There is little doubt that almost all Christians are content to have won Christ and thus to have received the gift of eternal life. But how many are equally concerned to know him? How often we cut Jesus in half, wishing to know that we are saved and that all is well with our destiny, but forgetting that to be truly saved means we must truly know him! On the gravestone of the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford (d. 1661), we read of his passion to know Christ:
True godliness adorned his name,
He did converse with things above,
Acquainted with Emmauel’s love…
Most constant he did contend
Until his time was at an end.
Then he won to the full fruition
Of that which he had seen in vision.Such words describing him at death correspond well with what he wrote in life in his Letters:
Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the Garden of Eden, in one. Put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness, in one. Oh, what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths.
Put all the pleasures of life such as family, job, recreation, music, sports, entertainment, cuisine, and technology in one. Oh, what excellent joys they are! Yet such joys pale in comparison with the delight of knowing Jesus and basking in communion with his person, not just his work! Is Christ the ‘drop of rain’ or is he the ‘whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths’?
– Mark Jones, Knowing Christ, pp. 2-3 (emphasis mine).
