“A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven” John 3:27).
While the revelation belongs to Jesus, the one revealing things to us is the Holy Spirit; it is He who is meant to teach us and guide us. Although I had been a Christian for twenty five years, it wasn’t until I asked the Lord to take from me all that men had taught me and teach me Himself that I really began to hear His voice.
In embracing a denominational outlook, we effectively hinder the Holy Spirit from doing that work which is His and His alone; if we have made up our minds about a doctrine handed down to us from men, it will harden our hearts to the extent that the light of God will not be able to penetrate. This is what happened to the Jews, whose rabbis had embraced the doctrine that Israel was the prophesied “suffering servant” of scripture and that the coming Messiah was to be the prophesied king Messiah who would re-establish the kingdom of David and Solomon and drive out the detested Romans.
Divine truth is of the Holy Spirit; it is His testimony of Jesus Christ the Living Word; for that reason it can only be revealed by internal revelation of the Holy Spirit; human reason and philosophy, scholarship and intellect, are unable to discover or comprehend divine truth. Moreover, reception of divine truth must depend upon a fit spiritual condition in the seeker; Jesus told His disciples;
“I have yet much to say to you but you are not able to endure them at present” (John 16:12).
Despite them living daily in the presence of the Son of God, the Word become flesh, it was not until the Holy Spirit came upon them at Pentecost that the disciples were able to receive the truth internally. While they were taught by Jesus Himself, and they believed Him, it was not divine truth to them until the Holy Spirit entered into them and “the eyes of their hearts were enlightened” and they received “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him”.
To receive divine truth there must be communion with His risen life; when you get to the right spiritual state, the Word becomes so clear and obvious that you can’t understand why you never saw it before; but then you realize that you couldn’t receive it before because you were not in the right condition internally.
“A man can receive nothing”; there is human despair! “Except it be given him from heaven”; there is our hope!
This is a summary of the promise of our Lord concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit in John 14, 15 and 16;
“The Holy Spirit will be with those who love Christ forever; He will teach them all things and recall all that Jesus said to their mind; He will bear witness of, and glorify, Jesus and lead all those that love Christ into all truth, disclosing to them what is to come and only speaking that which He hears from Jesus”.
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