God is all Knowing

Tozer in his book the Knowledge of the Holy addressed the attribute of God’s omniscience and for today’s Directive I would like to include the entire chapter with just a comment or two myself.  Vance Havner loved to talk about the young seminary student who set off determined that he was going to be original or nothing.  Havner said, “Guess which one he ended up being?”  Therefore, I will rightfully acknowledge that I cannot say this better than Tozer and so we will hear from him. 

Lord, Thou knowest all things.  Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising and art acquainted with all my ways.  I can inform Thee of nothing and it is vain to try to hide anything from Thee.  In the light of Thy perfect knowledge I would be as artless as a little child.  Help me to put away all care for Thou knowest the way that I take and when Thou has tried me I shall come forth as gold. Amen.  

To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn.  But it is more, it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.  The Scriptures teach that God has never learned from anyone.  “Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor has taught Him.  With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding.” For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?  These rhetorical questions put by the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul declare that God has never learned.  From there it is only a step to the conclusion that God cannot learn. Could God at any time or in any manner receive into his mind knowledge that He did not possess and had not possessed from eternity?  He would be imperfect and less than Himself.  To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Highest God, maker of heaven and earth.  This negative approach to the divine omniscience is, I believe, quite justified in the circumstances.

Since our intellectual knowledge of God is so small and obscure we can sometimes give considerable advantage in our struggle to understand God, we have been driven to the free use of negatives.  We have seen that God has no origin, that He had no beginning, that he requires no helpers, that He suffers no change, and that in His essential being there are no limitations.  This method of trying to make men see what God is like by showing them what He is not like, is used also by the inspired writers in the Holy Scriptures.  “Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard?” cries Isaiah, “that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary?”  And that abrupt statement by God himself; “I am the Lord, I change not,” tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand-word treatise were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out. 

God’s eternal truthfulness is shared negatively by Paul, “God … cannot lie,” and when the angel asserted that “With God nothing shall be impossible,” the two negatives add up to a ringing positive.  That God is omniscient is not only taught in the Scriptures it must be inferred also from all else that is taught concerning him.  God perfectly knows himself, and being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known.  And this he knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries of ages yet unborn.  God knows instantly, and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all minds and every mind, all spirits and every spirit, all beings and every being, all creature hood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones, all dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven and hell.  Because God knows all things perfectly, he knows nothing better than any other thing, but all things equally well.  He never discovers anything. He is never surprised never amused.  He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions. 

God is self-existent and self-contained and knows what no creature can ever know – Himself perfectly.  “The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Only the Infinite can know the infinite.  In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the tenor and fascination of the Godhead. That God knows each person through and through can be a cause of shaking fear to the man that has something to hide – some unforsaken sin some secret crime committed against man or God. 

The unblessed sole may well tremble that God knows the flimsiness of every pretext and never accepts the poor excuses given for sinful conduct, since He knows perfectly the real reason for it.  “Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” How frightful a thing to see the sons of Adam seeking to hide among the trees of another garden.  But where shall they hide?  “Where shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?... If I say, Surely the darkness hides not from Thee, but the night shineth as the day.” And to us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick, no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to bash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our character can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us.  “For the mountains shall depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed saith the Lord that has mercy on thee.”  Our Father in heaven knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery, and for His sake engaged to save us (Isaiah 48:8-11). His only begotten Son, when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish.  His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic; it is personal, warm, and compassionate. Whatever may befall us, God [1] knows and cares as no one else.

This is powerful stuff and a reminder that because God knows all things about us and therefore we are today where God knew we would be in this state of mind, and life responses. As a result we can apply the following:

We can therefore know that God always begins with today and we can open His Word and respond to His call to walk in obedience knowing that he already knows the response we will make! It is so humbling and yet weight lifting! He already knows, so why hide?

He already knows so come boldly to the throne of grace and find help in time of need. Come boldly to repentance where there is no shame.

A gracious and merciful God awaits us there on our knees prostrate, with standing or sitting hearts wide open crying out to God.

©2025 David W. Drake, President, Renewed Hope, Inc.