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Friday, June 14, 2013

The Necessity of Understanding in Edification

Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say "Amen" to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? 17 For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. 18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19 Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. (1Co 14:16-19 ESV)
I love the experience of God's presence and the genuine work of the Spirit in the body of Christ but cannot tolerate those who advocate checking your brain out at the door.  I have had well meaning individuals give me 'words from the Lord' about my mind being a stumbling block to my understanding and experience of God.  I have never been curt enough to tell them they were wrong (or maybe gutless is a better description!).   Here is what Schreiner says about this issue.  "Paul does not believe that others are edified when what is going on in the assembly - no matter how emotionally gripping - bypasses rational faculties.   He desires his converts to b emotionally gripped by the truth of the gospel; but the path to the emotions is through the mind, not around it."  Schreiner, Paul, Apostle of God's Glory in Christ, p. 354.

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