God's Word For You is a free Bible Study site committed to bringing you studies firmly grounded in the Bible – the Word of God. Holding a reformed, conservative, evangelical perspective this site affirms that God has provided in Jesus Christ his eternal Son, a way of salvation in which we can live in his presence guilt free, acquitted and at peace.

 
 

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

In the previous meditation we noted that the Holy Spirit was directly involved in moving people to speak and write the Word of God. It is also the Holy Spirit who applies that truth to our individual hearts and minds, so that we may grasp and understand the knowledge of God available in creation, in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. So that we can actually know God.

Without this operation of the Spirit of God in our individual hearts and minds we would forever miss, or misinterpret, the truth about God that is there. This inability of ours to see/hear the word of God, to see and know God, is repeatedly affirmed in the Bible’s description of us in both Old and New Testaments:

We are spiritually dead – Ephesians 2:1, 5.
We are blind – 2Corinthians 4:4.
We do not see what is right before our eyes – Isaiah 26:11.
No one understands – Romans 3:11.
In fact, we cannot understand – 1Corinthians 2:14.
Our hearts are so hardened that our thinking is futile and our understanding darkened – Ephesians 4:17 – 18.
We have deliberately chosen to believe lies – Isaiah 28:15b.
In our minds we are enemies of God – Colossians 1:21.
We love the darkness and refuse to come to the light – John 3:19.
We deliberately forget the truth – 2Peter 3:3 – 5.
We need God to open our eyes so that we can see what is in his word – Psalm 119:18.
Unless the Spirit of God brings us to life we can neither see nor enter the kingdom of God – John 3:3 – 8.

In 1Corinthians 2:6-16 Paul gives clear teaching about the involvement of the Holy Spirit in getting us to know and understand God’s truth. Speaking about the message that he and the apostles taught, Paul teaches us:

That this message is not human wisdom, but ‘God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that had been hidden’ – verses 6 & 7.

That not even ‘the rulers of this age’ understood it – verse 8.

That it is beyond all human sight, thought and human imaginings – verse 9.

Left to ourselves, we do not and cannot know God. So darkened is our understanding, that we do not know who or what we are talking about when we use the word ‘God.’ Left to ourselves, we are happy enough to believe whatever we want – whatever makes us feel good, or whatever is the latest ideology. Because of the enmity in our minds we will embrace anything other than God’s truth.

And even for those who ask serious questions about God, and really want to know the truth, left to ourselves we do not and cannot understand God’s truth, God’s ‘secret wisdom’. That is, we cannot understand God’s age-long mystery: the truth about Jesus Christ and the salvation God grants to us through Christ’s crucifixion. Left to ourselves, we would not even think of the truth of the Gospel, it is so grand and so glorious that it wouldn’t even enter our heads as a possibility. As God says through Isaiah ‘my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways’ – Isaiah 55:8.

‘But,’ says Paul,

God has revealed this to us ‘by his Spirit’ [verse 10]..

We have ‘received … the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us’ [1Corinthians 2:12].

We are ‘taught by the Spirit’ [verse 13].

The truths we know ‘come from the Spirit of God’ [verse 14].

Because of this action of the Spirit in revealing God’s truth to us, we have, Paul teaches, ‘the mind of Christ’ [verse 16].

The fact that you and I see and know Jesus Christ, the fact that you and I know and understand what Christ did for us on the cross, is clearly the result of the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds.

This revelatory role of the Spirit is an essential part of a person’s journey from unbelief to faith in Christ. It is also an essential part of the life of the believer, as the Holy Spirit opens our hearts and minds to know more and more of the truth of Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. As Jesus promised:

John 15:26: ‘When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.’

John 16:13: ‘But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.’

Not new truth, for there is no such thing, but that eternal truth that is contained and seen and known in Jesus Christ.

© Rosemary Bardsley 2024