The Importance of the Spoken Word

It may come as a surprise to many in the secular West, but the Holy Bible of the Christian faith is by far the world’s best selling book; translated into almost every language with at least one copy owned by hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people across the globe. It is ironic then that in my experience, this great anthology of wisdom is also one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented of all books.

One of the reasons for this is the often very different nature of the One who inspired it from that of those he gave it to be read by. By which I refer to the fact that the Bible was written under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit but was given to be read by largely carnal men. Even Christians, who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, are often more affected by the ideas and interpretations of carnal theologians and the propagators of religious tradition, than by what the Bible calls the quickening of the Holy Spirit.

As human beings we are made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26), which even includes the triple-faceted nature of our humanity as spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23), in a kind of pale reflection of God’s own Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).

For this reason, one way in which the Bible may be rightly divided (2 Timothy 2:15) is by discerning which aspect of our humanity is being addressed, because sometimes God aims a particular emphasis at our carnal nature, whereas at other times he speaks directly to our spirit, while on other occasions his focus may be more directed at our souls.

A lot of problems and misinterpretations arise from our confusion concerning these very different components of our personality. And perhaps inevitably, because of this misunderstanding many scriptures which were meant to be understood spiritually have been applied carnally, while others, which were intended to be applied to our physical situation, have been spiritualised away as if they had no immediate application to our physical circumstances.

This is folly but quite common, and is nowhere more apparent than in the instance of an admonition once given by the apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:17,

‘Pray without ceasing’.

Over the years I have heard many expositions of this verse, explaining in various ways that what Paul meant was that we should pray often, on the appropriate occasion, or live a lifestyle continually reflective of prayerfulness. Nor am I knocking such teachings because they have their own merits, but how about we get just a little more radical here and imagine that Paul actually meant what he said. But if he did, what does that mean and how do we go about it? - How do we pray unceasingly?

Well, for one thing it was not an isolated exhortation but part of an overall context of encouragement for the whole church which included these words in verses 16-18:

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus toward you.

Read that over again and you’ll begin to notice that Paul is actually employing a form of rabbinical tautology - saying exactly the same thing in three different ways:

Rejoice always: Pray without ceasing: In everything give thanks.

In Paul’s mind these three elements were inseparable - An attitude of continual thanksgiving to be expressed joyfully in prayer. Wow!

Notice that he did not say: ‘For everything give thanks’, but ‘In everything’. There is much pain and many vicissitudes in life that do not come from God and it is not for these that Paul says that we should rejoice and give God thanks, but that we are not alone in them.

But how do we do that?

 

One way we are told is in famously expressed in Ephesians 6:11-18.

Put on the whole armour of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world's rulers, of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Therefore take to yourselves the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Therefore stand, having your loins girded about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Above all, take the shield of faith, with which you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching to this very thing with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

It’s a very familiar passage, and one I have written about before when I have pointed out that the whole armour mentioned is God himself; Jesus, in fact.

In other words Paul is not instructing us to take some items of ordnance from God to use against the Enemy, but that we should put on Jesus in a very real sense, because the items mentioned are not things that we provide but that are part of his character.

The girdle of truth is not our truth, but God’s Truth, who is Jesus himself (John 14:6), and his counterpart the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13).

Likewise, the breastplate of righteousness is not our righteousness, but Jesus’ own righteousness, which God imputes to us through faith (Romans 4:11).

Similarly, our feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, which is neither our gospel nor our peace, but both of which are gifted to us through faith in the Son of God (Mark 1:1; John 14:27).

Nor is the shield of faith, our faith, but his, because Jesus never expected us to exercise our own meagre faith but to believe enough in him to avail ourselves of his great faith (Mark 11:22).

And, of course, none of us are capable of saving ourselves, so it should go without saying that the helmet of salvation is not our own salvation, but the salvation purchased for us by Jesus‘ Blood and given to us freely by his grace.

But, the aspect I really want to home in on here is found in verses 17b to 18a:

‘…and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of the of God: That praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit…’

Many think that the Word of God mentioned there is the Bible but, whilst it is certainly included, it is not restricted merely to the written text, because the Greek term used is rhema, which is generally used in the New Testament to refer to the spoken Word of God, and it is that which tells us how the Sword is to be wielded - as prayer. And notice how verse 18 begins:

‘praying always’ - there it is again. And also, ‘with all prayer’, which might be better rendered ‘with all kinds of prayer’.

So, read in its proper context, Ephesians 6:11-18 is actually Paul’s instruction on the uniform every believer should wear when praying. And how often should that be? - Always!

The problem that most believers seem to have with understanding Paul’s clear admonition throughout is caused by the way they seem to have swallowed a religious paradigm of prayer.

Somehow the whole purpose of prayer has become obscured by procedure, form and paraphernalia, to where prayer has become some kind of onerous discipline involving a special posture that we adopt in some special place, when we speak to God in some special language.

Religion, in other words has done a very good job of making very complicated something which God always intended should be very simple - talking to him. But then, religion has always revelled in complexity, whereas God loves simplicity, because complexities erect barriers that God prefers to demolish.

But shouldn’t we set aside special times to speak to God in privacy and in peace? Yes we should. There are appropriate times for different kinds of communication with God which is why Paul mentions ‘all kinds of prayers’. We can pray privately, publicly, loudly or silently. We can pray prayers of faith, prayers of intercession, in our everyday language or in tongues. And we can pray in many other ways besides, but one of the most overlooked and probably misunderstood aspects of prayer is this repeated emphasis of Paul’s, of praying continually. What can he mean by that?

Prayer is not a formula or some mantra, but simple communication with God. That means it is two-way. I pray just as much when I listen in silence to what God has to say to me as I do when I blab on to him. Indeed, I do not pray a lot of long prayers, informing God of what he already knows, or beating around the bush before getting to the point about something I want from him. I prefer to keep my requests short and to the point, and just spend the rest of the time being real in his presence.

Thees, thys and thous were great in 1611, because in 1611 that’s how people spoke. They were the normal, everyday modes of expression in those days, just as the New Testament is written not in high classical Greek, but in the koiné or common Greek of its day. We can pray standing up, we can pray sitting down; we can pray on our knees or lying on our belly. We can even pray lying on our bed. We can clasp our hands together, raise our hands high, we can wring our hands or even hold them over our eyes. We can pray with eyes open, or with eyes tightly shut. We can pray in one position, or while walking, driving, or riding a bike.

The point is not what we are doing with our bodies, but what we are saying with our mouths from our heats, and who we are saying it to. Because this is the central point - for the believer every single word we utter is heard by God and regarded as prayer. To some extent this is also true of the unbeliever, but the point about Christians is who we are in Christ, which is something quite different.

One of the most overworked tautologies in the modern church is the nonsense of calling believers ‘Born Again Christians’, not because it isn’t true, but because there is no other kind. If you’re not born again you’re not a Christian and that’s that. Nor do I say so, but Jesus, in John 3:3 & 7.

Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

And,

“Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'

And not only Jesus but the apostle Peter makes the same point, in 1Peter 1:3 & 23.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…

And,

…since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God…

And the apostle Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:17,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

The Greek for new (kainos) does not describe Christians as some kind of ‘repair job’ that God cobbled together in the bike shed, but altogether new creatures, something completely fresh and novel that didn‘t exist before…in exactly the same sense as born again.

And in 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul adds:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

What this means is that the Christian believer is no longer seen as a sinner by God, but what the Bible calls a saint, or ‘sanctified one’.

Again, it’s this business of the whole armour of God, including his righteousness, which is imputed to the believer by grace through faith and not by our own works or self effort (Ephesians 2:8), because ‘putting on’ his armour is not actually about dressing up in something we didn’t already have, but about being conscious of being so garbed.

The way I often explain this is by illustration of when I was a police officer. Duly sworn and appointed to the office of constable, I carried the warrant card and wore the uniform. In other words, I had the full authority of the Law behind me to uphold the Queen’s Peace, by force if necessary.

However, it is one thing to wear the uniform and quite another to walk in the authority it represents. Had I wavered or hesitated in any way in the execution of my duty I might as well have stayed at home for all the use I would have been, because the criminal is acutely aware when an officer is unsure of himself and will take full advantage should the situation arise. And so it is with the believer. He is fully equipped with the whole armour of God, but must choose to consciously focus on who he is in Christ or else he will simply fold under the least pressure. And who we are in Christ is something quite phenomenal.

The last book of the entire Bible begins with these words:

A Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to declare to his servants things which must shortly come to pass. And he signified it by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore record of the Word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all the things that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads and hears the Words of this prophecy, and the ones keeping the things written in it, for the time is near. (Revelation 1:1-3)

The reason I mention this is because Revelation surely has the most starkly stated provenance of any book in the Bible: Given by God the Father to Jesus Christ, and by Jesus to an angel who then gave it to John who gives it to us. That’s what I call Authoritative.

So when it says the following, I suggest we do well to listen:

John to the seven assemblies in Asia: Grace to you, and peace, from the One who is, and who was, and who is coming, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne; even from Jesus Christ the Faithful Witness, the First-born out of the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth. To him loving us and washing us from our sins by his blood, and made us kings and priests to God, even his Father. To him is the glory and the might forever and ever. Amen. (Rev 1:4-6)

Did you catch that snippet in verse 6?

To him loving us and washing us from our sins by his blood, and made us kings and priests to God, even his Father.

That’s a heavy verse because it reveals the believer’s standing before God, in Christ Jesus - we are kings and priests. Nor should it surprise us because one of Jesus’ titles revealed in Revelation 19:16 and elsewhere is:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

The point is that we are the kings he King of, and we are the lords of whom he is Lord. So, the idea that believers are kings and priests is not unique to Revelation 1:6. But what does it mean?

Well, for one thing, it means we have tremendous authority. As kings we bow the knee to our King, Christ Jesus, just as we also bow to him as our High Priest (Philippians 2:10; Hebrews 3:1, et al).

What this also means is that what we say matters a great deal. Our words are supremely important because what a king says carries authority, and so do the words of a priest. Under the Old Covenant only Levites could be priests, but under the New Covenant all believes are, but we can still see some principles that apply to how a priest’s authority operates in Deuteronomy 21:5.

And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near. For Yahweh your God has chosen them to minister to him, and to bless in the name of Yahweh, and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried.

Basically, the priest was a judge over certain matters and his word was binding. And that’s why our words matter, as we see in Matthew 16:15-19.

He (Jesus) said to them, “But who do you say I am?” And Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “You are blessed, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven to you. And whatever you may bind on earth shall occur, having been bound in heaven, and whatever you may loose on earth shall occur, having been loosed in heaven.”

That principle of binding and loosing was readily understood by Jesus’ disciples because it was a rabbinical concept of priestly authority, and basically meant that whenever anyone brought a controversy before them, they would apply God’s Word to settling it and their decision would have binding effect, not only on earth but in heaven. Which is why in James 1:5-8, we read:

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and with no reproach, and it shall be given to him. But let him ask in faith, doubting nothing. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. For do not let that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, not dependable in all his ways.

Jesus’ half-brother James is being quite consistent with the preponderance of what we’ve already read because he encapsulates the idea of the authority of the believer’s spoken word by warning that we cannot speak out of both sides of our mouth at the same time, because whenever we contradict ourselves we countermand our own judgement. For example, there’s a lot of power in a believer speaking healing scriptures over himself, but that power is completely dissipated if he then follows those words of faith with the confession that his back is killing him.

Of course, I am well aware that this area of faith has often been highjacked and misrepresented by the scripturally ignorant and spiritually immature, to where it has been ridiculed as ‘Name It and Claim It’, ‘Blab It and Grab It’ or ‘Fake It and Take It’. But there is a wise old principle that we do well to remember, which is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The question is not what I think of it, or how you feel about it, but what the Word of God says about it. And on that score Jesus had quite a lot to say. In Matthew 12:35-37, Jesus says:

A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings out good things; and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings out evil things. But I say to you that every idle word, whatever men may speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.

That word ‘idle’ in the Greek is argon, which means ‘unemployed’ or ‘inactive’. Indeed, anyone with a knowledge of chemistry will recognise it as the name of one of the noble gases, the term given to those inert gases on the Periodic Table (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon) that are totally chemically unreactive. Clearly, Jesus expects that our words should have real affect. But what sort of affect has God in mind? Jesus gives us a clue in Matthew 6:21-34.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye. Therefore if your eye is sound, your whole body shall be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

 

No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Behold the birds of the air; for they sow not, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them; are you not much better than they are? Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin, but I say to you that even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

 

Therefore if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much rather clothe you, little-faiths? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink?’ or, ‘With what shall we be clothed?’ For the nations seek after all these things. For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow; for tomorrow shall be anxious for its own things. Sufficient to the day is the evil of it.

Here, in verse 31, Jesus introduces us to the idea of reinforcing anxiety by what we say - through the expression of anxious thoughts; a principle he revisits in Luke 6:45, where he says:

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth the good. And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth the evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Evil, says Jesus, begins in the heart but is released to do its work by what we speak. Equally, the good things that we speak have the opposite effect, and in 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 Paul says much the same thing.

For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, pulling down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought into the obedience of Christ; and having readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

This is the language of warfare, where the expression Paul uses for ‘bringing into captivity’ is the Greek verb aichmalótizó from the noun aichmalótos meaning a ‘prisoner of war’, and literally means ‘to take prisoner at the point of a spear’.

I would caution here, however, that neither Jesus nor Paul is sanctioning a state of denial. Trials and difficulties beset us all and there is no shame in admitting to them, but we are warned of the danger of dwelling upon them which simply erects a stronghold in our mind that can become increasingly difficult to tear down.

What we say matters. And, in the sense that every word we utter is heard by God and has spiritual affect, then we can be said to pray continually. So, the point is not whether we pray but what we say when we do.

So we see that not only does what we believe influence what we say, but what we say influences what we believe, which ultimately has a real effect on the material world. We also see that this idea is not just some New Age hocus-pocus, but is entirely Scriptural. That being so, what then should we be speaking? Consider one of the most famous accounts in all Scripture, in Luke 1:26-37.

And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin who had been betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

And entering, the angel said to her, “Hail, one having received grace! The Lord is with you. You are blessed among women!”

And seeing this, she was disturbed at his word, and considered what kind of greeting this might be.

And the angel said to her, “Do not fear, Mary, for you have found favour from God. And behold! You will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you will call His name Jesus. This One will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob to the ages, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”

But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be since I do not know a man?”

And answering, the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for this reason that Holy One being born of you will be called Son of God. And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth! She also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month to her who was called barren; for nothing shall be impossible with God.”

I actually want to concentrate on the last verse, but it was important to view it its proper context. Look again at verse 37: ‘for nothing shall be impossible with God’.

Before continuing this discussion, however, let me explain why I have left the word rhema untranslated in many of the following references. This is to differentiate it from logos. Both terms can mean word in the Greek New Testament where logos occurs 331 times, while rhema is found only 70. Each carries its own slightly different nuance in that, whilst there is an undoubted degree of overlap, logos in the Bible mainly refers to God’s written Word and general revelation (as well as Jesus himself) whereas rhema tends to be used to refer to God’s spoken Word and/or specific revelation.

An analogy I often use to explain the difference is that between water and ice, where water represents rhema, while ice is logos. This is because all logos, in the sense of God’s written Word, was once uttered as rhema before being set in writing. However, when the Holy Spirit breathes on that logos it melts to flow as rhema once again.

This is an oft-quoted line of Scripture that has caused many to suppose that God can do anything. The reason however, is because it is a misquotation of the actual Greek, which looks like this:

‘hoti ouk adunaté sei para tó theou pan rhéma’.

Which, allow me to translate:

‘For not impossible with God is any rhema’.

This actually reinforces scripturally something that puzzled me for many years until God explained it to me some years ago when I asked him about it.

My dilemma was this: If God can do anything, then how come there are some things he cannot do?

Think about it:

God cannot lie; God cannot die; God cannot deny himself or act unrighteously. God cannot sin; God cannot break his covenant or contradict his own word...

And the list goes on. Indeed, I recall that estimable teacher and pastor, the Reverend David Pawson saying that it had been calculated that there are at least thirty-two things that God cannot do. That’s quite a lot for a God for whom nothing is impossible…until you understand what the Greek actually means.

Before I understood this verse, however, I simply took the matter to God and asked him to explain the apparent contradiction, whereupon he told me:

“I never created the possibility”.

That’s when I saw the full relevance of John 1:3, which says:

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Whatever God commands to be so is so, and that’s what makes Mary’s response to Gabriel in Luke 1:38 so powerful:

And Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.

In the original Greek, Mary responds to Gabriel in kind, because when he says to her ‘For not impossible with God is any rhema’, her actual answer is:

‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your rhema.’

Here Mary is saying something quite profound, in ratifying God’s rhema with priestly authority, in accordance with Genesis 1:26, which says:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

This is the first Devolution Act in history, in which God transfers a large measure of his own sovereignty on earth over to man. Henceforth, in order to intervene in man’s affairs God would need a large measure of man’s permission to do so. This is not because man is more powerful than God, but because God is more faithful to his own Word than man is to his.

Man is not sovereign on earth because he is worthy to be so. He is sovereign on earth because God said he would be. And that’s why our words matter. In order for God’s will to be accomplished on earth, he has first to find a man to co-operate in speaking it into existence. If that sounds fanciful, get over it, because it is precisely what the Bible tells us.

When Mary told Gabriel ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your rhema’, she would have been reminded by the angel’s words of the following prophecies in Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6-7.

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

 

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will do this.

In other words, Gabriel wasn’t just speaking off the top of his head but reiterating God’s will which had already been pronounced by his prophets.

And that’s why Jesus came as a man, in order to perform God’s will and wield his power on earth by the authority God had originally vested in man. We see as much stated by Jesus throughout John‘s gospel.

Then Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you shall know that I Am, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father has taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me. The Father has not left me alone, for I always do those things which please him. (John 8:28-29)

I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you, then, do what you have seen with your father. (John 8:38)

For I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me gave me a command, what I should say, and what I should speak. (John 12:49)

And I know that his command is life everlasting. Therefore whatever I speak, even as the Father said to me, so I speak. (John 12:50)

And we see this hierarchy of expression preserved by Jesus’ Successor in the church - the Holy Spirit, of whom Jesus told his disciples:

I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of Truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatever he hears, he shall speak. And he will announce to you things to come. (John 16:12-13)

And this is precisely what Jesus referred to in Matthew 16:17-18, where he responded to Simon Peter’s declaration that he was ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God’.

Jesus answered and said to him, “You are blessed, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father in Heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

As I explain in my series ‘Keys of the Kingdom’, the Rock Jesus refers to here is not Peter as is commonly supposed, but the means by which he received such revelation - which came directly from God. Would that this were the manifesto of the Christian church, for, as Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 2:9-16,

But as it is written, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,” nor has it entered into the heart of man, “the things which God has prepared for those who love him.” But God has revealed them to us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of man within him? So also no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

But we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit from God, so that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.

These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one.

For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Just counting the number of ‘buts’ Paul uses here is instructive, because I have long lost count of the number of times 1 Corinthians 2:9 ("Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love him") has been misquoted to support the notion that we mere mortals cannot know the mind and will of God - precisely the opposite of what Paul intended to convey. And another scripture that is often married to 1 Corinthians 2:9, by way of confirmation, is Isaiah 55:8-9,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways,” says Yahweh. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

What seems to be completely overlooked here, however, is that Isaiah is addressing an Old Covenant audience and not the New Covenant Church,  whom Paul additionally admonishes in 1 Corinthians 2:10-11,

But we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit from God, so that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

The upshot then, is that the Christian walk should be spiritual and not carnal, and that whilst we walk that walk on our own two feet, God intended that that walk be guided by the Holy Spirit and directed by our mouths. Because what we say affects where we follow. That’s what Paul means in Romans 8:1, where he famously proclaims:

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

It’s often said that ‘we need to walk the walk and not just talk the talk’, but God sees both processes as inseparable because as kings and priests, what we say affects where we go and how we get there. When we are born again and made a new creation something fundamental changes in our lives, in that the cleansing Blood of Jesus makes us a fit habitation for God’s Holy Spirit to come and dwell in us for the first time.

Sadly, throughout church history, many have cheapened the Gospel by presenting a slipshod version of our salvation and redemption that falls far short of the glory that God intended for his children and Jesus purchased with his Blood. By replacing the clear promises of God’s Word with the opaque offers of religious tradition we have missed and misrepresented what God desires for us, which we see in passages like Hebrews 2:9-12,

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, "I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise."

That’s why Paul could so confidently exhort the Thessalonian church to

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus toward you.