9. Guidance from the Holy Spirit. Yet another source of guidance is
personal direction from the Holy Spirit. Such guidance was explicitly
identified in Paul’s second missionary journey:
And they went
through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having
been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they
had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (Acts 16:6–7; see also
8:29; 13:2; 15:28)
But is direct
guidance from the Holy Spirit part of the life of all Christians or was it
unique to Paul and the other apostles in the book of Acts? I am convinced that
the New Testament teaches that direct guidance from the Holy Spirit is a normal
component of the life of Christians generally, and it is one of the factors we
should take into account in seeking to know God’s will.
Paul wrote to
Christians in Rome, whom he had not yet met, about an experience of being led
by the Holy Spirit that he seems to have thought of as characteristic of the
lives of Christians in general:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are
sons of God. (Rom. 8:14)
The Greek word
here translated “led” is agontai, the
present passive indicative form of agō,
which means “to direct the movement of an object from one position to another”
or (in a spiritual sense) “to lead/guide morally or spiritually.”
Similarly, Paul writes in Galatians:
But if you are
led by the Spirit, you are not under
the law. (Gal. 5:18)
Significantly,
Paul here uses the same Greek verb (agō)
to speak of such leading by the Holy Spirit.
Some
commentators argue that this leading by the Holy Spirit consists only in the
Spirit giving an inward desire or inclination to obey God’s moral laws as
revealed in Scripture. For example, Thomas Schreiner writes that being led by
the Spirit is not a matter of “specific guidance for daily decisions,” but
rather of “being directed by the Spirit to live a life that pleases God.”
Other
commentators, however, see guidance by the Holy Spirit as also including
situation-specific direction to make a certain decision, take a specific
action, or go to a particular place. Gregg Allison and Andreas Köstenberger
write,
Statements
such as “The Holy Spirit is leading me to do such and such” or “The Spirit told
me to say such and such” have become so commonplace that a tendency has
developed in some circles to avoid discussion of the guidance of the Spirit.
However, this work of the Spirit is well supported biblically and confirmed in
genuine experiences of his guidance in the lives of both individual Christians
and churches.
And Craig
Keener’s book Gift Giver contains 34
pages on “recognizing the Spirit’s voice” and “learning to hear God’s heart by
the Spirit,” including several personal anecdotes of being guided by the Holy
Spirit to walk someplace, talk to someone, and so forth.
I think that
the “situation-specific guidance” view is more convincing here, primarily
because of the way the Greek verb agō
is used elsewhere in the Bible. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the
Old Testament that was often cited by New Testament authors), the verb agō is used 113 times to speak of
leading by a personal agent (that is, leading by a human person or by God).
Every one of those 113 examples refers to situation-specific directional
guidance that leads to a particular location or decision. None of the examples
speaks of imparting an inclination to obey God’s moral standards apart from
situation-specific direction. Here are some examples (all of these examples use
agō in the Greek text, though the
English translation uses “bring” instead of “lead” in several verses):
Now out of the
ground the Lord God had formed
every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought (agō, “led”) them
to the man to see what he would call them. (Gen. 2:19)
And the rib
that the Lord God had taken from
the man he made into a woman and brought
her to the man. (Gen. 2:22)
[Joseph,
speaking to his brothers:] Bring your
youngest brother to me. So your words will be verified, and you shall not die.
(Gen. 42:20)
And I will lead the blind
in a way that
they do not know,
in paths that
they have not known
I will guide
them.
I will turn
the darkness before them into light,
the rough
places into level ground. (Isa. 42:16)
The Spirit
lifted me up and brought me to the
east gate of the house of the Lord,
which faces east. (Ezek. 11:1)
And the Spirit
lifted me up and brought me in the
vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles (Ezek. 11:24)
In addition, agō
is used several times to speak of God guiding
Israel through the wilderness:
And you shall
remember the whole way that the Lord
your God has led you these forty
years in the wilderness. (Deut. 8:2)
The Lord your God … who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery
serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought
you water out of the flinty rock. (Deut. 8:14 –15)
So I led them
out [a related verb, exagō] of the
land of Egypt and brought [agō, “led”] them into the wilderness.
(Ezek. 20:10)
When we turn
to the New Testament, we see a similar pattern. The verb agō is used 53 times in the New Testament, and in the overwhelming
majority of cases it refers again to the situation-specific directional
guidance leading to a particular location or decision. Here are some examples:
And Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted
by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. (Luke 4:1–2)
Go into the
village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which
no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring
it here. (Luke 19:30)
Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to
the governor’s headquarters. (John 18:28)
It is fair to
conclude that when agō is used in
contexts that speak about leading by a personal
agent, it overwhelmingly refers to a situation-specific kind of leading to
a specific location or decision, not merely imparting an inclination to do good
or evil. And since Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18 speak of leading by the Holy
Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is surely a personal agent, being “led by the
Spirit” in these verses should also be understood to refer to
situation-specific detailed leading to a specific location or decision.
We should also
notice that in both Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18, Paul uses a present-tense
verb to describe a quality that characterizes the lives of “sons of God”
generally, and therefore it is appropriate to understand the present tense as
indicating a continuous aspect to this leading, something like “all who are being led regularly by the Spirit of God
are sons of God.” Paul does not speak of a person being guided merely by his or
her own moral convictions or desires, but by the Holy Spirit himself, who is a
person. Paul is speaking of personal guidance from the Holy Spirit to
individuals, and he indicates that this experience is characteristic of the
lives of all Christians.
In the same
context in Galatians, Paul gives similar instructions to Christians in the
churches of Galatia:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not
gratify the desires of the flesh. (Gal. 5:16)
If we live by
the Spirit, let us also keep in step with
the Spirit. (Gal. 5:25)
All of these
passages speak about an expectation that Christians in general will experience
a measure of leading or guiding by the Holy Spirit, who will influence their
evaluation of various choices and courses of action in a subjectively perceived
way. (Wayne Grudem,
What the Bible Says about How to Know God’s Will [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway,
2020], 29-35)
