For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Romans 8:29

There are a lot of reasons why Christians listen to one teacher or another. Some Christian authors appeal to some groups of people better than others. Some of us like humor, others want exciting stories or erudite language.

But by-and-large, the purpose of our reading or listening to Christian teaching is so that our eyes will be opened—that we’ll discover the truth more clearly—that we’ll be changed by the information imparted. God’s truth never changes, but our understanding of it does change and should change as we grow closer to Him, and the Spirit conforms us more and more to His image.

As the Holy Spirit enlarges us as Christians to receive more of what God has for us, we become ready for deeper teaching. Truths that might have just passed over us with a nod five years ago now go off like fireworks in our spirits. The eyes of our hearts are further opened and we see spiritual things more clearly.

Old concepts of God, His character, how He interacts with us…these concepts may be outright wrong. But not necessarily. They might just be less complete, less clear… Baby food tastes ok when you’re a baby, but pretty bland when you’ve grown older. In the same way these old ideas about God’s nature and spiritual concepts in general are replaced by newer, fresher, more accurate concepts. We call this ‘growing in Christ’. It’s what’s supposed to happen, and when it doesn’t something’s wrong.

Jesus said He’d “come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind” (Jn 9: 39). Some Pharisees who overheard Him say this asked, “What? Are we blind too?”, implying, of course, that their own understanding of God was crystal clear. So Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”

In other words, there’s nothing sinful about having an inaccurate or incomplete view of God so long as we don’t flatter ourselves that we’ve got it all tied up in a neat package. The problem comes when we decide that we’re so full of truth that we got it all. That’s when the light within us is truly darkness (Matt 6:23).

Lord, open our eyes, that we may see…