Known by God
Ask a churchgoing Christian what it means to know God, and most will describe activities: reading Scripture, praying, attending services, believing sound doctrine. Ask the same person what it means to be known by God, and the answer usually stalls. That gap is worth closing, because Jesus treated the second question as more important than the first.
The Shepherd Who Knows His Sheep
In John 10, Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd and states the terms of the relationship plainly: "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep" (John 10:14-15). A few verses earlier he had already painted the scene: several flocks shared a single enclosure overnight, watched by a gatekeeper, and in the morning each shepherd called out and only his own sheep separated from the crowd and followed him, because they recognized his particular voice (John 10:3-5). A stranger's voice, however confident, produced no response.
That detail carries the weight of the passage. Jesus is not describing generic divine awareness of everyone; he is describing a shepherd who knows the specific sheep in his particular flock, and sheep who have learned to recognize one voice among many. Then he raises the stakes further by placing this bond on the same level as the relationship inside the Trinity: the way the Father knows the Son is the pattern for how the shepherd knows the sheep. Safety and belonging, in Jesus's own account, rest on being known this specifically.
The Warning to the Unknown
Matthew 7 shows what happens when that specific knowledge is absent, even where religious activity is abundant. Jesus describes a scene at the final judgment: "Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness'" (Matthew 7:22-23).
Jesus is not claiming ignorance; he is the one who searches hearts, and nothing about these people was hidden from him. His statement borrows the same covenantal sense of "know" that runs through the Old Testament, where God tells Israel through Amos, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2), obviously not because he lacked information about Egypt or Assyria, but because Israel alone stood in covenant relationship with him. "I never knew you" in Matthew 7 is a declaration that no such relationship existed, regardless of how much work had been done in Jesus's name. Prophecy, exorcism, and miracles are impressive by any human measure, and Jesus places all three on the wrong side of the ledger, because none of them substitute for being known.
Eternal Life Defined
Later, in his prayer the night before the cross, Jesus states plainly what he considers the actual content of eternal life: "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3). Eternal life is not framed here as a location or a reward for accumulated religious performance; it is framed as an ongoing relationship, the underlying verb carrying the sense of continuous knowing rather than a single moment of acknowledgment. The same Gospel later shows Jesus draw the practical consequence: he stops calling his disciples servants and calls them friends instead, "for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15). Disclosure, not distance, is the mark of the relationship he is describing.
Paul Sharpens the Point
Paul takes this theme and pushes it somewhere Jesus's teaching had already implied but never stated so bluntly. Writing to the Galatians, who were being pulled back toward law-keeping after having received grace, he catches himself mid-sentence: "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 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 4:8-9). The correction is deliberate. Paul begins to credit the Galatians with knowing God, then stops himself and relocates the credit: the decisive act was God's, not theirs. Their relationship with him did not begin because they finally figured him out; it began because he took hold of them first. Turning back to religious performance, for Paul, means forgetting who acted first.
He returns to the theme in 1 Corinthians, this time pointing forward to what is still incomplete: "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). Paul reaches for a stronger, more intensive verb for the future knowing he anticipates, and a settled past tense for the knowing he has already received. Being fully known is not a future hope; it is a present reality. Knowing fully is the hope still ahead. Paul places the more secure fact first in the reader's experience and the less secure fact last, exactly reversing how most believers instinctively rank the two.
The Point of the Whole Thing
Put the pieces together and a single argument emerges. A shepherd's sheep are safe because he knows them individually, not because they have proven themselves useful. People who prophesied, cast out demons, and worked miracles in Jesus's name can still hear "I never knew you," because none of that activity is the same thing as relationship. Eternal life itself is defined as an ongoing knowing of God, not a status earned by religious output. And Paul, writing to churches tempted to measure their standing by performance, keeps correcting the order: God knew you first, and being fully known by him is already secure, while your own understanding of him is still catching up.
That ordering should reshape how a Christian thinks about assurance. The question is not primarily how well you know your Bible, your doctrine, your theology, though those things matter and are worth pursuing with rigor. The prior question is whether the relationship exists at all, whether there has been the kind of self-disclosure and response that Jesus describes between a shepherd and his sheep, or whether there has only been activity done in his name. Matthew 7 exists precisely because those two things can be mistaken for each other. Galatians and 1 Corinthians exist to remind believers who have been known by God that they do not need to go looking for a more impressive credential. The relationship was never something to achieve. It was something to receive, and it began with him knowing you before you ever thought to look for him.