Does God Still Speak to People?

Understanding the Doctrine of Illumination

The title of my upcoming sermon this Sunday is “Religion, Gender, Race, and Pride.” The text is Numbers 12:1–16. In other words, I’ll have another opportunity to offend everyone there. Fun times.

One of the points I’ll make is that every religion claims to have some special insight into the key questions in life. The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam had prophets who claim a special relationship with God in which God communicates with them. In turn, these prophets communicate God’s message to the rest of us.

One big problem is that the prophets of these religions often contradict one another. They can all be wrong, but they can’t all be right. Christians would argue that Moses was a great prophet, but because Jesus is God, and proved his deity by his resurrection, Jesus is the greatest prophet. And because Jesus and Muhammed contradict one another, Jesus is right and Muhammed is wrong. All prophets are measured by Jesus.

Jesus himself warned his followers to “beware of false prophets” (Mt. 7:15). We must take that warning seriously. That means anyone who claims to be a prophet must be tested thoroughly. It is a serious thing to claim to have received special revelation from God. Because the canon of Scripture is complete, the need for prophets today is diminished if not eliminated. Protestants believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. The Bible has all we need to know for our salvation and sanctification; it is sufficient to guide us into knowing, loving, obeying, and exalting Jesus Christ. The Bible doesn’t tell us all we want to know, but it tells us all we need to know. That means we have to take great care with the way we talk about our relationship with God.

“God Told Me”

It is common to hear Christians speak to one another about their relationship with God in very personal terms. That is a good thing. All of us should strive to enjoy God in a relationship that is warm and personal. But sometimes we slip into cliches like, “God told me,” “The Lord revealed to me,” “Jesus spoke to me…” “Then God said to me…” I encourage my fellow Christians not to talk like that. It suggests a relationship with God that other Christians don’t or can’t have. It implies that you are receiving secret truth that is applicable but inaccessible to everyone else. It’s an implicit claim to being a prophet.

I planned to say something like that in my upcoming sermon.

Then, I previewed the sermon with our staff this week because they often help me consider things in the text I haven’t noticed, or they anticipate some question that will be raised by our church family. One of the suggestions that came from a staff member was to offer a balancing truth to my warning. Without that balancing truth, some of my hearers may conclude that it is normal to have a rather impersonal, cold, detached relationship with God that involves no personal or affectionate communication. So, I’m revising the sermon a bit to bring in that balancing truth. What is it?

The Balancing Truth of the Doctrine of Illumination

The doctrine of illumination can help us thread the needle. On the one hand, we want to avoid careless claims about receiving special revelation from God when we haven’t. On the other hand, we want to avoid a cold and sterile relationship with the Lover of our souls.

Illumination is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to every believer that starts even before conversion. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and convinces us we need a Savior. Some people read Scripture and don’t understand it or believe it, while some people read it, understand it and believe it. What’s the difference? The illumination of the Holy Spirit. Only God can open up Scripture to us. By his Spirit we understand God’s Word with our minds and by his Spirit we embrace God’s Word with our hearts. As Paul wrote, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12).

When the Holy Spirit helps us understand the words of Scripture, our understanding will probably not be a solitary experience. In other words, if you are the only person to come up with that interpretation, you are probably mistaken. The Holy Spirit also uses his church and other believers to help you understand the Scripture. But in addition to understanding what the text means, the Holy Spirit will help you understand what that text means to you. He will help you see ways you can apply the truths of Scripture to your personal life in particular circumstances. He will cause you to see its relevance. I like the way this author puts it:

There are times in our lives when we are reading the Bible and suddenly we are struck by something in the text that we have never noticed before. Perhaps we suddenly see how the passage applies to our specific context. Maybe we understand the contours of an argument that escaped us previously. These are examples of the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination.

Here’s a great word from one of my favorite theologians, J.I. Packer:

“The work of the Spirit in imparting this spiritual understanding is called illumination or enlightening. It is not a giving of new revelation, but a work within us that enables us to grasp and to love the revelation that is there before us in the biblical text as heard and read, and as explained by teachers and writers. Sin in our mental and moral system clouds our minds and wills so that we miss and resist the force of Scripture. God seems to us remote to the point of unreality, and in the face of God’s truth we are dull and apathetic. The Spirit, however, opens and unveils our minds and attunes our hearts so that we understand.” (Concise Theology p. 155)

So Does God Still Speak To People?

The answer to the question, Does God Still Speak to People?, is definitely Yes and probably No. He probably isn’t giving new revelation to people. I know of no prophets predicting the future like Moses or Elijah or the Apostles today, receiving direct and new revelation from God while performing authenticating miracles to back it up. But yes, God still speaks to us in and through His written Word as the Holy Spirit does his work of illumination.

In that sense we can say to one another something like this: “I was reading this verse today and I believe the Holy Spirit may have helped me understand it better and gave me insight into how I can practically apply his Word to my life right now in this situation.” Or we might call a friend and say, “Hey, today as I was driving to work, you came to my mind for some reason, and I don’t know how to explain it but I sensed that I needed to start praying for you and that you need this word of encouragement today.” That kind of humility will go a long way to eliminating the confusion about how God speaks to us.

More conversations like that, I think, would be theologically precise, emotionally satisfying, spiritually enriching, and pleasing to the Lord who loves us and who is speaking to us now. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you hear him today.