WE COMMUNICATE with the material world through the body. We communicate with the spiritual world through the spirit. This communication with the spiritual is not carried on by means of the mind or emotion but through the spirit or its intuitive faculty. It is easy for us to understand the nature of the communion between God and man if we have seen the operation of our intuition. In order to worship and fellowship with God man must possess a nature similar to His. “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4.24). There can be no communication between different natures; hence both the unregenerate whose spirit obviously has not been quickened and the regenerate who does not use his spirit to worship are equally unqualified to have genuine fellowship with God. Lofty sentiments and noble feelings do not bring people into spiritual reality nor do they forge personal communion with God. Our fellowship with Him is experienced in the deepest place of our entire being, deeper than our thought, feeling and will, even in the intuition of our spirit.
A close scrutiny of 1 Corinthians 2.9-3.2 can provide a very clear view of how man communes with God and how man knows the realities of God through the spirit’s intuition.
The Heart of Man
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (v.9). The larger context of this one verse speaks of God and the things of God. What He has prepared can neither be seen or heard by man’s outward body nor conceived by his inward heart. The “heart of man” includes among other facets man’s understanding, mind and intellect. Man’s thought cannot envisage God’s work, for the latter transcends the former. It is therefore evident that he who desires to know and commune with God cannot depend solely upon his thought.
Bookmarks