<p>15:34- see on 1 Cor. 4:14.</p><p><i>Awake to soberness righteously, and do not sin. For some among you have no knowledge of God- </i>We died and rose with Christ, and if Christ really did rise again, and we have a part in that, we must therefore abstain from sin, quit bad company and labour with the risen, active Lord. As noted on :33, this teaching is about the result of listening to false teaching which denied the resurrection, both of the Lord and ourselves. The end result of it was sin, and not knowing God; although <i>agnosia</i> really means 'ignorance'. Belief in the Lord's awaking would result in their moral awakening. To not believe in the Lord's resurrection was to not know God. There is actually no valid belief in God, or theism, if it is not predicated upon belief in the Lord's resurrection. Nobody can come to the Father except through the Son. &quot;Knowledge of God&quot; may well refer to relationship with God, rather than simply a lament that they did not know the right theology.</p><p>One of the greatest false doctrines of all time is the trinity- which claims that there are three &quot;persons&quot; in a Godhead. Trinitarian theologians borrowed a word- <i>persona</i> in Latin, <i>porsopon</i> in Greek- which was used for the mask which actors wore on stage. But for us, God doesn't exist in personas. He exists, as God the Father. And we practice the presence of that God. The real, true God, who isn't acting, projecting Himself through a mask, playing a role to our eyes; the God who is so crucially real and <i>alive</i>, there at the other end of our prayers, pulling at the other end of the cord... What we know of Him in His word is what and who He really is. It may not be <i>all</i> He is, but it is all the same the truth of the real and living God. And this knowledge should be the most arresting thing in the whole of our existence. So often the prophets use the idea of &quot;knowing God&quot; as an idiom for living a life totally dominated by that knowledge. The new covenant which we have entered is all about 'knowing' Yahweh. And Jer. 31:34 comments: &quot;They shall all know me&hellip; for I will forgive their iniquity&quot;. The knowledge of God elicits repentance, real repentance; and reveals an equally real forgiveness. It is possible for those in Christ to <i>in practice</i> not know God at all. Thus Paul exhorted the Corinthian ecclesia: &quot;Awake to righteousness and sin not: for some have no knowledge of God&quot; (1 Cor. 15:34 RV). The knowledge and practice of the presence of God ought to keep us back from sin. Ez. 43:8 RV points out how Israel were so wrong to have brought idols into the temple: &quot;in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and their door post beside my door post, and there was but the wall between me and them&quot;. How close God was ought to have made them quit their idolatry. But their cognizance of the closeness of God was merely theoretical. They didn't feel nor respond to the wonder of it. And truly, He is not far from every one of us.</p><p><i>I speak this to move you to shame- </i>As in 6:5; but on other matters, Paul did not seek to shame them (4:14). We note his sensitive approach to them, taking a different approach over different issues, just as we should. The &quot;shame&quot; was on &quot;you&quot;- that their collective attitudes had led to some amongst them having &quot;no knowledge of God&quot;. We are all in this together; it is not for us to shrug at the spiritual failure of some amongst us. Just as Ezra and others blushed at their collective shame for the behaviour of the community they were members of (Ezra 9:6).</p>