Scriptures selfattesting authority question doctrine truthfulness Scriptures

In the People the Word Creates 259
from its love affair with the praise of men in order to see and savor the
glory of God in the miracles of Jesus and in the word of God? No.
Picture it like this. The work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the
word of God in giving light to the soul are simultaneous in their effect.
The reason is that the word is like an instrument or tool in the hands
of the Holy Spirit. The soul has a template for the light of the glory of
God in the word. That template possesses indented shapes, so to speak,
which are a perfect fit for the glory of God. This template is a lifelong
witness in our souls that we were made for God and that his glory is real.
Sin has corroded this template and filled the indentations with corrosive
deceptions of false glories. The glory of God becomes real to us when
the Holy Spirit takes the tool of the word and by it removes the corrosive
deceptions and fills the indentations of the template with truth. “You
are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you” (John 15:3).
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).
Thus it is true to say that the human heart must be changed “before”
it can see the glory of God in the word, because those corrosive blockages
must be removed. But the word “before” has a causal meaning, not
a temporal one—as if I were to say, “You must open your eyes before
you can see the light.” In fact, the opening of the eye and the seeing of
light are simultaneous. The opening of the eye is a kind of cause without
which light will not shine through, yet the removal of the obstacle and
the seeing of light are simultaneous. So the corrosives of deception in
the heart must be removed “before” the light of the glory of God can
be seen. Yet the glory of God in the word is the instrument that removes
the blinding corrosives.
So, for example, the corrosive deception that the praise of man is
preferable to the glory of God must be removed “before” we can see
the supremely beautiful glory of God as our greatest treasure. But how
do we experience this? We experience it when the glory of God in the
word utterly obliterates that dark corrosive with its superior brightness.
The removal of the deception and the seeing of the superior glory
are simultaneous. The deception goes and the truth arrives in the same
instant. But the removal of deception was causally “prior” because this
truth and this deception could not coexist. Yet, in the hands of the Holy
Spirit, it was the truth that destroyed the deception.