And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.
These are Jesus's words to his closest followers on the night before his arrest and crucifixion. He is preparing them for a painful reality: people will persecute them, and some of those persecutors will genuinely believe they are serving God by doing so. Jesus gives a single, devastating explanation for why: "They have not known the Father or me." He is drawing a sharp distinction between religious activity — even zealous, sincere religious activity — and actually knowing God. The implication is sobering: it is possible to be deeply devoted to religion while being fundamentally wrong about who God is.
Father, it's sobering to realize I could be sincere and still be wrong about who you are. I don't want a God I've quietly shaped in my own image. Keep correcting my picture of you — even when that's uncomfortable, even when it costs me something I was holding tightly. Let me know you, not just know about you. Amen.
History doesn't lack for examples. People burned at the stake by those holding Bibles. Families shattered by someone who called their cruelty obedience. Slavery defended with chapter and verse. The Inquisition. Jesus names the root of all of it in one sentence: they did not know the Father. Not "they lacked information" or "they had the wrong doctrine on paper." They didn't *know* him. And there is a catastrophically wide gap between knowing *about* God and actually knowing him — between having a theology and having a relationship that reshapes you from the inside out. Before this verse becomes a window pointed at history or at other people, it needs to be a mirror. The harder question it asks is: do *you* know the Father — or do you know your *idea* of the Father? Have you quietly shaped God into someone who confirms your existing politics, preferences, and comfort zones? Knowing God is not a box you check at conversion. It is a lifelong, sometimes unsettling process of having your picture of him corrected — by Scripture, by suffering, by people who are nothing like you. The question is not whether you believe in God. It's whether you actually know him well enough to be changed by him.
Jesus distinguishes between religious activity and truly knowing God — what do you think it actually means to "know" the Father, as opposed to knowing facts about him?
Have you ever acted in a way you were convinced was right or godly, only to realize later it had caused harm? What did that experience teach you about the gap between sincerity and truth?
This verse suggests that deep religious sincerity is not the same as knowing God. How should that reality make us humble — and appropriately cautious — about our own most confident convictions?
How does this verse affect the way you respond to people who use religion to justify cruelty or harm — does it land as anger, grief, something more complicated?
What is one belief you hold about God that you have never seriously examined or questioned? What would it look like to actually sit with that question honestly, rather than just defending it?
John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not;
John 1:26
If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
John 14:7
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
1 John 3:1
Also, that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good; and he that hasteth with his feet sinneth.
Proverbs 19:2
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
Ephesians 1:17
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
Philippians 3:8
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
John 14:1
For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
Jeremiah 4:22
And they will do these things because they have not known the Father or Me.
AMP
And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.
ESV
'These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me.
NASB
They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.
NIV
And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.
NKJV
This is because they have never known the Father or me.
NLT
They will do these things because they never really understood the Father.
MSG