The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Anjela Paje of Spokane, WA, from the tape, GC 1301-W, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 25." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1983. All Rights Reserved.
Questioner
I have a question in regards to the working of the Holy Spirit. In John
16:13, it says, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide
you into all truth.” And, then, over in 1 Corinthians, the twelfth chapter, the
seventh verse, it says, “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every
man to profit withal.” And then, in the 13th verse it says, “For by one Spirit
are we all baptized into one body...and have been all made to drink into one
Spirit.” Well, I’m wondering why, if we have the same Spirit, that in the church
today, there is such a controversy of doctrine concerning the gifts of the
Spirit, such as miracles, healings, gift of tongues? And, also, in The Christian
Church, I have a nephew who’s a Pastor of a Christian Church in Phoenix,
Arizona. He teaches that faith plus baptism is necessary for salvation. And that
question concerning the Spirit really bothers me because why isn’t it that we
all receive the same truth to teach the church?
John MacArthur's Answer
Let me answer your question, and that’s a very good question. And, that’s a very important question. Basically, the question is simply stated. "Why, if we all have the Holy Spirit, do we find differences in our doctrine, if we are being taught by one Spirit?" That’s what you’re asking.
Let me, first of all, say that 1 Corinthians 12:13, “By one Spirit, we are all baptized into one body.” That is a sweeping comprehensive statement regarding every single believer. That says, that when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you will be, at that point, placed into the body of Christ. Now, that occurs with everyone. The application of that verse is to everyone.
Backing up to verse 7, which you mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man.” What that means is, that the Spirit of God also manifests Himself to every believer equipping that believer for a unique ministry.
So, we all possess the Holy Spirit, and we’re all placed into the body by the Holy Spirit. So, the conclusion she is drawing is exactly right. All of us are possessors of the Spirit of God. We all have, living within us, the Holy Spirit. What Paul said to the Corinthians, “Know ye not your body is the temple of the Spirit of God?”
Now, the issue comes in John 16:13. Because in John 16:13, our Lord says, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth. He shall not speak of Himself, but whatever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for He shall receive of mine, and show it unto you.” Now, let me just answer it in the very simple way. That is a very unique setting. Jesus is in the upper room. And, He has gathered together with the twelve. In fact, He’s gathered together with the eleven. Because Judas has already been dismissed to betray Him. And, what He has left, basically, is the eleven disciples. And, they are going to be those who carry on the message. Now, at this point, Jesus never wrote anything down, did He? He has written nothing. In order for them to go out and rightly articulate the truth and rightly speak the message that Jesus gave, and rightly reiterate the facts of His life as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did. In order for them to do that, our Lord grants to these Apostles a special, unique gift of the Spirit of God, which kept them, in their preaching, free from any error. This, I believe to be a unique gift given to the Apostles. Not to every Christian. We are guided into all truth through the pages of the word of God, and by the instruction of the Holy Spirit. But, that’s only because we have the truth. We don’t receive it by revelation. It’s in addition to this. Or, instead of this. Do you understand what I’m saying? We have the Word of God and the Spirit of God leads us to understand the Word.
So, John 16:13, is not a verse that causes us a problem. It simply promises the Apostles absolutely accurate recall of the incidents and teaching of the life of Christ, so that, for example, when John writes down the Gospel, and writes down what Jesus did, and Jesus said, he is exactly accurate, and he is speaking the very mind of God. So, 16:13, is the promise of inspiration to the Apostles. There’s no such promise given to a preacher. The only guarantee that we have that we’ll come to the truth is to rightly divide, right? And, we can’t stand there and get it from the Holy Spirit. It says, in 2 Timothy 2, “Study to, what? Show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, doing what? Rightly dividing the word of truth.” So, since we don’t have the apostolic guarantee of revelation, or inspiration, we have to go to the Word of God in this era.
Now, at that point, you might ask the same question. If we all possess the Holy Spirit, and we all go to the same Bible, why do we come up with differences? And, that’s the same question, really. Now, let me answer that. There are several reasons. The reason men differ in interpreting the scripture, multiple issues.
1. Number one: We’re sinful. And, therefore, we have certain limitations on our understanding, right? I mean, we have limitations. No single person is so pure that in that person resides all truth. In fact, our sin indicates to us that we cannot have perfection, right? So, there’re going to be areas where we are incorrect. Now, let me say this in a way I hope you’ll understand. I there are errors in my theology. I just don’t know where they are. Because I’m doing my best to be accurate with the Word of God, but I know I’m not the beginning and the ending of all truth in absolute accuracy. I know there have to be some areas where my sin has blinded me, where my humanness has left me short of the ultimate reality that’s there. So, our sinfulness contributes to that. The fact that we’re human and we have no guarantee of being protected from error as the Apostles did when they wrote the scriptures down.
2. Secondly; There are differences because people go to the Word of God with different presuppositions. In other words, they go with a lot of baggage that they have inherited from their past life. If you, for example, were raised in a Pentecostal church or you were raised in a Christian church which taught baptismal regeneration, faith plus water equals salvation. And, that’s the way you were raised, and your mother and father believed that way, and your grandmother and grandfather, and your brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles, and your Pastor that you admired, and so forth, it’d be very hard for you to consign all those people to error, and ignore that teaching. So, you’re bound by certain hereditary or whatever, presuppositions which you then take to the scripture, and impose upon it. And, that’s another problem that we have.
3. Thirdly: Another problem we have interpreting the scripture is because people don’t always do what they ought to do, and that’s study, and work hard. That’s why Paul says to Timothy that the elders who labor hard in the Word and doctrine are worthy of double honor. And, I really feel that those three areas are very important for us to understand.
4. There’s a fourth area that’s also important, and that is that we disagree a lot of times on things that don’t have complete revelation. In other words, we don’t have enough data to be dogmatic, so we take different options. You understand what I mean by that? There’s a passage in 1 Corinthians. It talks about the baptism of the dead. I read a thesis one time, 35 different views of that. Which one’s right? I haven’t got the faintest idea. I have an opinion, but it’s only an opinion because we don’t have enough data to interpret that. We really don’t.
5. Fifthly: There’s one other category that would be the fifth answer. And, that is, that we can’t ultimately, fully and totally know the mind of God, because His mind is infinite and our mind is finite, right? Okay.
So, the reason we differ, we differ because we’re human. We differ because we tend to have presuppositions. We differ because, maybe, we don’t work hard enough at the text. We differ because we don’t have complete information on something. And, we differ because, ultimately, we are left short of the ultimate mind of God because we’re such finite creatures.
Now, let me tell you something important. I think, we could reduce the differences tremendously, tremendously. And, I don’t think the Bible’s that tough. And, I’m not that smart. I think, we could reduce it tremendously, if one, we’d take care of that humanness thing by going to the Word of God in an attitude of prayer, and an attitude of purity of life, so that we become a pure vessel. Seek the truth. Secondly, if we would unload the baggage of our presuppositions, and let it speak at face value. In other words, let it speak for itself. That’s what’s called, ‘exegesis’ or ‘inductive’ Bible study. Don’t make it say, you know, "I’ve got a great sermon. I’ve got to find a verse to go with it.” That isn’t the idea. You let it say what it says. And, there are ways to do that. Open it up and let you presuppositions and let your traditions and let your heritage get shot to pieces if it has to. If you’re not willing to be vulnerable, and tear up some of your old books and change some of your old tapes, you’re in real trouble.
I remember, earlier at Grace church I preached a sermon on why the antichrist will be a Jew. And, a guy came to me in the middle of the week and said, “You’re wrong! It will be a Gentile.” So, the next week, I preached on why the antichrist will be a Gentile. I have a tape for both, see. And, I thought about it awhile and threw one of the two away. But, the point is, if you’re willing to eat crow once in awhile, I think, is what I’m saying. But, sometimes, a guy gets something in print, and he’ll just die the rest of his life before he’ll ever change it. And, I think, another thing is if men would go to the Word of God, and work hard, and really work hard, and test what they believe against every text of the word. I think, what happens is you get your system and you stick in the passages that feed your system. And, you don’t get out of your system.
Well, I hope that helps. But, it isn’t that tough, really it isn’t, folks, if
you just let the Word speak.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
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