Follow Jesus Christ

The song “If You Don’t Know Me by Now,” as performed by Simply Red in 1989, is a cover of a 1972 song by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes — but it was Simply Red’s version that became world-famous. The main idea of the song is summed up in the line, “If you don’t know me by now, you probably never will.” The narrator says to his wife: “We’ve been through so much together,” “You should understand me as I understand you,” “I’m not going to destroy our home.” “Yes, sometimes I come home late, yes, sometimes we argue.” “We need to trust each other more.” What we hear here is not so much a complaint as a moment of philosophical disappointment. The singer says enough time has passed that true mutual understanding ought to have developed — yet it hasn’t.

The song is less about love than about the fact that a long life together does not in itself guarantee true understanding. You can live side by side for years and never learn to see the other person’s inner world. Conversely, you can come to know someone very deeply in a relatively short time. The same can be said about contemporary Christianity: you can be a Christian for many years and still not know Jesus. You can love a religious system without knowing Jesus. Christianity has become like Judaism in Jesus’ time: we have built up many secondary things and forgotten that what is essential is Jesus and his way.

In psychology there is a distinction between “being acquainted with someone” and “knowing someone.” Most people know only facts about each other: age, job, hobbies, biography. That does not mean they know the person. We can identify levels. First: knowing facts — where someone was born, what they do for a living, what they like, their habits. That’s superficial knowledge. Second: understanding their inner world — knowing what another person fears, what they dream about, what hurts them, what their values are. Third: predicting their reactions — if you truly know someone you can fairly accurately say how they will act in a difficult situation, what will offend them, what will make them happy, what they would never do. That is why spouses after many years together sometimes finish each other’s sentences. Finally, the last level: understanding their development. People aren’t static. If you say “I know you very well” because you remember who they were ten years ago, that may no longer be true. People change.

Psychologist Carl Rogers believed that to understand a person is to be able to see the world through their eyes without losing your own perspective — not just to know their actions, but to grasp what those actions mean to them. Yet a philosophical problem remains: can we ever fully know another person? Most likely not.

Every person remains partly a mystery even to themselves. We are constantly changing, discovering new sides of ourselves, sometimes reacting unexpectedly to circumstances. To know someone means to understand their inner world deeply enough that their actions, feelings, and decisions cease to seem random. Perhaps that is why the closest relationships are not so much about the assertion “I already know you” as about an ongoing process: “I continue to learn about you.”

Psychology says we understand others through our own experience. If I have never suffered a loss, it’s hard for me to fully understand someone who has lost a child. If I have never felt deep guilt, I will find it difficult to understand a person who repents. The same is true of moral heights. When we meet someone who lives out love, humility, and forgiveness at a level we have never reached, we inevitably interpret them through our own motives. For example, if I am used to looking for personal gain, selflessness will seem like hidden manipulation. If I am only partly honest, absolute honesty will appear naïve. If I habitually seek revenge, forgiveness will seem like weakness. In other words, we don’t just fail to understand such a person — we involuntarily translate their actions into our own inner language. That is why many outstanding people remained misunderstood during their lifetimes.

Do Christians know Jesus? Many have tried to understand him only on the basis of his words. But perhaps he cannot be understood by words alone. You can understand him only to the extent that you begin to live by the principles he taught: loving your enemies, forgiving, renouncing vengeance, not seeking personal glory, serving others. The closer a person comes to these principles in their own life, the less Jesus’ words and actions seem strange. Conversely, if someone’s value system is opposed to these principles, many of his actions appear illogical or even unacceptable. For this reason many Christians don’t even try to understand Jesus. Many regard him only as a sacrifice for sins while refusing to follow or to understand him.

Understanding Jesus is not only an intellectual task; it is also an inner-developmental one. The distance between many modern Christians and Christ is measured not by education but by differences in experience and value systems. That is why some people, reading the same words of Jesus, see mere dry moral rules while others see a radically different vision of human life.

When people say “I understand Jesus,” that doesn’t always mean they truly understand his value system. Very often they understand him through their own coordinates. Thus one person sees him primarily as a revolutionary, another as a moralist, a third as a mystic, a fourth exclusively as a sacrifice for sins, a fifth as a teacher of love. From a psychological perspective this is predictable: people tend to interpret others through their own experience and values. Jesus lived at an extraordinarily high moral level, so it is impossible to fully understand him without moving closer to the values he embodied. Not because of some mystical requirement, but because many motives become comprehensible only from inside the relevant experience.

Do you want to know Jesus more intimately? Most Christians begin with questions like “Who is Jesus?”, “What is his nature?”, “What is atonement?”, “What is the Trinity?” But if your goal is to know Jesus rather than merely know about him, that is not the best starting point. Choose one specific command of Jesus and live it deliberately for at least a month. Then move on to the next. For example: don’t judge people for a month; consciously forgive offenses for a month; stop seeking your own advantage and seek the good of others; refuse to repay evil with evil; learn to love even those you find unpleasant. Each evening ask yourself one question: “Why did Jesus consider this so important?” Gradually you will notice that Jesus’ words stop being just moral rules. They begin to form a coherent worldview.

Don’t try to “know” Jesus all at once. Try first to look at the world through his eyes. We get to know a person not when we merely study their biography, but when we begin to understand the logic of their decisions. If you start to see the inner logic of Jesus’ actions, you will gradually begin to understand him himself. To know Jesus, it is not enough to study his words; you need to live for a time as if he were right, and watch carefully what that changes in you and in your perception of the world.

Jesus wanted friends and followers around him. He called us brothers. So try not only to worship Jesus’ person but to understand his inner life. Why did he live the way he did? What was the source of his decisions? Jesus cannot be known solely intellectually. A person begins to understand him when they themselves serve others, learn to love without calculation, trust God, and grow spiritually. This closely mirrors a psychological principle: experience reveals meaning. And that experience can be gained only in everyday life, not in ceremonial Sunday services.

But don’t simply copy Jesus’ actions. Seek the inner source from which those actions flowed. The question should not be “How can I repeat a particular deed?” but “How can I arrive at an inner state in which that deed becomes natural?” And don’t forget: knowing Jesus is not an event but a long process. As a person becomes more loving, patient, and free from selfishness, they begin to understand his words differently. You cannot understand a great person while remaining at your former level of inner development. To understand any great person you must at least partially rise to their way of seeing the world. So do we know Jesus? Have we risen to his way of seeing the world?