Carnal vs Spiritual Hearing
By John Gavazzoni

A prevenient work of grace is required to hear the Lord's words of spirit and life. We must be given an ear to hear ("he that hath an ear, let him hear...."). Such an ear is given, i.e., as a gift of grace. Otherwise, when it comes to responding to the words of scripture, one hears by the ear of the flesh which always hears the promises, declarations, indicatives, and especially the imperatives of the Bible as law, and therefore death is the result of that mode of hearing. "To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

The carnal mind has a carnal ear which hears erroneously misinterpreting what is ultimately intended to be received as quickening spirit. In the interim before the Lord grants an ear to match His life-giving words, the ear of the mind of the flesh receives those words as a challenge to contribute something of one's own will in order to fulfill God's will. This interim phase is part of God's plan. In a way beyond my ability to explain, the mishearing ultimately serves the true hearing, and the life-giving word becomes to the spirit of man "a shout, the trump of God, and the voice of the archangel." A greater-impacting force is added to the word of God by the intrinsic enmity of the ear of the mind of the flesh. All enmity against God ends up in the service of God.

When we hear by the ear given to us by God for life-giving hearing, that which God declares is on its way to inevitable fulfillment. "He sent His word and healed them." Nothing was required to be added. The word was sent, and it did the job. "The natural man (the man without the ears of the Spirit) receiveth not the things of the Spirit, for they are spiritually discerned." From the outset of man's earthly experience we see this syndrome at work. God said to Adam and Eve, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eateth thereof, thou shalt surely die (or better, 'dying, thou shalt die')." If Eve had been given an ear to hear what the spirit said, she, and Adam following, would not have eaten of the forbidden fruit. She would have heard it as a predictive declaration of God, rather than a challenge to perform.

So it is in respect to the Decalogue (the ten commandments.) All the shalts and shalt nots of the Decalogue, as God gives the discerning ear, are received as declarations of fact: this is what you will do, and what you will not do. The disciples whom Jesus called to follow Him, did so, by the power of His self-fulfilling word drawing them to come after Him. They didn't match His call with their self-willingness. He came; He called; they followed. On the other hand, the scribes and Pharisees heard Jesus' words as a demand imposed on them way beyond how they had reduced the word of God to mere perfunctory acts of religious observance. By doing so, they created a persona of self-satisfying, self-righteousness. Facing up to Jesus' spiritual imperatives, would have meant having to completely abandon their present relationship to the word of God.

Karl Barth understood this when He dared to declare that the Bible is not the word of God until God speaks it to your heart. The Logos must become the rhema for it, for Him, to be spirit and life to the hearer. How often we hear from revivalists that God is searching the earth hoping to find hearts with the kind of willingness that He needs to be added to His willingness in order that He might send revival. No He's not. NO HE'S NOT!!! He is going to and forth in the earth, selecting out men and women to receive that ear to hear by which He performs the desire of His heart.

I once heard from the Lord, "enough of your passion for Me, I have enough for both of us." May the Lord give us ears to hear the word of God as promise, and not as a challenge to the flesh to perform. Hearing the word as an externally-imposed demand to perform rather than hearing the word as promise, always leads to either pride in one's own willingness to obey the imperatives of God, or to despairing of ever finding in one's self such purity of intention. Dear brethren, there is rest (from such) that remaineth unto the people of God."