…these things God has revealed to us through the [Holy] Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
1 Corinthians 2:6-16
Paul writes here of the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination within the Christian. In Romans 8:12-17, Paul wrote of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, which tells us that the Holy Spirit confirms to us that we are the children of God if we do in fact belong to Him. The Holy Spirit confirms our adoption internally in the midst of a passage that tells us unequivocally that we have been adopted. The Word operates externally by our reading and hearing it, and the Holy Spirit works internally to apply it to us so that we know in our hearts that we are God’s children. Divine illumination and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit are closely related. In both cases, the Holy Spirit works in and through the Scriptures of God’s prophets and Apostles. With Divine illumination, the Holy Spirit’s work is to give us understanding of Scripture. There are times in our lives when we are reading the Holy Bible and suddenly we are struck by something in the text that we have never noticed before. Perhaps we suddenly see how the passage applies to our current life’s circumstances. Maybe we understand the contours of an argument that escaped us previously. These are examples of the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination. In our verses today, the Apostle describes this work of illumination. It involves the Holy Spirit, searching the depths of God (v. 10), not because He does not know the mind of God—for the Holy Spirit is God—but, in order to grant to us the understanding that the Lord wants us to have. In other words, the Holy Spirit searches the mind of God for our sake. He does not just open our minds and hearts at conversion. Instead, He continues throughout our Christian lives to make the gospel make sense to us and convince us of its truth. This work of illumination does not operate by giving us secret insight that one cannot derive by reading the text in context. Scripture is not a code book or the basis for fanciful allegorizing. Illumination, rather, takes what is already there and makes it real to us. Without the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination, we will never understand the Bible in a saving way. Many people read the Bible, know what it teaches, but never believe its message. It is not that they are somehow less intelligent. They do not believe because they have not been granted the ability to do so. We should thank God every day that He has granted us the capacity to trust in His Word, and may we ask Him to illumine our study every time we read it.
Source: S C Ball October 23, 2023
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