We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

light

Lies, Truth, and the Holy Spirit

The root of the flesh is a lie about who God is and who we are. Satan brings us into bondage of the flesh by convincing us that God is not the loving God he says that he is. In doing this, Satan convinces us that we cannot find fullness of life by being wholly dependent upon God. This is the lie of Satan.

The Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of truth (Jn 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), and the truth in Greek (alethia) literally means “not covered.” The Spirit of truth confronts the deception of the flesh by uncovering the truth about God and the truth about us. He brings the true God and our true identity out of hiding by lifting the deception that covers our eyes and hearts. He does this by pointing us to the person in whom the true God and true humanity were fully manifested to us: Jesus Christ.

The true God breaks into our deception-filled world through the Incarnation. In and of itself, however, this doesn’t lift the deception of the flesh from our hearts and eyes. We are yet dead in sin, blind and lovers of “darkness rather than light” (Jn 3:19). As long as the god of this age blinds us (2 Cor 4:4), we inevitably and habitually suppress truth. Thus, the light of God’s revelation in Jesus would fall on blind eyes and never benefit us if God’s plan stopped there.

But God didn’t stop there. God knew that if we were ever to see who God is and who we are rightly, he not only would have to be revealed to us, he would have to be revealed in us. So God didn’t stop with sending his Son to dwell among us; he also sent his Spirit to reside within us. God not only speaks to us and lives the truth for us in his Son, he also opens our eyes and ears to see and hear this truth by sending his Spirit.

The main work of the Holy Spirit, then, is not to supplement what the Son did but to apply what the Son did to our lives. He guides believers into all truth (Jn 16:13) by pointing us to the one who is the truth (Jn 14:6).

Whereas Satan blinds the minds, the Holy Spirit opens our minds and causes us to see the truth. The Holy Spirit manifests the truth of our fallen condition and thereby produces conviction and repentance in our lives (Jn 16:8-11). The Holy Spirit opens the hearts and minds of people so we are able to receive the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord and in him we become children of God. The Holy Spirit also infuses people with the love of Christ so that we may live in truth.

The Spirit of truth is simply pointing people to the one who is truth, Jesus Christ. He is confronting and reversing the deceptive assumptions of the flesh in our lives. He is unveiling the true God for us, revealed in Jesus Christ, so that he might reveal our true identity as people who are loved by God.

—Adapted Seeing Is Believing, pages 54-57

Image by Melissa Askew via Unsplash

Related Reading

Absolute Truth and Violence

A common argument today against Christianity is that believing that Jesus (or any other religious figure or religion) is the only way to God (See yesterday’s post) is “dangerous.” This claim actually has some justification, for it is undeniable that most of the butchery carried out throughout history has been done in the name of defending…

What makes the claim that Jesus rose from the dead unique?

Question: What makes the story of Jesus’ resurrection different from other pagan resurrection stories, such as those surrounding the Egyptian god Osiris? Answer: In Lord or Legend? (and more academically, The Jesus Legend), Paul Eddy and I address this, and many other, objections to faith in Jesus. I encourage you to check either of these…

Tags: ,

One Word

While I’ve lately been pretty distracted finishing up Benefit of the Doubt (Baker, 2013), my goal is to sprinkle in posts that comment on the distinctive commitments of ReKnew a couple of times a week. I’m presently sharing some thoughts on the second conviction of ReKnew, which is that Jesus Christ is the full and…

N.T. Wright: Truth Happens

N.T. Wright talks about the relationship between truth and beauty. Lovely.

The Cruciform Trinity

As paradoxical as it sounds, if God is supremely revealed when he stoops to the infinite extremity of becoming his own antithesis on the cross, then we must conclude that stooping to this extremity out of love must, in some sense, be intrinsic to who God eternally is. And rendering this coherent necessitates that we…

Topics:

Are the Charismatic Gifts for Today’s Church?

This week, we have offered a brief series on the Holy Spirit touching on what the Spirit does, how it changes us, and how the fruit of the Spirit is produced. Now we will look briefly at the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and more specifically the “charismatic” gifts. In the church today, Christians can be roughly divided into…

Topics: