Most of us carry a quiet fear. We fear that if people really knew us—our thoughts, our failures, the things we hide—they would walk away.

Tim Keller once put it this way: “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.”

The Bible says a great deal about knowing God. But it says something even more surprising: the deepest thing about a Christian is not that he knows God, but that he is known by God. Paul was so struck by this that he once stopped mid-sentence to correct himself. In this post we look at what it means to be known by God, why it matters so much, and how it changes the way we live.

In the Bible, “Knowing” Is More Than Information

In English, “to know” usually means to have information. In the Bible, the Hebrew word yada and the Greek word ginōskō often go much deeper. They describe a close, personal, committed relationship.

That is why Genesis can say, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived” (Genesis 4:1). It is the language of the closest human bond there is.

The same word describes God’s relationship with His people. Through the prophet Amos, God says to Israel:

“You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

Amos 3:2

God was not saying He knew nothing about Egypt or Babylon. He knew every nation perfectly. He meant that Israel alone was His chosen people—the nation He had taken to Himself in covenant love. The psalms speak the same way: “the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish” (Psalm 1:6). And Nahum says, “The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him” (Nahum 1:7).

Two Ways God Knows

Keep these two meanings apart and many hard verses become clear. Nobody is hidden from God’s sight: “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). But not everyone is known by God in the second, saving sense.

Why Paul Corrected Himself

Writing to the Galatians, Paul reminded them how God had brought them out of paganism. Then, mid-sentence, he changed his words:

“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world?”

Galatians 4:9

Why the correction? Because Paul didn’t want the Galatians to think their salvation began with their own discovery of God. It began with God’s choice to know them. Our knowledge of God is real, but it is the result, not the cause. He knew us first.

Paul says the same to the Corinthians, who were proud of their knowledge: “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God” (1 Corinthians 8:3). What matters is not how much you know, but whether God knows you.

JI Packer made this the centre of his classic book Knowing God (1973):

“What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that He knows me.”

JI Packer, Knowing God

The Shepherd Who Knows His Sheep by Name

Jesus used this language of Himself. “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). And again: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28).

Notice the order. Jesus knows His sheep; then they hear and follow. His knowing comes first, and it carries a promise: those He knows, He keeps.

This knowing is personal. God told Moses, “I know you by name” (Exodus 33:17). Jesus told Nathanael, who had never met Him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (John 1:48). And on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene recognised the risen Lord at the moment He spoke one word: her name (John 20:16).

God does not know His people as a crowd, or as numbers on a list. “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30). He says to His people, “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16).

Known Before We Were Born

God’s knowing does not begin when we start to pray. It reaches back before our birth. God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5).

David marvelled at the same truth: “O LORD, you have searched me and known me!” (Psalm 139:1). God saw him “being made in secret” and wrote all his days in His book “when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:15–16).

For believers, this reaches back further still. Paul writes, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Here “foreknew” does not mean God merely saw ahead who would choose Him. It means He set His love on them beforehand. (We explore this fully in The Foreknowledge of God: Why It’s Far More Than Knowing the Future.)

The Other Side: “I Never Knew You”

This is why the most frightening words in the Gospels are about not being known. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes people who preached, cast out demons and did mighty works in His name. Yet He will say to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). In the parable of the ten virgins, the shut-out bridesmaids hear the same verdict: “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you” (Matthew 25:12).

Jesus knew every detail of their lives. What they never had was the relationship. They knew things about Him; He had never known them as His own. (For a full study of these verses, and why they don’t teach salvation by works, see Matthew 7:21 Meaning: Does It Teach Salvation by Works?)

CS Lewis saw how deep this goes. In his sermon The Weight of Glory (1941) he wrote:

“In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all.”

CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

But the same words hold a hidden comfort. Jesus does not say, “I knew you once, but I stopped.” He says, “I never knew you.” Those He truly knows, He never forgets.

Fully Known—and Still Loved

Here is the wonder. God’s knowledge of His people is complete. He knows our sins, our weakness, our doubts and the motives we hide even from ourselves. And He loves us anyway.

“He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). When our own hearts accuse us, “God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

Packer again:

“There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me.”

JI Packer, Knowing God

Think of Peter after his denial. Jesus asked him three times, “Do you love me?” Peter had nothing left to boast in. All he could say was, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (John 21:17). He rested not on his own record but on Jesus’ knowledge of his heart. And Jesus restored him.

Living as Someone God Knows

Being known by God is not only a doctrine. It changes daily life.

• It frees us from fear of people. If the God of heaven knows you and calls you His own, other people’s opinions lose their power. You don’t need to win the room.
• It makes our prayers honest. We cannot hide anything from God, so we don’t need to try. We can pray as David did: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” (Psalm 139:23).
• It comforts the lonely. Many feel unseen—at work, at church, even at home. No believer is unseen by God. Hagar, alone in the desert, called the LORD “a God of seeing” (Genesis 16:13).
• It humbles the proud. Our knowledge of God is real but small. Salvation rests on His knowing, not our cleverness (1 Corinthians 8:1–3).
• It steadies us in doubt. When feelings fade, our safety does not depend on how strongly we hold God, but on how firmly He holds us (John 10:28).

Conclusion: The Weight of Glory

One day every person will stand before God. For some, that moment will mean the words “I never knew you.” For others, it will mean being welcomed by name into the joy of their Master.

Paul tells us what that day will be like for believers: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

CS Lewis called this “the weight of glory”: “to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

If you have come to Christ, you are known by God. Not just noticed—known, claimed and loved. And nothing will ever make Him forget you.

Related Reads

• Matthew 7:21 Meaning: Does It Teach Salvation by Works?
• The Foreknowledge of God: Why It’s Far More Than Knowing the Future
• Can We Really Know God? Understanding Divine Incomprehensibility
• I Am the Good Shepherd: A Death Freely Chosen (John 10:11)
• Union with Christ: Why is it the Bible’s Most Comforting Truth?
• Christ in You, the Hope of Glory: Why Paul Calls It a Mystery
• Assurance of Salvation: How Can I Know I’m Truly Saved?
• Perseverance of the Saints: Why True Believers Cannot Finally Fall Away
• What Psalm 139 Knew About Embryology and Life in the Womb
• Fatherlessness: Does Knowing God Heal the Father Wound?
• Why Does God Choose Some for Salvation and Not Others?