“I have the Holy Spirit, and he teaches me what the Bible means.”
I’ve heard this claim from many sincere Christians, including pastors. In every case, the person meant, “The Holy Spirit directly teaches me what the Bible means.” They were usually trying to shut down disagreements over the meaning of the Bible. I once shared several arguments from Scripture, only to have a man end the discussion by saying, “Well, I have the Holy Spirit, and he hasn’t taught me that when I’ve read the Bible!”
This article explores seven reasons why this claim is problematic, looks at two passages which are misused to prop it up (John 14:26 and 16:13; 1 John 2:27), and offers eight suggestions for how to go deeper in one’s understanding of the Bible.
A Confused Doctrine of Illumination
The claim that “I have the Holy Spirit, and he [directly] teaches me what the Bible means” reflects a wrong view of a doctrine called the illumination of Scripture. While the doctrine of inspiration refers to what the Spirit did in the past to produce the Bible, illumination refers to what the Holy Spirit does in the lives of believers today to help them understand the Bible. The simplistic view that the Holy Spirit directly teaches each believer how to correctly interpret the Bible is problematic for numerous reasons.
1. Spirit-filled believers disagree constantly about the meaning of just about everything in the Bible except the matters of “first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3). When the aforementioned man ended our discussion, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow… I guess he doesn’t think that I have the Holy Spirit too!” And since I knew of about a dozen church fathers and reformers who disagreed with his perspective, I wanted to say, “I guess Irenaeus and Augustine and Jerome and Ambrose and Aquinas and Luther and Calvin and Cranmer and Wesley didn’t have the Spirit either?” Having a correct understanding of the Bible cannot be as simple as having the Holy Spirit.
2. Scripture itself tells us that it contains some things that are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). The Apostle Peter (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit!) said that some things in Paul’s writings are “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). If clear understanding was as simple as having the Holy Spirit, then why would Peter say this? A wrong doctrine of illumination often goes hand-in-hand with a wrong doctrine of the clarity or perspicuity of Scripture. Kevin Vanhoozer explains, “Scripture’s clarity does not mean that reading works ex opere operato, as if simply pronouncing the words magically yields understanding. Nor does clarity mean that Scripture wears doctrines like the Trinity on its sleeve. Rather, it means that those whose eyes of the heart (Eph. 1:18) have been opened by the Spirit cannot miss the main story: the good news about Jesus Christ.” This view is consistent with Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith: “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
3. Scripture itself connects right understanding with disciplined thinking and study (Proverbs 2:1–5; 2 Timothy 2:7). Proverbs 2:1–5 indicates that understanding is the fruit of diligent searching, seeking, and digging. Paul told Timothy that the Lord would give him understanding as he carefully thought over what Paul had written: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Tim. 2:7). Paul had confidence that the Lord would give Timothy understanding, but not automatically. Paul did not disconnect divine illumination from the hard work of thinking. If this was true for Timothy, one of Paul’s contemporaries who knew Paul well, spoke Paul’s language, and spent time under Paul’s tutelage, how much more is it true for those of us who are removed from Paul by 2,000 years and can’t even read the original language in which he wrote? Historical and cultural distance alone complicates the command to “think over what I say” (2 Tim. 2:7). We must set our heart to study the law of Yahweh (Ezra 7:10), chew on it day and night (Psalm 1:2), and work hard to be the best thinkers that we can be (Acts 17:11).
Paul did not disconnect divine illumination from the hard work of thinking.
4. God’s Word is communicated through human language, which means that a person’s reading level (e.g., first-grader vs. college student) affects their ability to understand it. We grin if a child thinks that when Exodus 6:6 speaks of God’s “outstretched arm,” it means that God literally has a physical arm. The child may be saved and have the Holy Spirit, but they also have a low reading level. They don’t understand metaphor or anthropomorphism. And so they misunderstand the Bible. But what about the adults who are still deficient in their knowledge of general linguistics? What about the adults who don’t understand genre, for example, and how it drastically changes the rules of the game when reading proverbial literature (Proverbs) vs. apocalyptic (Revelation)? Just being 30 or 40 or 50 years old doesn’t make you a good reader.
Now, it is possible to be a master of general linguistics and still be a poor Bible reader. A secular reader may approach the Bible with certain preunderstandings due to their lack of faith and conclude, for example, that the Bible intends to present the resurrection of Jesus as a mere metaphor for the inward rebirth of psychological transformation. In this case, not having the Holy Spirit means that they cannot discern the spiritual truths which are otherwise plain to a sincere believer. But it does not logically follow that general linguistics is irrelevant for sincere believers. We must be literate to understand the Bible at all, and we must have linguistic skill to understand many of the Bible’s “hard-to-understand” passages (2 Peter 3:16).
We must be literate to understand the Bible at all, and we must have linguistic skill to understand many of the Bible’s “hard-to-understand” passages.
5. The details of the Bible must be understood in the context of the whole, which means that our knowledge of the canon affects our ability to understand its parts. If a brand new Christian starts reading at Genesis, they might conclude from Leviticus that they must stop eating pork. They misunderstand a part of Scripture because they don’t know the whole. Now, anyone who has read the Bible as a whole will not make this particular mistake. But many complicated passages of Scripture can only be understood by having a deep grasp on a matrix of other complicated passages. Jesus criticized his contemporaries because they did not have adequate knowledge of the Scriptures (Matthew 22:29; Mark 12:24). Their grasp on past revelation affected their ability to properly understand his teaching. The Bereans, on the other hand, recognized the need to carefully examine the Scriptures every day, working together as a group to discern their meaning (Acts 17:11).
When two Spirit-filled believers disagree, it might be because one of them has a weaker grasp on the whole of the Bible. And we should be humble enough to consider, “Perhaps that person is me!” Ironically, the same man that I mentioned at the beginning of the article—the man who shut down our discussion—once told me (and this is an exact quote), “I’m going to stick with my King James Bible. I don’t always understand it, but it’s what I’ve always read.” He never considered that perhaps his doctrinal conclusions were wrong because he lacked a firm grasp on many portions of Scripture. Having the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean that we can bypass diligent canonical study.
6. We all have a tendency to read our preconceived ideas into the text or ignore things in the Bible that don’t fit with what we already believe. It’s hard to admit that we are wrong. It’s hard to imagine that what we’ve heard our entire lives might not be true. It’s hard to recognize that what we once thought was so important, or even essential, is not actually very important, and might not even be true. It’s hard to change our thinking. And having the Holy Spirit doesn’t make it easy. If we think that it does, then we’re fooling ourselves. Being regenerated doesn’t change the fact that we’re finite and fallen. We’re fearful and, sometimes unwittingly, proud. We cling to the safety of what we’ve always been taught. And this isn’t all bad. If we were too quick to change our mind, we might be quick to embrace heresy. But we need to admit how our human and fallen tendencies can skew our understanding.
It’s hard to imagine that what we’ve heard our entire lives might not be true.
I once read John 20:23 to someone: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.” I asked him, “What do you think that means?” He said, “Oh, that’s Roman Catholic.” All that I did was read the verse and ask him what it means. But he was ready to move on because he didn’t know how to fit it into what he already believed. Chances are that he has read that and countless over verses for decades and just blew past them because they didn’t fit his preexisting system.
Don’t misunderstand me: Preconceived ideas and prior theological commitments are not necessarily a bad thing. No one comes to the Bible as a blank slate, and even if we could, that wouldn’t be desirable. Doctrines and doctrinal systems such as Wesleyanism and Calvinism are extremely valuable because they are the consensus of large Spirit-filled communities over time about how to best account for the most scriptural data in a logically coherent way. It’s silly and shallow to say things like, “I’m not Arminian or Calvinist, I’m biblical.” There is wisdom in identifying with systems and interpretive communities that we believe best synthesize the Bible. However, the more entrenched that we become in these systems, the more that we need to keep coming back to the whole of Scripture and allow it to challenge and refine our thinking.
7. Scripture itself consistently teaches that an ordinary way (and arguably the primary way) that people come to a better understanding of the Bible is through the Church and its teachers. Nehemiah 8:8 says, “They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” While this is an Old Testament example, we see the very same thing in the New Testament, even after Pentecost. When Christ ascended into heaven, he gave the gift of teachers (Eph. 4:11–12). Teaching is one of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:28), and it is not given to everyone (1 Cor. 12:11, 29–30). The point of teaching is to help others understand. How can we expect the Holy Spirit to give us understanding if we neglect or ignore the many teachers that Christ and the Spirit have given to the Church, from our local church pastor to the great theologians of church history? When Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?” he responded, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:29–31). Christ has given the Church and its teachers as crucial guides in the study and interpretation of the Bible.
Two Frequently Misused Passages
“The Spirit Will Teach You All Things”
Despite the points in the previous section, many of which should be obvious, a wrong doctrine of illumination is often propped up by a few misused Bible verses. The most common of these is John 14:26 or John 16:13, where Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will “teach you all things” and “guide you into all truth.”
First, we must recognize that these verses were specifically addressed to the apostles. In John 14:26, Jesus says, “he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” The second half of this verse doesn’t apply to us at all, since we’ve never heard Jesus speak to us directly. This should raise big questions, then, about how the first half of the verse applies to us, if at all. And there is at least one sense in which it does not apply to us: Jesus was promising that the Holy Spirit would teach the apostles revelation beyond what Jesus had taught them in his earthly ministry so that, under the Spirit’s inspiration, they could record it for future generations in the books of the New Testament.
The first half of John 14:26 may apply to us in other ways (a question for another time), but it clearly does not mean that the Holy Spirit directly teaches every individual everything that they need to know—especially if those individuals are detached from the Church which is built on the foundation of the apostles (Ephesians 2:20) and has been ordained by Christ as “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
“You Have No Need That Anyone Should Teach You”
Another frequently misused verse is 1 John 2:27: “But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.” It’s crucial to read this verse in context. The “but” in verse 27 connects back to verse 26: “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.” And the phrase “these things” in verse 26 connects back to the whole passage before it, 1 John 2:18–25, which is about antichrists—false teachers who deny essential truths about Christ.
In verse 20, John says, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” John clearly does not mean that all of his readers know everything that there is to know about the Bible. He clearly does not mean that every single believer who has been born again (“anointed by the Holy One”) automatically gains complete knowledge of every scriptural issue. “All knowledge” refers to the essential teachings about Jesus Christ that they heard “from the beginning” (1 Jn. 2:24) from apostolic teachers.
When John goes on to say that the anointing of the Spirit remains with them so that they have no need that anyone should teach them, he simply means that they don’t need any non-apostolic teachers to come along and supply them with new or contrary revelation about Christ. The Holy Spirit came into their hearts when they heard the gospel and confirmed its truthfulness, and the same Holy Spirit would keep them from falling into the deceits of false teachers with false gospels.
Seekers of truth should stop appealing to the Holy Spirit within them as if it makes their understanding infallible.
Lovers of truth should not prop up a confused doctrine of illumination by appealing to these verses, and seekers of truth should stop appealing to the Holy Spirit within them as if it makes their understanding infallible. If other Spirit-filled believers disagree with us, and especially if the consensus of the Spirit-filled Church throughout history disagrees with us, we should have enough humility to say, “Maybe the problem is that I haven’t been disciplined enough in my study or careful enough in my thinking. Maybe I haven’t listened patiently enough to the arguments of the many great teachers that Christ has given, and that the Holy Spirit is trying to use to help me along in my understanding. Maybe, whatever the reason, the problem is with me.”
Compensating for Human Finitude and Fallenness
Moisés Silva writes, “It is true that at the most fundamental level Christians enjoy direct access to God and that his Spirit directly witnesses to our spirit through the Scriptures. On the other hand, we cannot allow this precious truth to degenerate into a sense of personal infallibility. For one thing, our own finitude and sinfulness get in the way of perfect understanding.” If the Holy Spirit does not directly teach us everything that the Bible means, and if our human limitations and fallenness still affect our understanding after regeneration, how can we be better students of the Bible?
1. Develop your understanding of the doctrine of Scripture. As I have tried to show in this article, a wrong doctrine of illumination has a series of bad knock-on effects for how we approach the study of Scripture, and how we relate with other believers who read the same text but come to different conclusions. A wrong doctrine of inspiration can do the same. If we think that the Bible is “just like any other book,” we may prematurely close off the possibility of certain typological readings. If we think that the Bible dropped out of heaven on a golden pillow, we may ignore the way that general linguistics and general hermeneutics affects interpretation.
2. Regularly read through the whole Bible. Stay immersed in the whole canon. Don’t ignore things that you don’t understand or that don’t seem to fit with what you already believe. Dig in or at least mark them for future study.
3. Be a lifelong student of language. Since we have many excellent English translations, it’s not essential to master Greek and Hebrew in order to understand much of God’s Word. Still, we shouldn’t discount the value of the original languages. The study of language in general helps us to be better readers, and Chris Stevens notes that reading God’s Word in its original languages is like reading “in full color and in 4D.” Furthermore, we cannot engage in some advanced disputes over meaning without knowing at least something about Greek and Hebrew, since those disputes often center on grammar or lexical meaning. At the very least, all serious students of Scripture should seek to understand how language and translation works. Again: We can’t hope to be good Bible readers if we aren’t good readers in general. Helpful books include D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies (third edition available for preorder).
4. Study hermeneutics and the variety of perspectives within the field. Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation. Whether or not we realize it, we all have a hermeneutic—a set of principles, however undeveloped, that affect the way we read and interpret the Bible. Perhaps you’ve heard that we should always interpret the Bible “literally,” or that the whole goal of interpretation is to determine “the human author’s intended meaning.” These are hermeneutical principles (and both problematic, I would argue). Studying hermeneutics from a variety of perspectives can help us. I’ve been challenged by those with a strong grammatical-historical method, but I’ve also been deeply influenced by those who defend premodern approaches with their emphasis on intertextuality and theological interpretation. For an example from my own hermeneutical journey, see “Beyond the Human Author’s Intended Meaning: A Case Study in Typological Reading.” Helpful books on hermeneutics include Kevin Vanhoozer’s Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically; Craig G. Bartholomew’s Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics: A Comprehensive Framework for Hearing God in Scripture; and Hans Boersma’s Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition.
5. Read Spirit-filled writers from a variety of time periods and perspectives. I’m a committed Wesleyan, and I regularly consult classical Methodist sources such as Wesley’s Notes on the Bible. But when you combine everything else that I read, I spend far more time with Reformed, Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, and even Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox writers. Like Jacob Arminius, I think that Calvin’s commentaries are some of the best since the church fathers, and they are one of my go-to resources for sermon prep. Of course, there is no replacement for reading the fathers themselves, and I often consult the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) and patristic works that I’ve read or that others have recommended. Reading after Spirit-filled authors from a variety of times and traditions has helped me to see more in Scripture, not less, and to expand my plausibility structure. Carson notes, “We should learn all the historical theology we can. One well-known seminary insists that proper exegetical method will guarantee such a high quality of exegesis that historical theology may be safely ignored. I can think of no better way of cultivating the soil that sprouts either heresy or the shallowest sort of traditionalism.”
6. Read many different kinds of resources (e.g., commentaries, sermons, biblical theologies, and systematic theologies). Reading commentaries, old and new, should be part of every serious student’s study of the Bible. When I preach through a book of the Bible, I try to read at least one modern commentary (often from the recommendations at bestcommentaries.com) and one or two older commentaries (usually from the church fathers or reformers). As I have time, or when I encounter difficult texts, I consult additional commentaries. But commentaries are not the only kind of resources that help me to better understand the Bible.
I also often read biblical theologies, such as God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment by James Hamilton Jr. or A New Testament Biblical Theology by G. K. Beale. These books often help me to avoid interpretive tunnel vision—focusing on a passage in its immediate context while forgetting that it’s part of a matrix of passages throughout the Bible that inform its meaning and develop towards an eschatological fulfillment. Biblical theology has made me especially sensitive to the Bible’s major themes, such as kingdom, covenant, and temple, and to the countless terms that the biblical authors use to allude to or connect with those themes. Without biblical theology, I would miss even more than I already do!
Finally, I like to look up verses that I am studying (or the topics that the verse relates to) in systematic theologies such as William Burt Pope’s Compendium of Christian Theology or John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. These resources help me to consider how a particular text relates to major Christian doctrines or alludes to larger truths. When we read Bible verses, we often only see what’s on the surface, like the points where an iceberg pokes its mass above the water. Systematic theology looks at all these points and draws conclusions about the whole iceberg. And once we grasp what the whole iceberg looks like, we can make far better sense of its partial appearances above the surface. Of course, we must always allow our reading of Scripture to challenge our picture of the iceberg, and sometimes we need to adjust our drawing. But systematic theology is an invaluable resource for deeper scriptural engagement.
7. Immerse yourself in the church’s history of interpretation and theological consensus. This is closely related to the point above, but it’s crucial to understand that the Tradition of the Spirit-filled Church—the Church’s consensus of faith and practice—is not a roadblock to biblical understanding; it’s a rule by which to judge our interpretations on crucial matters. While Scripture is the only final or ultimate authority, the rule or norm by which all others rules are judged (the norma normans), the Church has passed on a formidable consensus about how to interpret the major teachings of the Bible, and we would be foolish to ignore it. The ecumenical Creeds are like the front of a puzzle box: they show us the big picture so that we can make better sense of the pieces, and avoid putting the pieces in places that would distort the image. Irenaeus viewed Scripture like a mosaic with many parts, and said that heretics arrange them to create a picture of a fox. The rule of faith (the Church’s consensual teaching, expressed in documents such as the Apostles’ Creed) helps the faithful to organize the parts of Scripture to reveal the image of Christ the King.
Beyond the matters of consensus, there’s a lot of room for disagreement among the faithful. But the more that we treasure the consensus and keep it in front of us, the more that we will be able to avoid bizarre readings that run cross-grain to the order of our faith. We will also be better equipped to keep our disagreements from dividing us or fueling interpretive pride. A book like Classic Christianity by Thomas Oden is invaluable for entering into the Great Tradition.
8. Pray and cultivate virtue. In this article, I’ve critiqued those who claim, “I have the Holy Spirit, and he teaches me what the Bible means.” But I want to end with an affirmation: It’s ultimately better to rely on the Holy Spirit in a simplistic way than to forget about the Holy Spirit and approach biblical interpretation as a purely secular and scientific discipline. Thankfully, it’s not an either-or situation. We should approach God’s Word as divine speech, worthy of reverence and faith, and with an awareness of God’s own personal presence with us. We should pray for illumination, not because we expect the Spirit to deposit understanding in our brains like a quarter in a gumball machine, but because we have confidence that the Spirit honors our faith-filled effort and will help us on our journey through all the means that he has ordained. Be prayerful. Be humble. Be diligent. God’s Word is worth our best effort.
