November 23
November 23
We should never underestimate the Holy Spirit’s ministry of illumination.
The message that has the power to change us is a mystery. It reveals God’s eternal plan, exposes the depth of our spiritual need, and shows us how this need is met in Jesus. But it remains in darkness for most of humanity:
Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. (1 Cor. 2:6–10)
When you need to see something in the dark, you turn on the lights. The illumining ministry of the Holy Spirit is God’s means of turning the gospel lights on for us. As Paul reminds us, the wisdom of the gospel is not a natural body of wisdom. If it were, then everyone would believe it and live in light of it.
Human wisdom never saw in advance exactly what God would do to redeem his fallen world. It never could have imagined the move of the gospel of grace and the amazing gift of the Son. Human wisdom could not have predicted the glorious things that God had prepared for those who love him. We were all born into the same miserable state. The eyes of all of our hearts were closed to the gospel, and all of our minds were closed to its life-giving wisdom. We all sat in darkness, unable to see the one thing that could have given us life right now and on into eternity. We were without hope until God met us in the darkness and, by the presence and power of his Spirit, turned the gospel lights on for us. If you know and love the gospel of Jesus Christ, then you do so because you have been met by the illumining ministry of the Holy Spirit.
There is something else that you need to know and celebrate. This illumining ministry is not an event but a process. Have you ever studied a biblical passage that you have read many times before, but all of a sudden it bursts with new meaning? That happens because the Holy Spirit continually shines his light on his word so that you may understand it more fully and deeply.
In your darkness, you were met by light-giving grace, and the lights haven’t gone out. They’re still shining, illuminating the best message ever written: the heart-changing, life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ.