You Can Find Truths Missed by Theologians
Back to The Spiritual Essentials
We mentioned earlier that the need for this series of webpage's becomes frighteningly obvious when we consider the degree to which Christians differ on doctrine and Bible interpretation. What is so disturbing is that these matters divide not just new Christians or worldly Christians or uninformed Christians. We are tempted to think poorly of anyone who disagrees with us, but if we dare look with godly eyes we will find Christians worthy of our highest esteem passionately believing opposite things. We might not know who is wrong, but clearly some of them must be. They cannot all be right! This sends us crashing to the humbling – even scary – reality that whenever we seek to understand such topics we are daring to confront a matter on which numbers of truly great men and women of God have got it wrong.
It is tempting to think that if God allows this divergence of opinion among even the most spiritual and knowledgeable Christians on earth, it must be because the matter is unimportant. If this were so, however, it becomes perhaps even more confusing. It would mean that so many fine Christians on both sides are wrong in thinking it is important.
If people more spiritual, knowledgeable, experienced and gifted than ourselves have somehow missed the truth, who are we to get it right? The thought seems enough to send us reeling into defeatism. We feel the same way when hearing the crushing news of a great Christian having a moral fall. If such a person could fall, what chance do we have? Nevertheless, there is one truth with the power to lift us out of defeatism: no matter how much Christians may differ in giftedness, causing some to seem superior to us, everyone without exception is equally dependent upon the grace of God for the understanding of spiritual truth and for every spiritual step we take.
Some of us can leap higher than others but it makes no difference in a quest to reach the moon. To leave earth’s gravity, each of us, no matter how athletic or disabled, are equally dependent upon a power outside of us – a spacecraft. Likewise, in reaching heavenly truth, human advantages or disadvantages make little difference. All that matters is our willingness to yield to a power greater than any of us – the grace of God.
If anyone could be mistaken, it’s me. But if anyone can reveal the truth, it’s God. If it depended on us, we might have little hope, but since it depends on the grace of God, each of us has boundless reason for hope.
If we can stop putting our faith in our devotion, experience, Bible skills and human teachers, and place our faith solely in the Almighty’s power to override all our inadequacies and penetrate our dull minds with his truth, then we have mastered two key factors in receiving divine revelation: humility (“The meek will he guide . . .” – Psalms 25:9), and all of our faith in the Almighty, none in our finite, easily deceived selves.
The obvious starting point for discovering God’s truth is, of course, a right relationship with God. The psalmist prayed for the miracle of supernatural insight into Scripture’s wonders (Psalm 119:18) but we cannot expect divine answers while unrepentant sin hinders our relationship with God. “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Psalm 66:18). “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). Sin must be removed by us trusting in Jesus’ cleansing and by genuinely wanting that cleansing. We are genuine only to the extent that we passionately long for purity and for devoted obedience to our Lord.
Another essential for accurate Bible interpretation is to have such a driving passion to receive the truth from God that we rival the mother of the demonized child who kept refusing to be put off from her quest to receive from Jesus the longing of her heart. Our Lord “rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).