Why would God test people, at first? Isn’t God all knowing?

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According to the Bible, God have tested people. Abraham for example. Why is it? Isn’t God all knowing? Why would God have to test people while God know everything?
 
You’re about to be indundated with a lot of speculation and theories from well meaning people who really don’t know what the answer is.
This is a mystery of faith.
 
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Testing does not change God, it changes us. We retain our free will throughout the testing.
 
So, GOD knows in advance the outcome right? We know this from our Philosophical deductions, logic and Revelation by GOD.

What about Abraham? Does he know if he can withstand the test? Without being tested!

So I hope you see that HE tests us so that we can make our choice, pass or fail it is in end up to us.
Free will. If HE did not test us, either to protect us from the failure, HE knows we will have or to teach us the limit of our strength if we pass, which HE also knows right? Free will would not be true.
As HE would have made the choice for us.
Remember also that GOD is working a veeeeery long time plan here.
All the way to the end of the universe.
 
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It would be easier to answer this question if you provide an example.
 
Needy1 said:
According to the Bible, God have tested people. Abraham for example. Why is it? Isn’t God all knowing? Why would God have to test people while God know everything?
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Why would Jesus in scripture ask questions of anyone, since He already knows their answer before the foundation of the world?

It’s for THEIR knowledge and ours, when we read the answer
 
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Jesus didn’t “know everything”.

It’s possible he knew he was “the Son of God” partly b/c his mother told him and partly b/c it was revealed at his baptism.
 
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Needy1 said:
According to the Bible, God have tested people. Abraham for example. Why is it? Isn’t God all knowing? Why would God have to test people while God know everything?
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To share. Any test allows us demonstrate love in keeping with our being created in the image and likeness of God.

1 Corinthians 9
24 Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. 25 Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.
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Catechism
1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.
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Bon_Croix said:
Jesus didn’t “know everything”.

It’s possible he knew he was “the Son of God” partly b/c his mother told him and partly b/c it was revealed at his baptism.
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Jesus by nature is always Divine, He’s always the 2nd person of the Trinity, He’s always God in His nature. He spoke in the beginning and all that is came into existence. He took on a 2nd nature in time. That didn’t detract from His Divine nature. That didn’t dumb down His divinity.

Jesus tells us in His own words about Himself

Jn 5:19
the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

Jn 6:
38* For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me;

Jn 8:29
The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him."

Jn 12:49
For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.

Jn 12:50
whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say."

Jn 14:10
The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

Jn 14:31
I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
 
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The ‘test’ is for human sake not God’s. The lesson is for us. In the case of Isaac, he was a type of Christ.
 
steve-b said:
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Needy1:
According to the Bible, God have tested people. Abraham for example. Why is it? Isn’t God all knowing? Why would God have to test people while God know everything?
Click to expand...
Why would Jesus in scripture ask questions of anyone, since He already knows their answer before the foundation of the world?

It’s for THEIR knowledge and ours, when we read the answer
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Just a fine point, but Jesus is fully human, and his knowledge of things human is not a “done deal”.
In Christ’s humanity, he grows in knowledge, although in God’s way knowing (which is the knowing of love) he is perfected with his Father. No small amount of mystery to ponder here.
But point taken that all of his questioning of us is out of love for us and for his glory.
 
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I think you need to look more at your questions from a standpoint of what lesson is the person learning, than what God needs to do or what God can do. God already knows the outcome. He’s helping us develop ourselves spiritually by giving us tests.
 
Everyone is given crosses in life that we struggle with and they are testaments to our faith and resilience for the infinite mercies of God. We all have our own crosses whether we like to admit them or not, and each one can either crush us and demean us or they can inspire us to greater faith and love of Jesus!

Just using myself as an example here, my crosses as they were, are life-threatening food allergies, temptations to impure actions, having a very hard time communicating with women and constantly over-analyzing situations. But these crosses, though very hard for me and they make me very sad sometimes as I feel they are too heavy for me to carry, I am reminded of Jesus who bore the sins of the world on the cross for the redemption of our sins! Jesus has used these crosses in my life to call me to a greater love of Him and others 😀
 
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God didn’t test Abraham, He taught him. He stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son and told him that He wasn’t like the God of the Greeks or the Romans etc but that He holds that life is Holy.
not a test, a lesson to be passed on …

So you say that why test us if God knows everything?

Because we don’t know everything, and He teaches us through these lessons. Do you see the difference? The lessons are for us.
 
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goout said:
Just a fine point, but Jesus is fully human, and his knowledge of things human is not a “done deal”.
In Christ’s humanity, he grows in knowledge, although in God’s way knowing (which is the knowing of love) he is perfected with his Father. No small amount of mystery to ponder here.
But point taken that all of his questioning of us is out of love for us and for his glory.
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And just a fine point as well, from the CCC

Re: 472 , that is qualified in 473 , 474, 475

472 This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why the Son of God could, when he became man, “increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man”,101 and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience.102 This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself, taking “the form of a slave”.103

473 But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God’s Son expressed the divine life of his person.104 "The human nature of God’s Son, not by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself everything that pertains to God." 105 Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father.106 The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.107

474 By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal. 108 What he admitted to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal. 109

Christ’s human will

475 Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but co-operate in such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation.110 Christ’s human will "does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will."111
 
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