To Know Fully As I Am Fully Known
“Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part; then shall I know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:12
Larry David once joked about languages that have formal and informal versions of “you.” He said he could immediately tell whether an audience understood the joke, because if you grew up inside one of those languages, the tension is obvious.
In English, everyone is simply “you.”
But in much of the world, grammar carries relationship itself.
Spanish has tú and usted. German has Du and Sie. Farsi has to and shoma.
One carries familiarity and closeness. The other carries hierarchy, reverence, and distance.
Entire relationships can pivot on a pronoun.
You can offend someone by becoming informal too quickly….. create distance by remaining formal when intimacy should exist. Grammar quietly reveals the architecture of relationship.
Most cultures instinctively reserve formal language for power. Kings are addressed formally. Elders are addressed formally. Teachers, judges, rulers, and strangers are addressed formally.
Children, however, usually speak differently to their father.
That distinction illuminates something profound about Scripture.
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He taught them to begin with:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be Your name.”
— Matthew 6:9
Older English partially hides the intimacy of this moment from modern readers. Words like thou and thy now sound ceremonial because they are archaic. Historically, however, they were intimate singular forms used for familiarity and nearness. The more distant and public address was actually “you.”
What sounds formal to modern ears once carried warmth and relational closeness.
The holiness of God remains central throughout Scripture. Sinai trembles. Isaiah falls before the throne crying:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of His glory!”
— Isaiah 6:3
Yet the movement of Scripture leads steadily toward restored communion.
David seemed to understand this with extraordinary clarity.
“O Lord, You have searched me and known me.”
— Psalm 139:1“Before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.”
— Psalm 139:4“You formed my inward parts;
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”
— Psalm 139:13
The Psalms carry remarkable transparency. David pours out joy, rage, shame, longing, gratitude, fear, repentance, and worship because he lives with the awareness that he is already fully seen.
And still drawn near.
That may be why David is called a man after God’s own heart. He continually returns into relationship.
Martin Buber described two ways of relating to reality: I–It and I–Thou.
In an I–It relationship, another being becomes an object to categorize, analyze, manage, or use. Modern life increasingly trains us to see one another through abstraction. People become profiles, demographics, diagnoses, customers, productivity units, audiences, and political tribes.
An I–Thou relationship moves differently. Another person is encountered as presence rather than utility. They carry mystery, depth, and personhood that exceed category.
Buber believed every genuine I–Thou encounter ultimately points toward what he called the Eternal Thou.
Scripture says something even more astonishing:
The Eternal Thou already knows us completely.
When Jesus says,
“I never knew you.”
— Matthew 7:23
and they answer,
“Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name…?”
— Matthew 7:22
He brings everything back to relationship.
The question is whether communion existed.
Love is personal, moving toward recognition and encounter, listening carefully, calling people by name, and resisting every temptation to reduce human beings into abstractions.
Modern civilization increasingly conditions us toward abstraction. We speak constantly in categories: consumers, followers, influencers, patients, cases, political identities, content, productivity, platforms.
Over time, categories begin replacing encounter.
Abraham Joshua Heschel warned that modern people risk becoming technically sophisticated while gradually losing the capacity for awe. He described encountering another human being almost as entering the Holy of Holies itself, because every person bears the image of God.
That image has stayed with me.
Every person carries depth beyond what can be measured or categorized.
“So God created man in His own image.”
— Genesis 1:27
The Hebrew idea of avodah carries a remarkable richness. It can mean work, worship, and service all at once. In Genesis, humanity is placed within the garden to tend and keep it, serving creation as image bearers under God. Later, avodah becomes priestly language connected to temple service.
Perhaps those ideas were never truly separate.
Love expressed toward image bearers becomes a kind of holy work. Compassion carries something priestly within it. Truthful presence, mercy, attentiveness, hospitality, and care all begin to resemble the service of a sanctuary.
Perhaps this is why the Lord’s Prayer begins with relationship before petition.
“Our Father…”
Holiness and intimacy remain joined together throughout Scripture.
Even the name Elohim carries this tension. Grammatically plural, yet often governing singular verbs, it expresses majesty, fullness, transcendence beyond ordinary categories. Yet this same God walks in the garden, speaks with Abraham, wrestles Jacob, calls Samuel by name, and invites human beings into covenant communion.
The movement of Scripture is astonishingly personal.
Again and again, God calls people by name.
“Adam, where are you?”
— Genesis 3:9“Moses, Moses.”
— Exodus 3:4“Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears.”
— 1 Samuel 3:10“Mary.”
— John 20:16“Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”
— John 21:17
This is the language of encounter.
Perhaps this is also why Pentecost matters so deeply.
When the Spirit descended and the Church was born, people from across the known world heard the Gospel in their own language.
“We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
— Acts 2:11
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Egyptians, Romans, Arabs, Jews from many nations — each heard in the language closest to the heart.
The Kingdom did not begin by erasing human particularity. It entered directly into it.
God spoke to people in the language they knew best.
Almost as though divine love naturally moves toward intimacy and understanding.
Babel scattered language through pride and self-exaltation. Pentecost gathered people again through communion.
The movement of God is continually toward relationship, recognition, encounter, and love.
In Jesus, the mercy of God takes on flesh.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
— John 1:14
He becomes bread for the hungry and living water for the thirsty. He welcomes the stranger and makes enemies into guests. He carries human suffering into Himself and opens communion where shame once produced hiding.
To know Him, then, is to participate in His life.
Scripture even uses the language of husband and wife to describe this knowing, because covenantal intimacy creates safety for transparency. Every fear, contradiction, wound, longing, and hidden thought already stands fully before Him.
And still He invites us near.
“For now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:12
Perhaps this is what Mammon slowly erodes.
Mammon trains the heart toward transaction, leverage, image, consumption, and performance. Relationships become markets. Identity becomes branding. Spiritual life becomes management.
Manna moves differently.
It arrives daily.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
— Matthew 6:11
It teaches dependence, trust, communion, and presence.
From that place, compassion becomes overflow. Love emerges naturally from abiding.
“We love because He first loved us.”
— 1 John 4:19
Perhaps this is part of the quiet vocation of every believer: becoming a priest of presence within a fragmented world, carrying reverence into ordinary encounters, recognizing the image of God in one another, and practicing avodah through love.
More than power, I long for presence, communion, and the kind of abiding in which nothing needs to remain hidden.
I want to know fully, even as I have been fully known.
References & Influences
The Holy Bible
Martin Buber — I and Thou
Abraham Joshua Heschel — God in Search of Man, The Insecurity of Freedom, Man Is Not Alone
Themes of avodah in Genesis, Temple worship, and priestly service
Pentecost narrative — Acts 2
Psalms of David, especially Psalm 139