Acts 22.14-15 describes, the God of our ancestors has already chosen you to know His will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear a command from His mouth, because you will be His witness to all people of what you have seen and heard.

Paul’s description of how he came to know the one true God summarizes how all of us come to know the one true God. We enter the world estranged from God. It is not inherent to the human species at birth to recognize or serve God. From infancy, we humans are self preserving and self seeking.

In essence, from birth, we worship ourselves first and foremost. While this is obvious in small children as evidenced by their responses to not getting their own way, it is more subtle usually among adults. Yet it is also obvious from those who lie, steal and cheat that self rules at the expense of God’s will or the benefit of others.

The Bible describes with clarity this reality and then identifies the remedy to our malady. Beginning with God’s grace, mercy and love He comes to us, choosing us to know His will. His will is recorded for all eternity in the Bible so that all people in all places for all time can have access to the knowledge of God and what He requires from us. From the Bible, we see the nature of God culminating in His very presence in human form as Jesus the Savior. Seeing God in Jesus and seeing God as Jesus we come to the true knowledge of God so that we can begin the habit of obedience.

The greatest act of obedience is to love God expressed practically by loving people. The greatest act of love for people we can exhibit is to inform them of their estrangement from God so that they can be reconciled to God in order to spend eternity with God and all those who have ever loved Him from all time.

This activity was the natural progression for Paul after he saw God and heard from God, he understood by God that he was to tell others about God. This progression is the expectation of God for all those who have similarly come to know Him, who understand His will, and who have seen Jesus as God and Savior.

Our refusal to identify ourselves clearly or consistently as witnesses for Jesus is why the world is so ignorant of Him. The result of the world’s ignorance is the creation of man centered religion whether it by as abominable as Islam or as narcissistic as atheism. In either case, neither of these religions make the world a better place.

Because the Creator loves the world and has demonstrated His love for the world He commands His people to love the world by loving one another particularly the loving behavior of reconciling people to God through Jesus the Savior. Now that we know Him we must be about the business of helping others come to know Him too.

This is the natural progression of our relationship with God. If we are not intentionally moving people towards Jesus perhaps we too are distant from Him?