The Necessity of the Spirit's Illumination
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthains 2:14 NIV)
I said that the causes of religious confusion were four, and I named misunderstanding of the nature of truth as one of them.
The others are lack of love, unbelief and nonobedience.
"Wisdom is a loving spirit," says the Wisdom of Solomon. "He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way" (Psalm 25:9), says David, the father of Solomon, and these set forth a truth which the whole Bible joins to celebrate; namely, that love and wisdom are forever joined and that soundness of moral judgment is for the meek alone. The humble, loving heart intuits truth as the Scriptures reveal it and the Holy Spirit illuminates it. The Spirit will not enlighten an unloving mind; and without His enlightenment the mysteries of Christian truth must forever remain a stranger to us.
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To the loving mind God gives the power of immediate apprehension, and to none other. The theologian who is only a theologian must work out the teachings of the Scriptures as a child works out a jigsaw puzzle, fitting piece to piece with painstaking labor till at last he has a body of doctrine bearing some resemblance to the Biblical revelation. The difficulty (and the source of confusion) is that certain pieces will fit anywhere and others nowhere, so they may be forced into place or tossed back in the box at the whim of the student. But where love and illumination are, the picture always comes out right. The Spirit says one thing to all loving hearts.
Prayer
"Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me . . . Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine." That's my prayer, Lord!
Thought
Divine illumination is necessary to savingly understand God's self-disclosure because Satan is active in blinding the minds of humankind (2 Cor. 4:3-4). The Holy Spirit opens minds to understand spiritual truth (Acts 16:14).
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