Jews and Gentiles Alike Can Say, “We Did Not Know You”

“You are, then,” he says, “our God, and we did not know you, O God of Israel, the Savior.” Who do you imagine chiefly say this, and in whose mouths are such words especially fitting, the Jews’ or the Gentiles’? If you say the Jews: certainly the Jews did not know Christ, as it is said, “But Israel has not known me; my people have not understood”; and, “The world was made by him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.” But if you say the Gentiles: it is clear that the Gentile world was given over to idols and did not know Christ, just as it did not know the Father either; yet if it has now come to know him, it is only through Christ. [a]

You see, then, that whether the believing people belong to the Jews or to the Gentiles, in either case they can truly say for themselves: “You are our God, and we did not know you, O God of Israel, the Savior.” For the Gentiles, who formerly worshiped idols, did not know God; and the Jews, who denied the Lord, did not know the Son of God. And so both truly say of Christ: “You are our God, and we did not know you.” For those who did not believe in God were as ignorant of him as those who denied the Son of God.

If, therefore, Christ is to be believed in as the truth declares, as the Godhead asserts, as indeed Christ himself declares, who is both, why are you trying, wretchedly and in your madness, to come between God and Christ? Why do you try to divide his body from the Son of God, and to separate God from himself? You are cutting apart what is one and dividing what is joined together. Believe the Word of God concerning God; for you cannot possibly make a better confession of God’s divinity than by confessing with your voice what God teaches about himself. For you must know that, as the prophet says, “The Lord himself is God, who found out the whole way of knowledge, who was seen on earth and lived among men.” He brought the light of faith into the world; he showed the light of salvation. “For God is the Lord, and he has given us light.” Believe him, then, and love him, and confess him. For since, as it is written, “every knee will bow to him, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord in the glory of God the Father,” whether you will or not, you cannot deny that Jesus Christ is Lord in the glory of God the Father. For this is the crowning virtue of a perfect confession: to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is always Lord and God in the glory of God the Father.