It is said that a little knowledge is dangerous. This being true, who has enough to be completely out of danger?
Paul says that none of us knows what we ought to know. He puts it this way, “If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.”
So we are not out of danger. No matter how much knowledge we have, it is not enough when it comes to Bible knowledge. Paul continues in the next verse by saying, “But if any man love God, the same is known of him.”
Our knowledge may be insufficient, but let us pray that our love is not. Peter tells us, “Love shall cover the multitude of sins.” This is encouraging. God knows we don’t know all we ought to know, but if we truly love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might, our love will cover a multitude of sins.
Love will also motivate us to learn more about the God we love so dearly. Our love will direct us to read and meditate upon His word so that we can say along with the man after God’s own heart, “0 how love I thy law! It is my meditation all the day…How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
The more we love, the more we will study and the more we study, the more we will love. Even though we meditate on His law all the day, we still will not know all that we ought, but our love for God, and for His word will become a driving force from within. The outcome of our love for God will result in action. James tells us to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.” John exhorts, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.”
The joy of meditating upon God’s word can be shown in the way we treat some of His other children. In the previous verse, John laid the challenge, “Whoso hath this world’s goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”
This agrees with the words of James, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?”
So we may never know all we ought to know, but if we love God, our knowledge and wisdom will grow as we meditate upon His word, and His word will then move us to act, for we cannot really love without doing.
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One