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Why should we ask for the Holy Spirit's help in Bible study?

Posted by Joshua Claycamp on

Sometimes we approach our Bible with an intellectual agenda and an academic approach. We are mining for textual clues that support or refute particular theological positions. Yes, that is necessary for debating error and falsehood. After all, we serve a logical God who is a person of order and not chaos, and it is helpful to show the order of God's Word when confronting the disordered holdings of error.

But it just won't do if we are hungering to draw near to Him as our Father. Dads rarely talk to their kids in purely logical paradigms. While God's word to us is always logical, our Father is also loving and tender. Bible Study remains the exclusive way of hearing Him, but we should ask Him to help us be nearer to Him in our Bible Study. Our reading of the Scriptures has to go beyond the academic and enter into the realm of personal dialogue. For this, we need the help of God's Spirit.

Listen to this prayer from Paul for the sake of the Ephesian church:

“...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might” (Ephesians 1:17–19, ESV)

I greatly appreciated this explanation from the New Bible Commentary, and I hope that it is useful to you. Faith requires the truth of God's Word impacting the center of perception within a person's soul. We should open our Bibles in the morning to read, and we should ask God's Spirit to illuminate the text not that we understand it, but that we would perceive it with faith.

These three verses concentrate on the content of Paul’s prayer. The prayer in v 17 for a Spirit of wisdom and revelation represents a typically Jewish way of speech; it means Paul prays that the Spirit they have already received will be experienced granting these things. Note the purpose of the request is not for special information, but deeper perception and knowledge of God himself (as he is revealed in Christ). Wisdom, illumination and revelation were indeed the most typical gifts Jews expected from the Spirit. Power is mentioned much more rarely (cf. Ex. 31:3; Dt. 34:9; Is. 11:2; 1 Enoch 49:3; IQS 4:3–5).


The prayer in v 18 is equally a prayer for spiritual understanding: the heart here is a partial synonym for mind, will and spirit, and means the centre of perception and decision. Although Paul above all NT writers sought to explain and argue his theology to the rational understanding, he clearly recognized that is but part of the task. The heart of a person needs not merely more refined theological concepts, but the work of the Spirit integrating these with their perception and so restructuring their will and life. Paul prays that his readers might be able to know (understand) the hope that lies ahead of them in this fuller sense. If it really dawns on them that God intends to make them with all the saints a wonderful inheritance for himself, that knowledge (‘By his grace I’m to be a prince, not a frog’) will transform them with joy and love. Israel is portrayed frequently as God’s inheritance in the OT: see e.g. Dt. 4:20; Ps. 33:12; Is. 63:17; Je. 10:16. Here Paul applies it to the glorified church, and his prayer is that they understand the hope which dominates his opening eulogy (1:14, 5–6, 12).[1]

 

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[1] D. A. Carson et al., eds., New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 1227–1228.

Tags: bible study, holy spirit, illumination, revelation

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