My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge . . . (Hos 4:6)
The church sometimes has difficulty rightly valuing knowledge. Sometimes people equate head knowledge with spiritual maturity and thereby give to knowledge an importance and a role it does not have. Knowledge by itself does not make anyone greater in the eyes of God. God does not care how much you know if you don’t love. Or if you don’t trust Him.
However, sometimes people devalue knowledge because “knowledge puffs up.” They see that faith and love are greater than knowledge. They see that knowledge by itself does not produce maturity, and they conclude that knowledge is not that important.
Thus, some people overvalue knowledge while others undervalue it. We need to see the importance of knowledge along with its limitations. The reality is that faith and love are based on knowledge. You can’t believe in something that you don’t know. And the more you know about God, the more reasons you have to love Him. Knowledge by itself does not produce spiritual maturity, but a certain amount of knowledge is a prerequisite for spiritual maturity. Knowledge is not the same as faith, but without knowledge you can’t have faith.
Let me put it this way. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen (Heb 11:1). Some people take that to mean that faith kicks in when you don’t see or know something, and, thus, knowledge is not that crucial to faith. But those people are only half right. It is true that faith trusts in what it does not see, but the reason it trusts in what it does not see is because of what it does know. I have knowledge that God is faithful, and based on that knowledge, I can trust that He will provide for my family even though I don’t see how. I have knowledge that God has made me a new man, and that knowledge gives me hope for eternity. I have knowledge that God has forgiven my sins through the Cross, and that knowledge spurs me to love Him even more.
Faith and love do not exist in a vacuum apart from knowledge. Faith has substance. Faith trusts in something. Knowledge gives you that substance, that something. Those then with the spiritual gift of knowledge help provide the substance for our faith and for our relationship with God.
So let’s talk about the gift of knowledge. The spiritual gift of knowledge does not pertain to knowledge broadly speaking but to the knowledge of Scripture and of God. Thus, having a Phd in literature does not give anyone this gift. In addition, someone with the gift of knowledge knows more than the mere facts that, say, Ehud was a left-handed man and the gospels were based on eyewitness testimony. Someone with the gift of knowledge knows not just the brute facts of Scripture but how to interpret Scripture in a godly way. Thus, having a Phd in New Testament does not give anyone the gift of knowledge. A boy in middle school with the gift of knowledge may know more than a New Testament scholar, even if the New Testament scholar knows more facts.
We have to get out of our head the idea that those who know mere facts are somehow spiritually mature simply because they know facts.
People with the gift of knowledge are the people you go to when you want to know what the Bible says about this or that topic. When you want to know not just the facts but the heart. These people help you understand Scripture and God.
Knowledge vs Teaching
The gifts of teaching and of knowledge have some overlap even if they are not identical. Many with the gift of teaching also have the gift of knowledge, for you can’t teach what you don’t know. Yet the gift of teaching also involves a communication gift.
The gift of knowledge by itself does not necessarily involve teaching, and some people may know the Bible and God well without being strong teachers.
Importance of Knowledge
People with the gift of knowledge provide the substance for the faith of the church.
Strengths
- love for Scripture
- love to read and learn
- ability to understand complex ideas
- care about doctrine
Weaknesses
- can be weak with relationships
- can be proud of their knowledge
- can trust in knowledge instead of God
Examples of People with this Gift
Ezra, Paul, John Calvin, D.A. Carson
Good Roles for People with this Gift
researcher, professor, apologist, teacher
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