No. Doing mundane things, such as picking up a book and reading it, does NOT get one spiritual understanding.
Without the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, you could read yourself blind and not a bit of it would make any sense to you.
There is NOTHING that the natural man can do to gain spiritual understanding. It has to be given to him.
Why? you ask?
Because the natural man is spiritually dead.
Just as a blind man cannot perceive the light about him or the Deaf man cannot perceive the sound about him, neither can the natural man perceive spiritual truths because, being spiritually dead, he does not have the ability to perceive the spiritual reality around him.
“No. Doing mundane things, such as picking up a book and reading it, does NOT get one spiritual understanding.”
I did not say “get spiritual understanding”, I said “get TO spiritual understanding”. That missing word is important.
“Without the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, you could read yourself blind and not a bit of it would make any sense to you.”
This isn’t the question. The question is: can you get the sense of the Bible without bothering to do mundane things first, such as learn to read, open the Bible, read the words, perhaps consult a dictionary to understand the meaning of words, etc. Can we dispense with all that and simply ask the Holy Spirit to give us understanding while skipping those steps?
Please note, I’m not asking about exceptional cases, where someone might have a special revelation that grants them knowledge directly from God, I’m speaking of the general, what most believers will have to do in order to get to a spiritual understanding of the Bible.
Well put.