THE SPIRIT AND HIS WORD: THEY WORK TOGETHER

The knowledge of the truth of God can build us up. It is even necessary for our growth. Paul explained that God had provided His Church with teachers and pastors to build it up in the transformational knowledge of the truth:

·       …to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Ephesians 4:12-15; ESV)

The truth is the source of all unity, stability, and growth (2 Peter 1:2-3). Nevertheless, the truth can also be used as a hammer to destroy and separate us when the Spirit is not involved:

·       If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-2)

Where the Spirit is lacking, we are possessed by an earthly wisdom and its earthly motives:

·       But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. (James 3:14-16)

Without the Spirit, we can even use the truth for very self-centered and unspiritual purposes. Consequently, in the Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Richard Lovelace has written:

·       [Biblical] propositions fall far short of the splendor of the One who is the Word and the Truth, it must be admitted. But by the power of the Spirit of truth they can be the medium of conveying to us the mind of Christ. The Christian who wants to encounter God without listening to what he has to say may remain in the condition of a smiling sub-literate and the disobedient two-year-old. (282)

Lovelace, therefore, argues that we need both – the Word and the Spirit illuminating it and applying it to our minds and hearts. Actually, this is at the heart of the New Covenant promise:

·       “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

However, this promised experience of God writing His words on our heart does not seem to be independent of our meditating on His Word. Paul had explained that the Spirit had written the Words upon the hearts of the newborn Church, but this did not happen apart from Paul’s teaching ministry.

·       And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:3)

The Israelites also had the Scriptures, which were able to make them wise unto salvation (2 Timothy 3:15; but without the Spirit, they remained blinded (1 Corinthians 3:14). However, the children of Christ had the Spirit. Consequently, they were able to behold the transformative truths of God (2 Corinthians 3:17-18; 4:4-6).

The Spirit must illuminate the Scriptures for us as Jesus had done for His disciples after His resurrection:

·       Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45)

While the Spirit has the ability to open our minds without the Word, He does so in accordance with the Word. Jesus had also promised His Apostles that the Spirit would bring all His teachings (Scripture) back into their remembrance (John 14:26).

Similarly, Paul instructed Timothy to meditate on what he had written him. Consequently, God would give Timothy understanding in conjunction with Paul’s words, not in isolation from them:

·       It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. (2 Timothy 2:6-7)

Again, we see that the Lord illuminates Scripture giving us understanding. Paul also likens Timothy’s reflections on Paul’s writings to the “hard-working farmer.” This suggests that we shouldn’t take the Spirit’s work for granted. We too must do our part by diligently studying Scripture, laboring over it, meditating on it both night and day (Psalm 1:1-3; Joshua 1:9; Deuteronomy 6:4-6).

Against this, some have appealed to the Spirit alone to guide us into all truth. For example:

·       Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Consequently, they wrongly argue that all they need is the Spirit and ecstatic experience. However, if we truly hear what Scripture is promising, we understand that these verses are promising His guidance in conjunction with the Word, with acknowledging Him in all of our ways.

How do we acknowledge Him? By acknowledging His Word! There is no other way. To acknowledge Him, we have to acknowledge what He reveals about Himself. According to Jesus, the Father requires worship which accords with His truth, as He had informed the woman by a well in Samaria:

·       But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24)

Scripture does not allow us to separate God from the truth of His Word. The two are inseparable. To love God is to love His Word. To hate Him is to dismiss or hate His Word. Consider these verses:

·       Psalm 130:5-6: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in HIS WORD I put my hope.”

·       I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name [God Himself] and YOUR WORD. (Psalm 138:2)

·       "But anyone who sins defiantly…BLASPHEMES THE LORD, and that person must be cut off from his people. Because he has DESPISED THE LORD'S WORD and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him" (Numbers 15:30-31).

·        “Why did you DESPISE THE WORD OF THE LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you DESPISED ME and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own” (2 Samuel 12:9-10).

Consequently, to love God is to love His Word (John 14:23-24). This understanding should prevent us from relying on either the Spirit or His Word. The two must go together. Besides, we are instructed to pursue understanding through the Word and not experiences.

Seeing our dependence on both the Word and the Author of the Word, we should be in continual prayer for understanding and the Spirit’s involvement. We also have to ask Him to protect us from sin – anything that would distance the Spirit from us. Consequently, we should be examining ourselves to see if there is anything that might be separating us from His influence (1 Corinthians 11:28-32), also asking Him to examine us (Psalm 139:23-24).