What Does 1 John 3:20 Mean?
For if our heart knows against us, God is larger than our heart, and knows all things.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.THE KEY
The Greek uses the same knowing-root for the heart’s condemnation and God’s knowing: the heart knows against you, but God knows all.
THE MEANING
When your heart condemns you, that verdict is not the whole truth. God’s knowing is greater than your heart and reaches all things, including what your inner accusation cannot see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that an accusing verdict must be complete because it comes from within you; this verse places that verdict inside God’s greater knowing.
THE ROOT
καταγινώσκῃ
kataginōskē
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω
ginōskō
To know or perceive through encounter, rather than merely possess information.
The verse uses this knowing-root twice: the heart “knows against” you, while God knows all things. The root reveals that the heart’s condemnation is a kind of knowing, but it does not contain the reach of God’s knowing.
ALSO GROWS
kataginōskō: Condemn, find fault with; literally, to know against.
καταγινώσκω
This is the word translated “condemn”: the heart’s verdict takes the form of knowing against you.
ginōskō: Know, perceive through encounter.
γινώσκω
This is the word translated “knoweth”: the same knowing-root now names God’s knowing of all things.
THE PATTERN
God’s complete knowing reaches beyond the limits of human judgment, including the verdicts we form about ourselves.
You perceive my sitting and my rising, and from afar you separate out my thought.For I see nothing alongside myself, yet in this I have not been aligned. The one who judges me is the Lord.And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
For now we see through a mirror, in a riddle; but then face to face. Now I know in pieces; but then I shall know wholly, even as I was known.Paul uses the same γινώσκω (ginōskō), “know,” root and names human knowing as partial. That opens John’s contrast further: the heart’s condemning knowledge is real, but it does not have the final or complete view.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us