Praise be to God for his Spirit’s supernatural work of illumination in our hearts. Without it, we would not be able to accept the things of the Spirit of God, we would not recognize them as the truthful, authoritative revelation of God that they are, and we would not willingly submit ourselves to them.

I am convinced that a charismatic theology of the Holy Spirit has infected most of evangelicalism in ways we don’t often recognize. Carl F. H. Henry was right when he observed, “The modern openness to charismatic emphases is directly traceable to the neglect by mainstream Christian denominations of an adequate doctrine of the Holy Spirit.”1
This influence can be seen in a number of ways, but one that I’d like to focus on here is with our understanding and use of the term illumination. Often we hear prayers like, “Lord, please illumine your Word so that we can understand what it says,” or other similar language. Intentional or not, many believers seem to expect that the Spirit is going to help us understand what Scripture means or that he is going to “speak” to us specific ways that the Word applies to our personal situations.
Neither of these are what the biblical doctrine of illumination means.
Biblical Teaching on Illumination
The term illumination does not appear in Scripture; rather, it describes a collection of concepts involving the Spirit’s work in relation to his Word in the believer’s life.
1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16
One of the key texts is 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16. In this passage, Paul describes the fact that “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). Though the concept of illumination or enlightening don’t really appear in this passage, it does clearly teach that a key difference between believers and unbelievers is the fact that unbelievers simply do not recognize the truthfulness, beauty, and authority of God’s Word (specifically the gospel), while a believer is one who has come to recognize Scripture as such, not because of any human persuasion, but simply through “the Spirit and of power” (2:4).
2 Corinthians 4:1–6
Second Corinthians 4 makes a similar assertion, this time using explicit language of “enlightening.” The gospel is “veiled to those who are perishing” (2 Cor 4:3), Paul argues. Believers accept and submit to the gospel only because God has enlightened their hearts:
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Cor 4:6
This is illumination—a work of God’s Spirit upon a believer whereby he recognizes the beauty and glory of the gospel and therefore willingly submits himself to it.
It is important here to recognize that this concept of enlightening happens at the moment of conversion and is always true of Christians. Once our hearts are enlightened, we will always recognize and accept the Word of God as true and authoritative for us. An enlightened believer does not doubt or reject God’s Word.
1 Corinthians 2:10–16
Another text frequently cited in discussions of Spirit illumination is 1 Corinthians 2:10–16.
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
Two points are important to recognize in this text: First, the “us” and “we” in verses 10–13 are the apostles and other authors of Scripture. Charles Hodge notes, “The whole connection shows that the apostle is speaking of revelation and inspiration; and therefore we must mean we apostles, (or Paul himself), and not we Christians.”2 These men certainly received direct revelation from the Spirit of God to the degree that whatever they wrote can be considered “inspired” by God (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Peter 20–21). But we must remember that such inspiration was unique. The Spirit uniquely revealed the truths of Scripture to these men, and these truths are now inscripturated in the 66 canonical books of Scripture. The Spirit does not “reveal” truth to us in the same manner. These verses describe inspiration, not illumination.
This is important to remember in any discussion of illumination: the primary way the Spirit brings God’s Word to us is not illumination, rather, God’s Spirit has already brought God’s Word to us perfectly and sufficiently through inspiration.
However, second, verses 14–16 do touch on what we may describe as Spirit illumination.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
The key phrase is “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.” When the natural man reads Scripture, he does not accept it as God’s authoritative revelation. Rather, he sees it as foolishness. He does not understand its spiritual significance.
On the other hand, the spiritual person recognizes the Word of God for what it is and therefore submits himself to it. These verses do not speak of intellectual understanding but spiritual understanding. If we want to use the term illumination to describe what’s going on in these verses, it refers to the Spirit’s work to cause believers to recognize the significance and authority of the written Word of God. Furthermore, this act of the Spirit is not something that necessarily happens in separate points of time as we read the Word; rather, it is something that comes as a result of the new birth—the Spirit gives us new life and enlightens our hearts to recognize the significance of his Word.
In other words, 1 Corinthians 2 refers to two acts of the Spirit: inspiration, whereby the authors of Scripture wrote the very words of God, and illumination, whereby believers are enabled to recognize the spiritual significance of the Word of God.
Ephesians 1:17–22
A text that more specifically refers to what we may call illumination is Ephesians 1:17–22. Here Paul specifically uses the phrase “having the eyes of your heart enlightened” (v. 18). And what is the result of such illumination? Like with 1 Corinthians 2, the result of this enlightening is that the believer recognizes the value and authority of the truth of God’s revelation. No new revelation is imparted; rather, illumination causes believers to accept God’s Word for what it is—the sufficient, authoritative revelation of God.
Philippians 3:15, Colossians 1:9
In Philippians 3:15, Paul tells believers, “if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” Here, too, “reveal” refers not to new knowledge but to a kind of spiritual maturity that rightly submits to and appropriates God’s written revelation. Likewise, in Colossians 1:9, Paul prays that believers “may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
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It is important that we recognize the proper function of our physical expressions of worship and the fundamental spiritual essence of worship. The physical expressions themselves are never the essence of our communion with God; plenty of people do the physical stuff without truly worshiping. Rather, the physical aspects of worship should be an expression of the spiritual responses of our hearts toward God in the true heavenly temple. We cannot be satisfied with just going through the motions, assuming if we sing and pray and read the Bible and listen to a sermon, we have communed with God. No, the essence of true communion with God is in our hearts, hearts set on things above.

One of the clearest ways you can determine someone’s fundamental theology of worship is to ask them the following question: “How do you know that you have worshiped?” If our goal in worship is to commune with God, how do we know we have accomplished our goal? How do we know we have worshiped?
Embodied Expressions of Corporate Worship
As physical beings, much of what we do in corporate worship is embodied. In Colossians 3, we find a command to sing—the Greek word translated as “singing” literally means “make a melody with the vocal cords.” That may seem obvious, but some Christians in times past have argued that this passage refers to singing internally, not externally. No, we are supposed to sing with our voices in corporate worship. We cannot teach and admonish one another with singing unless we use our physical voices to do so. Likewise, Paul says in Ephesians 5:19, “addressing one another”—you can’t do that with internal singing—“in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” The word singing there is the same as in Colossians 3, but he also adds the word translated as “making melody,” which literally means “to pluck a stringed instrument.” So, clearly, the music of our corporate worship is a physical, audible expression.
We also necessarily use our bodies in other ways in corporate worship, don’t we? To let the Word of Christ richly dwell within us, as Paul commands in Colossians 3, we must use our eyes and voices to physically read the Scriptures. We use our ears to listen as others speak and sing. We even use our mouths and fingers as we eat and drink at the Lord’s Table. We cannot worship God corporately according to his instructions without the use of our bodies.
Indeed, the Bible teaches that the human body is good. God created the body and, therefore, by nature the body is good. Furthermore, Jesus Christ took on a human body at his incarnation, and he will have that body for the rest of eternity. Jesus died bodily, and he was raised bodily from that death. He ascended bodily into heaven, and one day he will return to the earth in his body. Job affirmed, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25). The Bible teaches that God, through Christ, has saved our souls, but he has also saved our bodies (1 Thess. 5:23).
Some Christians in the first couple centuries of the church adopted a Platonic philosophy that believed the body to be inherently evil. This resulted in what is known as the Gnostic heresy, which denied that Jesus Christ really had a physical body or that he rose bodily from the grave. Gnosticism also taught that we must try to completely free ourselves from our bodies by denying our bodies what we need to survive physically and instead attempt to become one with God’s spiritual essence. This heresy is specifically what Paul was addressing in Colossians as well as in other letters, such as in 1 Timothy when he said that Jesus “was manifested in the flesh” (3:16) and that “everything created by God is good” (4:4). And John explicitly condemned Gnosticism when he said, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” (2 John 1:7). Orthodox theologians continued to fight against this heresy until it was officially condemned in the fourth century. The body was created by God, Christ took on human flesh, and therefore the body is good, and our corporate worship is embodied worship.
This embodied reality of corporate worship is one reason that we must physically meet together. We cannot sing to one another without physically being together. The New Testament frequently emphasizes the importance of meeting together. John said in 2 John 1:12, “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete,” and he wrote similarly in 3 John. Paul stressed several times to the believers in Rome his desire to be there with them, so that he might enjoy their company and be refreshed together with them (Rom. 15:23–24, 32). He longed to physically gather with the believers in the church at Thessalonica, saying that he “endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face” (1 Thess. 2:17), and he urged Timothy to be diligent to come to him quickly (2 Tim. 4:9). Paul recognized the importance of physically being together for fellowship.
And so, the author of Hebrews commanded, “Do not neglect to meet together.” It’s why passages about corporate worship in the New Testament frequently emphasize the physical gathering of corporate worship. In 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, Paul repeats the idea multiple times: “when you come together” (11:17), “when you come together as a church” (11:18), “when you come together” (11:20), “when you come together to eat” (11:33), “when you come together” (11:34), “when you come together” (14:26). Corporate worship assumes the necessity of a physical gathering where we do physical things. “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus said, “there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20).
Spiritual Essence of Corporate Worship
Yet that very statement leads us to the primary point of this essay. Jesus said that where two or three are physically gathered in his name, there he is among them, but is Jesus physically in the midst of us when we gather? No, not since he ascended into heaven. Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God the Father (Acts 7:56). Colossians 3:1 says that Christ is “seated [bodily] at the right hand of God.” So, if Jesus is bodily in heaven, and we are gathered bodily here on earth, how can he be in the midst of us?
Notice how the verse opens: “If then you have been raised with Christ.” The first point to recognize here is that all who are united with Christ are also seated with him in heaven. Verse 3 alludes to this reality: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul says it even more explicitly in Ephesians 2:6 when he states that God has “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Christ is seated in heaven, and since we are in him, we are with him there. Remember what Paul says a few verses later in Ephesians 2:18: “For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” We have access to the Father because, in one Spirit through Christ, we are actually there in the presence of God in heaven.
This is a reality, and yet we also recognize that it is not yet a physical reality. Our bodies are still here on earth, while we really are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. What this reveals is the important spiritual essence of our relationship with God through Christ. As Paul says, we have access in one Spirit. The Spirit of God is the agent who makes this possible because it is a spiritual reality.
This is also part of what Jesus meant in John 4 when he said that God is seeking those who will “worship the Father in spirit and truth” (v. 23). Since “God is spirit” (v. 24) and does not have a body like man, true worship takes place in its essence in the Spirit, which is why it is essential that the Holy Spirit dwell within the NT temple—the church—in the same way he dwelt in the temple of the Old Testament. Back then, worship was limited to that physical, Spirit-indwelt temple, but “the hour . . . is now here” (v. 23) that worship takes place wherever two or three Spirit-indwelt believers gather together, for there Christ is “in the midst of them.”
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This is the source of communion with God—Someone hears the truths of the gospel, God supernaturally shines light into his heart so that he recognizes the beauty and value of the gospel of the glory of Christ. And when that happens to a person, he will give up everything for Christ; He will value Christ above all else. That is true Christianity. 

The king raged with fury.
How dare they say I have no right to be here? he steamed. I have done right in the sight of God. He has blessed me. He thought of all the rich spoils of battle adorning his chambers. I have grown strong. My fame has spread far. I deserve to be here.
“My lord, you must leave!”
What is his problem? How dare he say I must leave? The king picked up the censor to burn incense on the altar. I am trying to honor the Lord with this.
The priest persisted. “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense.”
The king turned. A crowd of strong priests stood behind Azariah in the doorway.
The priest moved a step closer. “Go out of the sanctuary,” he pleaded, “for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God.”
How dare he challenge the Lord’s blessed servant? He lowered the censor toward the altar.
He trembled, the censor dropping from his hand. What is that? White scales appeared all over his outstretched hand. His left leg collapsed beneath him. A sharp pain spread across his forehead.

King Uzziah was a leper until the day of his death.He dwelt in an isolated house, because he was a leper;for he was cut off from the house of the LORD.(2 Chron 26:21)

Barriers
“Let us draw near” (Heb 10:19).
The Son of God himself invites you to draw near to the presence of God and enter into the eternal communion enjoyed by the three persons of the triune godhead.
But any reader of the invitation in Hebrews to draw near would have immediately recognized its inherent problem—this God to whom we are supposed to draw near is holy; he cannot tolerate sin. Yet we are sinful.
The fall of mankind into sin destroyed the possibility of drawing near to God. After Adam and Even sinned they no longer enjoyed the privilege of walking with God in the garden; instead they hid from him in fear and desperately tried to cover their guilt with leaves. And ever since that time, any attempt to draw near to God results in a profound recognition of guilt and unworthiness.
The Israelites experienced this when they drew near to Mt. Sinai; when they witnessed the majesty and greatness and white-hot holiness of God, they trembled in fear and begged Moses to go in their behalf. This is the reason that although God inhabited the holy place in the tabernacle and later the temple, no person could enter his presence except the high priest once a year on the Day of Atonement. This is what Isaiah experienced when he saw the Lord high and lifted up in all of his glory and holiness and cried out with, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa 6:5).
Second Corinthians 4:3 says that every person is born in the condition of perishing, and thus the beauty of a relationship with God is veiled to us: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” Even worse, Paul says that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (v 4). All people are perishing and blind; all people are depraved. The Bible says that no one seeks after God (Rom 3:11); the natural mind cannot understand the things of God (1 Cor 2:14). And because of this, perishing, blind people do not even recognize the wonder and beauty of communion with God.
The problem with the command in Hebrews 10 is that we have neither the right nor even the desire to draw near to God; we do not have access to him because of our sin. The only way God enabled people to partially draw near to him is through temporary sacrifices, and even then there are barriers keeping us from the very presences of God himself; there is a veil hiding the holy place, only the high priest can enter there and only once a year, and we know what happens if you even touch the symbol of God’s presence, the ark—Remember Uzzah? Even Psalm 100 calls people to come only into the outer courts of the temple, not into the actual presence of God. The people had no direct access.
The point is that we cannot obey this command. God commands us to draw near, but this entering into the presence of God to worship him is not possible.
Or is it?
Through Christ
Hebrews 10 explains the solution to the problem through two “since” clauses. The first is found in verse 19: “Since we have confidence to enter the holy places . . . draw near.” Now the term translated “confidence” in most English translations has the idea of free and open “access” to someone or something. “Since we have access to enter the holy places . . . draw near.” So this verse is specifically addressing our problem. God commands us to draw near to him, but because of our sin we do not have access to him. Yet this verse tells us that such access is possible; it is possible to have access to the holy place of God’s presence.
Here is the first term in our text that is meant to conjure up images of Old Testament worship. The holy place was that most sacred of places in the tabernacle and temple, and several boundaries prevented access to God in this place. The first was the wall that enclosed the outer court of the temple, then was the wall of the temple itself, and finally the veil that hid the holy place where the Ark of God dwelt. In each successive stage, fewer and fewer people had access. No Jew would ever even consider entering the Holy Place; they knew what happened when Uzziah did that.
In fact, if you go to Jerusalem today, you’ll find out that there’s a certain area of the temple ground where it is forbidden to Jews to ever walk, because it may be the area where the Holy of Holies once stood, and no Jew would ever put his foot on the Holy of Holies. So that’s why there are big signs outside the gates of the temple area that say, “Orthodox Jews have been forbidden by the rabbi to enter in this place lest they step on the Holy of Holies.” Orthodox Jews have a fear still today of ever going into the presence of God.
Jesus our Substitute
But Hebrews 10:19 tells us that we have access, not just to the outer court, not just into the entrance of the temple, but beyond the veil into the very presence of God. How can this be? Keep reading: “by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.”
Access to God is possible through a sacrifice, and this is no ordinary sacrifice; this is the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of the Son of God. At the beginning of Hebrews 10, the author revealed the insufficiency of animal sacrifices to purify those who come to God in worship: “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.”
But this sacrifice can perfect those who draw near. This Jesus is fully man, and thus he can stand as our substitute, and he is fully God, and thus he can pay an eternal punishment to an eternal, holy God that no normal man could. And because of the perfection and eternality of this sacrifice, it need not be offered day after day after day to atone for sin; it is offered one time and the complete wrath of God is fully appeased.
This is what God pictured when he slew the animal in the garden and covered Adam and Eve’s guilt. This is what was pictured when Moses offered a sacrifice at the foot of Mt. Sinai so that the elders of the people could approach God. This is what was pictured each year in Israel on the Day of Atonement when an animal was sacrificed and the high priest entered the holy place to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. This is what was pictured when the seraph took a burning coal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, saying, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
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There is a great danger when Christians today talk about knowing God apart from his Word, as if they have some sort of mystical experience, or they think they can simply know God in nature, or through some sort of direct magical connection, or through their own reason. No—we come to know God first and foremost through his Word.

When King Saul sinned against the Lord and forfeited his rule over God’s people, the prophet Samuel said to him,
But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”1 Samuel 13:14
And the Lord did find that man after his own heart. The apostle Paul said in Acts 13,
And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.”
David: A man after God’s own heart. What a description! A man whose heart follows God’s heart. This is a man who truly knew the Lord.
What would it take for that to be a description of you? What kinds of qualities characterized David such that God described him as a man after his own heart?
We know it certainly wasn’t external qualities that characterized David this way. When God sent Samuel to anoint a new king from among Jesse’s sons, Samuel assessed the sons on the basis of their outward qualities—surely Eliab the eldest is the Lord’s anointed. “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’mmm” God was not seeking height of stature; he was seeking a man whose heart followed his heart.
And he found such a man in David. What qualified David as such?
We could go to 1 Samuel and look at some of the narratives of David’s life to discover such qualities, and we will do some of that. But the narratives mostly focus on what David did—the outward appearance; if our goal is to truly discover David’s heart, then there is no better way to do that than to look at the God-inspired window into David’s heart, the Book of Psalms.
At least 73 of the 150 psalms are attributed to David—David is a major focus of the psalms. But this is not just a randomly compiled collection of songs by David and a few others. Christians today often don’t recognize that the 150 psalms were intentionally organized by Ezra or someone like him following the Babylonian exile into five books, and these five books of psalms were arranged to teach us some very important truths, largely centered on David and his relationship with God.
The psalms don’t trace David’s life chronologically—that’s the purpose of the historical books; David did write the psalms during particular experiences in his life, but the psalms primarily unfold David’s inner life. They communicate his heart to us. And so if our goal is to uncover David’s heart, to discover David’s deep inner knowledge of God, then it is fitting that we explore his heart in the Psalms.
The Law of the Lord
Almost every psalm in Book I of the Psalter—the first forty-one psalms—was written by David. Most of these psalms are characterized by songs of lament about the wicked; uncertainty; conflict. The wicked are surrounding David; they are prospering, and the righteous are suffering.
Think about experiences in David’s life that could be characterized like that. King Saul is chasing David through the mountains, intent upon killing him. Bloody battles against the Philistine armies. David’s own son, Absalom, tries to kill his father and take the throne. And what is perhaps the most famous story about David? His battle with Goliath! A huge giant threatens God’s people.
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God is concerned not only with heart motive—although that is certainly central—nor is he simply concerned that people worship him alone—although that is, of course, true. He is also concerned that his people worship him in the right way, which includes not worshiping in ways that he has forbidden or inventing new ways to worship that he has not commanded.

In the Old Testament Law, God gave his people very specific instructions about how they were to relate to the people around them, including in their culture and worship practices.
Deuteronomy 12:2–8 reveals important principles in this regard. God commanded that the people destroy the places where pagans worshiped, including their altars, their pillars, their images, and even the names of the places. This is clearly more than simply insisting that they worship Yahweh rather than false gods; this is stark evidence that God rejects worship that imitates pagan worship in any way. Everything in pagan culture embodies religious commitments, and those elements that are imbibed with pagan religious meaning must be rejected for use in worship. One might ask why they had to destroy, for example, the altars and pillars; wouldn’t these be useful even for the worship of the true God? Yet God commanded that they be destroyed. He summarized his desires with the words, “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way.” Instead, they were to listen to his instructions and find a place of his choosing for their worship.
Yet the people disobeyed these principles even as they waited at the foot of the mountain for Moses to return from receiving the law tablets. The golden calf incident is a terrible failure for this newly formed worship community, but unfortunately one that foreshadows many other failures in the days and years ahead. Fearing that Moses would never come back, the people demanded a physical representation of deity, just like the pagan nations had. Aaron complied, forming a golden calf, similar to the practice of both Egypt and Canaan, and the people celebrated with an orgiastic festival so noisy that it sounded to Joshua’s ears from a distance like “a noise of war in the camp.”
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Communing with God is like eating with someone around your table in your dining room. In that kind of setting, you can let your guard down; there’s no need for pretense. Dining with someone is an opportunity for you to listen to them, to get to know them, to enjoy their company. It is an opportunity to share your heart, to communicate something of yourself. There is a mutual give and take that happens around a table. You listen as the other person speaks, and then you respond in dialogue with that person. And as you do, your relationship with that person grows deeper as you get to know them better.

The man was a scoundrel, certainly not worthy of the invitation he had just received. He had stolen before—he had even stolen from the king’s treasury. And now he was eyeing the fat purse on the richly-dressed nobleman headed his way on the main road, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
Oh no, he though. Caught at last.
“Sir,” a voice behind him said. He turned around.
“Sir, the king is giving a wedding feast for his son.” This was clearly one of the king’s servants. He continued, “He has prepared the dinner, his oxen and fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready.”
And what would someone like me have to do with that?
“The king would like you to come,” the servant said. “Come to the wedding feast.”

And those servants went out into the roadsand gathered all whom they found,both bad and good.So the wedding hall was filled with guests.(Matt 22:10)

Let Us Draw Near
Imagine—the sovereign, holy, all-powerful Ruler of the universe invites lowly, finite, severely flawed creatures into his presence.
This is exactly what he calls us to do. The end of Hebrews 10 contains such an invitation:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb 10:19–22)
“Let us draw near.”
This idea of drawing near is an important focus of the book of Hebrews, evident by its presence in the three major climaxes of the book. Here in chapter 10:22 we find the second of these climaxes. The first is found in 4:16, which says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” And the final climax of the book is 12:22, which says, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,” and that phrase “you have come” is a translation of the same Greek term translated “draw near” in Hebrews 10:22.
Not only does this concept of drawing near appear in the book’s main literary climaxes, but it also appears in several other places in the book as well. Hebrews 7:25, 10:1, and 11:6 all focus our attention on the call to draw near to God, the basis for drawing near, and the means for drawing near. The concept of drawing near is critical in this book.
So what is the importance of this command? What does “drawing near” mean?
This idea of coming or drawing near is a translation of a term that means more than just a casual coming toward something. Rather, it specifically refers to approaching God, and we can see this by how it is used in the book of Hebrews; we find commands to draw near to God, draw near to the throne of grace, and 10:19 implies that we are to draw near to the holy place of God’s presence. So it is clear that this drawing near is coming to God, and throughout the book of Hebrews the author compares this idea of drawing near to the Hebrew worship practices—they are in chapter 10 as well, terms like “holy place,” “the veil,” “high priest,” “sprinkling” and “cleansing”; drawing near to God is what the author defines as the essence of worship—communion with God.
Drawing near to God in worship permeates the storyline of Scripture. It is what Adam and Eve enjoyed as they walked with God in the cool the day (Gen 3:8). Exodus 19:17 describes it when Moses “brought the people out of the camp to meet God” at the foot of Mt. Sinai. He had told Pharaoh to let the people go so that they might worship their God in the wilderness, and this is exactly what they intended to do at Sinai. It is what Psalm 100 commands of the Hebrews in Temple worship when it says, “Come into his presence with singing and into his courts with praise.” It is what Isaiah experienced as he entered the heavenly throne room of God and saw him high and lifted up (Isa 6). To draw near to God is to enter his very presence, to bask in his glory, to fellowship with him. It is the plea of the psalmist when he says,
One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple. (Ps 27:4)
Koinonia
This idea of “drawing near” is a central picture of communion with God throughout Scripture, but the word most often translated “communion” or “fellowship” in the New Testament is the term koinonia. The core meaning of this term helps to further uncover the essential nature of communion with God.
At its root, koinonia simply means sharing something or having something in common with another person. For example, Luke uses the term to describe the “partnership” in fishing shared by Peter, Andrew, James, and John (Luke 5:10). Similarly, Paul uses the term to describe the sharing of material goods to meet the need of Christians in Macedonia (2 Cor 8:4).
This helps us begin to understand that communion is not something mystical or mysterious; rather, it is a relationship between individuals in which they share of themselves with each other.
Tri-Unity
The Tri-unity of God presents the perfect example of, and is indeed the ultimate source of this concept of communion. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each individual and unique persons within the singular godhead, experience perfect fellowship one with another. The very truth of three-in-one and one-in-three reveals the amazing communion shared by the persons of God. Their communion is so complete that to divide their being would be to divide God himself; as persons they are distinct, but in essence they are One. Jesus himself tells us of the unique relationship that he has with his Father; it is a relationship so profound that in reality, no one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father (Matt 11:27).
This reality about God—something that is unique to the God of Scripture compared to the gods of other religions—provides the basis for all discussions of communion with God and with others.
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As we translate the words and concepts of Scripture, we must make sure that the target words and expressions faithfully capture the original meaning and sense of Scripture, rejecting the notion of cultural neutrality, and seeking always to reshape our lives and language according to Scripture, not the other way around.

It seems most Christians today assume that Christians have always “contextualized” the gospel, but this is simply not the case.
Like the idea of culture itself, the term “contextualization” is a relatively recent development. David Hesselgrave and Edward Rommen provide a helpful survey of contextualization’s history in Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models.1
The idea of contextualization is rooted in the missions debates of the Division on World Missions and Evangelism (DWME) of the World Council of Churches (WCC). Influenced by a secularist, anthropological understanding of culture and thus concerned that each civilization develop its own theology and method of church ministry in its own cultural context, the DWME began to condemn the “theological imperialism” of the church in the West. Its 1972–73 Bangkok Conference argued that non-Western churches should develop their own ideas “in a theology, a liturgy, a praxis, a form of community, rooted in their own culture.”2 This desire for each church to be indigenized within its culture, clearly influenced by a belief in cultural neutrality, became known as “contextualization.” Hesselgrave and Rommen explain how this new concept differed from previous ways of thinking:
Contextualization is a new word—a technical neologism. It may also signal a new (or renewed) sensitivity to the need for adaptation to cultural context. To its originators it involved a new point of departure and a new approach to theologizing and to theological education: namely, praxis or involvement in the struggle for justice within the existential situation in which men and women find themselves today. As such it goes well beyond the concept of indigenization which Henry Venn, Rufus Anderson, and their successors defined in terms of an autonomous (self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating) church.3
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Churches that understood corporate worship to be covenant renewal used music that modestly supported a fitting embodiment of doctrinally rich hymn lyrics and avoided music that simply “enervates men’s souls.” Sacramental worship, on the other hand, with its understanding of worship as felt experience of God, saw pop music as the perfect vehicle for their goals. 

In a previous article, I argued that music (all art) embodies interpretation of reality—it embodies ideas beyond mere words. Scripture itself does this, not only telling us what we should believe, qualities that should describe us, and how we should live, but also showing us through artistic embodiment those things. Therefore, we Christians ought to always evaluate the embodied ideas within a work of art to determine whether or not they accord with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1).
Two Worship Theologies
This brings us to music used in worship. As I’ve argued, what worship songs do is more than just neutrally carry theological ideas expressed through words. If this were the case, then as long as the words were theologically correct, it would not matter what musical forms or performance style carries those words.
Side note: I hope you recognize here that even lyrics that are “technically” correct may already present an interpretation of biblical ideas that do not “accord with sound doctrine.” This is beyond the scope what I want to get to in this article, but just consider whether “reckless” or “sloppy wet kiss” accords with how Scripture expresses God’s love. These are not just neutral expressions of a correct biblical truth (God’s love), they embody a particular interpretation of what God’s love is like.
Music is not simply a neutral container for lyrical ideas—music embodies an interpretation of those ideas. So with worship songs, the music embodies both an interpretation of the particular words of the song and an interpretation of what is actually happening in the worship service.
So before I give some attention to the music itself, we need to briefly review the fact that Christians hold to more than one theology of worship.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll focus on what I would say are the two most dominant theologies of worship among Christians today.1
Covenant-Renewal Worship
The first is what I’ll call Covenant-Renewal Worship. This is a theology of worship that considers the Lord’s Day corporate gathering to be one of covenant renewal in which God renews his covenant with his people through the gospel, and his people renew their covenant with him in responses of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and dedication. This kind of covenant renewal glorifies God because it highlights the work that he has done, and it forms his people to mature in how they live out the implications of that gospel covenant. Here’s how I describe it in Biblical Foundations of Corporate Worship:
Corporate worship is like renewing our gospel vows to Christ. Just like when we were first converted, God calls us to draw near to him. Just like at our conversion, we respond with confession of sin and acknowledgement that we have broken God’s laws. Just like when we were first saved, we hear words of pardon from God because of the sacrifice of Christ. Just like when we began our relationship with God, we eagerly listen to his instructions and commit to obey. We are not getting “re-saved” each week, but we are renewing our covenant vows to the Lord, and in so doing, we are rekindling our relationship with him and our commitment to him, and he with us.2
Worship services shaped by this theology follow the shape of the gospel:

God reveals himself and calls his people to worship through his Word.
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness.
God provides atonement.
God speaks his Word.
God’s people respond with commitment.
God hosts a celebratory feast.

Corporate worship that embodies this theology is dialogical, a conversation between God and his people. God always speaks first through his Word, and then his people respond appropriately to God’s revelation.
As Bryan Chapell has helpfully demonstrated in Christ-Centered Worship, and as I demonstrate in Changed from Glory into Glory: The Liturgical Story of the Christian Faith, covenant-renewal worship characterized believers in the early church and Protestants following the seventeenth-century Reformation. Though differences certainly exist between various groups stemming from the Reformation, their theology of covenant-renewal worship was fairly consistent. Another book that very helpfully explains this historic theology of worship is Jonathan Cruse’s What Happens When We Worship.
Songs within this covenant-renewal worship serve one of two functions: (1) Often psalms and hymns serve as God’s words to us, either directly quoting from or paraphrasing Scripture itself. (2) Psalms and hymns can also serve as our response to God’s revelation.
With both cases, choice of songs depends upon how the lyrical content fits within the dialogical, gospel-shaped covenant renewal service. Songs are not lumped together into a musical “set,” but rather interspersed with Scripture readings and prayers throughout the dialogical, gospel-shaped service.
The goal of covenant-renewal worship is discipleship—building up the body (1 Cor 14:26). Every aspect of the service is chosen, not for how it will give “authentic expression” to the worshipers or give them an experience of God’s presence (see below), but rather how it will build them up, maturing them by the Word of God.
The music itself is actually not very prominent in this theology of worship. Music is important—as I’ve discussed, it provides an interpretation of the theology of the lyrics and gives expression to that interpretation. But music is secondary. The music is selected and performed to modestly support the truth with sentiments that “accord to sound doctrine,” and an emphasis is given to reverence, self-control, sobriety, and dignity in how the songs are led, accompanied, and performed.
Contrary to caricatures, this kind of worship is deeply emotional, but the music is not intended to stimulate or arouse emotion; rather, deep affections of the soul are stirred by the Holy Spirit through his Word, and music simply gives language to appropriate responses to the Word. Emotion in covenant-renewal worship is not often immediate, visceral, or flashy—rather, it is felt deeply in the soul.3 In fact, particularly because of commands in Scripture (like Titus 2:1) that Christians are to be dignified and self-controlled, care is given to avoid music that would cause a worshiper to lose control. Christians with this theology recognized that although physical feelings are good, they must be controlled lest our “belly” (a Greek metaphor for bodily passions) be our god (Phil 3:19). Rather, since reverence, dignity, and self-control are qualities that accord with sound doctrine, music is chosen that will nurture and cultivate these qualities and the affections of the soul like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (Col 3:12) and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:23). This theology takes note of the fact that qualities like intensity, passion, enthusiasm, exhilaration, or euphoria are never described in Scripture as qualities to pursue or stimulate, and they are never used to define the nature of spiritual maturity or the essence of worship.
Musical choices from this perspective are not about new vs. old or the canonization of one kind of music; rather, it is about choosing musical forms that best accord with a covenant-renewal theology of worship.
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God’s purpose for calling out a people for himself and unifying them together into one body under Christ is that his great wisdom might be marveled at by supernatural beings, ultimately bringing him supreme glory. Now what does it take for supernatural beings to marvel? It takes something supernatural, and God’s eternal plan of regenerating sinful people and uniting them together in one body is clearly that kind of supernatural act that would cause supernatural beings to marvel at the manifold wisdom of God.

What makes the events of Paul’s mission work in Philippi (Acts 16) so interesting for us is that this one of the first times that we are introduced to specific individuals who are converted and joined to the body of Christ. Luke takes note of a few individuals earlier in the book such as Paul himself or Sergius Paulus on Crete, but most of the time he just tells about groups of people who accepted the gospel. In Acts 16, Luke records the conversion of three specific individuals—Lydia, a slave girl, and a jailer.
The record of the salvation of these individuals serves a greater purpose than simply to provide interesting conversion stories. The fact that Luke, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chose to record the conversions of these three specific individuals was to teach us some important truths regarding the power of the gospel and Christ’s plan in building his church. Comparing and contrasting these three individuals help us to draw some conclusions regarding the nature of the gospel and the purpose of the church.
The Universal Appeal of the Gospel
Christ could hardly have chosen three more different people to save than Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer. Notice how different they were.
Nationality
First, their nationalities were different. Philippi was quite a cosmopolitan city. It was fairly large and influential, it was a common retirement spot for Roman military men, and it attracted much commerce. Lydia had evidently come to Philippi for the reason of commerce. Verse 13 says that she was from Thyatira, which was a city in modern Turkey. Thyatira was known for its fabric dyes, and evidently Lydia had come to Philippi to deal in dyed cloth.
The slave girl was likely a native of Philippi, and so she was probably Greek. As we’ll see in a moment as well, she was a worshiper of the Greek god Apollo, so that further indicates that she was probably Greek.
The jailer was a Roman soldier, maybe even a retired Roman official who had retired in Philippi.
So here we have three individuals who come to Christ, each of different nationality—West Asian, Greek, and Roman.
Gender
It probably goes without saying, but these individuals differed in gender as well. This may seem like a mundane point to us, but in that day women were looked down upon, and here Lydia becomes an influential member of the church, one of the few believers to be named in Paul’s letter to the church here. In fact, many scholars believe that Lydia was wealthy, and that her home was the meeting place for the church here.
Social
Which leads to the next difference. These three individuals were of completely different social status. Lydia was a business woman. She was likely wealthy. Not just anyone would have had space in their home to entertain guests like she did in verse 15.
The girl, as verse 16 tells us, was a slave. You couldn’t get much more opposite to a wealthy business woman than a slave. The girl was a member of the lowest class of their society.
The jailer fell somewhere in the middle. Being a soldier in the Roman army, he would have been your average middle-class worker.
Religion
The religious beliefs of these individuals differed as well. Lydia, according to verse 14, was a worshiper of God. She was a Gentile proselyte to Judaism. You might remember that on Paul’s first missionary journey it was his practice when he first entered a new city to visit the Jewish synagogue there. Now that his second journey had found him further away from Israel, the city of Philippi evidently had no synagogue. In order to have a synagogue, a city had to have at least 10 Jewish male heads of households in the city. So even in a fairly large city like Philippi, there were not even 10 male Jews. So Paul found the next best thing. As verse 13 tells us, on the Sabbath they went down to the river, and found several women who had gathered there to worship, and Lydia was among them. She had probably converted to Judaism in Thyatira where there was more Jewish witness, and when she came to Philippi had joined with other God-fearing woman in their Sabbath worship.
Once again, you could not get more opposite to Lydia in terms of religion than the slave girl. Verse 16 says that she had a spirit of divination. It literally says that “she had a spirit of Python.” According to the Greek myths, Zeus, the king of the gods, brought into existence at the town of Delphi an oracle, a place where the gods could be consulted. The oracle was guarded by Python, a female serpent, and answers from the gods were obtained through a priestess. According to mythology, Apollo, the son of Zeus, killed the serpent and took control of the shrine. He made the priestess, known as the Pythia or Pythoness, his servant. As a consequence, Apollo became known as the god of prophecy. Sometimes the name “Python” was associated directly with Apollo.
Based on the myth, at this time, there was an actual shrine and a succession of priestesses at Delphi, which wasn’t too far from Philippi. There are ancient pictures of the Pythoness sitting on a three‑legged stool over a cleft in the earth from which the oracle was supposed to proceed. When about to prophesy, she would go into a kind of ecstatic trance and utter a stream of unconnected phrases and obscure words. People would come from all over Greece to the shrine to enquire of the oracle, especially concerning the future. A priest would put their questions to the Pythoness, and her utterances, which were supposedly inspired by Apollo, would be interpreted by the priest and presented to the questioner, often in an ambiguous form.
The prophetic powers of Apollo, supposedly manifested in the priestess at Delphi, were also thought to be present in other women. Like the priestess, their utterances would be accompanied by convulsions or other abnormal behavior, which were assumed to be evidence of the presence of a spirit from Apollo, or a “spirit of Python.” In some cases, such behaviors may have been self‑induced; in other cases, they may have arisen from mental disturbance, or physical defects in the brain. Usually such a woman would be a slave, often owned by a group of men, who charged clients for her services.
So in Acts 16:16, the “slave girl who had a spirit of Python” was one of these women supposed to have similar powers to those of the Pythoness at Delphi, and to whom people came seeking the future. And evidently in this case she actually was demon possessed, which made her do things that people thought proved she was a Pythoness.
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Both God’s natural revelation and his special revelation condemn us. They reveal to us our incompatibility as sinners with the holiness of God and the way he designed his universe to operate for his glory. Scripture explicitly teaches us that the payment for sin is death, it reproves and corrects us. It warns us, as David just affirmed in verse 11. It explicitly teaches us that if we confess our sins, Christ is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:6).

A central doctrine of biblical Christianity is that God has revealed himself, and he has done so in two ways, both of which we can find in the first chapter of Genesis. The opening phrase of Scripture expresses the first form of God’s revelation: “In the beginning God created.” Creation itself is God’s revelation—it is God revealing certain things to us, which is why we sometimes call this God’s Natural Revelation or God’s General Revelation.
But then verse 3 of Genesis 1 expresses the second form of God’s revelation: “And God said.” And again in verses 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, and 26 of Genesis 1, we find God revealing himself through spoken words. And then in verse 28 after he created Adam and Eve, “God blessed them. And God said to them.” And then in Genesis 6:13, “God said to Noah.” And in Genesis 12, “the Lord said to Abram.” And in Exodus 3, God called to Moses out of the burning bush. And later at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God spoke the words of his law to his people. And as Hebrews 1 tells us, “long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” So God has revealed himself not only through what he has made, his natural revelation, but also through what he has said, what is sometimes referred to as God’s Special Revelation. And many of these words were written down by holy men as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21), compiled into the Holy Scriptures, which Paul says “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus,” these Scriptures being “breathed out by God” (2 Tim 3:15–16).
So God has revealed himself, and he has done so both through his Natural Revelation—what he has made—and through his Special Revelation—what he has said.
Perhaps one of the most succinct and, indeed, beautiful articulations of these two forms of God’s revelation is found in Psalm 19. This psalm describes both God’s natural and special revelation in a strikingly vivid poem. In fact, C. S. Lewis wrote, “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.”
Psalm 19 is unique for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its genre. In the Psalter, we might expect to find songs of praise or even songs of lament, but Psalm 19 is neither of those. In fact, it reads more like a Proverb than it does a psalm, which is why it is often referred to as a wisdom psalm. But another unique characteristic is its focus on God’s revelation, his Torah—Law. These unique features are found in only two other psalms in the entire 150, Psalm 1 and Psalm 119. These three psalms are wisdom psalms that focus on God’s revelation.
And so let’s consider what Psalm 19 says about God’s natural revelation and his special revelation, and then notice what it says about the proper responses we should have to God’s revelation.
God’s Natural Revelation
First, verses 1–6 express God’s natural revelation.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
This is the natural created order—heavens, skies, what God has made. And as these opening verses poignantly say, what God has made reveals certain things about him—creation is God’s revelation. It reveals his glory and his handiwork. And not just some of creation, all of creation is God’s revelation; the psalmist uses poetic expressions in verse 2 to communicate this:
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
From morning till evening, day and night, what God has made reveals his glory and handiwork; nature is God’s speech and knowledge revealed to us. As Maltbie Babcock wrote, “This is my Father’s world . . . in the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere.”
But I want to stress one point here that I have said several times but that we often take for granted because we say it so often: Nature is God’s revelation. God created the heavens and the earth, and he did so intentionally to reveal himself. Nature is the voice of God. We know this; we affirm this. But I think sometimes, especially in our modern scientific, naturalistic society, we tend to view nature as apart from God, sort of doing its own thing.
No, nature is God’s revelation just like Scripture is, but it does differ from Scripture in a couple key ways, and they are communicated in this psalm.
First, nature reveals God without words. Notice what David says in verse 3:
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
It’s interesting—he just said in verse 2 that “day to day pours out speech,” so nature is God’s speech, but then he says just two phrases later, “there is no speech” in nature. In other words, David is clarifying what kind of revelation nature is. What God created is like speech—it reveals something about him, but it is not exactly speech. It is not actual words. We do not actually hear the audible voice of God in nature. When we sing, “in the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere,” we don’t mean that literally. There’s no audible sound or voice.
But that does not make nature any less God’s revelation. It just reveals God in ways other than words. God’s spoken revelation does do some things that his natural revelation cannot, which we’ll look at in a moment. But the fact that nature reveals God without words actually allows it to reveal God to us in ways that words cannot, which leads us to the next point:
God’s natural revelation is universal. That cannot be said for his spoken special revelation—you have to be able to read, or at least listen to Scripture in order to understand what God wants to reveal through Scripture. But what God reveals through what he has made is universal. This is what David communicates in verse 4:
Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
There is no place on earth, nor is there any person on earth where God’s natural revelation does not reach—it is universal. In fact, the apostle Paul quotes this verse in Romans 10:18 to argue that Israel has no excuse for rejecting God’s revelation, for
“Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”
God’s natural revelation is universal. David uses the image of the sun to picture this beginning at the end of verse 4:
No one can escape the sun; it’s universal.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
The same is true for God’s natural revelation—nothing is hidden from it. Its voice goes out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world. It is universal, which is why sometimes it is called “general revelation,” meaning it reaches all people in general.
So what then is the nature of this universal, non-verbal revelation from God? Verse 3 says its voice is not heard, but verse 4 says its voice goes out through all the earth. So what is this voice?
Well, the Hebrew word in verse 4 literally means “line,” which is often used of a measuring line, but that doesn’t really make sense in this context. It can also be used for a line of text, like a line of poetry, so that begins to fit a bit better.
But what’s really interesting is how the Greek translators interpreted this word. I mentioned a moment ago that Paul quotes this verse in Romans 10:18, but of course, Paul is writing in Greek, so he’s quoting the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. And the Septuagint (LXX) uses a Greek word for “voice” that means “musical sound.”
In other words, nature communicates revelation from God to us, not in actual words, but more like music—non-verbal communication of the beauty and order of God. Even ancient secular philosophers believed that music is the public demonstration of the harmony of heaven. They recognized an inherent order to the physical universe; they found that natural principles of physics and acoustics and geometry and astronomy all share an amazing unity and that music was one of the best representations of that unity. They believed that music harmonized the universe; the intervals of music ordered all things, even the planets—they called it the “music of the spheres.” They believed that the universe is characterized by a quality of interrelatedness that is highly evident in music.
And Christian theologians have long agreed with those early philosophers and considered music to be a particularly powerful expression of the order and harmony of heaven. One of the earliest theologians of the church, Augustine, defined music as “the art of the well-ordered.” God created the universe with an orderliness that displays his glory and handiwork universally to all people.
Natural Revelation is the music of God, a display of his nature and the order of what he has made, and because it is not dependent upon words, natural revelation is universal. What music communicates is not limited to one group of people like spoken language is; music communicates at a natural level universally because it is part of God’s created order, and this is what all nature does—it communicates naturally to all people regardless of language, ethnicity, or culture.
Paul highlights this universal power of general revelation in Romans 1 when he says,
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
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