To Know and Be Known

The Question We Keep Avoiding

We all do it.

Someone asks how you're doing, and without missing a beat, you launch into a breathless rundown - the deadlines, the kids' schedules, the project that's behind, the inbox that never empties. "Busy" is the answer. It's always busy.

But here's the thing about busyness: it's a brilliant disguise. Behind every crammed calendar and every overflowing to-do list is a question we haven't answered - maybe haven't even asked. And it's the most important question of our lives:

What is my greatest purpose? Why do I exist?

Chasing the Wrong Things

If we're honest, most of us spend our lives auditioning answers to this question without realizing it. We chase success, recognition, achievement. We tell ourselves: If I get that promotion, if I reach that goal, if I build something that matters, then I'll feel it. That sense of meaning. That arrival.

And sometimes we get those things. And still, something feels missing.

The pursuit of fame, fortune, and accomplishment isn't wrong, exactly, but it has a strange habit of leaving us emptier than when we started. We reach the summit and find ourselves scanning the horizon for the next one.

So what are we actually looking for?

The Answer That Surprised a Room Full of Believers

Every spring, I teach a baptism class at my church. The students are already believers, for the most part - some have already committed their lives to Jesus; others are still in discovery. Near the end of the first lesson, I ask: "What is your greatest purpose and the reason for which you exist?"

The answers come quickly, confidently:

"To glorify God."
"To make disciples."
"To praise His name."
"To serve Him."

Good answers. Right answers, even. And then I say: "What if I told you, no?"

The room goes quiet.

"I Never Knew You"

The pause isn't there to be provocative. It points toward one of the most unsettling passages in all of Scripture. In Matthew 7, Jesus describes people who prophesied in His name, cast out demons, performed mighty works, and were turned away. Not because they didn't do enough, but because He never knew them.

"I never knew you."

That phrase cuts to the heart of everything. It suggests that the real question isn't what we do for God, it's whether we actually know Him.

The Apostle Paul understood this with startling clarity. He was, by every measure, a high-achiever: a devoted Pharisee, zealous, accomplished, impressive by the law’s standard. And yet he wrote that he counted all of it as loss: every credential, every achievement, and every act of service. It was all considered a loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus.

Not serving Jesus. Not performing for Jesus. Knowing Him was the answer.

The Difference That Changes Everything

There's a profound distinction between doing things for someone and actually knowing them, and being known by them in return.

For years, I lived on the performance side of that divide. I believed, genuinely, that I could earn God's approval through effort and goodness. Every night I'd lay in bed feeling the weight of not having done enough. I'd pray for forgiveness. I would promise to try harder tomorrow. It felt like my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling.

Then something shifted. I began to understand that God wasn't distant, waiting to be impressed. He was present, inside me, knowing my thoughts, understanding my struggle to measure up before I ever found the words to explain it.

Why was I straining to articulate what He already knew?

That realization didn't make me less faithful. It made me freer. I stopped agonizing over failures and started resting in the grace that was already mine. I stopped begging for forgiveness and started thanking God for it. Not because the standards changed, but because the relationship did.

What Flows From Knowing

Here's the surprising thing about getting this right: all those good answers my students give - the glorifying, the praising, the disciple-making - they don't disappear. They multiply.

But they stop being obligatory. They become expressions.

Worship isn't a performance you put on for God. It's what pours out of a life that has been genuinely encountered by love. Service isn't a checklist you maintain to stay in good standing. It's the natural response of someone who walks alongside Jesus, yoked to Him, not to a list of things to do.

That image - being yoked to Christ - matters enormously. A yoke isn't about carrying a burden alone. It's about moving together. The work still happens. But it happens in relationship, not in striving.

The Eternal Answer

So what is our greatest purpose?

Not fame. Not achievement. Not even the most noble acts of service, ministry, or sacrifice, though those things matter deeply in their proper place.

Our greatest purpose is to know Jesus, and to be known by Him. It is, in the truest sense, an eternal journey: a lifetime of discovering the depth of a love that has no floor.

And the stunning thing? The more we lean into that knowing, the more we trust, linger, and let ourselves be understood, the more everything else begins to flow naturally from the overflow. The works happen. The fruit appears. Not because we pushed out enough effort, but because we trusted in the source.

Like Paul, we are invited to count everything else as loss for the surpassing worth of this one thing. Not as resignation, but as liberation.

The question of purpose doesn't have to stay unanswered. The answer has been waiting all along; not at the end of a to-do list, but at the beginning of a conversation.

Corny Bartsch