The One Who Knows Me Better Than Myself

As the description of the Exodus resumes at the end of Exodus 13, we are invited to reflect on God’s choice of escape route: “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, ‘Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt’” (Exod 13:17 ESV). By inviting us into this reflection, God teaches us something about him and also about ourselves, and he does so by a play on words. In Hebrew, the word translated “lead them” in the first half of v17 sounds a lot like the verb translated as “change their minds” in the second half of v17. That wordplay indicates to us that God’s sympathy for the weakness of his people was realized in the choice of an escape route from Egypt. It also teaches us that God knows us better than we know ourselves.

Now, this idea that God is the one who knows me better than myself is impressed deeply into the pages of Scripture. It begins with the fact that the inner life of man is mysterious and even impenetrable to oneself. Psalms 42 and 43 include an inner dialogue between the mind and the heart, as it were, of the psalmist, which suggests to us that there is a potential for a disconnect between what we consciously think and how we unconsciously respond to situations. In Psalm 64, the enemies of the psalmist suppose that their inner being or heart is too deep or mysterious to be found out by anyone (and ironically even themselves as the rest of the psalm proves). Experience reinforces this biblical notion, for many times we might later become aware of unintended actions of our own or later remember something that otherwise went unnoticed by us at the time it happened.[1] In each of us is an active unconscious life that is often as unfathomable as deep waters.

However, our inner life is not completely unknown. Though Jeremiah laments, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”, there is a quick response: “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds” (Jer 17:-910 ESV). Proverbs 15:11 (ESV) declares, “Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD; how much more the hearts of the children of man!” The psalmist acknowledges that God “knows the secrets of the heart” (Psalm 44:21 ESV; see also 1 Sam 16:7; 2 Chron 6:30; Acts 1:24). John comments about Jesus, “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25 ESV). The consistent biblical testimony is that no matter how much or how little I might know about myself, God is the one who knows me better than myself.

Now, that thought might be a chilling one for anyone who is held fast by the magnetic field of sinful desire, and it is used as a warning by the writer to the Hebrews when he writes, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb 4:12-13 ESV). However, that warning is quickly followed up with consolation and encouragement (cf. Heb 4:14-16). Because Jesus is the one who knows me better than myself, and because Jesus is my great high priest who is able to sympathize with my weakness, then I have every reason to hold fast to my confession of faith in God, to trust in him, and to flee to him for grace and help in time of need. Indeed, I can even trust that he is working out his will for my life in a way that I could never anticipate or understand because he is the one who knows me better than myself. Let that be a balm for anxiety and a buoy when you feel like you are floundering in the deep waters of life.

[1] J. H. Bavinck, Inleiding in de Zielkunde, ed. A Kuypers, 2nd ed. (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1935), 379–80. Bavinck lists six categories of the unconscious that were current at the end of the 19th century. One major category was “the unintentional” (het niet-bedoelde). This is the category of acting with unintended consequences or without forethought; it is the category of impulsive and instinctive actions. Bavinck notes that developments in psychology after the turn of the 20th century would greatly expand this category. A second major category was “the unnoticed” (het neit-opgemerkte). This category includes the phenomenon in which we see and hear all kinds of things without consciously noting them at the time, though “transitions” can bring to consciousness certain unnoticed things or activities. Bavinck writes: “Transitions sometimes point out that the impressions do not actually happen outside of us. This holds even when we are sleeping: one awakens on the train when the monotonous rattle of the wheels comes to a stop; in church, one is startled when the preacher is silent for a moment.”