"Know All Things"

"God has given you all a certain amount of spiritual insight..." 1 John 2:20a, Phillips translation

If you were reading along through 1 John 2 and came across this clause, you'd probably keep on reading without giving it much additional attention. But I want us to stop and check on the translation given here and, really, the translation given to this verse in almost every major English Bible translation. If you went and grabbed your own Bible, it'd probably read close to what the ESV says: "You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth."

But what that last part of that phrase really says in the Greek is far more thrilling, far more in line with a promise that Jesus made to us Himself: "and you know all things." Do you see the difference? 

"All of you know the truth" v. "You know all things"

When Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit "will teach you all things" (Jn. 14:26), when the Apostle Paul wrote that we "have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16), do you think that we were supposed to receive those promises as "all having some of the truth," like a scratching at the surface, or, as John appears to be hinting at here, and by the glorious power of the Holy Spirit, that all of us are meant to be learning to know all of Jesus?

What Jesus promised, and what Paul later wrote and proclaimed, are both part of the New Birth experience; we are actually called to hear, to learn and to know - as both Jesus and John say it - "all things." 

Hear me: There's more for you. Today. Now feel free to go and get what's yours!