Romans 2:14-15 “for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, (15) who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.”
We have seen thus far that the born-again spirit has full and complete understanding of God’s word, because of which the spirit of the believer is able to give godly counsel to the saint in every area of their lives. We have also seen that the spirit of the believer has the divine nature of God (i.e. the fruit of the spirit) and will therefore always counsel the saint to walk in love. It is for these reasons that under the New Covenant that the spirit of the believer is a safe guide, for our spirits can only give guidance in accordance with God’s word and in accordance with God’s nature. And so, as we will see in this section, under the New Covenant God admonishes the saints to follow the guidance of their spirits. Under the Old Covenant that was not the case however because the saints were spiritually dead, and so God never advised the saints to follow the guidance of their spirits. In fact time and again God warned the saints against following the dictates of their hearts because their hearts were evil (Jeremiah 7:24). Sadly there are a number of teachers in the church today who, because they do not understand that under the New Covenant our spirits are born-again, continue to quote the Old Testament to erroneously teach believers not to listen to their hearts. A favourite passage that they quote is, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). While this passage is completely true as far as the Old Testament saints were concerned, it is completely untrue as far as the New Testament saints are concerned, and should not therefore be applied to the New Testament saint. And so whereas the saints under the Old Covenant were warned against listening to their spirits, under the New Covenant the saints are encouraged to listen to their spirits. We have already looked at the above quoted passage of scripture to show that the New Testament saints have the word of God written in their spirits, but in this section I want to look at this passage from the guidance aspect that our spirits give us in this current dispensation. In this passage the apostle Paul teaches us that our spirits (along with our conscience) will accuse the saint when they choose to do wrong, or else they will agree with the saint when they choose to do that which is right. Paul teaches us that the way the spirit does that is by placing thoughts in our minds. And so the thoughts that would come into our minds would be in the form of God’s word being quoted to us by our spirits. In other words a scripture would come into our minds that would either support our contemplated course of action, or a scripture would come into our minds that would contradict our contemplated course of action. And so depending on the saint’s spiritual condition at the time, they will choose to either follow or ignore their spirit’s counsel.
Michael E.B. Maher
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