually know stuff. You really can't know anything if you don't assume that you know things. Another assumption other  persons are real and not just illusions in your mind, that's knowledge. But  nobody has ever proved the reality of other persons. We just take that as a  given. Another memories really happened. They weren't just implanted in your  brain five minutes ago, making you think that you have a lifetime of memories of  things that actually didn't happen. Another given. Some things are right, others  are wrong, and there's a difference between right and wrong, all these things  and others too, can't really be proven. They're just taken as Givens, and that  doesn't mean they're irrational or that they're not knowledge. They are  knowledge that come to us immediately and are right there in the basis and  foundation and standard of everything else we know. Now there are different  things that can also be starting points. I'll give you an example of another  starting point, the starting point of atheistic science. Richard Lewinten, a  geneticist at Harvard, says, we take the side of atheistic science in spite of the 

patent absurdity of some of its constructs, because we have a prior  commitment, a commitment to materialism, that is the belief that matter is all  there is, and that even mind or spirit or anything else, is really just any illusion  that comes from matter. It's not that the methods and institutions of science  somehow compel us to accept a material explanation, says Lewinten, but on the contrary, that we're forced by our a priori adherence, that is our acceptance  ahead of time of material causes, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how  much it goes against our sense of things. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Now that is one of his first  principles, something he accepts without proof, no matter how absurd it  sometimes seems, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how it goes against his sense. He says, We cannot allow God in the door, and we believe that  matter is all there is. And for him, that's a first principle, or, dare I say it, an  article of faith. Now, when you have a first principle like that, you have to ask  how it fits with your other first principles. If you start by saying, matter is all there is. Then you have to ask the question, Does your mind have the ability to know  things outside it? And the related question, is the world real, and does it have  features that are knowable? You could take those things as Givens, perhaps,  but if you take as another given that your mind is a randomly evolved blob of  meat with electrical impulses firing randomly within it. Do you have the ability to  know anything? After all, if the world is simply atoms falling randomly through  space, should you expect to find any patterns within that that are discernible to  the mind and that the mind can make sense of? If you have those assumptions,  the fact is, your mind is not trustworthy and the world is not patterned. And so  there are certain kinds of first principles that destroy the other first principles we  know to be true. Thought itself, in some ways, is an act of faith. G, K, Chesterton said it is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. It is an act of  faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you're merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, why should  anything go right, even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic  be as misleading as bad logic. They're both movements in the brain of a  bewildered ape. So you understand that some first principles will destroy your  other first principles. Hebrews 11:2 says, By faith, we understand that the  universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made  out of things that are visible by faith. We understand not by faith. We take a leap in the dark. Faith gives us understanding, and we know the universe was  created by the word of God. John 1:1, says, In the beginning was the Word, and  the Word was with God, and the Word was God, the word is the logos. In the  beginning was that logos, and this true light that gives light to every man was  coming into the world Jesus is that logos, the eternal logos, the logic of the  world and the light of human intellect that came into the world. He's the one who made the entire world by his wisdom, and the one who gives wisdom to the 

human mind and by faith. We understand that we can understand something  about our world. A W Tozer said, Imagination projects unreal images out of the  mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing. It simply reckons upon that which is already there. God and the spiritual world are. Real. We can  reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there, or rather we should say here, inviting our  attention and challenging our trust. So it's rational to presuppose some things as Givens without any proof. We can't avoid first principles. You've always got to  start somewhere. We just need sound first principles, and starting with right  presuppositions gives us a firm foundation for other knowledge and a measuring stick to evaluate other claims. Now, given the fact that God created the heavens  and the earth and that God created our minds, that's an important first principle  for relying on our minds to think about reality and when we think about other first principles, God's revelation, in His written Word, the Bible and in his living word,  Jesus can be accepted by faith as first principles to ground our worldview and to provide a standard for deciding what else is true. You don't really need to prove  that God's revelation is true. You can take it as a basic starting point, because  what is more certain than God's own truth, and so that's one element of faith,  accepting as a starting point the reality of God, of his creative work, and the fact  that Jesus is the one who gives the patterns and logic of all reality a second  brand of knowing that we use in other areas besides faith, and of which faith  also has an element, is credulity, believing what we're told, accepting testimony,  most of what we believe and most of what we know comes through believing  what we're told. Our knowledge of math, of science, of history, comes mostly  from accepting what we're told by books and teachers. Most of what we know  about these things did not come by our own personal discoveries and  experiments. It came from reading about or hearing from those who taught us  our knowledge of parenting, gardening, cooking, business and much else comes mostly from accepting what we're told. And some people might say, Oh, it's  irrational to believe what you're told. Well, it might be irrational not to believe  anything you're told, because you'll just be a big ignoramus. You only believe  about 1% of the knowledge that's available to you. Our knowledge, even in court cases, often comes from the testimony of others. If we dismissed all belief of  testimony in courts and elsewhere in life, we just wouldn't know very much at all. We need to accept testimony, and we know much about God by accepting  testimony, Part of that's accepting the testimony of Christian people we know.  Maybe you learned things from Christian parents or possibly from Christian  friends who told you many things that you didn't know, and you came to believe  those things and to know those things yourself. So one form of accepting  testimony is simply believing what other people who are in the know about God  and who are already Christians have told you there's another level of testimony  the Bible gives, at one level human authors eyewitness testimony to God and to 

his actions in Christ. When the people of Israel received God's revelation of the  10 Commandments at Mount Sinai, they saw the lightning and the fire and  heard tremendous voice and thunder, and they were eyewitnesses of Moses  coming down from the mountain with tablets with the 10 Commandments written in stone. The apostle John says at the beginning of I John about his relationship  with Jesus and His eyewitness testimony, he says That which was from the  beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which  we've looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the  word of life. The apostle Peter said that we didn't invent idle myths when we  brought you this testimony about God, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And we heard the voice on the mountain that said, This is my beloved son.  Listen to him. You have eyewitnesses to God's actions and to the person of  Jesus Christ that are written down in the Bible and beyond that. They're not only reliable eyewitnesses giving their testimony, but they're guided by the Holy Spirit to say exactly what God wants them to say, and giving them accurate memory  and recollection of all that they saw. And in all of this, the apostle John says, we  accept man's testimony. We learn a lot from human testimony, but God's  testimony is greater. If we believe testimony of ordinary human beings, and that  counts as knowledge, and it's valuable knowledge, then surely we ought to  believe what God Himself says. And when this happens, when we hear what  God says and we believe what he says, there's a double action going on. When  the outer testimony of Scripture produces belief in Jesus, the Son of God, then  we also have the inner testimony of God's Spirit, the Spirit. Who inspired that  testimony about God in the scriptures is also inspiring belief within us, and faith  is the action that accepts God's outer testimony and his inner testimony. John  puts it this way in I John 5, we accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is  greater, because it's the testimony of God, which he has given about his son.  Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone  who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar because he has not  believed the testimony God has given about his son. And this is the testimony  God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these  things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know  that you have eternal life by faith in God's testimony you know that you have  eternal life. So those are the first two aspects of knowing by faith, accepting  certain things as Givens, and then also credulity, accepting the testimony of  people who know God of the book that testifies to God, and accepting God's  own voice as the Spirit seals that testimony to your heart. A third aspect of  knowing and of knowing by faith is to have certain faculties and abilities that are  working properly. We have knowledge when our faculties are working properly in a suitable setting for which those faculties were designed to produce true  beliefs. For example, let's take sight. Let's suppose that you're looking at a 

particular chair, and that chair is there, and you're able to see it because there's  light on that chair, and that light is entering your eyes, and your eyes and your  mental system are working properly. Now let's suppose instead that there is  absolutely no light in the room at all, then you can't see the chair, because it's  not a setting where light is coming from the chair to your eyes and you can't see  it. On the other hand, you might be in a room where the light is there and the  chair is there, but sorry, you're not there, even though you're there, you may be  just blind drunk, or you've been on drugs, and you don't see a chair. You see a  pink elephant, so your faculties can malfunction when there's something gone  seriously wrong with them, but when they're working properly, you gain  knowledge that a chair is really there in front of you. Now, what if faith is what  happens when our God sense, our faculty, designed to produce knowledge of  God is made healthy and is in a setting where God is showing something of  himself for us to know. In that case, faith is knowledge. If we really do have a  god sense, a real faculty, and it's healthy and God is showing things to us, then  we're gaining knowledge through that God sense. Think again about the organs  that you have of sense and the way you receive signals. You see only if you  have eyes that work and light from an object reaches you. You hear only if you  have ears that work, and something sends sound waves to you. You taste only if your taste buds are working and something is actually in your mouth. You don't  taste something if it's not in your mouth, or if your taste buds aren't working. You smell only if your nose is working and molecules from something are in the air.  You smell that rose, not if it's sealed in a ziploc baggie, but if that rose has a few of its molecules drifting through the air and making it to your nose. You feel  touch only if your skin and nerves are working, and something touches your  skin, whether a physical object touches it or you feel heat from something like a  fire close by. Now that's how our bodily senses work. Let's let's think about how  that might work with our God sense. The Bible uses language that is very  sensory, when it talks about our heart organs receiving signals from God. Psalm  34:8 says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Jesus says in John 10:27 My  sheep hear my voice. Psalm 119:103, says, how sweet are your words to my  taste sweeter than honey to my mouth. The apostle Paul in II Corinthians 2  compares the gospel to a smell, he says, For we are to God, the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing, to the one we  are, the smell of death to the other, the fragrance of life, same smell, but  different people smell it in different ways. Think, for instance, of the smell of fried chicken. To some women who are in a certain stage of pregnancy, the smell of  fried chicken is nauseating. It just smells so yuck to them and to many others of  course, the smell of fried chicken is delicious, and they wish they had some  same chicken, but depending on your condition, you smell it in a very different  way and same gospel. But depending on your condition, it smells very differently to you, whether you're perishing or whether you're being saved. When Jesus 

was walking along with two people on the road to Emmaus, the day of His  resurrection, he spoke with them, and afterward, they said, Were not our hearts  burning within us while they talked with us on the road and opened the  Scriptures to us. The flame of God was touching their hearts while Jesus spoke  with them. So you have the language of tasting, seeing, hearing, smelling,  touching, having to do with something that happens within us as God comes  near and shares himself with us now, heart, organs, sense and know things by  experience, and not just by hearing descriptions. You can gain valuable  knowledge by hearing descriptions of things, but there are other elements of  knowledge that you can't get except by experiencing them through your senses.  It will not help you for me to describe the color red if you've never seen red, you  know, red by seeing it if you're blind, or if you happen to be color blind, no  amount of my talking about red is going to help you get what red is. You know  music by hearing it. You could look at a page with all the drawings of notes on it.  You could have somebody talk to you about music theory. But if you never heard music, there would be much that you wouldn't know about it. You know a scent  by smelling it. You know honey by tasting it. And so it is with the things of God.  You know things of God by seeing with your inner eye. You know the music of  God's voice by hearing it, not just by hearing about it. You know the sweet scent  of the gospel when it smells good to you that God is conveying this God's word  tastes sweeter than honey when you taste it, not when the Bible is just a dusty  book over there that you say, Yeah, I believe that it's a true book. And you know,  God's burning reality by feeling his flame within when your heart flames within  you, then you're experiencing something of God's reality. And these are not just  weird things going on in the mind or the spirit that have no contact with reality.  These are heart organs that sense and know things by experience. And we can  know these things even if a lot of people don't believe them. Other people not  experiencing or knowing something doesn't mean you don't know it. Sometimes  we think of knowledge as something that everybody ought to be able to know  and ought to be able to prove to each other, but there are some kinds of  knowledge that simply aren't known to some people by faith. Christians see  reality even if others lack a renewed eye or lack God's light. Our sight is  knowledge, even if unbelievers don't see it. The apostle John says in I John  5:19, we know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the  control of the evil one. That explains a lot. There's a lot they can't know as long  as they're under the control of the evil one. II Corinthians 4:4, says, the god of  this world, that is Satan, has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them  from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of  God. So just because not everybody agrees with you doesn't mean you don't  know what you know by faith. Some have been blinded by Satan. On the other  hand, God gives the ability to see and to know for God, who said, Let light shine  out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the 

knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That's II Corinthians 4:6.  God makes his light shine into your heart and your heart. Sense of God knows  that God is real and that he's glorious and that Christ is his revelation. Jesus  says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Faith sees and faith  knows. The Apostle Paul prays in Ephesians I, I keep asking that the God of our  Lord, Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and  revelation so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your  heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has  called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and his  incomparably great power. For us who believe, notice that phrase, the eyes of  your heart. God has designed people with eyes in our heart, a way of sensing  him, and we can know him through the eyes of our heart. Those who have never known him need the eyes of their heart opened, and those who do know God  somewhat and are already. Believers, we need the eyes of our heart opened  even wider, and we pray that God will give more light to those eyes so that we  can know Him even better than we already do. There are some people who may be totally blind. Maybe somebody has partial cataracts, and they need those  cataracts removed from their eyes so that they can see more clearly and fully by faith, our heart eyes see what simple eyeballs can't see. Our heart eyes can see God and His promised rewards. Hebrews 11:6 says, Whoever would draw near  to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.  Those are two key things that heart eyes can see that God exists and that God  is rewarding. And so when our heart eyes are opened, we seek God. And later  on, in Hebrews 11:26-27 it talks about Moses. And it says Moses considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward he endured as seeing him who is invisible. I love that phrase,  seeing him who is invisible. You're not seeing him with your eyeballs, but you're  seeing him with your heart eyes. And what do you see? You see that it's better  to suffer with Christ than to have all the treasures of Egypt. You see that Christ is better on a cross than the world is on a throne. You see the unseen because  your heart eyes see what ordinary people's eyeballs don't see. Faith is the  action of your reborn God. Sense that takes in God's self revelation the spirit  creates faith by reviving the god sense and by speaking gospel truth in such a  manner that the hearer accepts the facts, knows those facts are meant for you,  and delights in God and in the great things of the gospel. So God revives that  heart sense, he communicates to it, and he gives you a sense not only of his  reality, not only that he is wonderful, not only that he's glorious and good and  loving and brings salvation, but that he does this for you. And when your  faculties are working properly and God is sending you those signals, then what  you know by faith, you truly do know. AW Tozer, again, speaks of faith versus a  kind of numbness. He says faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where  faith is defective or where it's not working, the result will be inward insensibility 

and numbness towards spiritual things. Those spiritual things just won't get  through to a numbness that lacks faith. Our trouble is says Tozer that we have  established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real,  and we doubt the reality of any other sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God shining around us. The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear. Feeble they may be  from long disuse, but by the life giving touch of Christ, they are now alive and  capable of sharpest sight and most sensitive hearing. As we begin to focus upon God, the things of the Spirit will take shape before our inner eyes, a new god  consciousness will seize upon us, and we shall begin to taste and see and  inwardly feel God who is our life and our all when our faculties are working  properly, when Our God sense has come alive, and God is shining his light in  our hearts, then we know these things of God by faith, and a fourth and very  closely related matter is simply relating. We know things by personal interaction  and in our faculties working. It's God who's personally interacting with us. We  know other people by interaction. When I know a friend, I don't ask that friend,  do you exist? Could you please prove your reality to me? No, I interact with that  friend, and he interacts with me, and we communicate. And so it is in relation to  God, when God speaks to me, when I speak to Him in prayer, we are  interacting. We know the personal God by interaction, by awareness of another  self, making himself known to us and drawing us to know Him. Nearly everybody in the world has some sense of the reality of God. Conscience reminds us that  there is some right and wrong far beyond us, someone who expects certain  things of us, and that's why our conscience troubles us when we do what we  know to be wrong. Sometimes, when we're in the presence of fantastic created  realities, we have a sense of awe and gratitude come over us that goes beyond  anything in the creation and. We know that we're in the presence of someone far greater than anything he's made. And our knowledge of God goes far beyond  that. When by faith, we know what he's done for us in Jesus, in paying for our  sins, in crediting to us Jesus perfect life, in Jesus being our companion every  day. And we accept that by faith, and we go to God's throne. He's not he's not  just a theory anymore. He's not just a belief, he's not just an idea. He's a person, and we seek Him. We're glad we know him, and we seek to know him even  better. I John 5:20, says we know that the Son of God has come and has given  us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. Jesus came into our  world so that we would understand things, and in particular, so that we would  simply know the real and living God. And Jesus came to make Him known. The  Holy Spirit is the one who brings God close to us and draws us close to him.  John writes, This is how we know that he lives in us. We know it by the Spirit He  gave us. We know that we live in Him and He in us because he has given us of  His Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God. 

God lives in Him, and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has  for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. This of  all the ways of knowing by faith is the deepest and the most wonderful,  interacting in love with the God who has loved us from all eternity and getting to  know better, the one who has already begun to make himself known to us and  knowing that he knows us, that He knows us inside, out and backward, that  there's nothing about us that's going to shock or surprise him, but that He loves  us in spite of the bad things he knows that he loves us and creates in us more  and more of the good things of Jesus Christ, and gives us more to love Him in  return. So having looked at all that we can see that knowing by faith includes  and combines and surpasses these four elements, the givens, the  presuppositions, your starting point and standard. There's things you just take,  without question, without proof, as true. And there's an element of faith where  it's perfectly rational and wise to take as true the reality of God and things  revealed by God simply as first principles that really don't need a whole lot of  other proof. A second element of faith is accepting testimony, credulity, believing  what you're told. And if we accept man's testimony, God's testimony is far  greater and more reliable, and so much of what we know is known by believing  others. Certainly, if we want to know God and about God, we need to accept the  testimony of God and of others who know God. A third element of faith is the use of our faculties, our abilities working properly. And God has given us that heart  faculty, that heart sense for him, and sin has really clouded and messed that  thing up. But when God gives you new birth, when you're born again, he  awakens that God. Sense that faculty so that you sense that his reality, you see  his light, you taste his goodness, you hear His voice, and more and more,  maybe dimly at first but then growing, your abilities work more and more  properly, and God shines more and more brightly, and you come to know him  better through that God faculty that he's given you, and all that comes together  in relating, in personal interaction, in loving and being loved, in communicating  and being communicated with and so by faith, we embrace God's interaction  with us. We perceive his glory with our inner heart. We accept his testimony, and we take his written and Living Word as our starting point and our standard for  truth. The great philosopher Alvin Plantinga, one of the foremost Epistemologists in the world, someone who has explored what does it mean to know, has this to  say. He says faith is not to be contrasted with knowledge. Faith is knowledge.  Knowledge of a certain special kind. It is special in at least two ways. First, what  is known is of stunning significance, certainly the most important thing a person  could possibly know. Second, it is known by way of an extraordinary cognitive  process, or belief producing mechanism. Christian belief is revealed to our  minds by way of the Holy Spirit's inducing in us belief in the central message of  Scripture. So again, faith is not to be contrasted with knowledge. Faith is  knowledge. John. Calvin said, faith is a firm and certain knowledge of God's 

benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promises in  Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy  Spirit. So there is a revealing to the mind and a sealing on the heart that gives  us firm certain knowledge of facts, of great truths, but also of God's attitude and  love and benevolence towards us. A W Tozer says it very briefly, faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God, going back once again to I John, I write these  things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know  that you have eternal life. We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who  is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ, He is the true God and eternal life. Your  children guard yourselves from idols.