In the next verse to those just quoted we read, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. iii. 14). Not only is the Holy Spirit the Author of revelation, the written Word of God: He is also the Interpreter of what He has revealed. Any profound book is immeasurably more interesting and helpful when we have the author of the book right at hand to interpret it to us, and it is always our privilege to have the author of the Bible right at hand when we study it. The Holy Spirit is the Author of the Bible and He stands ready to interpret its meaning to every believer every time he opens the Book. To understand the Book, we must look to Him, then the darkest places become clear. We often need to pray with the Psalmist of old, “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law” (Ps. cxix. 18). It is not enough that we have the revelation of God before us in the written Word to study, we must also have the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit to enable us to apprehend it as we study. It is a common mistake, but a most palpable mistake, to try to comprehend a spiritual revelation with the natural understanding. It is the foolish attempt to do this that has landed so many in the bog of so-called “Higher Criticism.” In order to understand art a man must have æsthetic sense as well as the knowledge of colours and of paint, and a man to understand a spiritual revelation must be taught of the Spirit. A mere knowledge of the languages in which the Bible was written is not enough. A man with no æsthetic sense might as well expect to appreciate the Sistine Madonna, because he is not colour blind, as a man who is not filled with the Spirit to understand the Bible, simply because he understands the vocabulary and the laws of grammar of the languages in which the Bible was written. We might as well think of setting a man to teach art because he understood paints as to set a man to teach the Bible because he has a thorough understanding of Greek and Hebrew. In our day we need not only to recognize the utter insufficiency and worthlessness before God of our own righteousness, which is the lesson of the opening chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, but also the utter insufficiency and worthlessness in the things of God of our own wisdom, which is the lesson of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, especially the first to the third chapters. (See for example 1 Cor. i. 19-21, 26, 27.)
The Jews of old had a revelation by the Spirit but they failed to depend upon the Spirit Himself to interpret it to them, so they went astray. So Christians to-day have a revelation by the Spirit and many are failing to depend upon the Holy Spirit to interpret it to them and so they go astray. The whole evangelical church recognizes theoretically at least the utter insufficiency of man’s own righteousness. What it needs to be taught in the present hour, and what it needs to be made to feel, is the utter insufficiency of man’s wisdom. That is perhaps the lesson which this twentieth century of towering intellectual conceit needs most of any to learn. To understand God’s Word, we must empty ourselves utterly of our own wisdom and rest in utter dependence upon the Spirit of God to interpret it to us. We do well to lay to heart the words of Jesus Himself in Matt. xi. 25, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” A number of Bible students were once discussing the best methods of Bible study and one man, who was in point of fact a learned and scholarly man, said, “I think the best method of Bible study is the baby method.” When we have entirely put away our own righteousness, then and only then, we get the righteousness of God (Phil. iii. 4-7, 9; Rom. x. 3). And when we have entirely put away our own wisdom, then, and only then, we get the wisdom of God. “Let no man deceive himself,” says the Apostle Paul. “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, _let him become a fool_, that he may be wise” (1 Cor. iii. 18). And the emptying must precede filling, the self poured out that God may be poured in.