Paul the apostle received the gospel as a revelation from God. No man taught him the Good News. The Spirit showed it to him (Galatians 1:11-12).
Therefore, it’s not intuitive that God so loved the world that He gave us His Son.
It’s not apparent that the Son of God gave up His life for us.
You can’t use logic to conclude that Jesus gave Himself to save the world.
The churches have many people who don’t know that God loved them with a self-sacrificial love. Let me put it in another way. Many of us don’t live our lives with this act of love in the forefront of our minds. Rather, our minds are often filled with the emptiness or foolishness of the world.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of the Kingdom of God, is not intuitive. It needs the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to bring it home to us.
It’s more intuitive that life is ugly, death and destruction is prevalent, and God must hate us. No one needs to explain these things to us. Anybody can conclude these things by looking around.
God reveals His love to us through the Good News of Jesus Christ. He uses the simple method of preaching to communicate His sacrificial love (1 Corinthians 1:21). Then the Holy Spirit directs the hearing heart to believe in Jesus for salvation from sin. Then His love is made plain. The eyes of the blind are opened to see Jesus.
I think the gospel is communicated as the love of God so that when we come to the many passages of our sinfulness in the Scriptures, they will not crush us.
But that isn’t quite right. Even the extent of our sinfulness needs the revelation of the Spirit to enlighten us. We already know that “all have sinned and fallen short.” No one needs to tell us we’ve done wrong.
We do, however, need revelation to believe that we are so far from God due to sin that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. We can’t do anything to right the problem. It’s a spiritual problem needing a spiritual solution, and Jesus is the only solution God offers. Even after we are saved, many of us often find ourselves trying hard to please God. We know the dictionary definition of grace, but don’t know how to grasp it for daily living. We need illumination.
In Romans 7, Paul was using the Ten Commandments and other Jewish laws to make himself righteous. He wasn’t enlightened yet to see that sin had totally saturated his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He could not save himself by any works of the flesh.
We have head knowledge about the gospel, God’s love for us, and some experiences with personal sin. We need personal illumination, as Paul did, to see the danger we are in, that sin has saturated our entire being. Some in the church don’t see how far they have fallen, and consistently elevate the vanities of the world above the glory of God. The world has changed much of the church more than the Holy Spirit has conformed it into the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Did not Jesus tell us that in the the end times the love of many will dim (Matthew 24:12)?
If we are not zealous to keep ourselves personally in the Word of God, to read and meditate on it, then we remove ourselves from the influence of the One who sees all things, and who directs our steps in the way of righteousness in truth.
The New Testament spells out our sins. It repeatedly exposes the techniques we use, like following religious rules, to hide our sins and make us appear more righteous than we really are. Do you know why we use the flesh to try to look good? Because God’s remedy for our sins is also not intuitive. That remedy is spelled out in Romans 6:1-14. We surrender to God so the flesh is rendered impotent. We can’t serve two masters (Matthew 6:24, Romans 6:16), so when we surrender to the Lord, sin in the flesh is toast while that surrender is in force.
As part of His program to save us from the power of our sins, Jesus took sin out of the way, dying to it on the cross, burying it in the tomb, then leaving it behind when He rose from the dead. The Spirit wants to impress this truth upon us so we can live as those who have died to sin, and know Him and the power of His resurrection. He died to sin once for all, and so did we. Sin shall not have dominion over us.
The gospel is not intuitive. The love of God is not intuitive. The greatness of our fallen state is not intuitive. The remedy of the cross, of identification with Christ, of dying to our sins and living to God, is not intuitive. We can’t just read it on a page and grasp its significance for our lives.
But we think that if we read about these things, it’s the same as though we possessed the truth about it and can live it out. “I read about it on the internet, so I understand it.”
I propose that any time you are going to position your ears and eyes to receive spiritual truths, that you first surrender to the Lord and pray some of these words:
“Please, show me Your glory” (Exodus 33:18).
“Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things out of Your law” (Psalm 119:18).
“Speak, for Your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:10).
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
We need to stop thinking that because we can read, we therefore can understand. These things must be spiritually comprehended when we are open to the Holy Spirit and seek the truth (1 Corinthians 2:6-16).
If I understand it rightly, revival is when the Spirit reveals the state of a people’s heart, and spiritual conviction of sin and the splendor of God causes many to turn to the Lord in truth. By “in truth,” I mean they really get it; they see their sin; they see the necessity for the Savior; they see the significance of the saving power of Jesus over sin and they make revolutionary, life-altering choices to live for God like never before.
We need revival.
We need the Lord to open sin-blinded eyes of churchy Pharisees like ourselves. We need to see the love of God as such a strong safety net that we may safely collapse into it and die to sin, expecting Jesus to raise us up to new life as alive from the dead; alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord while we live. I love this safety net. I need illumination. There is so much I don’t understand. But I am patient. God is working. When He opens my eyes, then I have an article to write.
It’s not enough that we believe a Bible doctrine is true. What’s more important is whether we are believing that God can use that doctrine to make a difference in our lives.
We say we believe that Jesus died for our sins; specifically, to save us from sin’s power. Do we therefore take steps against sin to stand in that victory?
We say that we believe we have sinned so badly that we were bound for eternal punishment if it weren’t for Christ. But do we still believe what the world says, that we and everybody else are basically good? May we live as those who are trusting in God’s Word to steer us right.
In Colossians 2:12, Paul wrote this curious phrase, “you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God.” They were not raised with Jesus because they believed a doctrine was true. No; they had “faith in the working of God,” that God worked in their lives to deliver them from the power of sin and make them alive to God.
These doctrines are not intuitive. But the Spirit wants to make them real to us so we have faith in the working of God, that God is taking these doctrines and writing them on our hearts, and we are experiencing their power first-hand.
Jesus in John 15:5 says that without Him we can do nothing. We rebel at that, don’t we? It’s not intuitive. We can make lists of things we can do and lists of what we’ve accomplished. But He’s talking about developing spiritual fruit, isn’t He? The fruit of drawing so close to Him that He answers the prayers we ask of Him because we want His will done (15:7). His heart, His vision, has become ours. You and I can’t make that change on our own. But with God, all things are possible.
We can say we believe these ideas because they are in the Bible, but what the Lord wants us to do is put them in our prayer list and invite Him in to work. To hear Him knocking at the door and let Him in to dine with us and us with Him.
That idea of opening the door to let Him in is from Revelation 3:20. We use it for unsaved sinners, asking them to open their hearts to Jesus. Actually, these are the words of an angel taking to a church, to believers who find themselves perfectly self-sufficient, thank you very much. It’s not intuitive that we in the church need to let Jesus in. We can’t trust that our hearts have gotten it right. Yet the world tells us to trust in our hearts, doesn’t it?
Jesus in Matthew 6:33 told us to make the Kingdom of God our first priority. He had to tell us because it’s an alien concept for us to follow. Rather, we naturally seek first the American Dream and its leisure hours. We need the Spirit to illuminate our spirits so we see the difference between the two and steer our choices wisely. When we don’t know the difference, we are storing up treasures on earth instead of in heaven.
What to do? When you ponder the Word and pray over verses, believe them when they stand out. Believe the Lord can make the teaching come alive in you. Believe what you do know and ask the Lord to do a fuller work. Faith in God’s Word opens the door for the Lord to work (Romans 10:17). If the verse settles your faith on Him, then He is already working: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:29).
You want a secret to answered prayer? Add the promises and purposes of God to your prayer list. Praying for them, you’ll get more answers to prayer than all the times you’ve been praying for your own goals. This method works because you are praying for something that God already said He wants to give you.
As I said earlier, Paul addressed the matter of the Spirit revealing the things of God in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Verse 12 tells us that with the Spirit we know we have received the things of God. Verse 14 tells us that the natural man (who doesn’t have the Spirit) cannot know spiritual things.
Jesus spoke about spiritual sensitivity after He gave the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-17. In verse 15 He explains the spiritual status of His hearers, saying that their hearts have grown dull, their ears were hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes. This is why most of the hearers are unfruitful. They did not receive illumination. The Jews heard His words of the kingdom, saw His miracles that validated His kingdom teachings, and they didn’t get it. They did not seek the Kingdom of God that He proclaimed.
Take care that when you read the Word of God, surrender to the Lord and ask Him for wisdom to understand the word. Be in a humble position to hear and receive, to have His word and keep it. Then Christ will manifest Himself to you (John 14:21-23).
Will you take a moment to pray for a book manuscript I have been writing for the last few years? Pray for the pro editor to sharpen the book–she starts today. Pray that I find several endorsements. Pray the book will reach the people who need to read it, whether it is released self-published or traditionally. You may sign up on the home page to be alerted to upcoming news of this book. Thank you.
