Illumination describes the Spirit’s work in people by which He gives them the ability to correctly understand Scripture. Again, fully understanding Scripture includes understanding the meaning of the words intellectually, realizing that the truth of those words bears on us personally, and following through in obedient submission. While we are capable of partially understanding Scripture intellectually and personally without the Spirit’s help, we cannot receive the truth on our own, for those things are spiritually discerned. Fully understanding Scripture is only possible through the Spirit’s illumination.
As in all theology, we must build our definition of illumination on the text of Scripture itself. Our opinions and ideas must be ever-subject to the authority of the Bible, else we risk believing things that sound good and make sense yet are unbiblical. Let’s begin with Psalm 119.
Psalm 119:7-9
How can a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed according to Your word.
With my whole heart I have sought You;
Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!
Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That I might not sin against You.
Psalm 119:7-9
Nearly every study of the nature of God’s Word should include an examination of this Psalm. Significantly, this longest of the Psalms centers on the Word of God. The psalmist describes the blessedness of living according to God’s law, his love for the law and for God who gave it, and his desire to know the law and keep it.
This last aspect is especially relevant to the concept of illumination. The psalmist knows God’s law is the means to moral, God-honoring living, and his longing is to understand and obey it. He understands that God’s law will guide him toward righteousness.
Throughout the psalm, this desire to understand the law is paired with a desire to know God, to be like Him, or to obey Him. That is, the psalmist wants to gain a right understanding of God’s word so he can be more like God or so he can more fully obey Him.
But he also finds himself inadequate. No less than twelve times we find him asking God to help him understand the law. Phrases like “Teach me Your statutes,” “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law,” and “Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments” express his need for help to comprehend the full meaning of God’s word. He needs God’s illumination.
The marriage between his desire for godliness and his need to understand God’s Word is especially seen in verse 68: “You are good, and do good; teach me Your statutes.” First, he recognizes God’s character. He is good. This is a description of who God is in His very nature. He is good. Nothing about Him is evil, unfair, unjust, unloving, or undesirable. We humans, by contrast, are not good. Yes, we were created good, but Adam’s sin brought death on us all. We are born dead to God and alive to sin, needing to be good but unable to be. But God is different; He is good.
The psalmist recognizes this, but he goes a step further. Not only is God good in His nature, but He does good. His character is manifested in His actions. In God’s plans, His ways, His providence, His sovereignty, He is always good. He is right, true, just, perfect in all He does. God is good, and He does good.
Upon remembering this, the psalmist recognizes his need to be like God. And how can he be godly? By learning God’s statutes. He sees God’s goodness, loves it, and desires to be like Him. He wants to understand God’s law because, through it, he can learn to be good, to be like God. He is as a child who wants nothing more than to be like his father. He says, “You are good. You do good. Please make me like you. Teach me your statutes.” Godliness is his goal, and understanding Scripture is his means toward that goal.
Similarly, we ought to love the Word of God, not for its own sake, but because relationship with God is bound up in our knowledge of Scripture. We study the Word so we can know God and be like Him. We love the Word because it tells us about the God we love. We study the Word so we can understand our God, love Him more, and serve Him better. And in our study, we echo the psalmist’s confession of his desire and his inadequacy. “Teach me your statutes.”
How does this bear on our discussion of illumination? Though this psalm doesn’t directly assert God’s work of illumination, it does assert our need for it. It teaches us time and again that without God’s help we cannot understand Scripture as we should. It assumes that we need help to understand and obey God’s commands. We, like the psalmist, need God to teach us His statutes.
One final note. The psalmist would not have here had in mind all of Scripture as we now know it. When he used terms like law, statutes, judgements, precepts, commandments, and testimonies, he would have been picturing the Pentateuch. But, as we’ve discussed before, we can usually apply references to the law in Old Testament texts to all of Scripture. God’s law, as the psalmist knew it, comprised the sum of God’s revelation to man. When other later writings were recognized as Scripture and added to the canon, they assumed the same properties as the rest of God’s Word. As such, we can appropriately transfer the psalmist’s discourse about God’s Law to all of Scripture.
Ephesians 1:15-19
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power
The apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesian church, offers this prayer for them in some of the opening letters of his epistle. The crux of his prayer is that God would give them the “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” There is a close parallel between illumination and enlightenment. To be enlightened is to be filled with light, to illuminate is to fill something with light. It could be said, then, that the Holy Spirit illuminates us, and we are enlightened. As such, this is an important verse in our understanding of illumination.
What is Paul asking for when he prays that God would illuminate these believers? First, illumination includes receiving the “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” Spirit, here, is not the Holy Spirit, but indicates having a mindset, attitude, or dispositions. We have the mindset of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is not necessarily us knowing what God knows (having His knowledge) but is knowing God Himself.
How does this work? I believe the progression in our own experience is the reverse of how Paul lays it out here. We must first have our eyes enlightened. We must be given the ability to understand the truth about God. As that happens, we grow in our knowledge of Him. We learn to know Him. That process of illumination and growth in knowledge is accompanied by increased wisdom and by a continual revelation, to us personally, of the character of God. Illumination, growth in knowledge of God through His revelation, resulting in increased spiritual wisdom.
As Paul goes on, he further describes what it means to have knowledge of God. We are to know: (1) the hope of His calling, (2) the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and (3) the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe. All three of these things have aspects that we realize here and now, and aspects that we anticipate eternally. The hope of His calling is eternal in a sense, as we anticipate full redemption, but those who respond to His calling also anticipate the hope of daily fellowship with God and the application of redemption in our sanctification.
If we set these things in the context of the book of Ephesians, we gain a bit more clarity on what Paul envisions when he prays for their illumination. In Ephesians, Paul unpacks many spiritual treasures the Christian enjoys: salvation from sin, reconciliation with God, reconciliation with man, participation in the church, pursuit of sanctified living, and the list goes on. Given that Paul prefaces his epistle with this prayer for the Ephesians to be illuminated, it is fully appropriate for us to understand that Paul prays that they would be enabled by the Spirit to understand his words to them in this epistle. Paul’s primary concern in his prayer is that they would understand God’s Word.
We have said previously that illumination is the work of the Holy Spirit, but He isn’t actually mentioned in these verses. Does that mean He isn’t involved? I think He is, for several reasons. First, as we think about how Scripture describes God’s work, typically the Father plans, the Son enables, and the Spirit applies. That’s especially clear in our own salvation. The Father planned the salvation through Christ, Jesus enabled our salvation by His substitutionary atonement, and the Spirit applies that salvation to individual hearts. I believe this passage assumes that pattern, thus, though it is God the Father who wills to illuminate us, God the Spirit works in us in the actual work of illumination.
Secondly, since Scripture came through the ministry of the Spirit (as in 2 Peter 1:21, “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”), it follows that He is also the interpreter. He gave the Word through the apostles and prophets, and He explains that Word to Christians. Third, throughout the New Testament the Spirit is described as the sanctifier. Of the members of the Trinity, He is most personally involved in our spiritual growth. Given that Scripture is central to our sanctification, it seems that He is the one opening the eyes of our understanding. And fourth, 1 Corinthians 1, a passage we’ve touched on several times now, describes the Spirit as the teacher. He comes so we can understand and receive spiritual things, things revealed in Scripture.
To summarize, Psalm 119 proclaims the great worth of God’s law, but it also teaches us that we need God’s help to understand it. Without illumination, we cannot understand Scripture as we ought to. But Ephesians promises that God is willing and able to illuminate us, so we can understand the hope of the gospel, the riches of the glory of His inheritance, and the greatness of His power toward us. Scripture gives us all things necessary for life and godliness, and the Spirit is our guide, enabling our understanding and teaching us wonderful things from God’s law.