Slices
Prepare
Read Romans 8:14–16. Ask the Holy Spirit to share with your spirit a conviction that you are God’s child. Pray for others you know to experience this too.
Bible passage
God’s wisdom revealed by the Spirit
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
‘What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived’ –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
‘Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.
Explore
God’s rejection of human wisdom and culture is more than a ‘no’. It’s an invitation to understand that we can know God.
Partly this is about us knowing the ‘mystery’ of salvation, grasping through the Spirit all that God has graciously given us (vs 7,12). Human wisdom, which can’t or won’t understand (v 14), has to give way to divine wisdom which redefines reality for us (vs 7,14). This is revealed – not discovered – as the Holy Spirit within us interprets ‘spiritual realities’ in words that the Spirit must first teach us (v 13). Our faith rests on what’s been revealed to us rather than what human wisdom can discover or construct.
But even more than this we’re privileged to know not just what God has done, but to know God himself. Paul boldly claims that we can know a measure of the depths of God through the presence within us of the Holy Spirit, God’s very self (vs 10–12). That means we can know something of the thoughts of God, which Paul calls the ‘mind of Christ’ (v 16). This astounding privilege no human culture or wisdom can ever give to us. That’s why we must rest on Christ crucified alone.
Respond
Bring any matters about which you need to discern the mind of Christ to God (v 15). Ask God to speak by his Holy Spirit.
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Numbers 20,21; Matthew 20
Pray for Scripture Union
Please pray for the Grow Community ‘Rooted’, run by 15 Faith Guides who are part of the Ross Deanery, as they look to engage more of the 95 in their area of Herefordshire with the help of Rooted and Rooted Junior resources.
