What does it mean to "know fully"? (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Context: 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
ESV - 12 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.
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Asked October 12 2019
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Jack Gutknecht
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Tim Maas
As an omniscient Being, God is not bound by any constraints in knowing us. However, as closely as any Christian may follow the Lord in this world and life, I would say that none of us can know Him as fully as will be possible in eternity, when we will finally see Him face to face, just as you would be able know more about any human on earth from meeting him or her in person than from letters or even via such "virtual reality" means as the internet. Any unresolved questions that we may have about Him or about our experience in our earthly life will be answered in a way that is not currently possible.
George Fitt
To know fully means to have perfect understanding and knowledge of all scriptural doctrine. This is similar to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and thereby knowing all good from all evil. The warning: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. Genesis 2:17a ESV The deceit: For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3:5 ESV The sin: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. Gen.3:6a ESV They knew fully: Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. Genesis 3:7a ESV
Jack Gutknecht
God has formed a perfect comprehension of the believer (1 Corinthians 8:3); He possesses an immediate, full, and interested discernment of us (Romans 8:27); this future knowledge will match, in some sense, His present knowledge of the same, the searching effect of which it has realized (Galatians 4:9).
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