New Morning Mercies #246

Grace causes us to be alive to God and causes our eyes to be open to spiritual realities we once had no capacity to see.

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor. 2:6–16)

This really is one of those “That says it all” passages. It confronts us with our inability to see and understand the things of God, things that are critical not only for knowing God, but also for living life as he designed it to be lived. You and I simply cannot know all that we need to know in order to be what we’re supposed to be and to do what we’re supposed to do by means of personal experience and collective research. There is a body of wisdom that comes to us only by means of revelation. God first reveals this wisdom to us in his grand redemptive book, the Bible, and then he opens our eyes and our hearts so that we can receive and understand what he has revealed. Without this ministry of illumining grace, these things would be at worst completely concealed from us and at best a whole lot of foolishness to us. We need Christ to come to us by his Spirit to reveal his mind to us so that we can think his thoughts after him.

All of this is vitally important because one of the things that sin does is turn us all into fools. Sin brings with it a functional insanity from which we all need to be delivered. So here is delivering grace that opens the eyes and understanding of our hearts so that we may know God, know his grace, and seek and receive the life that only he can give.

For further study and encouragement: John 14:15–31