So far, we have described the mental aspects of your basic, natural, human being: a brain, a human spirit, and a uniquely ordered mind. This is true of every person who has ever lived on the planet. But for some – we call ourselves Christians – there is an additional component to our constitution that makes all the difference in the world. And in the next world. We will also consider in this post the fifth aspect of our spiritual existence, since the fourth and fifth are closely related.

The Holy Spirit is a fourth factor in the constitution of some people, and He is the Agent of change or sanctification in every Christian. Paul makes it clear that, if we do not have the Spirit of Christ, then we are not believers (Rom 8.9b). He does a lot of things in His ministry to and through us, but here we are limiting our consideration to His role in our sanctification.

Like the human spirit, the Holy Spirit is an initiator, activator, and governor of processes in our brains. Unlike the human spirit, however, the Spirit only initiates and governs those (neuro)pathways of righteousness that He has made. He does not work on the old, sinful channels in the mind of the Christian – or even the “righteous” ones we have done in the flesh – but instead creates new pathways to be followed. His purpose is to make the righteous channels more active and attractive than the sinful ones.

The sinful paths are what constitutes the flesh (when used in a negative sense in Scripture). When Paul declares, “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please” (Gal 5.17), he may be describing something that modern neurology sheds some light on. The flesh – the mental eight-lane channels of pleasure and sin – presents itself as an easy alternative to what the Spirit is offering. The Spirit beckons us down a path of righteousness, but the well-traveled and familiar path of sin is calling, too.

Who wins? Well, according to Paul, whichever one our human spirit decides to yield to. He says to the Galatians, “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal 5.16), and to the Romans, “do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. . . . Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” (Rom 6.13, 16).

The Christian’s responsibility in the process of sanctification is to yield, not to the flesh but, to the Holy Spirit. As we walk with Him, He will transform our minds and change our behaviors.

Of course, it is possible to make similar changes without the Holy Spirit. Any person, including a Christian, can attempt to create new neuropathways of righteousness through willpower and discipline. There are, without question, a great number of very good, very honorable, very noble non-Christians in the world. Many of them are in church every Sunday. The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were good men: their peers looked up to them and admire their piety. We know that they’re the bad guys because we know the whole story, but had we been living at that time we, too, would have thought very highly of them. But their righteousness was a product of their own spirit and thus corrupted by sin.

And there are a great number of Christians who, for one reason or another, are attempting to perfect themselves by the flesh (i.e., the work of the human spirit to change the brain for the better). Paul says that they are foolish (Gal 3.3) and states that no one – that is, NO ONE – will be made righteous or justified through their own efforts (Rom 3.20, Gal 2.21).

All our righteousness, after all, is nothing but but a filthy rag (a polite euphemism) in the eyes of God (Is 64.6). And this is true whether that self-produced righteousness is accomplished by a non-Christian or a Christian. The only righteousness that counts with Him is that which He gives (positionally) to us and that which the Holy Spirit produces (experientially) in us.

The Holy Spirit does not work nilly-willy or arbitrarily in the believer, He utilizes the written word of God – the Bible – to establish new paths of righteousness in the believer. That may come from reading the Bible, hearing it read, or hearing it from the lips of others, but it is the truth as contained in the Bible that provides the direction, form, and content of the new channels in our brain. The more we hear the word of God, the more our minds are transformed – if we yield to Him and follow down those paths.

The Bible does not contain error and, if studied correctly, cannot lead us into error. It is one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Scriptures for us. Strictly speaking, He does not “reveal” anything to us: revelation is complete; revelation is confined to the Bible. The Spirit enlightens us and enables us to see the truth of God in a way that it becomes part of our life. It is not just knowledge of the Bible that He desires, but a change in our lives. We are to be “living bibles” in the world, blessing others and being blessed in the process.

It is the presence and leading of the Holy Spirit that makes the Bible living and active (Heb 4.12). The Bible does not possess some magical power of its own. This is clearly seen by the effect it has on a non-Christian: to them it is just a book, a collection of confusing and sometimes-quaint concepts. But it is hardly something to live by and, even if it were, it would be impossible.

The Bible is special because of its purity and clear revelation of the Person of God, but by itself it changes no one. Change is the activity of the Holy Spirit, and it is the Bible that He uses to accomplish His work in us.

Next (and last): Application


2 Cor 1:13