How could an all-knowing, omniscient God say such a thing?

How could Jesus, who is God in flesh, look into someone’s soul and say he never knew them? Is this a contradiction? A paradox? Or something deeper?

To be sure, Scripture teaches that God is omniscient—He knows all things. And yet, Jesus’ words here suggest there is a kind of knowing that God will not force. A kind of knowing that must be invited. That must be mutual.

This is where the Philosopher’s God begins to fall apart. You know the one—omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Perfect in power, all-knowing, always everywhere. That God is not false. But He is flat. A list of adjectives isn’t a relationship. Attributes are not a person.

It’s like trying to describe someone you love by reading off the bullet points on their résumé. True, maybe—but not intimate.

The Philosopher’s God is like a pencil sketch of the divine—suggestive, but lifeless. Close, but not Him. Not the real thing.

The God of the Bible is different. He is alive. Relational. Particular. He creates, He invites, He fills. But He does not impose. He does not coerce. From the very beginning, God’s posture toward creation has been one of generosity, not domination. And so when He created humanity in His image, He embedded something of Himself into them: agency.

Agency is the ability to choose freely between real alternatives. Between life and death. Between trust and autonomy. Between becoming like God—or becoming unlike Him.

That’s the irony of Genesis 3. The serpent tempts Eve with the promise of becoming like God. But her choice—mistrusting God, taking rather than receiving—makes humanity anything but like God. For God is relational. Submitting. Loving. Trusting. The action Eve took fractured that. She did not trust. She did not love. She broke relationship—with God and with the other.

And because of this gift of agency, we now inhabit a realm that God does not control. Not because He can’t, but because He won’t. It’s not chaos. It’s not out of His reach. But it is unforced.

The psalmists understood this. When they wrote about the sea dragons, the tanninim, they weren’t just describing mythical creatures. They were naming the chaos that lurks beneath the surface of life—the unresolved, the untamed, the powers that threaten to pull us under. And yet, God rules even over them. Tim Mackie described Leviathan like a rubber ducky in Yahweh’s bathtub. (Psalm 104v26) God is not intimidated.

But He chooses not to dominate us.

He limits His own power—not because He is weak, but because love always limits power. God is sovereign precisely because He allows for freedom. He leaves space for us to respond. Or not.

That’s why Psalm 139 is so profound. David writes, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.” He speaks of a God who sees him in every moment—when he sits, when he rises, even the words before they form on his tongue. “You perceive my thoughts from afar,” he says. “You hem me in behind and before.”

And yet—at the end—David prays again: “Search me, God, and know my heart… Test me and know my anxious thoughts… See if there be any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Why would David ask God to search him again, if God already knows everything?

Because intimacy with God is not automatic. It’s mutual. And God, though all-knowing, will not force intimacy. He waits to be invited. Even in His knowing, He respects the boundary of the heart.

Just a few verses earlier, David even expresses his rawest emotions to God: “If only you would slay the wicked… Do I not hate those who hate you?” It’s messy, emotional, unfiltered—but it’s honest. And God delights in that honesty. David was going vertical. He was offering his soul, unedited. And to God, that smelled like a sweet aroma. Like barbecue on an early summer breeze—something tender and rich that rises from a fire and calls out, Come near. Come closer.

Your garden of Eden is your heart.

And just like the first Eden, God won’t force His way in.

He barred us from Eden because of sin. But through the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb—through Jesus—He went through the flaming sword that guarded the way back in. He made a way. And now He knocks. Not as a conqueror, but as a guest.

Behold, He stands at the door and knocks.

He knocks to be known.

Yes, He sees you from afar. He knows your patterns and preferences and the posture you carry when no one’s watching. But He still waits for your “yes.” He wants you to want Him. And even more tenderly—He will not force you to want to want Him.

But make no mistake—He has never stopped.

He has never stopped wanting you. Like a child’s favorite stuffy—you are the object of God’s love. The one He crossed the cosmos to rescue. The one He was pierced for. The one He longs to walk with again in the cool of the day.

He knows about you.

But the real question is:

Will you let Him know you?