The Spirit of Truth takes your mind to another level
In the previous post we learned God leads into truth even the newest believer through three divine guides: the inerrant Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and the church. We now look more closely at the guidance given by the Spirit of Truth.
2. The Holy Spirit
The third person of the Trinity has divine ability to lead us into truth. Jesus told his disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Jesus had complete confidence in the Holy Spirit to do this.
Notice that Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth.” We lack the ability to know the truth of the gospel apart from the Spirit of truth. First Corinthians 2:11 says, “…no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
And 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
So the mission of the Holy Spirit is to reveal truth within the human soul, like a lamp within your spirit, not merely a teacher talking externally to you.
We can have confidence in the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit
The apostle John wrote, “His anointing [the Holy Spirit] teaches you about everything—and is true and is no lie” (1 John 2:27).
Even though our inner world of thoughts and feelings is subjective and prone to error, John had supreme confidence in the believer’s ability to find truth with help from the Holy Spirit in tandem with the Old Testament and John’s teaching (and by implication the teaching of the other apostles), which became New Testament Scripture.
John wrote, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4:6 ESV) He could say that as a divinely commissioned apostle of Jesus himself.
The apostle Paul showed the same confidence in the Holy Spirit
Paul showed similar confidence when he instructed Timothy, “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit [the true gospel] entrusted to you” (2 Tim. 1:14).
The Holy Spirit lives within every true believer in Jesus Christ (see Romans 8:1–16), and he is the Spirit of truth who leads us in truth through the Scriptures, which he wrote (see 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20–21).
The Holy Spirit guides us into truth by illumining our minds to understand Scripture and by giving an abiding internal witness to truth. We do not hear a voice talking to us externally or internally (except perhaps in a very extraordinary occurrence), but we do experience his illumination, his witness, and the divine depth and breadth and weight he gives to truth.
Next week we look closely at the third, essential, divine guide into truth—the church—enabling even the newest believer to know the truth with confidence.