How does the Holy Spirit Guide the Believer?

To what degree is the Holy Spirit involved in everyday decision making? In this series, Dr. Dean answers these questions and distinguishes between the view consistently presented throughout scripture concerning the Holy Spirit's leading and guiding ministry in the believer's life and today's scripturally unsupported but popular mystical view. The 2006 Spring New England Bible Conference was held at the Preston City Bible Church, April 5-7 2006.

What we want to do is focus on one area specifically in relation to the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. We know that the Holy Spirit is involved in many different things. He is the one who regenerates us at the instant of salvation when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. At that instant God the Father imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, and then because we possess the perfect righteousness of Christ God declares us just, which is why we call that justification by faith alone. At that instant we are saved, and at that same time in logical order but not chronological order because all these things happen simultaneously, God regenerates us. We become a new creature in Christ, we are baptized into the body of Christ, identified with His death. Burial and resurrection which, according to Romans 6:1-3, becomes the foundation for our new spiritual life. We receive something at salvation that is brand new, and we call that a human spirit to distinguish it from the soul, to distinguish it from the body; it is that immaterial part of our make-up that enables our soul to have a relationship with God. But beyond that God gives us the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity indwells us. This is a permanent indwelling, it doesn’t increase, it doesn’t diminish, it doesn’t become more powerful or less powerful; it is a steady state reality in the life of every believer from the instant of salvation until the time we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord.

During our Christian life the relationship that we as believers have with the Holy Spirit is described by a variety of different terms in the Bible. We are told that we are to walk by the Holy Spirit, that we are commanded to be filled by means of the Holy Spirit, that we are also led by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes these terms are not always clearly understood. In fact, in generations gone by and as each generation goes forward, we come to a little clearer understanding of just exactly what the role of the Holy Spirit is. Part of the problem that we run into is, just like every other area of doctrine, we tend to come to what the Bible says, that unique revelation of God to us, and we interpret it within our frame of reference. So if we come to the Scripture with a rational or empirical frame of reference we tend to interpret the Bible within that frame of reference. If we come to the Scripture from a mystical background then we tend to interpret things that are said in the Bible from this kind of a mystical background. So there is always this sort of tension within the way we understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. That is especially true in our background.

We as 21^st century evangelical believers in a doctrinal church, Bible church background, come out of a historical stream. Going back to the time of the Reformation and through the 19^th century, the primary battle that was fought in terms of understanding the Scripture was over salvation—sola fide was the battle cry of the Reformation” “by faith alone.” Also it was based on Scripture alone, so they talked about sola scriptura, by “Scripture alone,” not the authority of the church fathers, not the authority of the tradition of the various theologians through the Middle Ages, but it was only on the basis of what the Scripture said. Gradually as they came to emphasize sola scriptura there was more of an understanding and development of a literal interpretation of Scripture, that the Word of God should be interpreted in a literal manner. Just as we speak we understand how someone talks, we use a plain normal means of interpretation. This was what was going on in the 1500s. What happened by the late 1600s is that all these new groups started. You had the Lutheran church, the Reformed church—an amalgamation of Calvin, the French-Swiss reformer located in Geneva, and Zwingli, the German-Swiss reformer headquartered in Zurich—and it was in the reformed tradition that the systematization of theology really developed. Then there was the break-out of the Anabaptists who recognized that there should be a distinction between the church and the state, and that believer’s baptism was to occur after a person had put their faith in Christ, it wasn’t for infants. By the late 1700s they developed various creeds which were nothing more than detailed doctrinal statements. But what happened was that everyone was identifying their relationship with God with just basically believing in a doctrinal statement. So the relational aspect of the believer’s relationship with God somehow got lost. Theology just became very stultified, rigid and traditional, and it was just cold creedalism. So there was a reaction setup and there was another movement which tried to swing things back to having a closer relationship with God, and this was called pietism. Of course, one of the things that happen when you start trying to define relationship is that it brings into it a certain amount of emotion and subjectivity. So there was this trend of pietism and an emphasis on having just a personal relationship with God, being alone with God. A lot of good things came out of pietism, including missions, but also there was this area of emotional subjectivity. It can be seen that there is this trend from one pole to the other where you end up on the Reformed side and extremely rationalistic creedal view of God, and all you have to do is have a very precise theological statement and everything is okay, and on the other hand there is the swing to emotion and subjectivity. It is not as extreme as sometimes today with Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement on the other side, but that whole Pentecostal movement traces its roots more to this, the pietistic stream, than the Calvinistic Reformed stream. As we go down through history into the 1800s the pietism movement is the sort of great grandfather of the Methodist movement—Methodism is another reformed movement that was in reaction to the cold, dead creedalism of the Anglican church in the 1700s. Methodism gave birth to something called “Holiness” theology in the med-1600s. In Holiness theology there is again the return to this emphasis on the personal relationship with God but it also has a large degree of subjectivity, and the holiness movement gave birth to the holiness Pentecostal movement. At the same time there was a break-out movement that came out of the Holiness movement which was the Keswick movement, and at the same time in the Holiness-Keswick stream there were the “victorious life” teachers who are teaching a victorious life view of Christianity, a sort of a let go and let God, that somehow if we just let go of ourselves God sort of just takes over. That kind of terminology was very present in the Bible conferences at the end of the 19^th century. There were all these prophecy conferences and some of the key speakers at some of those were C.I Scofield and L.S Chafer. In this context Chafer had a lot of victorious life terminology, as did Scofield. Chafer really improved on a lot of Scofield’s views, including his views on the Holy Spirit—further clarification. So that is how we fit within this historical flow of understanding Christianity, and during this era, because of the Holiness movement and the Pentecostal movement, all of a sudden there is a renewed interest in the Holy Spirit, who the Holy Spirit is and how He relates to the spiritual life of the believer.

In the Reformed camp was B. B. Warfield. He reacted to Chafer’s book, “He that is Spiritual,” and he accused Chafer of being Keswick. Chafer wasn’t really Keswick-Holiness but he uses their terminology. The problem is that these men were not always as careful with their terminology as they should be, and so even within the stream of Dallas Seminary teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit there are some different emphases that came out of that. One of those was Charles Ryrie. On page 105 of his book on the Holy Spirit he says under the paragraph on guiding:

“Quoting Romans 8:14, ‘For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’ …” He then goes on to say, “Leading is a confirmation of sonship, for sons are led. Much as already been said in chapter 16 about guidance in connection with dedication …” Ryrie has a completely different view of the spiritual life: you have to reach a stage of yieldedness or dedication before the Holy Spirit will really start maturing the believer. That was much closer to Keswick theology than the view that we hold and the view Chafer taught. Ryrie continues, “The work of guidance is particularly the work of the Spirit.” There are two key verses in the Bible that talk about the leading of the Holy Spirit: Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18 which says that if you are led by the Holy Spirit you are not under the law. What happens in this stream of thought is that people coming out of this holiness movement and with pietism in the background tended to interpret the Holy Spirit’s work in our life in a somewhat subjective emotional sense. So they would interpret Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18, the leading of the Spirit, as divine guidance. The question to be addressed is, is the leading of the Spirit divine guidance? It is not! This is a very poor interpretation of these two verses. Ryrie is saying that leading of the Spirit is divine guidance. We are going to see that it is not divine guidance. Ryrie says: “Romans 8:14 states it and the book of Acts aptly illustrates it.”

Let’s see what the Scriptures actually say. Acts 8:28, 29: “Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.” 1) Philip is physically moved from point A to point B by the Holy Spirit. That is a miracle. 2) Then the Spirit says something to Philip. Is He giving Philip an impression? This is what we hear from people today in the process of making decisions, e.g. you need to pray and listen to the Holy Spirit. How do you listen to the Holy Spirit? The flip side of that question is, How is He speaking? What Ryrie is doing when he goes to these verses is saying, This is how He speaks. But let’s pay attention to these examples because they are not doing what happens today, it doesn’t occur today. The Spirit speaks audibly and propositionally to Philip. This is special revelation. The Holy Spirit is not speaking audibly anymore since the close of the canon. The next example Ryrie gives is in Acts 10:19, 20. This is another situation where there is a transition point in the early church. Peter has been instructed to take the gospel to Gentiles, and the Gentiles down have to become proselytes into Judaism in order to get saved. So God gives him a vision, direct revelation, where most of the food that is there is prohibited by the Mosaic law. While Peter is thinking about this “the Spirit said to him…” The whole context is what we would classify as special revelation. Again, this is happening in Acts, in a transition period in the early church, when you are establishing the foundation of the early church, before there is a completed canon of Scripture. Acts 13:2 is the next passage he references: “As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” This isn’t just some inner impression, they are not just getting an intuitive insight into something. It is specific revelation, audible, and they know they are getting precise directions. It is classified as special revelation. Acts 16:6, “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia.” The text really doesn’t tell us how the Holy Spirit blocked them from going into Asia. It could have been special revelation like we have seen in examples up to this point, but it could be that whatever they tried to do the door just didn’t open and it wasn’t possible for them to go in that direction. Acts 20:22, “And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there. Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.” Paul has been warned all along the way by New Testament prophets given special revelation that he would be arrested down in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit is again specifically communicating something, that the chains and tribulations await him. So all of these examples that Ryrie gives to substantiate his statement that the work of guidance is the work of the Holy Spirit, as if this pattern continues today, are actually unique to that early transition period in the book of Acts.

How do we know anything? In the history of mankind there have only been four answers as to how we know anything. Three of these are based on human viewpoint systems of knowledge, and one is the divine viewpoint.

1) Rationalism. This is illustrated in the ancient world by Plato; in modern philosophy by Descart. It is the idea that somewhere in the human mind there are innate ideas. The means of development is logic and reason. There is no input from God, it is just man starting from whatever he has and arguing to ultimate truth. This is faith in human ability.

2) Empiricism. This doesn’t start with innate ideas in the mind, it starts with sense perceptions: what we see, taste, touch.

3) Mysticism.

4) Revelation. We believe that the Bible gives us an objective revelation from God about God, that God the Holy Spirit was involved in the process of communicating information, but this is information that comes to us so that we are then able to understand, evaluate, and make decisions about reality. This gives us the framework for understanding and interpreting the details of life. The biblical viewpoint is that God gives us the key pieces of data that we need that is going enable us to understand everything about reality.

What is revelation?

1) Revelation is derived from the Greek word APOKALUPSIS [a)pokaluyij] which means disclosure or unveiling. It is the idea of disclosing or unveiling something which cannot be known any other way. For example: You can’t come to a knowledge of man’s problem of sin, the tendency of sin and the effects of sin on the soul apart from the Word of God. Revelation signifies God unveiling Himself or disclosing other information to man.

2) We have to distinguish revelation from certain other words that we talk about—inspiration, illumination, these are other categories. Inspiration is the process whereby God oversaw the process of recording the disclosure—how the Holy Spirit worked in and through a fallen human being to guarantee that what he wrote was without error, was absolute truth, and stated exactly what God wanted to be stated. Inspiration is the means by which revelation is disclosed. Then there is illumination, the process whereby the Holy Spirit enables us to understand what has been revealed in Scripture. This isn’t some kind of mysticism. Then there is leading of the Spirit.

3) There are two categories of revelation: verbal and non-verbal. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” This is the concept that underlies the whole debate on intelligent design. This can’t happen by chance, it communicates something non-verbally to us. There must have been a designer, and this designer must have been able to control incredible amounts of data in order to produce that. And if He made that out of nothing then He is really something, because one of the most significant realities is that there was nothing and then there was something. Out of just a vacuum God created matter. That is non-verbal revelation, but special revelation is needed for interpretation. Special revelation tells us how to interpret general revelation. Special revelation is detailed and propositional. It is progressive in nature. God didn’t give 66 books of the Bible to Adam. He only gave five to Moses, then He built on that. Galatians 4:4, “In the fullness of time …” There was a 4000-year preparation period to get the human race ready before an incarnate God could come, so that there would be meaning and content in order that people could understand who He was. It is progressive revelation, and people in different generations have had more data from God.

4) Special revelation is verbal, not just ideas or concepts; the very words are inspired by God. It is specific and technical. It is propositional, i.e. it can be verified or falsified. Exodus 19:6, “These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.” It is propositional.

What we have today is this issue of mysticism. It really come sup today and it is dangerous today because the world around us is a mystical world. So there is this attraction to that today, whereas in the time of L.S. Chafer it wasn’t as dangerous because that wasn’t a mystical age. But today to speak in mysticism is really dangerous because everybody is prone to following their emotions. They are attracted to that like iron filings are to a magnet. The sin nature that is being fed today is the sin nature that emphasizes emotion and subjectivity and personal feelings rather than objective information and objective universal principles. There are universal principles that we apply regardless of individual circumstances. We live in a world where we are so moved by self-absorption and arrogance that we just want to go with our feelings. It is very dangerous to identify inner feelings, inner experience, inner movement, inner light, whatever it is, with the Holy Spirit. Quakers did that, holiness Pentecostals, charismatics, all hold to this inner light. All the false doctrines come from people who are listening to their emotions and not studying the Word.

Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18 are the two passages people go to to talk about the leading of the Spirit. We have to understand what these passages are really talking about. Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Often people will go to this passage and say “If you are a believer,” i.e. a son of God, and then they will use John 1:12, “For as many as received him, to them gave he the power to be called the sons of God.” They go to that latter verse and take “sons of God” and the one in Romans, and identify them, but they are different words—HUIOS [u(ioj] in Romans; TEKNON [teknon] in John—so they are talking about different kinds of sons, not just any son but an adult son in Romans. There are those who will look at this and say sons of God = believers, all believers are led by the Spirit. Others will come along and say sons of God isn’t TEKNON, it is HUIOS which is an adult son, a mature son, so if you are a mature son then you have to be guided in your life by the Holy Spirit. And they bring in this whole doctrine of divine guidance. What we have to do is ask if this is talking about divine guidance or is it talking about something else? What is meant by divine guidance is direction in our lives in terms of How do I know God’s will? Usually we ask that question more often when we are young and life is in front of us and there are so many decisions to make. What we usually mean by divine guidance is that God will help us in decision making in our lives so that we will make the right decision so that we stay in God’s geographical will and all these other kinds of will that theologians have developed.

Is Romans 8:14 a passage that talks about divine guidance? Or is this a passage that is talking about something different in terms of God the Holy Spirit’s ministry? Answer: It has nothing to do with divine guidance; neither does Galatians 5:18. Galatians 5:18 says, “But if you are being led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” In both passages we need to stop and look at the context to see just exactly what Paul means by this concept of being led by the Holy Spirit. What is interesting is that both contexts are the same. What Paul is talking about in Romans chapter eight is really an expended version of what he is talking about in Galatians chapter five. He wrote the epistle to the Galatians a long time before he wrote Romans.

Romans 8 fits into the context of Romans 6, 7, & 8. In Romans 1-5 Paul is developing the doctrines related to salvation. In Romans 1 & 2 everyone is condemned; in Romans 3 he brings that together in the conclusion that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Then the solution begins in Romans chapter 4 with justification by faith, and imputation of righteousness, that we are only saved if we possess Christ’s righteousness. That is the key to salvation, and we only get salvation if we trust in Him for salvation. Romans chapter five says that once we are justified we have peace with God—reconciliation. And chapter five is basically a summation of the doctrine of reconciliation in reference to the way that Christ has solved the sin problem of condemnation in Adam. The word “condemnation,” KATAKRINO [katakrinw], used in 8:1 is used three times in chapter five. So that is our contextual precedent for why Paul is going to say that there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ. Chapters 6 & 7 begin a discussion of sanctification. Romans 6 starts off talking about the fact that after we are justified, reconciled at that instant of salvation we are baptized into Christ. As a result of that we are freed from the tyranny of the sin nature. Nowhere in chapters 6 & 7 do we see the key word: “the Spirit.” Then all of a sudden the Holy Spirit shows up in 8:2. It is in the context of Romans eight that Paul begins to emphasize that the new life that we have in Christ, that break away from the tyranny of the sin nature, is only made possible through God the Holy Spirit. It is not something we know rationally, not something we know empirically, not something we know mystically; it is indeed supernatural, that God the Holy Spirit’s ministry is supernatural because the Christian life is a supernatural way of life which can only be accomplished with supernatural means. It is God the Holy Spirit who is energizing that spiritual growth.

We understand up to this point that the believer is no longer under a judicial penalty from the supreme court of heaven. That is the idea that there is no condemnation. The arena of application here is “to those who are in Christ.” We become “in Christ” at the instant of salvation when we are baptized by means of the Holy Spirit and placed in union with Christ and identified with His death, burial, and resurrection, Romans 6:3-5. Romans 8:1 then points us back to chapter six, verses 1-5, which emphasize first of all the potential of walking in this new life. We have this new potential as believers. Because of the Holy Spirit we can walk in newness of life. But certain things have to happen in order to bring about that walk—walking in new life. We are going to see how Paul connects new life to the Spirit. So walking in new life is a parallel of synonymous statements for walking by means of the Holy Spirit. He uses different phrases to relate the same concept all the way through here. Walking in new life is walking by means of the Holy Spirit. If you are not walking by means of the Holy Spirit you are not walking in life, you are walking in death [by the flesh]. So there is this contrast between life and death and it comes out of the whole context of Romans 6 as the background. Second, there is this emancipation from the tyranny of the sin nature, not the presence of the sin nature. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,” v. 2. To understand this we must realize that there is a contrast here between the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus on the one hand, and the law of sin and death on the other hand. He is talking to believers here, and he says, “ … the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has already set me free.” But we have a choice now. Are we going to choose life, or are we going to choose death. It is the same choice Joshua set before the Israelites just before his death. To understand this text we have to understand what is said later on in the context. Too often what people do is when they look at death they immediately think of either physical death or spiritual death. But what we are looking at here isn’t spiritual death, it is what we classify as carnal death or temporal death, i.e. a believer who is living like a dead unbeliever. He is not producing anything in the spiritual life, there is no spiritual maturity. He may go through the motions and have the external appearance of godliness but they are denying the power thereof. They don’t understand the mechanics of the Holy Spirit, they don’t understand how to get in fellowship, they don’t understand the dynamics of 1 John 1:9.

This is made clear in Romans 8:12, “Therefore, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh [the sin nature], to live according to the flesh.” He is talking to believers, “brethren.” But, v. 13, “ … if you are living according to the flesh [the sin nature], you must die [temporal death]: but [contrast] if you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” Romans 6:16, “Know you not, that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” If you are a believer and you let the sin nature dominate your life, and you continue out of fellowship under the control of the sin nature, where does it lead? It leads to temporal death, carnal death. You are producing wood, hay, and stubble. So you are a slave either to the sin nature, resulting in death, or in obedience to God, resulting in righteousness. The context of Romans six indicates this same contrast between life and death. Romans 6:21, “What benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? for the outcome of those things is death.” He is talking to believers: that if you are putting the emphasis in your life on the sin nature you are allowing mental attitude sins, your bitterness or your hatred toward somebody, letting anger dominate your thinking, it is going to lead to temporal death, it destroys your spiritual life. Then Paul concludes that there is a payment for this. If you want to live according to the sin nature God is going to pay you for it, because there is built into the system a payment schedule—Romans 6:23, which is not a salvation verse. But the second part of the verse, “the free gift of God is eternal life,” is talking about the fullness of the life that we receive at justification. Romans 8:6, “For the mind set on the flesh is death; but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.” These are all contrasting statements. For the believer you are either one or the other. These are absolute conditions.

When we sin we are ejected from the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work. It is shut down. The best analogy we can come up with is thinking about the growth of any living thing, whether it is a plant or animal or whether it is our own physical life. God has built into all living things a metabolic process. It is not conscious; it is not volitional; it is not overt. It is something that is happening inside the whole process. We decide volitionally as to what we eat, what we exercise, how much we eat; but once we swallow it, or with a plant, once it absorbs the nutrients in the soil there is a built in dynamic in a metabolic way—how that process can be distributed to the cells to produce growth and to produce maturation. That is what is at the background of this. When we are out of fellowship and the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work is not active, then it shuts of that metabolic activity and we are out here under the rule of a different metabolic activity—of darkness and carnality—and it reverses the growth process. These are absolute conditions and you are either one or the other—either in, walking by means of the Spirit, abiding in Christ, or you are not. Romans 8:6 contrasts these two positions.

Romans 8:3, 4: the law was not designed to give salvation. It was a contract between God and the Jews and nobody else, it had nothing to do with salvation. It had to do with how a redeemed people should live set apart to God. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. In order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” It is those of us who do not walk according to the flesh that the requirement of the law is fulfilled. The requirement of the law had to do with the sanctification of God’s redeemed people in the Old Testament, not with their redemption. The nation was redeemed at the Passover; they didn’t get the law until after the Passover. The redemption related to God’s choosing them to be a kingdom of priests; the giving of the law was telling an already redeemed people how they were supposed to live. So if the analogy of the law is brought in here is has to be talking about sanctification type issues, not salvation type issues. Paul is saying that believers who are being sanctified, who are walking according to the Spirit, fulfill the requirement of the law. In other words, we are living a set apart life to God and that fulfills the requirement of the law. He is not saying that the law is in effect today but that redeemed people were to live set apart to the Lord.

Romans 8:5, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” So here we have the contrast: those who live according to the sin nature, the flesh, and those who live according to the Spirit; those who pursue death and those who pursue life.

Romans 8:6, “For to be carnally [fleshly] minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

Romans 8:7, “Because the carnal mind is in hostility to God...” Is that the carnal mind of the unbeliever or carnal mind of the believer? It is the carnal mind of the believer. “ … for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” When a person is living according to the flesh they cannot produce divine good.

Romans 8:8, “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” There is a subtle shift here. Those who are in the flesh are unbelievers. He has been talking about believers who live according to the flesh or death. Believers who are living according to the flesh are living like unbelievers who are in the flesh. In the flesh and in the Spirit are believer versus unbeliever. According to the flesh and according to the Spirit are believers a believer’s choice, and when you live according to the flesh you are living like someone who is in the flesh—living like an unbeliever.

Romans 8:9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit…” This is where he makes it clear: you as a believer are not in the flesh. You are in the Spirit positionally. “ … if indeed the Spirit of God dwell in you [and He does, 1^st class condition]. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” This is the contrast between believer and unbeliever.

Romans 8:10, “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The believer has life because Christ is in him. This is bringing in the concept of imputed righteousness.

Romans 8:11, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” That is in contrast to verse 10 which said that the body is dead because of sin. “ … shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” That happens at the resurrection, at the Rapture. Redemption doesn’t extend just to that spiritual realm, it eventually extends to the physical realm and there will be life given to your body, a resurrection body, at the Rapture.

Romans 8:12, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.” V, 13, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.” If you live according to the sin nature you will die, “but if you live by the spirit you will put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” So “led by the Spirit of God” fits with what series of phrases? It is consistent with “living according to the Spirit, walking according to the Spirit, living a life set on the Spirit, and being led by the Spirit.” They are all talking about the same thing in contrast to walking by the sin nature. The contrast isn’t between being guided in your decision making by God versus not being guided by God, the contrast is between living by the Spirit and living by the sin nature. It is not talking about decision making in terms of divine guidance, it is talking about the orientation of and the basis for living the spiritual life. You live your life according to the Holy Spirit or the sin nature. The conclusion that he reaches in verse 14 is that those who are led by the Spirit, i.e. those who have been walking according to the Spirit, they are walking by the Spirit. The Spirit leads us through His Word and never apart from His Word. The key here to understanding the word “sons” is that word HUIOS, meaning mature believers. How do we get to maturity? Through walking by the Spirit. If you don’t walk by means of the Spirit you won’t have life and peace, you won’t grow and become mature. It is not talking about these being believers, it is talking about mature sons of God. So the only way to grow to maturity is to be led by the Spirit. The only way to be led by the Spirit is to walk by the Spirit, and that is all defined in Scripture by taking in the Word of God and applying the Word of God. The word translated “led” is just an average Greek word which means to lead, to guide someone along. It is a present passive indicative. The present means that this is talking about those who are continually being led. It is passive, which means that the subject, the believer, receives the action of the verb. He is being led. He receives the action of being led by means of the Spirit of God.

Galatians 5:16, “This I say then, Walk by means of the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” The Spirit is not the one that is doing any walking, the Spirit is the means by which the walking is accomplished. Just as it is impossible for a person walking by the sin nature to please God, it is impossible for a person who is walking by means of the Holy Spirit to sin. What do I have to do to sin? Stop walking. If we walk by means of the Spirit we are going forward, and as long as we are going forward we can’t bring to completion the lusts of the sin nature. Galatians 5:17, 18, “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh”, the is an explanation here of the war that goes on. They are in competition: the sin nature against the Spirit, the Spirit against the flesh. “… they are contrary to one another and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if you are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” “If you are led by the Spirit” is again a passive construction. To be led by means of the Spirit is comparable to walking by means of the Spirit. It is analogous terminology looking at the same dynamics with two different words. “You are not under the law.” Why? Because the law isn’t the means to sanctification. So if you are walking by means of the Spirit you are not going to be under the law, that’s all he is saying. If you are walking by the Spirit you are not living the Christian life according to the law. He is not talking about divine guidance here, he is talking about how to walk by the Spirit. The bottom line here is that these passages are not talking about what we normally refer to as divine guidance, decision making.

There is no more special revelation today. God doesn’t speak in dreams and visions today, He doesn’t speak through the Urim and the Thummim any more. God doesn’t give us vibrations or inner impressions or inner light that gives us information as to exactly how to work through a difficult problem or reach some solution that we have to in life. God has given us His Word, and the whole idea of Christianity is for us to take the Word so that we are forced to think deeply about the Word, to work our way through the Word, to learn the Word, and to think about how the principles embedded in the Word of God affect the way we make decisions. God is not in the process of spoon-feeding us the answers to the problems in life. He wants us to think about what He has done, what He has provided, and to apply those principles to our lives. That is why the Christian life is a life that is based on thought and thinking. God isn’t going to have a shortcut around the thought process. That is what a lot of people think, that if they just pray enough and stay awake long enough, and fast, that God is somehow going to directly communicate to them the answer to their problem. That violates the whole principle in bibliology, the study of the Bible and revelation, that direct/special revelation has ceased.

Ryrie says: “This ministry of the Spirit is one of the most assuring ones for the Christian. The child of God never needs to walk in the dark. He is always free to ask and receive directions from the Spirit Himself.” That is all he says. The question is: How does one ask and receive answers? So how do we make decisions? How do we know the will of God in the Christian life?

First we have to understand some terminology. The term “will of God” actually relates to three different aspects of divine volition in relation to His creation.

1. The first category of divine will is God’s sovereign volition—God’s sovereign will with respect to creation, with respect to history, that God is in control of history and He will bring about that which He intends to bring about in history. God’s sovereignty is great enough, powerful enough, that God can accomplish in history exactly what He intends to accomplish in history, but He can do this in such a way that it doesn’t violate the individual free choices of His creatures. So God’s will can work behind the scenes, working within the circumstances, to bring about what He wants whether the creature decides choice A or choice B. Sovereign volition relates to what He has decreed to take place in history. Sometimes it is called the decretive will of God or the decreed will of God, and this category also includes something called the permissive will of God, that within God’s decree of what will happen in history He decrees that He will allow man to have volition. And if man has volition and is going to choose freely to disobey God, or at least the potential was there, that would bring about sin and disobedience and bring sin into creation. God’s sovereign will and His permissive will clearly includes the acts of sinful creatures that God permits to take place for a temporary period in order to demonstrate certain things about His character, about His grace, about His justice, and about His righteousness. In one sense, if we are talking about God’s will, about His sovereign will, we can’t know it because we don’t know what He has decreed until it has already happened. So it is also called God’s secret will.
2. God’s moral will. This is also sometimes called His revealed will. This is the “Thou shalt nots.” God has revealed that there are certain things we should do and certain things we should not do. The certain things we should do are encapsulated in the positive commands and mandates that we find in the Scriptures. The things that are prohibited are the negative mandates that are in the Scriptures. But all of this encapsulates God’s moral will. So we know that on the oen hand God says, “Thou shalt not lie,” and somebody lies, that shows that they have violated His moral will but they are lying within His sovereign will, His permissive will.
3. God’s overriding will. This is when you may decide to do something and it is a good and proper thing, and maybe it is a biblically correct thing, but in the process God says no, and does not allow you to do that, He does not gives you the means to do that. We have examples of this in Scripture, like David who wanted to build a temple. Part of the test is how we went through the decision-making process.
4. Scriptures that relate to God’s sovereign will. Daniel 4:35, “And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” Ultimately, when everything is said and done, God is in control and God’s will is what is worked out in history. Proverbs 21:1, “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” Revelation 4:1, “After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must take place hereafter.” Ephesians 1:11, “In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” indicating God’s sovereign control over the affairs of man. Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.” Romans 9:19, “Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?” God is the boss! He makes the final decisions but He does this in such a way as to not destroy human responsibility and free will.
5. The specifics of God’s decreed will are secret, unrevealed and unknown. The issue is: What decisions are you going to make in the process? And only as history takes place do you know what God’s decreed will was. These things can’t be known until after the fact. Human history once transpired is the outworking of God’s decree.
6. We can only know the specifics of God’s revealed or moral will. You can only know what God has said: “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not.” That is, unless we are living in an era where God is giving special revelation in some way. Once you open the door to that then you really have a can or worms to go through because now you have to have a criteria for determining what is revelation and what is not revelation. So God’s revealed will includes all the precepts, mandates and prohibitions in the Scripture. Romans 2:18, “And knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law.” The assumption there is that we can know His will because it is revealed in the law. He is talking about the Jews at this particular point and that they knew His will because they were instructed out of the law. 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” No matter what else is going on in life, whether it is bad or good, God says, In everything give thanks. That is God’s will. 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.” 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” These are clear statements of God’s will. So when we look at the Scripture and take all of the positive commands, all of the negative prohibitions, and all the principles, they define a boundary. When we are inside that boundary we are clearly in the will of God. When we are outside the boundary we are outside the will of God. This refers to the moral will of God; we can never get outside of the sovereign will of God. We always know what moral will is, but since God isn’t involved in ongoing revelation we want God to tell us what the answers are to the decisions in life rather than deal with them from maturity. That is part of what it means to grow up and be mature. It is to have the resources available in our soul to be able to make the right decisions.
7. Therefore God’s sovereign will includes His moral will, but His moral will—“Thou shalt not”—clearly is not always His decrees. When the creature does what God has prohibited then His revealed will is outside the decreed will.
8. Usually we become concerned about the will of God in the midst of some momentous decision. Momentous decisions are built on minor inconsequential decisions. Often decisions we make in some other area affects the momentous decision. When we make bad decisions they limit future options. When we make good decisions they expand future options. This is where the Word of God plays an important role in all of our lives because we learn responsibility, we learn that we are to do everything as unto the Lord.
9. If man is to do all things to the glory of God, then even the most minute decision demands attention. But not every decision necessarily involves either a) a moral issue, or b) a specific will of God in relationship to what some would call the geographical will or the operational will. Some people think that God has a geographical will for their lives. What they mean by that is that at every moment of every day, of every week, of every month, of every year, God has point X where their feet need to be; and if they are not there they are out of God’s geographical will—which means they are out of God’s will! But we don’t agree with that. Biblically we can go to the Bible and say that there were places where God wanted people to be at specific times. There are times in our lives when God has a geographical will for our lives. But He doesn’t have a geographical will for us every moment of every day, etc. Sometimes He wants you in the general area.
10. Since we can only know the specifics of God’s revealed or moral will before the fact, questions about the will of God relate only to revealed information. What God is saying most of the time is: Are you willing to take what I have already given you and use that as the basis for making a decision? – including prayer, wise counsel from mature believers, including looking at the doctrinal issues that may be involved, etc. Scripture is clear that God does direct our paths, and that is a little different from giving internal revelation. You trust in the Lord with all your heart—that means you take doctrine, apply the doctrine, you talk with mature believers, you pray about it, you make sure that you are not operating independent of revelatory authority, i.e. you are not leaning on human viewpoint. “In all your ways acknowledge Him,” and what does He do? He makes your paths straight. In other words, He is going to open those doors or close those doors, and you make the wise decision that you think, and there are times in life where you evaluate all the data and are convinced that this is the right and best decision for me in my life. Then the door gets slammed firmly and solidly in your face! In those circumstances the test is how you arrived at the decision. If there is a right decision as opposed to a wrong decision geographically, God is not going to let you go in the wrong direction. He is going to shut that door. On the other side you may make all the decisions and say you are not sure. Then all of a sudden you lose your job and you have to do that anyway. God straightens out our paths. Why? Because the basic orientation of our soul is that we are trusting God, we are trying to apply all the principles of the Scripture that we can to the situation, and we are allowing God to make it clear one way or the other. Sometimes it really doesn’t matter in God’s plan where you are living in location A or location B, because any place you go God is still going to provide the resources you need to grow, and the issue is whether you are going to grow and mature in the Lord Jesus Christ. The wisdom approach to decision making is that we take the doctrine in our soul—EPIGNOSIS/ e)pignwsij—and then as we develop skill at applying doctrine to the problems and issues of life that is what the Old Testament calls chakmah or wisdom, the skill of applying that storehouse of doctrine to various issues of life.
11. The geographical will. In the examples of this probably the key one is Jonah. “1:1, 2, “Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” Now at that particular point in time did God have a geographical will for Jonah? Yes. Go to Nineveh. Ten minutes earlier, did it matter where Jonah was? No. There are some times when God wants us in a specific place and there are other times when it really doesn’t matter. So we evaluate and make decisions based on wisdom and application of doctrine. Jonah decided his will was better than God’s will so he headed west instead of east. But no matter what we do as believers, if God wants us in X location and we go to Y location, guess what! The same thing as happened to Jonah. We are going to end up exactly where God wants us. So there’s no point in trying to figure it out, like playing a walnut shell game and trying to find which shell the pea is under, and guessing where God wants us. Acts 10 gives another example, where Peter gives the gospel to Cornelius, but again we have special revelation in terms of that geographical will. There was special revelation involved in getting both of those men to the place where they were supposed to be. Acts chapter 13, the choice that was made to select Paul and to send out as missionaries. “As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” That verse is often taken out of context and is the model for decision making. The problem is it is a special revelation giving direction to an apostle, it doesn’t apply to you and to me. We are not in the pre-canon period of the church age.

So how do we know God’s will? We know it through the grace learning spiral. We take in the Word of God under God’s grace provision of God the Holy Spirit. While we are in fellowship the Holy Spirit stores it in our souls. He is the one who teaches us doctrine, who builds maturity, and through that He guides and leads us—through the doctrine that is in our soul, not separated from that. We see this is a number of places in the Scriptures. For example, Colossians 4:12, “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” The will of God there is talking about the Word of God and that is why Epaphras has ministered to that congregation. Romans 12:2, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” How do you prove what the will of God is? You renew your thinking according to the Word of God. Ephesians 5:17, “Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” The next verse is: “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” So how do you understand what the will of God is? Be filled with the Spirit. Ephesians 6:6, “Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” That is, obeying God from the heart. So again and again and again the focus is on Scripture.

Acts 15 gives a great picture for us of how decision-making took place in the early church. The situation here is what is called the Jerusalem Council. It was the first time that the apostles had to really deal with a doctrinal issue. The background to this was that the Gentiles were now trusting Christ as savior and the issue has been raised: Do they need to be circumcised? Do they need to come in under the law? What exactly is the relationship of the law to the salvation of Gentiles? You would think that being apostles these men would have a hard-wired connection to special revelation from the Holy Spirit. So you would think that when they are faced with this crucial of a decision they would be asking the Holy Spirit for the answer. But they don’t do that. Number 1: the first step in decision making here on a crucial doctrinal issue is that they are not going to the Holy Spirit for direction. They have a discussion. They bring in the apostles and the elders. “And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter. And when there had been much disputing …” They are arguing the merits of the case. Let’s go to doctrine and argue from the Old Testament, the New Testament, what Jesus has taught us. Let’s work through the doctrine and argue the pros and the cons, both sides of the issue so that we can completely analyze the issue in the framework of doctrine and make a decision. “ …disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us.” So he gives a line of evidence based on the fact that the Holy Spirit in Acts 10 had led him to Cornelius and had led them to the Lord. What are they doing here? They are using both reason and experience, but not independently. They are looking to the experience of God’s revelation to Peter and the experience of Paul, and they are thinking through logically. But they are using logic and experience under the umbrella of the doctrine that they have already learned, and not operating independent from that. They are working through the decision making process. Then they come to a decision: v. 22, “Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; namely, Judas surnamed Barnabas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren.” What is the basis for their conclusion? They made a wisdom decision. “It pleased them”—they approved of this decision, which was a wise decision, and they chose some people. The conclusion to this is in v. 25, “It seemed good unto us, [they had evaluated the situation] being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul … vv. 27, 28, “We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” The Holy Spirit is not absent from the discussion; the Holy Spirit is working covertly in the discussion. Obviously, when you get through and reach a conclusion, and as you move forward in that conclusion, you know that God has worked in that decision. But you are not looking it as you go in that decision. You are not waiting for God to give you the answer. But after you go through the decision making process and come out the other end you know that God was leading you—Proverbs 3:5,6. That is what they recognized there. V. 34, “Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.” So he stayed there, there was no special revelation from the Holy Spirit in these elements.

So in Acts we have two kinds of decision-making. We have the decision that is the result of direct revelation from the Holy Spirit, and we have decision-making that is the result of application of doctrine to the circumstances or wisdom. Since the Holy Spirit and God are not involved in special revelation any more the only arena of decision-making that is left is that of wisdom decision-making. And we have to ask questions. Where can I best grow as a believer? Where can I best learn the Word of God? Where can my family best live and operate in terms of spiritual environment?

The leading of the Spirit is not some kind of mystical inner quiver. The leading of the Spirit has to do with following the Spirit and walking by the Spirit in the light of His Word. It is directly related to His Word, not to anything else. It doesn’t have anything to do with divine guidance in terms of day-to-day decisions. The day-to-day decisions are based on that storehouse of doctrine in your life where you go through the process—you pray, you commit the situation to the Lord, you trust the Lord, you evaluate all the pros and cons, get all the data you can. Even if the decision doesn’t pan out the way you thought it would, it doesn’t mean that God didn’t guide you, direct you, at that time, because often God puts us through some tough spots so that we have to apply doctrine in different ways in order for Him to work some spiritual growth in our lives.