How Does God Make Himself Known?

God Takes the Initiative

The answer begins with God Himself. We know God because God has chosen to make Himself known.

This is easy to overlook. We can begin to think of knowing God as something we accomplish by studying enough, becoming religious enough, or searching deeply enough. But Scripture presents the order differently. God acts first. He speaks, reveals, calls, and makes Himself known, and human beings respond to what He has made known.

This means that the knowledge of God is not something we construct from our own ideas. We do not begin with our imagination and then decide what God must be like. We begin with God's self-disclosure.

That is important because many things may be said about God. People have their own experiences, traditions, opinions, and assumptions. But the God we are called to know is not the God we invent. He is the God who has revealed Himself.

What matters next is how God has made Himself known, and what His different acts of revelation allow us to know about Him.

Creation Bears Witness

One of the first ways Scripture directs our attention to God's revelation is through what He has made.

David looked at the heavens and declared, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1). Paul similarly explains that God's invisible qualities can be understood through the things He has made (Romans 1:20).

Creation therefore bears witness. The world is not God, but it points beyond itself to its Creator. Its existence, order, power, and beauty tell us that we are living in a world that did not make itself.

This revelation places every human being under a witness that existed before any preacher spoke, before any church was established, and before any person opened a Bible. Creation tells us something about the One who made it.

But creation does not tell us everything we need to know.

The heavens can declare the glory of God, but they do not tell us the story of redemption. Creation can point us toward the Creator, but it does not tell us what God has promised, what He commands, or what He has done in Christ. For that, God has spoken more directly.

Creation gives witness. God's word gives us His testimony.

God Speaks So That We Can Know His Will

The God who made Himself visible through His works has also made Himself known through His word. Scripture repeatedly presents God as a God who speaks.

He spoke to Abraham. He spoke through Moses and the prophets. He gave His commandments. He made promises. He warned, instructed, corrected, and called His people. What God said was not left to disappear with the people who first heard Him. It was preserved in Scripture.

This changes the way we approach the knowledge of God. We are not left to interpret creation and then build a theology from what we think it means. God has spoken concerning Himself.

His word tells us what He loves and what He hates, what He commands and what He forbids, what He has promised and what He has done. It reveals His character through His dealings with people and His purposes through the story He has unfolded.

This is why Scripture is indispensable to knowing God. We cannot claim to know the God of the Bible while ignoring the book through which He has given us His written testimony.

But even this points beyond itself. The Scriptures do not merely give us statements about God. They prepare us to see God's greatest self-revelation: God has spoken to us in His Son.

God Has Made Himself Known in His Son

The writer of Hebrews gives us a remarkable contrast. God spoke in different ways through the prophets, but “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2).

This does not mean that Jesus simply brought additional information about God. It means that in Christ, God's self-revelation reaches its centre.

John says, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son... he hath declared him” (John 1:18). Jesus came to make the Father known.

This is why Jesus' words to Philip are so important. Philip asked Him to show them the Father, and Jesus answered, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:8–9). Jesus was not saying that He and the Father are the same Person. He was declaring that the Father is perfectly revealed through the Son.

The life of Jesus therefore matters to our knowledge of God. His words show us God's truth. His works show God's power and compassion. His treatment of people reveals the character of God. His obedience reveals what it means to live in complete submission to the Father. His death and resurrection reveal the purpose and power of God's saving work.

If we want to know what God is like, we cannot place Jesus at the edge of the discussion. God has made Himself known in His Son.

This also explains why the Christian faith cannot be reduced to general belief in God. The God Christians are called to know is the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

The Spirit Brings Us Into What God Has Revealed

Knowing what God has revealed is not the same as simply having access to revelation. A person can hear the words of Scripture and still fail to understand their significance. The disciples themselves repeatedly heard Jesus before they understood what He was saying.

This is where the work of the Holy Spirit becomes important. Paul writes that the Spirit searches the deep things of God and makes them known to believers (1 Corinthians 2:10–12). Jesus also promised that the Spirit would guide His disciples into truth (John 16:13).

The Spirit does not give us permission to create a private version of God. His work is not to replace Scripture or to make every personal impression equal to God's revealed word. Rather, He brings us into the truth God has already made known.

God reveals. The Spirit enables us to receive.

This is why knowing God is more than collecting information. The truth must be received, understood, and embraced. God is not simply giving us material to study. He is bringing us into a knowledge of Himself.

The same God who makes Himself known also works in those who hear Him so that His revelation becomes personally understood and rightly received.

Revelation Calls for a Response

Once we see how God makes Himself known, another truth becomes unavoidable: revelation creates responsibility.

If God had remained silent, humanity could claim ignorance. But God has spoken. He has given witness through creation, spoken through His word, and made Himself known supremely in His Son. He has not hidden Himself from those who seek to know Him according to the truth He has given.

Therefore, the question is no longer simply, “Has God made Himself known?” It becomes, “What will I do with what God has made known?”

This is why knowledge of God cannot remain theoretical. When God reveals Himself as He truly is, our response matters. We cannot separate knowing God from believing Him, trusting Him, honouring Him, and responding to His will.

The goal of revelation is not merely that we should become people who can explain more things about God. It is that we should know the God who has revealed Himself and respond to Him according to that knowledge.

If God has made Himself known, and knowing Him is central to eternal life, then knowing God carries responsibility. A person who knows God is not simply someone who possesses information about Him. He is someone who has been brought face to face with the God who has spoken.

The next question, therefore, is a necessary one: What does God expect from a person who knows Him?