SPIRIT TAUGHT: THE RESULT IS SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION
“Having the understanding darkened…because of the blindness of their heart” (EPHESIANS 4:18)
It may shock some readers to suggest that there is a difference between being “Bible taught” and “Spirit taught.”
Nevertheless, it is so!
It is altogether possible to be instructed in the rudiments of the faith and still have no real understanding of the whole thing. And it is possible to go on to become expert in Bible doctrine and not have spiritual illumination, with the result that a veil remains over the mind, preventing it from apprehending the truth in its spiritual essence.
Most of us are acquainted with churches that teach the Bible to their children, reinforce it with catechism classes, and still never produce in them a living Christianity nor a virile godliness.
Their members show no evidence of having passed from death unto life. None of the earmarks of salvation so plainly indicated in the Scriptures are found among them. Their religious lives are correct and reasonably moral, but wholly mechanical and altogether lacking in radiance.
Many of them are pathetically serious about it all, but they are spiritually blind, getting along with the outward shell of faith while all the time their deep hearts are starving for spiritual reality.
It has been said that “The Scriptures, to be understood, must be read with the same Spirit that originally inspired them.” No one denies this, but even such a statement will go over the heads of those who hear it unless the Holy Spirit inflames the heart!
- W. Tozer
Leave A Comment