Being Led By God's Spirit; The Spirit Of Truth

He was in the world, and the world

was made through Him, and

the world did not know Him.

He came to His own, and His own

did not receive Him.

But as many as received Him,

to them He gave the right to

become children of God,

to those who believe in His name:

Who were born, not of blood,

nor of the will of the flesh,

nor of the will of man,

but God.

John 1:10–13

            In the early Christian Church attacks upon the truth bombarded those who were truly seeking the truth making much confusion and the need for men of God to correct what was falsely being taught and to teach the truth, the truth handed down by those men, the apostles, who wrote under the guidance of the Holy Spirit what God wanted to have revealed for His children. I have attempted to show some of the false teachings, and heresies and their source in previous blogs; but there came more than just false teachings, rather false teachings under the deceptive guise of being Scriptural, as if these false teachings were correct, the truth: By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber”(2Peter 2:3). One major problem that existed in the early Church and exists in many Churches today is the use of Scripture as a proof Scripture, a verse taken out of context to validate false teaching. One such teaching came by way of Gnosticism, even Montanism, and later in the 4^th century by Pelagious ( I will write more about him when I write in regards to that era), who taught that man could save himself, that is, that may could choose God. Oh! Yes! These who believe that man is just good enough to save himself hate the fact that God would choose some and not others, that God would predestinate some for salvation and not others, that man could choose either good or bad, that man could believe the Gospel by means of his own reason. Taking verses as proof verses is done with the above Scripture: “As many as received Him…to those who believe in His name…” and point to these verse as though man can by himself come to believe. Is that true? Is this what John is writing? No! For in context man can be saved only by the will of God: “nor of the will of man, but God” and is plain that flesh cannot save man, and salvation is only by the will of God. Let me ask: when John wrote: “And the world did not know Him” (vs. 10), was John speaking of all the people around the world? If John meant that all the people did not know Him then this would be ludicrous as it could not be expected that those outside of Judea would have the possibility to know that He was in the world. Yes, Jesus created the world, He is the Light of the world, in Him was life (vs. 3–4), and the world did not know Him, even those who were the chosen people of God, the Israelites did not know Him. This was the “world” that John had to be writing to for he makes clear that unless a person receives Jesus they cannot be a child of God, and that choosing is done by man when God wills for that man or woman to be saved. Jesus was the One that had been prophesied about, the One coming as the Messiah, the eternal One:”…This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me” (John 1:15b). Man being totally depraved, fallen in his nature, having no desire for godly things, needed more than what he could produce enabling him to obtain salvation. As I wrote in the last blog: the soul of man needed purification, a desire to convert, to choose Jesus Christ. The Greek language is succinct as a person to be a child of God is not only by the will of God, but man must believe, that is the word translated in vs. 12 a who believe in His name, is a dative, plural, present tense participle, as the word “to” indicates dative, therefore it is to them (plural) who are believing, in the present, that will become a child of God, and this is done by the will of God for God in His grace and mercy bestows upon those He wills to be saved the gift of faith: “Fro b grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). A child of God is known, for a child of God leaves all things behind and places God as the priority of their lives and desire to be led by God: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:14–15).

            In the next blogs I will enhance this subject that Jesus Christ is not what those who have been influenced and infected with false teachings, no matter how Scriptural those teachings may sound. Why did the Wisdom of God become incarnate?  In what sense did the Wisdom of God come to us? How do we understand the fact that the Word became flesh? And, how is it that Jesus Christ is both God, and man?  As the early Church had to fend off the attack by those who deceptively attempted to draw away a child of God, this is happening in our present age, and must be attacked as well. I must assume that you want the truth, not my truth, not someone’s truth, rather the truth according to Scripture, not proof Scriptures, rather Scriptural truth, interpreted by Scripture, in context. You want the real Jesus: do you not?

But let him who glories

            Glory in this,

That he understands and

            Knows me, that

I am the LORD, exercising

            Lovingkindness,

Judgment, and righteousness

            In the earth. For in these

I delight, says the LORD.

            Jeremiah 9:24; cf. 1Corinthians 1:31

Be Led Today By God: His Truth

Richard L. Crumb