When Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit to His disciples, He referred to Him as “The Spirit of Truth,” John 16:13. He also pointed out in this same passage that this same Spirit would lead and guide us into all truth. If this is the case, then it is astonishing that much of the corruption, lies and heresies are linked with this area of activity in the church today.
The word truth is also speaking of reality, that which is true and genuine. It is the Holy Spirit, who makes the things of God a reality in our lives. He is the one who convinces us of truth. He is the one in the Godhead who bears witness to us of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of our salvation. He is the faithful, truthful Divine witness, sent into our hearts by God the Father, through the Son to work sanctification in our lives. He performs this work by sanctifying us by the truth.
When praying for all believers, Jesus asked the Father, “sanctify them by thy truth, thy word is truth.” John 17:17. If this is the case, then it should come as no surprise, that in the church today, this is the area of biggest conflict! It would seem that the believer must wage war on two fronts in this area. First, where the Holy Spirit is being grossly misrepresented, claims of Holy Spirit activity that cant be substantiated from scripture. Secondly where the Holy Spirit is being quenched, ignored, or neglected.
It is vital that we have a recovery in our churches of genuine Holy Spirit activity. To accomplish this, we must be willing to accept, that we have often got it wrong, how we have taught the Holy Spirit, and seek to reestablish our teaching from scripture, correcting some of the things that we have traditionally believed. Second, we must learn to quit ignoring the Holy Spirit, but realize the importance of this topic in how the church functions and operates in ministry today.
As a new believer, I had a lot of ignorance in this area, that God graciously, and mercifully overlooked, blessing me anyway, because He saw the hunger in my heart for Him. But as i’m getting older, I am finding that He is starting to call me into account, wanting more from me, and wanting me to believe and teach correctly in this area of the Holy Spirit.
Because the Holy Spirit is “The Spirit of Truth,” you may rest assured that He will not bless and bear witness to falsehood, In fact lying and operating in deception in His name is one of the things that grieves Him! Eph 4:30. We can be deceived and not really know it, there are deliberate deceivers out there, who know what they are doing, but there are others who are operating out of ignorance, who genuinely believe their own deceptions. May the Spirit of Truth expose the one, and open the eyes of the other!