What Is the Illumination of the Holy Spirit?

By Robb Brunansky

Published January 12, 2026

How can we know as believers if we have received the mind of Christ through the indwelling Spirit of God? In 1 Corinthians 2:12, Paul told us that God has revealed the mind of Christ by the Spirit so that we might know the things God has graciously given to us. This verse explains the purpose of the reception of the mind of Christ by believers. God wants us to know the mind of Christ so that we might understand what He has freely bestowed upon us through the cross.

What Paul is describing in this verse is what theologians call the illumination of the Spirit in our minds. Previously, we encountered the revelation the Spirit gave to the apostles, but now we see the illumination the Spirit gives to all believers. To put it simply, the illumination of the Spirit is the ability to understand God’s Word accurately. The Spirit revealed the Word through the apostles and prophets, but that revelation was not enough in itself because apart from the illumination of the Spirit we cannot understand what God’s Word means by what it says. The gift of the Spirit is essential to understanding the mind of Christ.

How then can we understand the meaning of God’s Word?

The answer is crucial because anyone can quote or even memorize Scripture, but it doesn’t mean we understand its true meaning. Only the Spirit of God enables us to hear or read divine revelation and rightly understand and interpret it.

Many years ago, I remember trying to work through the doctrine of justification by faith alone with someone. I would ask him a question about it, and he would quote a verse. This exchange was frustrating because it missed the point of the problem.

The problem was not that one of us did not know what Scripture said, but that we did not agree on its meaning. We could both agree that James 2 or Romans 4 were the inspired word of God, and we might even agree that a particular translation accurately captured the intention of the original Greek text, but that still left a vital question: what does that text actually mean? To get at the meaning of the text requires not merely a human intellect, but divine illumination by the Spirit who inspired that Scripture.

Now, we should understand two things about the illumination of the Spirit to help us know what God has graciously given to us in His Word.

First, the illumination of the Spirit does not eliminate the need for human effort in understanding Scripture. This point is of vital importance. Someone might say to me, “Pastor, do you believe in the illumination of the Spirit of God in your mind before you preach?” And I would say, “Absolutely, I do. I am totally dependent on the illumination of the Spirit to get anything right in a sermon or any other setting where I am interacting with the Word of God.” And he might reply, “Then why do you need to spend so much time studying and preparing? Why not just get into the pulpit, prayed up and let the Spirit illumine your mind as you go?” And the answer to that is because the illumination of the Spirit does not work independently of human effort.

There are two passages that make this point clear. The first is in 2 Timothy 2:7, where Paul asserts his belief in the illumination of the Spirit to open our understanding to the meaning of God’s Word. Paul, here, tells Timothy that the Lord will give him understanding in everything already revealed. Understanding comes from the Lord, not from men.

Paul, though, begins the verse with a command: consider what I say! This shows us that illumination is not automatic. We don’t just open our Bibles and receive immediate understanding from the Holy Spirit. Rather, God designed illumination such that we employ our minds to think on His Word to understand it. If and when we consider and prayerfully meditate on God’s Word, the Spirit will enable believers to understand it.

The second passage is in 2 Timothy 2:15, where Paul tells Timothy that he must be diligent, and that Timothy is to think of himself as a workman as he handles the word of truth. Studying and understanding Scripture takes diligence. There is no room for laziness in the lives of those who would rightly understand and communicate divine truth.

This diligence is what will enable Timothy to accurately handle the word of truth. Timothy needed to be diligent and work hard. Paul believed in the illumination of the Spirit, but he also knew the Spirit uses means to illumine our minds – and one of the means He uses is our diligent study and meditation on the Word of God.

So, we see that illumination is necessary to understanding God’s Word, but it does not eliminate the need for diligent study and meditation of Scripture.

Second, the goal of illumination is not merely a clearer understanding of the text of Scripture, but of the realities those texts describe.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:12 that God gave us His Spirit so we might know the things freely given to us by Him. One of those things is the Word of God, but God’s Word contains divine promises that are only experienced and realized as we live out our faith and walk with the Lord.

For example, the Bible promises us peace through the cross of Christ, peace with God and others, and peace in our own hearts and minds. One goal of illumination is that we might understand God has graciously given us peace through Christ. We must have an intellectual grasp of the meaning and application of this peace.

Another goal, though, goes beyond an intellectual understanding of this peace to an experience of this peace. God has revealed He has given us this peace in His Word, and He wants us to know this peace in our lives.

So, the Spirit illumines us to the meaning of Scripture, not only so our minds will grasp the meaning, but so that meaning will permeate our lives and transform us from the inside-out. God has given the Spirit to Christians so we might know, understand, and experience the things He has freely given us in the gospel.

That is, then, the purpose of the reception of Christ’s mind, so we might know God has freely given to us in Christ things that are revealed by the Spirit in the Word and that radically transform us as we understand the Word.