“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)
It is God, through the Word and the Holy Spirit, who shines into our blind hearts and enables what has only known darkness to see the brilliant light of God’s glory in Jesus Christ. Through the faithfully proclaimed Word of God, the Holy Spirit brings life out of death; repentance instead of unbelief, one who was dead in trespasses and sins has now become a “new creature” in Christ Jesus.
God has determined that He will draw men unto Himself through the preaching of His Word. Carl F. H. Henry once said that “The sermon is nothing less than a re-presentation of the Word of God. Sound preaching echoes and re-echoes the gospel;” As the Truth of Scripture is proclaimed externally, the Holy Spirit works internally, illuminating the heart and mind, convicting the hearer of the veracity of what He is hearing. God has given His promise:
“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)
Mr. Henry further states:
“Only the Spirit’s illumination enables fallen human beings to see the truth of God for what it truly is. The Scriptures convey the truth of God; the Spirit gives life and assurance.”
“God’s purpose in redemption is to deliver otherwise doomed sinners from the penalty and guilt and power – and ultimately from the very presence – of sin, and to restore the penitent to vital fellowship with himself and to righteousness. God’s revelation and redemption have in view a people of God, a transformed humanity.”
“What God proposes to write upon man’s heart deals at once with both divine knowledge and human obedience.”
“God intends that Scripture should function in our lives as his Spirit-illumined Word. It is the Spirit who opens man’s being to a keen personal awareness of God’s revelation. The Spirit empowers us to receive and appropriate the Scriptures, and promotes in us a normative theological comprehension for a transformed life.”
“The Spirit shapes a new mindset for those who were formally hostile to God (Romans 8:5-7), a mindset that prizes God’s truth and stimulates whole hearted obedience to his will. The Spirit, moreover, nurtures a new and godly life and provides the dynamic for defying sin and its temptations. We must remember that the life-giving Spirit by whom God raised Jesus from the dead is already active in Christians, liberating them, as they appropriate his presence and power, from the moral inabilities of their sinful past.”
“What God intends finally to inscribe upon the human heart is his scripturally revealed will. The biblical lifestyle requires absolute commitment to God rather than allegiance to the world; its themes are dying to the world, rebirth in Christ, renewal by the Holy Spirit. Evangelical lifestyle desires divine perspective on human existence – that is, it endeavors to see man and the world through Christ’s eyes, or rather, according to the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5).
“The New Testament writings repeatedly associate the truth of God’s revelation with the transforming power of divine redemption. ‘If any one is in Christ,’ writes Paul, ‘he is a new creature’ (2 Corinthians 5:17).”
Once God has shown in our hearts, to give us "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" we will be changed. Once we truly see and understand the Doctrines of Grace, our hearts will be captured by the infinite worth and beauty of the Lord Jesus. Most assuredly, "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
