Unlike the faith heroes of Hebrews 11, we have many Bible versions to consult. God, in his wisdom, has seen fit to make the written word available to us and we do not want to ignore his gift. We must be careful in our reading, however, because God has alerted us to the fact that all scribes (i.e. writers of God’s word) have mishandled the law so badly that he considers their writings to be lies. We must also be humble enough to consider that what God said about his people not having eyes to see or ears to hear applies to us and that we also have mishandled and misquoted scripture.

If we believe that all scripture is good for training in righteousness, we will apply what God said about sight, hearing and wisdom to ourselves and not proudly think that God is only talking about someone else who does not have our level of understanding. We should not think that God was commenting only about Jews and ancient Israel who could not see the spiritual meaning of the Bible or hear and understand when God spoke to explain it to them. But we should humbly admit that we are blind to the meaning of Biblical mysteries and ask God to open our eyes so that we can see and hear.

What we see with our natural eyes and interpret with our natural minds when we read the Bible is the literal words. What we want to learn to do when we study the Bible, however, is to hear the spiritual meanings of the words that we read. In God’s view, those who read and think they understand because they read the literal words and act on what those literal words say are blind and deaf. They see with their natural eyes and understand with their intellectual minds, but these capabilities are not what God wants us to use to hear his voice. Rather, he wants us to hear and understand with our hearts.

In religion, intellectual capabilities and skills used to read and interpret the literal words of the Bible are praised by religious people who value human wisdom. But these are not the capabilities that God values. They represent worldly knowledge — not Godly knowledge. God, being spirit, values the spiritual capability of hearing with the heart. This ability is the essence of the New Covenant  in which the spirit of God that teaches people all things. This is the ultimate goal of study.

Anyone can read and report on the literal meaning of the Bible, but only God knows the spiritual meaning of those literal words. And God only reveals the spiritual meanings of those literal words to those who can hear his spoken voice. This ability is available only to New Covenant disciples.

The caution here is that we should never depend on understanding that comes through natural eyes and ears or intellect. Nor should we depend on a human teacher to interpret the mind of God for us. We should, however, only and always depend on what we see and hear in our spirits — not only on the literal words of the Bible.

The suggestion that we should not rely on the literal words of the Bible or on human teachers will not be well received by most religious people. But we remind them that the Bible says that, if the law (i.e. religion) was able to impart life, the promise of righteousness to Abraham would be empty. Thus there would be no need for a New Covenant.

Therefore, because God has given us the Bible (i.e the law) as a tutor to lead us to faith (i.e. New Covenant), we begin with the Bible but we do not end with the Bible for understanding. Rather, we apply the “first the natural and then the spiritual” principle while reading the literal Bible to discover what the spirit of God will reveal to us through it.

God remedied our inability to understand the spiritual law by sending Jesus and other true prophets to heal us of spiritual deafness and blindness. Until we are healed (i.e. our spiritual eyes and ears are opened), we are not able to understand the spiritual meanings of the following kinds of scriptures:

parables dark sayings proverbs and riddles figures, words of the wise and riddles dreams, enigmas and difficult problems figurative language dreams and visions shadows types and patterns symbols

 

The spiritual meanings of these scriptures have always been hidden from religious people — including Jews and Christians. Lacking understanding of spiritual things, they always wrongly think that the literal/natural interpretation of the Bible was all that God had to say about a subject. Thus they put their trust in their human, fleshly ability to read, understand and apply the literal human words they read in the Bible. They also put their trust in the intellectual, fleshly interpretations of those human words by presented by religious leaders who convince them that they alone understand the spiritual meanings of those written words.

It can be said about the teachers, therefore, that they function as gods for those who listen to them because people listen to them and not to God’s voice. It can also be said that those who listen effectively idolize the ones who teach them because they prefer to listen to human teachers instead of listening to God’s voice. It can also be said that when they chose to listen to listen to human teachers instead of listening to God’s voice, they, in effect, violate the terms of the first commandment.

The result of the long history of listening to human teachers instead of God’s voice is that religious people are ignorant of the following truths:

There is a spiritual Bible (i.e. God’s voice) that leads to life, and a literal, written Bible that leads to death. The literal Bible is what religious people read and understand with their intellectual minds. The spiritual Bible is what God communicates by his spirit to teach his people who listen to his voice.