13 Jan 2024
“Now the serpent….said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1)
Right from the beginning, in Genesis, the enemy, the devil, cast doubt on what God has said, and revealed that the evil one not only is proud himself, but he is very well aware that he can use pride in man and woman to cast doubt on God’s word and instruction. Whence comes the impulse to trust and follow the leading of human reason in religion, rather than be content simply to take God;s word for things? Whence comes the impulse to exalt reason over revelation, and the sense of outrage which is so widely felt when the authority of reason in religion is challenged? This spirit springs from sin.
The people in the NT times used their reason to conclude that it is impossible for someone (not of intelligent status and nobility) to die on a cross as a ‘criminal’ and be the saviour of the world. The idea was preposterous to them/
Paul wrote: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).
To doubt revelation in favour of a private hunch was the sin into which Satan led Eve, and Eve’s children have been committing the same sin ever since .he impulse to indulge oneself in believing something other than what God has said is an expression of the craving to be independent of God, which is the essence of sin.
The attempt to know all things, including God, by reason, without reference to revelation, is the form this craving for independence takes in the intellectual realm, just as the attempt to win heaven by works and effort, without grace, is the form it takes in the moral realm.
I venture to add that even in the attempt to build the church and God’s kingdom, the tendency is to refer to reason and intellectual ability and capacity rather than to depend on God and His revelation (in the Scripture and by the Spirit). Throughout the history of the church in recent times, we see various ‘methods’ and ‘pursuits’ to ensure that the church would grow – hence the plethora of many denominations, approaches in evangelism, mission, discipleship, worship – all these often ending in ‘spiritual setbacks’ and having ‘structures’ without the “Life’ of God.
Pride prompts fallen mankind to go about, not merely to establish their own righteousness, but also to manufacture their own wisdom. The quest all along is self-sufficiency: our sinful arrogance prompts us to aspire after independence of God in the realm of knowledge and ‘experience’.
What is fundamentally the message is that it is useless to seek for truth about God by speculating and to put faith in what God has said, simply on the grounds that he, the God of truth, has said it. The authority of reason cannot overrule the revealed truth of God.