The School of the Spirit

Just as God created the physical body and breathed into it His own Spirit and breath, so He created the physical Torah and breathed into it His living Spirit and living word.  As the man without breath has no life in him, so the Word/Torah without the Spirit has no life in it, but brings condemnation and death.  But the Spirit brings the word to life and puts flesh on its "dry bones."  Out of the desert, the Word rises and speaks; it becomes a living Word, imparting life and health to all our bones:  Then He opened their minds to understand the Scripture.

Years ago, when I'd first begun to read the Bible, I wanted to know it, to "get" it.  I (not by accident) met a woman at a banquet who opened the Scriptures to me in a way I had never heard.  She really "got" it.  Amazed, I asked her how she had come to know the Scriptures so well; I thought maybe she had gone to Divinity School.  She said, "Whenever I read, I pray and ask God to open my mind to understand what I am reading."  Oh.   Later, when I asked the Lord if I could go to Bible school, He answered me:  I've got you in the school of the Holy Spirit.

That settled it; I finally understood that when the Scriptures "open" to us, it is not because someone teaches us, but because the Spirit of God Himself is teaching us.  Paul says, "I did not consult the other apostles, but learned by revelation the things of God."  We still must learn by revelation, no matter how often we go to church or attend classes in Scripture.  The Word without the Spirit remains hidden to us.  Some Greek icons depict Christ holding the closed book with His fingers raised in the position of a teacher.  If we knew how to "read" the icon, we would understand that the Book remains closed to us until Christ Himself opens it.