Mike Focht 12/5/2025
The truth of God requires an act of God to be known. The very Holy Spirit who inspired the infallible Word of God must speak to our hearts in the true original language. If we don’t have the divine light of supernatural communication, even the most elementary biblical truths are impossible to understand. The original language of the Holy Spirit is not Hebrew or Greek. His language is the language of the light of God shining on the spirit of man. Only God can reveal God.
Man can teach biblical truths. Man can explain revealed mysteries. Sound doctrine is the starting point of all spiritual health. But sound doctrine is the wood without the fire. The wood of biblical truth needs the fire of the Holy Spirit to produce light and heat. Spirit and truth are necessary for spiritual life and worship. I can sit down with another Christian and walk them through what the Bible tells us about the love of God. That is sound doctrine. Only the Holy Spirit, shining divine light on the truth of the love of God, can make that other Christian know the love of God in greater depths and glory.
Now, before anyone accuses me of being a little too mystical, allow me to summarize this biblical reality by Scripture.
The Father can teach what flesh and blood cannot. Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven (Mt. 16:17).
The Son can teach what no human intelligence can search out on its own. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him (Luke 10:22).
The Holy Spirit teaches us all truth. These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you (John 14:25-26).
Many other Scriptures teach the same reality. I am called to speak the truth as a pastor. Only the Father, Son, and Spirit actualize biblical truth in human hearts. This is not a mystic presumption. This is an everyday spiritual reality. Why do two people sit in the same Sunday service, hear the same message, intellectually comprehend the same biblical truth, but one leaves different and the other exactly the same? Why do two children grow up in the same godly home, receive the same spiritual upbringing, worship in the same services, but one leaves the home for the mission field and the other lives for the love of the world? Why do we read the same passage of Scripture over and over again, but one day, the familiar passage is made new, deep, and real in ways we never before knew? Why does the Bible sometimes live to us, and other times, it does not?
The answer to all these questions, and many other similar spiritual experiences, is the same. Divine light. Everything about intellectual biblical truth changes when God teaches the soul. When Jesus Christ makes truth live. When the Holy Spirit shines the light of God on truth, revealing new facets of glory and grace. Only God can teach God. Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes (Psalm 119:135)!