ONE OF THE most popular and acclaimed American TV sitcoms of the 1980s was Cheers. In fact, as recently as 2023, Variety ranked Cheers as the eleventh best TV show, period — of all time. Cheers racked up an impressive 28 Emmy awards over its eleven-year run, and virtually launched the careers of many of its ensemble cast.

The comedy explored the camaraderie and conflict between the owner, employees, and patrons of a fictional Boston bar. Every Thursday night, viewers would tune in and be greeted with the words to a catchy theme song that reminded them how tough life can be, how sometimes you just need a place to get away from it all. You want to go “where everybody knows your name,” the lyrics suggested, “and they’re always glad you came.” (Some of you are probably hearing the song in your head right now.)

Personally, I know the names of hundreds of people — including the cast members of Cheers! — but couldn’t really tell you much about them. Conversely, because I’m a public person, hundreds of people whom I’ve never met know my name. And honestly, going to a place where people know my name but don’t know me isn’t my idea of “getting away.”

What the song means, of course, is that you want to go to a place where you’re on a first-name basis with everyone. They know you as a person and you know them; you have a history and a relationship together. There’s a difference, in other words, between knowing things about a person, like their name, and really knowing the person.

And the same can be said of how we “know” God.

PREVIOUSLY, IN CHAPTER one, we’ve seen how John tries to correct some of the strange ideas and comments that have cropped up in his circle of believers. Some, it seems, had taken what John had written about light in his gospel and turned it into some distorted notion of enlightenment. They claimed to have fellowship with God, and even to be sinless, despite living in a way that John characterizes as walking in darkness (1 John 1:5-10).

In chapter two, then, John picks up a similar claim, and uses similar language to correct it:

We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. (1 John 2:3-4, NIV)

“I know him,” they would say. Know whom: God, or Jesus? Given that John has just spoken of Jesus in the previous verse, it’s probably the latter. But it may not matter much, because in the letter as a whole, John doesn’t keep these distinct. Moreover, the words Jesus spoke in the Upper Room were probably burned into his memory. He would have remembered Philip’s plea, “Lord, show us the Father,” and Jesus’ response: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

But what does it mean to “know” Jesus, or for that matter, God the Father? The Greek verb that John uses here is ginosko; the related noun is gnosis, as in the English words diagnosis and prognosis. It can refer to knowing facts, but even such knowledge is gained by personal experience. To “know” people, in that sense, is more than just knowing facts about them. It’s a more personal and sometimes intimate kind of knowledge.

Think, for example, about young Mary, the mother of Jesus. When the angel Gabriel appeared to her and announced that she had been chosen to conceive and give birth to the Messiah, she responded with justifiable curiosity: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). That’s the New International Version. More literally, what Mary says can be translated as, “How will this be, since I don’t know a man?” Obviously, she’s not saying, “Gabe, how am I supposed to get pregnant if I don’t know any guys?” (Surely, Joseph would be dismayed to hear her say that.) She’s saying she hasn’t “known” any man intimately enough to conceive a child.

John is questioning whether the people who are claiming to know Jesus or God really know them. He may also be working against the so-called Gnostic tendency –there’s that word gnosis again — that was so widespread in the ancient world. Put simply, some Gnostic views of spirituality so devalued bodily existence that it didn’t matter what you did with your body. Spirituality was defined entirely by internal criteria, like the possession of special knowledge. Behavior? Who cares?

If there were budding Gnostics in John’s community, that would make sense of his retort. Your behavior and how you live matters. You don’t really “know” Jesus just because you know something about him, or think you possess some kind of special insight. The kind of “knowledge” that counts is one that shows in obedience to what he commanded. If you don’t live like someone who has an authentic relationship with Jesus, you can’t say you know him. That would be a lie, a failure to live out the truth.

READING THIS, YOU might think that Gnosticism is a thing of the past, a curious feature of the ancient world. But we will probably never be done with ways of understanding the Christian faith that are more about what we believe than how we live. Don’t get me wrong. Doctrine — right doctrine — is important. If it wasn’t, John wouldn’t bother to write these letters.

Having said that, though, authentic Christianity is not merely about believing the right things. It’s not just about knowing what’s true but living truly. To use a phrase, as we’ll see shortly, we have to “walk the talk.” But before we do that, we need to introduce a subject that’s near and dear to John’s heart: love.