John 21:17 “He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Feed My sheep.”
There are three methods that the believer can use to feed their spirits. The first and most common method (which we have already discussed) is to simply read the word of God, and all believers who desire to grow strong spiritually should allocate a part of their day every day to reading their bible. The second method is meditation on God’s word, which we will discuss in more detail in the following section. The third method is to be taught the word of God, and it is this method that we want to discuss in this section. The Lord Jesus has placed ministers of the gospel in His church for one primary purpose, i.e. to feed His sheep. In the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord confirms that truth to us when He told Peter to feed His sheep, and we read earlier where Paul stated that he was the one who fed the church in Corinth. The scripture also teaches us that the Lord has placed the ministry gifts in His church to edify the church (Ephesians 4:11-12). In other words, it is through the teaching of God’s word by the ministry gifts that the church grows spiritually. And so believers that desire to grow strong spiritually should avail themselves to regularly being taught God’s word through the ministry gifts. Those who choose to be negligent in this area however will never grow strong in spirit.
1 Corinthians 3:1-2 “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. (2) I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able.”
So why has the Lord Jesus raised up ministry gifts to teach God’s word to the church? The reason is because it is only through the ministry gifts that the church is able to partake of the solid food of God’s word, for as we can see in the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul stated that once they were ready to receive it, he was the one who would feed the church at Corinth with solid food. And so we see that without the ministry gifts the church is limited to only partaking of the milk of God’s word. In the natural it is not possible for humans to grow strong physically on a diet of milk alone, for as a child grows it needs to start eating solid foods in order for their bodies to develop and grow. In the spirit that principle is exactly the same, for it is not possible to grow strong spiritually on the milk of God’s word alone. And so believers who do not avail themselves to receiving spiritual food regularly through the teaching of the ministry gifts will never grow strong spiritually. There is a further truth that is revealed to us in this passage regarding spiritual growth that we need to understand. Paul stated that he was ready to feed the church at Corinth with the solid food of God’s word, but that he couldn’t do so because they were not yet able to receive it. So what did Paul mean by that statement? He meant that there were certain truths in God’s word which they would simply not understand, even if he taught those truths to them. We will discuss the reason why they couldn’t understand in a later section, but the point that I wanted to raise from this passage is that the spirits of the saints at Corinth were only being fed with that which their minds could understand and nothing more. So how do we reconcile that truth with the truth which we discussed earlier, i.e. that our spirits already have full understanding of God’s word? Again it helps to look in the natural to be able to better understand the spiritual. In the natural, the food we eat nourishes our physical bodies not our intellect. In other words our minds do not gain knowledge and understanding through the food we eat. In the spirit that principle remains exactly the same, i.e. the spiritual food we eat nourishes our spirits not our spiritual understanding. In other words our spiritual understanding does not increase through the spiritual food that we eat, for we stated earlier that our spiritual understanding does not come from an external source bur rather directly from the Holy Spirit residing in our spirits. Nevertheless our spiritual growth originates from an external source, i.e. reading, meditating and being taught God’s word. One way of understanding the concept is to think of the spirit as being the body of the spirit, and the spirit’s understanding as being the mind of the spirit.
Luke 24:32-45 “And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?" … (45) And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.”
The passage of scripture quoted above clearly illustrates the point that our spirits are only fed with that which our minds understand. The context of this portion of scripture is that our Lord Jesus appeared to two of the disciples after He was raised from the dead, and so while He walked with them He had taught them what God’s word had to say about His death, burial and resurrection. That evening our Lord shared a meal with them and revealed Himself to them and then disappeared, and so we pick up the account in this passage. And so when the disciples said that He opened the scriptures to them, they were referring to our Lord opening their understanding to God’s word, for as we can see from this passage, later that evening when our Lord appeared to the disciples in the inner room that’s exactly what He did. There are two very important points that are confirmed to us in this passage. Firstly we see that the disciples had to be taught the word in order to understand it. And secondly we see that their spirits only began to burn when they began to understand God’s word. In other words it was the word of God which they understood with their minds that went down into their spirits. And so the point is very clear in scripture, i.e. our spiritual growth is directly linked to the renewing of our minds as we are taught God’s word.
Michael E.B. Maher
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