Posted on 11/15/2025 1:51:12 AM PST by metmom
“‘You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight’” (Matthew 11:25–26).
God does not exclude intelligent people from His kingdom but those who rely on their own intelligence for salvation. The apostle Paul was a scholar, but he didn’t abandon that brilliance to become a Christian. However, he did stop relying on that training to understand the things of God. Intellect is a gift from God, but it becomes an impediment to authentic knowledge of Him when trust in it supersedes trust in the One who gave it.
The means God uses to hide things from certain people who relish their own intelligence is the darkness of their proud hearts. God’s truth is not knowable by mere empirical means. Instead, it must be known and received through the faithful heart, as God graciously reveals it. No amount of human insight can grasp God’s saving truths since the unregenerate “cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14).
Of those who miss the divine invitation, the apostle John writes that, “though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: ‘Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’. . . ‘He has blinded their eyes and He hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted’” (John 12:37–38, 40). Those who reject the gospel will one day have their unwise choice confirmed by God, the all-wise Judge.
Ask Yourself
Yes, God’s heart moves at the sight of simple trust, honest dependence, and awareness of need. Does your heart likewise bend toward those who are the least deserving yet the most impoverished?
Studying God’s Word ping
An important part of my journey to faith was the realization humans are limited creatures, by nature.
If we did not have limits, we would not be human.
Those limits, as large as they are, mean there are many things we are incapable of knowing through intellect alone.
“He has blinded their eyes and He hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted”
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