Knowledge-of-God
Short answer: The knowledge of God in Scripture is not information about God but a personal, covenant relationship with him, and Jeremiah 9:23-24 grounds it in God's own character: he delights in loving kindness, justice, and righteousness. Yahweh says, "Don't let the wise man glory in his wisdom. Don't let the mighty man glory in his might. Don't let the rich man glory in his riches." Jeremiah 9:23 instead directs every boast to understanding and knowing him. Hosea 6:6 makes the same point by ranking mercy and the knowledge of God above sacrifice. John 17:3 says, "This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ." Knowing God is thus the goal, not a side benefit, and it is measured by transformed allegiance rather than by intellectual accumulation.
What the Knowledge of God Actually Means
In the Hebrew Scriptures, to know is far more than to hold facts in mind. It describes relational experience, covenant loyalty, and intimate acquaintance. When God says Israel did not know him, he is not complaining about a failed quiz; he is describing a broken relationship and a divided heart. Scripture uses the same kind of language for marital intimacy. That is why a person can master theology and still not know God. Knowledge of God means trusting him, loving him, obeying him, and finding him to be exactly who he says he is. Jesus also warns that many who did impressive works in his name will hear him say he never knew them.
This relational knowledge is not vague or contentless. It is not a warm feeling detached from truth. It is knowledge of the only true God as he has revealed himself, and of Jesus Christ whom he sent. Because God is personal, knowing him is personal. Because he has spoken, knowing him is anchored in what he has said. Doctrine serves communion. Clear teaching about God's character protects us from worshipping a God we invented. So Scripture refuses both cold correctness and empty warmth. The knowledge of God is truth embraced with a whole life, resulting in worship, obedience, and love for others.
Jeremiah's brief oracle presses this because Judah felt secure in the wrong places. They honored God with their lips while their lives wandered. It is easy to confuse religious activity with genuine knowledge of God. Attending services, holding correct opinions, or serving in visible roles can all exist without love for the living God. Jeremiah redirects the glory of the boast. The question is not whether we are impressive, but whether we know the God who delights in steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. That is the standard, and it exposes our real confidence.
Why Wisdom, Might, and Riches Cannot Be the Boast
Wisdom, might, and riches are not evil in themselves. Scripture praises wisdom and calls riches a blessing under God. The problem is their assumption of the center. When these goods become our confidence, they distort the heart. The wise man builds an identity on his answers. The mighty man depends on his strength. The rich man rests on his security and accumulation. Notice that each of these boasts is a normal human pursuit, not a scandalous vice. They are unremarkable when viewed from the outside. Yet Jeremiah forbids resting in them, because anything that replaces God as our glory becomes a rival worship.
These boasts also prove fragile. Wisdom ages and can be outrun. Strength fails with the body and is never fully in our control. Wealth evaporates through markets, injustice, or death. To build a life on them is to build on shifting ground. Jeremiah's warning is not an instruction to neglect these gifts or to neglect effort in our work. Rather it strips them of the ultimacy they so easily claim. The wisdom we have is given. The strength we have is given. The wealth we have is given. When we glory in them, we glory in gifts as if we had made ourselves. That is vanity, and it cannot hold weight when tested.
There is also a social dimension. A community that glories in power and wealth will inevitably devalue the unimpressive and overlook the needy. A community that glories in knowing God will find it hard to ignore his own priorities. Jeremiah immediately names loving kindness, justice, and righteousness, which are not abstract ideals but moral commitments that change how we treat people. If our boast is right, our behavior follows. Where boasting in status rules, injustice is natural, because people become means rather than neighbors. Where knowing God rules, mercy becomes compelling, because mercy is who God declares himself to be.
The Content of the Boast: Knowing God and His Delight
Jeremiah does not merely forbid boasting; he replaces it with a better one. The one who boasts should understand and know God. And knowledge of God in this passage has definite content: God exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth, and he delights in these things. So we know him truly when we understand his moral character. This is a stunning claim. The infinite Creator is not merely powerful and distant. He is committed to mercy while never abandoning justice. These attributes meet most fully at the cross of Jesus Christ, where God shows both justice and justifying mercy. Our knowledge of God is therefore not abstract but cruciform.
Jeremiah also tells us that God delights in these things. That is, mercy, justice, and righteousness are not reluctant duties but his joy. Many people carry a picture of God as grudging and harsh, obeying a code he finds distasteful. The text presents the opposite. God is glad in kindness and glad in right dealing, and he calls his people into that gladness. To know God involves learning to love what he loves. That is a work of the heart, produced by the Spirit, not simply a moral effort. As we come to know him, our loves are reshaped. What once seemed weak becomes beautiful, and what once seemed impressive loses its shine.
This is also why the New Testament can make knowing God synonymous with salvation's essence. John 17:3 ties eternal life directly to knowing the Father and the Son. Philippians 3:8 calls everything a loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. Paul is not dismissing doctrine or effort; he is expressing the surpassing worth of Christ himself compared to all competing gains. Colossians 1:9-10 shows the apostles praying that believers may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that they walk worthily. Knowing God therefore begins with the gospel and continues in a life shaped by that gospel.
How Knowledge of God Grows: Ordinary Means
If knowing God is relational, how does it grow? Scripture consistently binds it to ordinary means. First, God's self-revelation in Scripture. We come to know him by hearing, reading, studying, and meditating on his word. This is why whole books of the Bible, such as Hosea, indict a people who rejected knowledge. Second, prayer. Paul's prayer for the Colossians is not a formality; it is how knowledge is sought and received. Third, obedience. Jesus said that whoever loves him keeps his commandments and he will manifest himself. Disobedience hardens the heart and obscures sight; obedient trust sharpens both. Fourth, the gathered church. Knowledge of God is not a solo project. We learn his character surrounded by his people, taught, corrected, and encouraged over years.
It is important not to confuse growing knowledge of God with emotional intensity. Seasons of dryness are common even for mature believers. The measure is not feeling but faith expressing itself in love and obedience. Likewise, growth is often gradual and unremarkable. Someone who has walked with God for decades may not be able to point to a single dramatic experience; instead, they can point to a life slowly conformed to Christ. That is knowledge of God in the biblical sense. It deepens quietly through fidelity. It is tested in hardship, which often teaches us more about God's sufficiency than comfort ever could. Suffering can be a classroom, but it is not the only one.
We should also beware of shortcuts. A hunger for spiritual experience can lead to looking for knowledge of God apart from his revealed word, which opens the door to error and self-deception. God has chosen to be known through what he has spoken, supremely in his Son. So the path is both simple and lifelong: hear the word, pray, obey, and stay among the saints. This does not earn God's favor; it receives it. Knowing God is a gift given in the gospel and a pursuit commanded by the gospel, and both truths must be held together. The one who boasts in knowing God boasts in a relationship God himself initiated and sustains.
Knowledge of God in the New Testament
The New Testament takes up the same theme with striking continuity. In 2 Peter 1:2-3, grace and peace are multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, and that same knowledge brings all things that pertain to life and godliness. Peter does not treat knowledge as one virtue among many. It is the sphere in which every other grace grows. Mature Christianity is not merely believing correct facts about God; it is knowing him increasingly. That is why the apostles speak of knowledge multiplying, filling, and deepening rather than being a static possession acquired once and filed away. The relationship develops, even as its object remains constant.
This also clarifies an important distinction. Knowing God is different from knowing about God, but the two are not enemies. Knowledge about God, rightly pursued, serves communion with God, just as knowing truths about a spouse serves a marriage. The danger is stopping at information, or supposing that information is enough. A marriage is not strengthened merely by memorizing facts about one's spouse, but it is not strengthened by ignoring them either. In the same way, doctrine without love inflates, and love without truth drifts. The New Testament holds them together because the God we are to know is the God who has revealed his character and his saving work in Christ Jesus.
Because knowledge of God is relational, it is also ethical. John's letters repeatedly connect knowing God with keeping his commandments and loving one another. Whoever claims to know God while hating a brother is contradicted by the claim itself. So knowledge of God produces love for neighbor, mercy toward the weak, and integrity in ordinary dealings. Jeremiah's triad of loving kindness, justice, and righteousness is not abandoned in the new covenant; it is written on hearts by the Spirit. This means that growth in knowledge is testable in daily life. It shows up in how we speak, spend, forgive, and treat those who cannot repay us. It is not a private badge but a public character.
The Pastoral Comfort of a Knowledge That Holds
Jeremiah 9:23-24 is often read only as a rebuke, but it is also profound comfort. It tells us that God's regard is not captured by the impressive. The quiet, uncelebrated believer who knows and loves God is engaged in the greatest pursuit available to a human being. If your life is small by the world's measures, this text dignifies it. If your mind is not the sharpest, your strength the greatest, or your resources the most, you are still invited into the highest privilege: to know the living God. The gospel levels every human boast and opens the same door to everyone who comes by faith in Jesus Christ.
It also reframes our failures. When our wisdom runs out, our strength collapses, or our money fails, we are not left without resources if our boast is in God. He remains who he is: merciful, just, and righteous. His love does not fluctuate with our performance. Christians differ on many secondary matters, but this foundation is shared across faithful traditions: salvation is by grace through faith, and the knowledge of God is a relationship established by that grace. Where believers differ on the details of how this knowledge is pursued or experienced, we can hold charity without surrendering the core. The important thing is that we actually know the God we speak of.
Finally, this knowledge is meant to issue in worship. The end of knowing God is not self-improvement but praise. When we see his mercy, justice, and righteousness, and when we see these meeting in Jesus Christ, our boasting is transferred from ourselves to him. That transfer is the heart of repentance and the heartbeat of the Christian life. So let the wise boast in this: that they understand and know Yahweh, who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth. Everything else can be lost. This boast cannot, because it rests not in our grip on God, but in his grip on us.
Biblical fidelity check
What does Jeremiah 9:23-24 establish? It establishes a command against glorying in wisdom, might, and riches, and a positive command to glory in understanding and knowing God, with his delight in loving kindness, justice, and righteousness given as the content of that knowledge. What it does not establish is that wisdom, strength, and wealth are inherently evil, that education or effort should be neglected, or that emotion alone constitutes knowledge of God. The passage does not describe a technique for spiritual experience, nor does it promise that knowing God will exempt anyone from poverty, weakness, or the loss of earthly things. It is a call to reorder every confidence under God.
A common misreading treats this text as if it said God cares only about feelings and not about truth or practice, or the opposite, as if knowing God were merely doctrinal correctness. Both are wrong. Jeremiah grounds knowledge in God's revealed character and its outworking in mercy, justice, and righteousness, which cannot be reduced to sentiment or to quiz answers. Another misreading reads the passage as a general invitation to spiritual self-cultivation apart from Christ. But John 17:3 identifies the knowledge of the only true God with knowing Jesus Christ whom he sent, and Philippians 3 locates it in Christ himself. The boast Jeremiah commands is ultimately a boast in the God who saves in Christ.
Other passages that speak to Jeremiah 9:23-24
Several related studies help place Jeremiah's call to boast in knowing God within the wider teaching of Scripture. First, What Does 1 John 1:1 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application shows why knowing God begins with the apostolic witness to the Word of life, the historical foundation for all fellowship with God. Second, What Does 1 John 1:8 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application explains why honest confession of sin is inseparable from true knowledge of God, since self-deceit blocks communion. Third, 1 John 1:9 Meaning: Confession, Forgiveness, and Cleansing assures believers that the God who calls us to know him also cleanses those who confess, keeping relationship open. Fourth, What Does 1 John 2:15 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application warns against love of the world, which is precisely the rival boast Jeremiah forbids.
Frequently asked questions
Is the knowledge of God the same as knowing facts about him?
No, though facts matter. In Scripture, knowing God is relational and covenantal, involving trust, love, and obedience, not merely correct information. Jeremiah ties it to understanding God's delight in loving kindness, justice, and righteousness, and John ties it to knowing the Father and the Son. Doctrine serves that relationship; it is not a substitute for it. A person may hold accurate beliefs and still not know God, and a person cannot truly know God while denying what he has revealed. Both truth and relationship belong together, and genuine knowledge of God produces a life shaped by his character.
How can an ordinary believer grow in the knowledge of God?
Growth ordinarily happens through means God has given: reading and meditating on Scripture, prayer, obedient trust, and life among God's people. Paul prays for the Colossians to be filled with the knowledge of his will, showing that this knowledge is sought from God, not manufactured. Jesus connects love for him with keeping his commandments. Growth is usually gradual and is often tested in hardship. The measure is not dramatic feeling but an increasingly Christlike life. Faithfulness in these ordinary practices, sustained over years, is the normal path by which God deepens our knowledge of himself.
Why does Jeremiah say wisdom, might, and riches cannot be our boast?
Not because these things are evil, but because they are fragile and easily become rival confidences. Wisdom fades, strength fails, and wealth can vanish, and when we rest in them we are resting on shifting ground rather than on God. They are also gifts, not achievements we can claim as our own making. Jeremiah redirects the boast to knowing God, whose loving kindness, justice, and righteousness are lasting. Boasting in these goods also damages how we treat others, since status-based confidence tends to neglect the weak. The passage reorders every human confidence under the God who alone deserves glory.
