Unfolding Truth

Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions.

Psalm 119:18

Jesus asked the Father to reveal truth to us: “Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth” (John 17:17). He prayed that the Father would use the truth hidden in his Word to make us holy. The Father always hears and answers the Son (see John 11:41). So we are experiencing the Father’s work in response to the Son’s words.

Is the truth in God’s Word sitting on the surface to be skimmed off by the casual reader? No. The Scriptures make it clear that the treasures of the Word are hidden: “In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). They are hidden in the written Word and in the living Word. The wonderful, rich, consecrating truth is buried. It must be mined, like gold or silver (see Proverbs 2:3-4).

God has deliberately hidden deep truth so that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, can disclose it. The Spirit, working directly in our minds and understanding, reveals truth. First Corinthians 2:12 tells us that God has given us his Spirit for this purpose: “We have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.” Because we have the Holy Spirit, we can understand what the human intellect alone is unable to comprehend. The truths of God’s Word are buried for one purpose—so that you and I can find them.

In the process of revealing “deep and hidden things,” God anchors in his children the knowledge that we are totally dependent upon him. Even our understanding of the truth comes directly and only from him. Left to our own devices, we would never see any deeper than the surface. But as we learn directly from him, our intimacy with him is strengthened and enriched.

Father, show me your deep and hidden truths.

It may be indispensable that Our Lord’s teaching, by its elusiveness (to our systematising intellect), should demand a response from the whole man, should make it so clear that there is no question of learning a subject but of steeping ourselves in a Personality.

C. S. Lewis(1898–1963), Irish novelist, literary critic, and essayist