Know-It-Alls Know Nothing (Part 2)

I was planning on writing this the whole time. Yeah. This was absolutely my point from the beginning.

Okay, not really.

Sarrah lovingly pointed out to me something blatantly obvious that I completely forgot to mention.

With all those resources and fancy-shmancy things that are available, there is nothing, and no one, more important than the Holy Spirit teaching Christians as they read His Word. The Holy Spirit teaches and reveals to us what is meant when God says things in the Bible. As Sarrah said, we're taught by the same teacher as the "big guys" like Calvin and MacArthur. And that's totally Biblical, because Jesus said in John 6:45, "It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.'

As I continued to think about this, I realized how interesting an idea this was to dwell on. How exactly does He do it? I don't think it just "clicks" for most Christians. A lot of us read the Bible and aren't exactly certain of what it's saying in a given passage. I think it "clicks" more with people who have devoted their entire lives to study, who know the Bible and can quote many verses from memory. And I can confidently say that that's still the Holy Spirit guiding them because He is teaching them according to His Word. It's the principle of "Scripture interpreting Scripture" or "God's Word interpreting God's Word." God guides us to a right understanding of the Bible based on His Bible. At least that's how I think of it.

I also think that He guides us when we use other Bible study resources such as commentaries, concordances, etc. It's important to note that none of these things are the inspired Word of God. Only the Bible is. They are, however, an attempt to understand it and to teach it to others. And I think the Spirit helps us to discern whether these people and their resources are right or not based on His Word, the final authority in everything.

And when we listen to those people whose entire lives have been devoted to study, we can discern whether what they believe and teach is Biblical by measuring it with the standard of the Word of God. This doesn't negate a need for teachers; a good teacher of the Word, who studies all the time, can at times bring up an idea that the listener simply hadn't thought of, or perhaps teach about the cultural context that a passage of Scripture was originally written in, or maybe even teach about the historical meaning of a prophecy and how it was fulfilled (the last few chapters of Daniel come to mind). And I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit will prod an earnest, Bible-believing Christian and help them realize something they're listening to or reading in a book could be questionable.

This doesn't negate the necessity for the study of God's Word. If anything, it encourages it. How else will we know what God has to say to us if we don't study the very words, the absolutely authoritative and correct words, He has said to us? And how else can we know discern His will in a world full of ungodly, heretical wills and viewpoints without reading the words of His will?

It's also not an attempt to remove a supernatural aspect of the Spirit's guidance by saying that we need to study a book to understand. Of course there's a supernatural aspect, there's a Spirit who transcends all earthly reality guiding us to a right understanding of something we, by our own power, are completely unwilling to accept in the first place! But by His power, we do accept it. And He helps us recall, He reminds us of His words, He teaches them to us when we read and listen, and He guides us in our study to understand.