WORDS THAT ARE SPIRIT & LIFE
I think I'm aware that knowledge has a tendency to puff us up, since we're sinful people; I think I heard Paul say something about that in 1 Corinthians 8 so I subscribe to the distinction between head knowledge that isn't also heart knowledge.
I get that! Is there anyone who thinks at all and who doesn't get it?
But it's humans God created and it's humans he works with! And he works with them in the way he sovereignly chooses. "Why did he make us at all and why did he makes us as he made us?" might be good questions but in the final analysis the answer must involve this: "He did so because he freely wanted to!" If we don't like that we're just going to have to bear it.
If anyone had a heart for God I would guess Paul was one but he was the one in Romans 10:13-17 who said nobody calls on the Lord in faith if he hasn't heard [of] him because a faith-filled hearing comes to people via the word of God. If no one gospeled no one would name the name of Jesus Christ as Lord of All!
That's how God created humans and it's how he works with them as they live in a world of human experiences and situations. Who alive today saw God create the world? Who was there when he called Abraham or worked through Moses or set David up as king or spoke to a little virgin girl called Mary? Did you see her or her baby, see him grow and live and die and rise again and ascend into glory and send the Spirit as a witness to his exaltation?
Like it or not--it's all Story, it's all truth told in various ways. It's all magical truth without magic. You want magic? Go to the movies! It's in the light of that gospel truth that we interpret the experiences of life as good or evil, beneficial or destructive
The word of God is alive and powerful [Hebrews 4:12]. It's alive and powerful because God is alive and powerful. The authority and power of the Word of God, embodied in the biblical witness, is nothing other and nothing less than God himself! The gospel is God's saving power and it's God's saving power because in it he reveals himself and his faithfulness/righteousness in Jesus Christ [Romans 1:15].
It's knowing [in the best sense of that word], the truth in and about Jesus Christ that sets us free in that ultimate sense of "freedom" [now there's a "freedom" that's worth unpacking--John 8:31-32]. It's never some Gnostic type mystic contact of the HS with our human spirit--imagine the scene in the movie when E.T.'s long bulbous finger touches the little boy's body and heals it's hurt and you get the picture usually offered in the evangelical world of how the Holy Spirit works today.
The bottom line in this view we got from Augustine's argument with the Welsh man, Pelagius, all those centuries ago. Augustine would dismiss Pelagius' approach to God's saving work as "teaching, teaching, nothing but teaching." Augustine's newly developing view of grace meant God had to do something directly to the human spirit to enable it to receive gospel truth. Gospel truth lacked power if it wasn't accompanied by a personal moral miracle [which Augustine finally said was given only to a select few and the Calvinistic predestination view was born, and the bulk of mankind was created to be damned because God was pleased to have it so].
Now the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth never becomes the truth he brings [much less is he the canonical Scriptures/Bible] but the truth he brings, the words "are spirit and life" [John 6:63]. The words are life-giving because in them the gracious God makes himself known and therefore present in the hearts and minds of people.
The words/truth is/are the Spirit [of God and Christ] making himself liberatingly present in the Church and its various parts. Paul prays that the Spirit would empower the Church and its individuals and he makes it clear that the Spirit does that by bringing it and them to an understanding of God in Christ [Ephesians 1:13,16-20; 3:14-19 and see 4:11-21].
As much as sinners and simpletons such as we are can do, we must bring God [via the truth of God], ceaselessly, to our family, friends, church, world. Even Calvin believed that the proclamation of the gospel was essential to saving faith.
Preparation for ministering that truth must include a ruthless sifting and assessing of truths so that the truths we come to know serve the one holistic truth of God. When we speak of [and physically/socially engage in] life's situation/circumstances, as we must and should at times, it must ceaselessly be construed within the vision of the world under God's Lordship and in light of his eternal purpose.
The people of God have no monopoly on truth--the entire human family lives in truth's presence, suppressing it or shaped by it because the Spirit of God can be resisted [Acts 7:51 and elsewhere]. But certain truths have been entrusted [in that mysterious and complex and unsearchable way God works in a world of humans that are truly humans]--certain truths are entrusted alone to the NT church [whatever its boundaries]. It will use all truths [Acts 14:15-17 & 17:24-29] to serve the specific gospel truth that climaxes and finds its dynamic fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Paul will use a truth expressed by a pagan writer as he gospels because all truth is God's truth whoever has it.
But it is the truth of things that liberates and the words he speaks are [S]pirit and life. "He [the Spirit of truth] will not speak of/from himself but whatsoever he heareth that shall he speak; he will take of mine and declare it unto you..." John 16:13-14.
The strength and scandal of our faith is a single person--it's Jesus of Nazareth contra mundum. And that Jesus we come to know by the gracious God's gospel concerning his Son [Romans 1:1-5].
Our faithfulness and our message is the embodied telling of the truth of Jesus--the developed truth about Jesus. Whatever helps us to see him is the gift of the Spirit, it is the Spirit helping us to see, admire and worship him; whatever obscures or sidelines him--even if it is a truth--becomes "the lie".
To rise to speak is no little thing. To lean over to whisper is no little thing. Each time it is done well it is another nail driven into that coffin of satanic/demonic lies which is made of half-truths, palpable lies and over-stressed specific truths which become our darlings rather than the Worthy One himself.
The disconcerting/scandalous truth is: all we have is a message/a Story. And hungry/oppressed/lonely/despairing/angry/demanding people understandably want more, they want to experience justice and "bread" now. The challenge the Holy One faces, via his teaching ministers, is to persuade/enable these people to see and feel the substance of things that can only be hoped for and to join him in his grand enterprise.
But to those that believe the truth that is storied, that is gospeled, is embodied in an actual person who said of himself, "I am the truth..." [John 14:6]
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