We know our friends, we know our spouse and our kids. We know the people we work with and we know of people. In the bible it sometimes talks about “knowing” as being an intimate knowing like intimate relations between a husband and wife. So there are a variety of explanations as to what “knowing” means.

Jesus was talking about the end of the age when the judgement takes place. People were coming to him and saying that they had done all kinds of things in his name, but does that mean that they knew Him?

Lets talk about a politician or a TV personality or your favourite sporting personality. You might do things on their behalf, advocate for them or their beliefs.

The politician for example, is well known by the people. We might believe in what they are doing or standing for. We advocate on their behalf, stand up and state, sometimes vigorously, why they should be listened to, voted for and why we should also be listened to and understood because of our affiliation with this politician.

A sporting character, we wear the uniform, their hat and scarf. We go around and proudly show the world and particularly the opposing club supporters that we are with a particular team and player. We will jump up and down and yell why our team and our player are better and why they should win.

What’s all this got to do with “knowing”? At the end of the day when the votes are counted and the match has been played and won, the person you were rooting for doesn’t give you a call with appreciation for all you did to contribute to the cause or the cheering at the game.

They never even knew you!

We have different levels of intimacy with people. Different levels of how much we allow people into the more intimate parts of our lives.

We have distant friends these are the ones you don’t actually know at all, friends of friends on social media. We know a bit about them, and they may know a bit about us but we’re not actually friends. There is no sharing of inner parts of our life, only superficial and external things like what others say or believe.

Then there are friends for work and play. We know them, we work with them every day or we go to sports events together or camping. We share common likes and dislikes together and mostly on a shallow level. There is a sharing of thoughts, opinions and beliefs but mostly about external things.

Friends for life, these are the select few, generally only 3 or 4 people throughout our life. These people are the ones who know most of our life, we feel safe enough to have shared our feelings, experiences, failures, joys and hopes with these people. There is still a level of secrecy, some things that remain hidden and are never shared.

4 Our Spouse is the one person who should know everything about us. The one who knows all the dark secrets of our life. They have shared in all our ups and downs and loves us anyway. Our spouse is the other half of us, Gen 2:24 & Matt 19:5. We feel truly safe with sharing the deepest thoughts, feelings and desires with our spouse. Our fears, failures and hurts, our most intimate emotions. People outside of this are generally only shown our successes.

If you are a Christian, God Himself. More than likely you have read some of the Bible and you believe in Him and have said the sinner’s prayer. You have heard sermons and discussed with people what God is like and you have, whether you think so or not, made an imaginary avatar of what you think God is like. You pray and ask him all kinds of things. Direction, provision are probably the most common. Do you allow God into your life? Do you asking him about every decision you make? I have heard it preached many times that God is not interested in what we wear or what we eat, but I believe He is vitally interested in every minute part of our life. The “knowing” it talks about in Matt 7:23 is the intimate type, like with our spouse, but clearly without the physical part, let’s not be silly about it. Without doubt, we are to be more intimate with Him than we are with our spouse and with that intimacy will come the ability to be more intimate with others. More genuine, more real, more known.