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The Spirit’s Revelation of God’s Hidden Wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:9–13) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed thinking. This is the show where we do a
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deep dive into the sources that help us really get a handle on
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Christian theology and, you know, the authority we give to
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Scripture. And today we are opening up a
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passage that is just so central to, well, to Christian
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epistemology, the whole doctrine of how we know what we know.
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We're in First Corinthians chapter 2, looking at verses 9
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through 13. If you've ever asked the
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question, why do we believe the Bible is certain?
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Or maybe how do we even access God's saving plan when the world
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around us just treats it like it's nonsense?
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This passage messages. It's the answer key.
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Our subject today is God's hidden counsel why the gospel is
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inaccessible to human wisdom. We're going to try and look
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behind the scenes of revelation itself To get started, we really
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have to picture the context of this letter.
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Paul's writing to the church in Corinth, and Corinth was not
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some small town. It was a major metropolitan
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center known all across the Mediterranean.
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It was a place where people were, let's say, intellectually
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ambitious. Philosophy was king, and being
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able to speak with sophisticated, eloquent
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rhetoric, that was almost like a sport.
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So when the apostles show up with this simple message of
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Christ crucified, a concept that to Greek thinkers just sounded
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ridiculous and to Jewish traditionalists was a huge
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scandal, it just didn't land well by Corinthian standards.
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You know, it didn't have the intellectual Polish, that high
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rhetorical flair, or the kind of philosophical pedigree the city
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really admired. That's it exactly.
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And Paul saw that the dominant mindset of fallen humanity, what
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he ends up calling the spirit of the world, you know, this pride
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and what humans can do, intellectual autonomy and
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self-reliance. He saw that starting to creep
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into the church itself. And in that kind of atmosphere,
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the simple gospel starts to feel, well, cheap or
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unsophisticated compared to the latest philosophical ideas being
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debated in the marketplace. So Paul confronts this tension
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head on. The big question he's tackling
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in this whole chapter is this. If the wisdom of God, the wisdom
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you see in Christ's atonement and his resurrection, if that
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looks like weakness and foolishness to our unaided
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natural reason, then where does the saving knowledge of God even
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come from? How can anyone possibly come and
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understand and and actually embrace this plan?
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He's basically building a case against human intellectual
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arrogance, isn't? He, he is.
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And these verses 9 through 13, this is where Paul lays out the
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answer. It's almost like an instruction
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manual for how Christian knowing actually works.
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It is, and our whole deep dive today is going to be built
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around distilling Paul's argument.
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He wants to ground all our confidence in Christian doctrine
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solely on the Spirit of God speaking through the inspired
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Word. We're going to look at 3
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connected pieces that Paul reveals.
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First, why revelation is absolutely necessary because of
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human limits. Second, the exclusive competence
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of the Holy Spirit is the one who does the revealing.
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And 3rd, how this all applies to the authority of Scripture and
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the Spirit's work in the church today.
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All right, let's unpack that first point, then the necessity
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of it all. Paul kicks this off with a
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really powerful statement, and he's using language that sort of
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echoes Isaiah 64. He makes the strong assertion
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that God's redemptive plan was prepared long, long ago, but it
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was completely outside the grasp of human intelligence.
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And our sources point out, he uses this dramatic triple
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negation to really drive home the total failure of human
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ability. That AAA negation in verse 9 is,
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well, it's rhetorically absolute.
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It's designed to just shut down any claim that humanity could
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have figured out God's specific saving plan using any of its
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natural faculties. Paul just systematically
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dismisses all three of the main ways that human beings generally
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acquire knowledge in the world. I'm curious, why three different
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ways? Why not just say you couldn't
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see it? What did those three things I
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ear and heart? What did they represent in the
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ancient world, especially in a place like Corinth, that was so
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philosophical? That's a great question because
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each term really, it does represent a whole.
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Avenue of human inquiry and while they're.
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Useful for worldly things, they are totally inadequate.
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For getting into God's inner counsel.
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So the first one is the I what no I has seen.
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This is all about empirical sensory observation.
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This immediately rules out the whole approach of, say, ancient
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empiricism, which tries to find truth primarily by observing the
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external world through scientific method or by studying
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nature, the saving plan, the wisdom of God in Christ.
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It's not something you can discover by looking at the
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created order or just observing human history.
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It's a super sensory kind of knowledge.
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If you only relied on what you could see happening in the
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world, the crucifixion just looks like a political
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execution, a failure, not God's eternal design.
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OK, so the world of sight and observation fails.
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So the ear, that must represent a different kind of failure.
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Correct. The second is the ear nor ear
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heard. This points to received
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instruction, tradition, or public disclosure.
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In the ancient world, truth was often passed down through
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authoritative traditions. You know, philosophical schools,
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mystery cults, ancestral religious practices.
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And Paul is making it clear here that God's counsel is not found
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in the traditions that get inherited from one generation to
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the next, nor is it in secrets whispered from a master to a
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student. It's not something you can get
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by just being taught by human means.
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It rejects the authority of every non divine tradition.
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That makes sense. Observation fails, Tradition
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fails. But the most prestigious kind of
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knowledge in Corinth would have been philosophical reasoning,
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the kind that comes from deep introspection.
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How does Paul deal with that, that higher faculty?
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And that's where the heart comes in.
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And this is maybe the most sweeping negation of them all.
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Nor the heart of man imagined, really.
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This heart, in Paul's usage, refers to the deepest center of
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a person. It includes intellect,
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intention, our reflective capacity.
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So this is a decisive rejection of knowledge gained through
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sheer internal reflection or intuition or some kind of
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mystical ascent or even the very best philosophical reasoning.
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You know, think about the great philosophical systems.
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They're all products of brilliant human hearts trying to
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reason out the nature of good and the path to salvation.
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Paul is saying that even if the greatest genius, whoever lived,
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sat down and thought about it for 1000 years, they would never
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ever conceive of the idea of God redeeming the world through the
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scandalous cross of Christ. The gospel isn't an evolved
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idea. You can't just dream it up.
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So if we put those 3 failures together, empiricism with the
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eye, tradition and instruction with the ear, and rationalism or
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intuition with the heart, it means that every single natural
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human faculty, whether it's sensory, received or internal,
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it just completely fails when it tries to discover God's specific
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redemptive wisdom. That is the precise conclusion
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Paul is forcing us toward unaided human intelligence.
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It doesn't matter how brilliant or how disciplined it is, it
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hits a wall. The saving counsel of God, that
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unique wisdom about Christ, it's qualitatively different from any
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human knowledge, and it's completely inaccessible to our
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natural equipment. Without God actively, you know,
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pulling back the veil and speaking, the gospel just
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remains a locked, hidden mystery.
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But hold on, doesn't this kind of run up against the concept of
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general revelation? I mean, many would argue that we
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can learn quite a bit about God just by looking at creation.
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Where does Paul draw the line? He draws the line exactly at
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saving counsel. We absolutely can discern God's
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power, His creative genius, His moral law, through nature and
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conscience. That's general revelation, and
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it's taught elsewhere in Scripture.
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But general revelation only leads to condemnation.
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It doesn't reveal the specific, gracious, eternal plan to save
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sinners through the substitutionary sacrifice of His
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Son. That plan is an eternal decree
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of God hidden before the ages, and that's the subject of this
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inaccessibility. The necessary prerequisite for
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Christian knowledge is not human searching, it's divine
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revelation. If we could reason our way to
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the atonement, then revelation wouldn't be necessary, and the
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Holy Spirit's role would be well minimized.
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Paul's whole system here is designed to remove all boasting
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and human cleverness. And what makes this hidden
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wisdom so desirable? Paul contrasts its hiddenness
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with its objective. He says it concerns what God has
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prepared for those who love him. And this contrast is vital.
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The content of this inaccessible knowledge is incredibly
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desirable because it concerns God's eternal, gracious and
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purposeful design. It wasn't invented yesterday.
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It was prepared to create and set an order by God before the
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creation of the world. And the beneficiaries are
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defined covenantally, those who love him.
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This really highlights that access to this knowledge isn't
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given to the intellectually elite or the rhetorically
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skilled or the socially powerful, but to those who are
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defined by a relationship of faith and love that was
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initiated by God. It just underscores that the
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Gospel is a gift that requires the humbling of the human mind,
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replacing intellectual pride with grateful reception.
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OK, so we've established the absolute failure of human
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ascent. We can't climb up to God's
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secrets with our eyes or ears or heart.
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If human ascent is impossible, the only solution has to be a
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divine descent. And Paul marks this decisive
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shift from hiddenness to disclosure right in the next
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verse. This is the real turning point
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of the chapter. Paul says these things God has
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revealed to us through the Spirit.
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This makes Christian doctrine, and specifically the gospel of
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Christ crucified, the product of a unique divine self disclosure.
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It's fundamentally a top down operation, a gracious intrusion
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of heaven's wisdom into humanity and the US.
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Here, that's primarily referring to the Apostolic witnesses, Paul
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and the others who were commissioned to lay the
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doctrinal foundation of the Church.
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They are the recipients of this unique disclosure.
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The whole structure of Christian knowledge relies on the fact
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that God took the initiative to communicate what was otherwise
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unknowable. The audacity of calls argument
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here is pretty remarkable. He has to prove that the
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messenger of the Spirit is fully competent to disclose God's
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secrets. So what grounds the Spirit's
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unique ability to reveal the depths of God?
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Paul provides A theological justification for it and is
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rooted in the Spirit's nature. He argues that the Spirit
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possesses exclusive, exhaustive, and penetrating knowledge of
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God's inner life and counsel. Verse 10 and 11 really detail
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this competence, Paul says. For the Spirit searches
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everything, even the depths of God.
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Let's stop right there. That term searches sounds a
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little bit like an investigation, which might
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suggest that the spirit is learning or is ignorant.
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Given that we hold to the Spirit's full deity, how do our
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sources explain that terminology?
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That's a crucial point, and it does reflect the potential
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misunderstanding of the Greek word he's using here.
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When it's applied to God or the Spirit searches doesn't imply
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investigative ignorance, as if the Spirit were, you know,
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looking around, trying to find the answers.
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Instead, it signifies the comprehensive scope and the
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penetrating nature of the Spirit's knowledge.
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Think of it less as searching for something lost and more as
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penetrating fully into the reality of it.
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Affirms the Spirit's exhaustive grasp of God's essence and His
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eternal plan. The Spirit does not need to
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search. He knows completely.
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The term is used here to show that nothing about God's inner
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counsel, his motives, his intentions, his decrees, nothing
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is hidden from the Spirit. And those intentions and
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decrees, that's what Paul is calling the depths of God.
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What are we including in that phrase?
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The depths of God represents God's inner counsel, His eternal
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wisdom, His saving decree, the very things that were hidden
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from the eye, ear, and heart of man just a moment ago in verse
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9. This includes the trying life,
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the specifics of the covenant of redemption, and the execution of
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salvation through Christ. The Spirit knows God's innermost
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being and purposes without any limit.
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Paul then uses that really perfect analogy in verse 11
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about human self disclosure to kind of solidify the argument
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for the Spirit's exclusive competence.
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Yes, the analogy is brilliant, and it's accessible.
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Paul asks for who knows a person's thoughts except the
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spirit of that person, which is in him.
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Imagine you're standing across from someone.
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You can see their actions, you can hear their speech.
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You can try to guess their mood, but their true deep thoughts,
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their private motivations, their inner deliberations, that is
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utterly inaccessible to you. Only the individual's own
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consciousness or spirit knows those internal workings.
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If that person chooses to disclose them, you gain access.
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Otherwise they stay hidden. So we just apply that analogy
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upward to God. Exactly.
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And by analogy, Paul concludes that no one comprehends the
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thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
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And this is a staggering theological claim.
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It asserts the full deity of the Holy Spirit.
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It shows his unique internal and intimate connection to the mind
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of God the Father. Since the Spirit shares in the
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Godhead, He alone has full, unmediated access to God's
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deepest counsel. This claim does a massive amount
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of work for us. On the one hand, it excludes all
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human pretenders to divine knowledge, and on the other, it
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guarantees the reliability of the knowledge we do receive.
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It creates a perfectly secure foundation for our faith.
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Negatively, like we said, it dismisses all purely human
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claims to saving knowledge. If the Spirit, a divine person,
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is required to comprehend God's mind, then certainly no
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philosopher, no religious genius, no meditative Mystic,
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and no merely human tradition can Pierce those depths on their
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own power. And positively, it guarantees
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that the revelation we receive, which we're about to talk about,
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is flawless. The revealer is the one who
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fully knows the original thought.
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Our confidence isn't resting on some imperfect second hand or
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flawed transmission, but on the divine agent whose knowledge is
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exhaustive and complete. This is the bedrock of biblical
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certainty. So if the Spirit is the one who
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knows the depths of God, and he chose to descend and disclose
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this hidden counsel to the apostles, the next logical
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question has to be how is that secret knowledge actually
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communicated to the church? How did it move from the mind of
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God to the lips and the pens of men?
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And this is where we make the shift from the receiving of
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revelation to the communication of it.
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Verse 12 kind of sets the stage, noting that we have received the
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Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things
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freely given us by God. And then verse 13 addresses the
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precise medium of communication. Paul describes how the apostles
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communicate and we impart this in words not taught by human
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wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual
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truths to those who are spiritual.
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This phrase about Spirit taught words is just absolutely vital
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for our doctrine of Scripture. Help us unpack that phrase a
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little. What does it mean for the words
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themselves to be taught by the Spirit and not just, you know,
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the general ideas? It means that the Spirit is the
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divine instructor for the very verbal expression of the
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message. The apostles didn't just receive
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some kind of wordless mystical vision of God's plan and then go
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off to find the best human philosophy or rhetorical
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technique to describe it. No, the divine guidance extended
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to the language itself, and this really forms the basis for the
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classic understanding of verbal inspiration.
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It asserts that the Spirit superintended the process of
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communication in such a way that not only the ideas, but the
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specific words chosen we're determined and guaranteed by
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God. That seems like an extraordinary
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claim. It requires us to believe that
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the authority Scripture is invested all the way down to its
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vocabulary at syntax, it's grammatical structure.
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Why is that specific level of detail so crucial?
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Because the content and the form, they can't be separated
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without losing authority. If the divine revelation is only
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about the ideas, and the words are just human expressions,
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human wisdom, then the truth is always being filtered through a
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fallible, potentially distorting lens.
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Then the authority rests in the human writers, not in God.
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And Paul explicitly contrast the Spirit taught words with words
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taught by human wisdom. This is a direct refutation of
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that very intellectual pride of Corinth, which valued eloquent,
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rhetorically polished human speech.
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Paul is saying our message isn't based on human cleverness or
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oratorical skill or philosophical refinement.
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It stands in opposition to all those humanly crafted methods.
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Since the Spirit is the only one who knows the depths of God, as
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we saw in Part 2, he must teach the words here in Part 3 so that
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the truth is communicated accurately.
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If the Spirit guarantees the word choice, then we can trust
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that what is written is exactly what God intends for us to know
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about His saving counsel. OK, so let's talk about the
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result of this whole process. When these Spirit taught words
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were committed to writing, when they were inscripturated, what
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does the Church possess now? We possess Spirit given truth,
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delivered in Spirit taught language.
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This is the foundation for this efficiency in the finality of
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the Scriptures, the New Testament, the Apostolic
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witness. It isn't just a historical
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record of human encounters with God.
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It is the concrete, authoritative deposit of God's
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saving wisdom in Christ. The Reformers understood this
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principle very well. The claim that the Bible is the
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supreme and final authority, our sola Scriptura.
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It rests on this truth. The Spirit, the competent
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revealer, guarantee the reliability of the very language
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used to communicate the revelation.
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It's the normative finished vehicle of divine speech for the
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Church at all generations. So we have this system where
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human reason fails, the spirit reveals, and that revelation is
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secured and spirit taught words. And building on this finished
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work of verbal inspiration, we have to clarify the two distinct
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but related roles of the Holy Spirit in history.
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If the apostles received the definitive, authoritative words,
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what is the Spirit doing for believers today?
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We need to draw a sharp line between foundational revelation
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and ongoing elimination. Let's start with the
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foundational work. Why do we say that revelation in
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the sense Paul is describing here is complete and non
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repeatable? Because Paul is talking about
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the disclosure of new doctrinal truth, the mystery of Christ
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crucified and risen decreed before the ages, which laid the
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very foundation of the church. Revelation in this unique
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foundational sense was given to the apostles who were
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commissioned to write the canonical scriptures.
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Once those Spirit taught words are written down, bound, and
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recognized by the Church as the Canon, the sufficient rule of
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faith in life, well, the task of generating new doctrinal content
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is finished. We don't need, and we shouldn't
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seek new doctrinal knowledge or further depths of God beyond
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what's already recorded in Scripture.
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OK, so the revelation is complete.
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This means the Spirit's primary work toward later generations,
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toward us, is something else entirely.
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This where illumination comes in.
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How does Paul define this ongoing work?
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Back in verse 12, he says we've received the Spirit that we
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might understand the things freely given us by God.
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Exactly. Illumination is the Spirit's
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work to grant saving understanding of the divine
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wisdom that is already revealed and recorded in the inspired
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words of Scripture. The obvious of this
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understanding is the things freely given us by God, the
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gracious gifts of salvation in Christ, justification, adoption,
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and eternal life. The natural man, as Paul notes
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later in the chapter, can't grasp these truths because they
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are spiritually discerned. Illumination is the Spirit
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overcoming the spiritual blindness that resulted from the
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Fall. It involves opening the eyes of
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the mind, softening a heart that's hardened by sin, and
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granting a true spiritual apprehension of Christ as
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glorious, true, and personally saving.
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You know, I think sometimes people confuse illumination with
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revelation. They might say something like
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the Spirit gave me a new word or I received a private message
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from God. What's the guardrail that
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prevents us from collapsing illumination into a form of
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continuous revelation? The defining difference is the
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content. The Spirit works through the
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completed Scripture. He does not bypass it or add to
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it. If the Spirit gave a new word
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that contradicted scripture or introduced doctrine not found
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there, it would undermine the sufficiency of the Spirit's own
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previous work of verbal inspiration.
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The Spirit's work today is always tied to the written word.
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He's the author of Scripture, and he doesn't contradict
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himself or make his previous words obsolete.
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So if we want to hear the voice of the Spirit, we must go to the
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words the Spirit taught the canonical Scriptures.
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The Spirit applies the once for all revelation, but he never
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replaces it. And This is why the
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authoritative preaching of the Bible is so central to the
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church's life. It is the Spirit working through
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his chosen finished vehicle of speech.
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This theology, which you know, establishes the source of our
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knowledge outside of ourselves and secures it in a spirit
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taught Word. It carries massive practical
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implications for how we live and how the Church conducts its
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mission. So what does it mean for how the
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church operates when it's facing that spirit of the world that
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Paul contrasted? The confrontation is total.
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Paul contrasts the Spirit who is from God, who brings divine
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wisdom from above, with the Spirit of the world, which
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represents the prevailing autonomous, man centered
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worldview of fallen humanity. Believers have been taken out of
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the ladder and granted the former.
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So if God's saving counsel is inaccessible to human wisdom to
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the eye, ear and heart. Then any attempt to base
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Christian ministry on methods derived from those very human
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faculties is a betrayal of this theology.
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The Church's function is decisively not to entertain, not
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to chase cultural trends, not to seek acceptance by using the
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world's most impressive rhetoric or marketing strategies.
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But that flies directly in the face of what so many successful
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modern churches seem to practice.
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If worldly pragmatism assumes we need to package the religious
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product attractively using high production values, complex
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psychological analysis, or self help formulas to make it
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appealing, doesn't Paul basically declare that whole
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approach useless? He does.
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It risks a kind of practical unbelief in the power of the
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Spirit's own words. The thinking goes something like
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this. The gospel is inherently
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unappealing, so we must add something from human wisdom to
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make it work. But Paul says our confidence
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must rest solely on the words taught by the Spirit.
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When a church relies on words taught by human wisdom, maybe
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incorporating management theory, marketing studies, or a
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therapeutic psychology is the main way of generating
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understanding or community. It subtly communicates that the
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Spirit taught words of Scripture aren't sufficient or effective
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on their own. It suggests that human
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cleverness has to compensate for the perceived offense or
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foolishness of the cross. So when a church marginalizes
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the serious, systematic exposition of Scripture, you
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know the patient, detailed explanation of the Spirit taught
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words in favor of drama or anecdotes or motivational
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speaking, they are practically denying the central claim of
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First Corinthians 2, even if they would affirm it
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doctrinally. That is the consequence.
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Yes, the act of neglecting faithful public reading and
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teaching of Scripture suggests that the Spirit of the age, the
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methods of worldly communication, can bring true
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understanding of the things freely giving us by God.
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When Paul explicitly says they cannot, the Spirit works through
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his own words, and we have to honor that by prioritizing the
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detailed, authoritative presentation of those words.
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Let's broaden this out a bit and look at how the spirit centered
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epistemology challenges some major theological viewpoints
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today, starting with, say, liberal theology.
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How does Paul's insistence on verbal inspiration just
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fundamentally oppose that school of thought?
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Liberal theology in its different forms.
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It typically views the Bible as a fallible record of human
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religious experience. It sees the prophets and
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apostles as religious geniuses who reflected on their
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encounters with the divine. The text is seen as a human
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effort to capture spiritual insight, and it's often full of
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cultural mistakes and moral blemishes.
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Paul's teaching just flatly contradicts this.
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If the words themselves are taught by the Spirit because no
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man could access those secrets otherwise, then Scripture is not
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the product of human genius or mere reflection.
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It is a unique, sovereign disclosure of God's own thoughts
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and decrees. A denial of verbal inspiration
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is a denial of the Spirit's exclusive competence to
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communicate God's mind accurately.
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This is a battle over the Source human ascent, which is
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liberalism, versus divine descent, which is Paul.
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And what about religious pluralism, the idea that all
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religions are just different symbolic paths to the same
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ultimate reality? Religious pluralism denies the
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exclusivity and the objective truth claim that's inherent in
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Paul's argument. If God's wisdom in Christ was
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hidden from all human faculties, from every eye, ear and heart,
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then it cannot possibly be accessed through Buddha or
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Muhammad or any other founder who relied on human insight or
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receive tradition. Paul insists that this wisdom is
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known only because the Spirit of God, who alone knows the depths
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of God, chose to reveal it. To treat Christian doctrine is
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just one culturally specific way of describing a general human
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spiritual reality is to deny the Holy Spirit's exclusive
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testimony to the unique, non discoverable depths of God.
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The Gospel isn't common ground. It's a revealed secret.
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OK, so finally, let's turn this back to the individual believer.
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If the Spirit's work today is illumination of the written
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Word, where should we be focusing our energy as people
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trying to gain true knowledge of God?
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Our spirituality has to be defined by understanding the
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things freely given us by God, not by seeking novelty or
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subjective, ungrounded experiences.
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We have to resist the temptation to mistake human psychological
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excitement or emotional intensity for the specific work
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of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit's work is always
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ordered and connected to the Word.
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He works through the ordinary means of grace, patiently
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reading the text, sitting under the preached Word, engaging in
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prayerful reflection on Scripture to illuminate the
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mind. If we're chasing unusual
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experiences, visions, or subjective feelings, we risk
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confusing elimination with continuing revelation and
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substituting true spiritual knowledge.
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From your emotion the clearest and most authoritative voice of
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the Spirit is founded the Scripture he inspired.
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So this deep dive into First Corinthians 2 really gives us a
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clear framework for Christian knowing.
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It calls for deep humility because we realize that our best
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human efforts can't find saving truth.
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And it also grants deep confidence, because the Spirit
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who fully knows the mind of God has spoken reliably and
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securely. Absolutely.
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The system is comprehensive. The Holy Spirit reveals the
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hidden wisdom of God to the Apostolic witnesses.
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Scripture contains that revelation in Spirit taught
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words, which makes it authoritative and sufficient,
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and then the same Holy Spirit illuminates the mind of the
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believer today, enabling them to understand and receive the
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glorious gifts of salvation contained within that written
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word. So if the certainty of our faith
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rests entirely on the Spirit speaking through the inspired
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and finished Word, here's something to consider.
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What are the subtle ways we might still be tempted to trust
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in the spirit of the world, relying on human cleverness or
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cultural attractiveness or self help strategies to communicate
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the very wisdom that God declared inaccessible to those
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same worldly means? Think about where your
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confidence truly rests this week.
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We appreciate you jumping us for this deep dive into God's hidden
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counsel.