The Deadly Danger of Truth Untethered from Spirit

Spirit and Truth

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Nov. 5, 2023

The Deadly Danger of Truth Untethered from Spirit

We’re in a series called Spirit and Truth and last week I warned that bad things happen when we disconnect our understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit from the anchor of God’s word. Christians and churches can do and believe weird and wacky things when the Bible isn’t guiding our beliefs and expectations of the Holy Spirit. Like Lawn Chair Larry who flew his lawn chair at an altitude of 16,000 feet, we can find ourselves in places God never meant for us to be in. It’s a dangerous thing to untether Spirit from Truth.

But it’s just as dangerous to untether Truth from the Spirit. What I mean by that is treating the Bible as if by itself the Bible alone had everything we need to live the Christian life and neglecting the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and churches. The Bible itself makes it very clear we need both! Spirit and Truth.

Just as we need the word to reveal God the Spirit to us and guide us in His ways and will, we need the Spirit to empower and make alive the word of God. Paul in fact says that ministry isn’t ministry until the words on this page are written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Let’s read 2 Cor. 3.

3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? ² You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. ³ You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

⁴ Such confidence we have through Christ before God. ⁵ Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. ⁶ He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Cor. 3:1-6

Moses came down with God’s words written on stone tablets. And it was glorious – the glory of God shone on Moses’ face. But all those stone tablets with the law written on them could bring us was condemnation and death because we couldn’t keep them. We couldn’t keep them because our hearts were like those stone tablets – hard and stone dead. The law was good, but we were bad so all the good law could bring was death. The letter kills.

But God promised that He’d make a new covenant with us where He’d turn our stone hearts into soft hearts.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 36:26-27

God promises to give us His Spirit and His Spirit will give us a new heart – replacing our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. A heart that wants to follow God’s will and keep His commands. That’s what Paul means when he says the Spirit of the living God has written on our hearts a letter from Christ. It’s not longer a book of paper and ink, but this book comes alive in us…by the Holy Spirit! Jesus’ saving work detailed in this book come alive in us by the Holy Spirit! Listen to Paul’s ministry declaration in 1 Cor. 2

² For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified…⁴ My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. 1 Cor. 2:2,4-5

The Bible informs us and the Spirit transforms us! We need both!

When Lawn Chair Larry finally landed safely, a reporter asked him why he did it, and Larry replied, a man can’t just sit there. Larry wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he did get that right. Jesus doesn’t want us to just sit there – he gave us the word of God to anchor us in truth and wisdom and to reveal God’s plan of salvation through Christ to us. And he gave us the Holy Spirit, the wind of God, to enable that truth to soar in us.

So on the far, far extremes you have crazy, unbalanced, weird believers for whom the skies the limit when it comes to the wild and wacky things the Spirit does. And on the other extreme churches that are spiritually cold, hard, and dead. Weird…dead.

But in my experience, many if not most gospel-centered churches might lean heavier in one direction or the other – word or Spirit, but love both the word of God and the Spirit of God. I think there’s too much friendly fire in the church where believers from one camp fire at believers in the other camp because they believe differently. Too often we can misrepresent those in the other camp and cast them in a bad light. Charismatics are nothing but fruit cakes and Baptist type churches are dead. We’d do well to remember we have far more in common that we have differences.

So no friendly fire here, but a friendly encouragement to all of us to keep growing and not get entrenched in places the Bible and the Spirit don’t call us to be entrenched. I believe the Lord’s calling Charismatic churches to dig deep in God’s word and love sound doctrine. That would also be true for church growth churches that feed the crowds what they want to hear and never go too deep into all that boring Bible teaching stuff. Feed the flock, Jesus says. And for the more staid, focus on the Bible and pay little attention to the Spirit churches, who might be reacting to the crazy extremes they’ve seen in the Charismatic movement, call upon the Spirit of God to let your faith soar. Let Him warm your prayers if they’ve gotten cold. Let Him burn in your heart to purify you from sin and give you boldness to share the gospel. Those things won’t come from just reading the Bible and getting the information. We need the transformation that the Spirit brings. We need the Spirit to make the word come alive to us, written on our hearts!

Why I believe the Spirit still gives miraculous gifts to His church today

Now there are churches that call themselves cessationists. They love God’s word, theybelieve in the Holy Spirit – of course they do! – and they believe the Spirit is working in the church today. What they believe has ceased are the miraculous gifts like tongues or prophecy or healing or miracles mentioned in the New Testament. I want to share some brief thoughts as to why I don’t believe that and also my thoughts about why we see far less truly miraculous power in the church today.

This isn’t going to be in depth but just a brief explanation based on my study of the Bible. I’m going to get a little wonky here so if this isn’t your thing, bear with me.

1. The arguments for, and my responses to, the cessationist view

There are two primary Bible-based arguments that I’m aware of for believing that the miraculous gifts listed in the New Testament have ceased. The only argument directly from the Bible is found in 1 Cor 13 where Paul clearly says there will be a day when the gifts will cease:

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor. 13:8-13

They teach that “when the perfect comes” refers to the canon of the Bible being completed. With all due respect this seems to me to be a very weak argument and bad Bible exegesis.

Let’s unpack what Paul is saying. He says love will never cease but the day will come when prophecy and tongues will cease. When? When the perfect comes the partial will pass away. To me “the perfect coming” can only refer to Jesus’ return and establishing his kingdom not the completion of the Bible. In that day, Paul says, we who see dimly now will see face to face. I find it hard to believe that Paul, who wrote scripture, saw dimly but we – who have the completed canon – see face to face. I tend to think Paul saw it all way more clearly than I ever have on my best days.

In that day we won’t need tongues or prophecy or faith or hope because all those things encourage us to hold on to God’s faithfulness when we don’t see it. But on that day there won’t be any need for tongues or prophecy to build up the church; we won’t need faith or hope because faith and hope speak to the unseen but we’ll see it all. The one thing that will remain on that day will be love.

Another argument given is that the books that mention the spiritual gifts are the books that were written earlier. There is little mention of the gifts in the NT books that were written later. Again I don’t find this a convincing or even a particular accurate argument. The bulk of Paul’s epistles were written between AD 55 and AD 62 so there’s only a few years between the early letters and the later letters. Romans, Ephesians, and 1 Timothy are among the later epistles and mention spiritual gifts.

But even taking this argument at face value, the fact that later books have less mention of the gifts is an argument from silence – again, not solid biblical ground to stand on. Many of the epistles say little about missions and evangelism as well, but few churches believe that it was God’s will for missions and evangelism to cease.

As an argument for the continuation of the gifts, there are so many passages that instruct believers what the gifts are for (building up the body), how to steward them, and encourage us to eagerly pursue the spiritual gifts that it makes me very uncomfortable to say those parts of the Bible don’t apply to us anymore.

So why don’t we see the kind of power and mature gifts operating today that we see in the Bible? Maybe a couple reasons. First, the spiritual health of the church plays a part in it. A church that is impure or not praying or doesn’t believe won’t experience much of the Spirit’s work just as a church that has no heart for evangelism or missions won’t reach the lost because they have little faith or desire to, not because God’s heart has changed.

But I also tend to believe – and this is not scripture but just my own opinion – I do believe that the ebb and flow of greater and lesser moves of God in signs and wonders including the more sensational gifts are primarily directed by God’s sovereign will and I think there are seasons of more and lesser signs and also people on whom more or lesser anointing rests.

Jesus had power beyond what anyone else in history had or will have. The apostles were entrusted with power that others in the church in that day didn’t have. Peter and Paul’s shadow would heal people. They gave out handkerchiefs and the sick would touch them and be healed. God gives varying amounts of gifting and power and faith to His people and the early church received the highest level of power and gifting in the apostles. Some non-apostles like Philip also had great power. But we see no indication that everyone was walking in this kind of power.

I don’t know how it works or what all the reasons are, but I do believe God pours out revivals on the basis of His will (in response to prayer, but that prayer is in response to His will) and signs and wonders based on what’s needful and helpful. The early church needed its credibility established. In the last days some will also walk in great power (the two witnesses for instance) but we can and should all walk in the Holy Spirit and experience His powerful grace and love and peace and fruitfulness in our lives.

How to invite the Holy Spirit into your Bible reading

• Make it a priority by setting aside a time of the day for Bible reading. I try to get time in God’s word first thing in the morning, but whenever works for you. Just don’t make it a vague “when I get to it” thing cause nine out of ten days you won’t get to it.
• Don’t play “Bible Roulette” and open the Bible randomly hoping the Lord leads you to the verse you need to read. Select a book and read through it so you get the context and flow of the book. Personally I alternate between old testament books and new testament books. I just finished reading through Romans and am now reading through Isaiah.
• Read a few verses slowly and carefully, asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you from them.
• Consider journaling – as the Lord speaks to you, or as you lift burdens up to Him, keep a journal. Writing out big prayers can be very faith-building, especially as you later see how God answered those prayers. Example: Isaiah 7:9b if you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. That spoke so much to me and I journaled it. I wrote, this is a timely encouragement for me because I am feeling the tremors of a vague fear. Fear about this, fear about that. I continued writing: I don’t have to live in fear. I choose to trust in the Lord. That verse might not have hit me so hard if I hadn’t taken the time to journal about it.
• Look in the mirror – how does this passage speak to me personally? What will I do with what I’ve read? The Spirit will help us be doers of the word not just hearers. Don’t just read the Bible, let the Bible read you.

Amen!