Scott Stephens is the founder and director of Covenant Counseling Center, and the counseling pastor at West End Baptist Church’s West End Counseling Center.
Scott serves as the executive director of the Upcountry Biblical Counseling Training Center. Scott earned his MA in Biblical Counseling at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and his PhD in Biblical Counseling at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Scott is an Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) certified biblical counselor with a specialization in marriage and family counseling. Scott is currently a “Fellow Candidate” with ACBC.
The Importance of God's Revelations
Last week, I was reading Paul Tripp’s Everyday Gospel and came across this comment:
“It can be a bit overwhelming to think that in God’s world there is no end to knowing. You and I will never know enough; we will never be able to say, ‘I know everything.’ This is why we must understand what is important and to know what is not. You and I have a limited amount of time and limited mental capacity, so what we commit ourselves to know is significant and life-shaping.”[1]
Everything we learn about God is significant and life-shaping. As Christians, we read the Bible because it reveals what is important to know about Him.
God reveals Himself in specific ways, and it’s essential to understand how the Bible explains this. In this article, we’ll discuss how God reveals Himself and what the terms special revelation and general revelation mean.
General revelation and special revelation are the two ways in which God reveals truth about Himself. While general revelation emphasizes God’s divine greatness, absolute power, and infinite wisdom, special revelation clearly reveals the triune God’s distinctions and characteristics.[2]
God’s special revelation is His written Word and is inspired directly by Him to be “useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, so the man of God is complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Scripture reveals God to His Church in order to declare His will and to preserve and propagate the truth for the establishment of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, the maliciousness of Satan, and the sinfulness of the world. Special revelation is necessary for His people to understand who He is and His will for their lives. The Bible contains all the guidance needed for the “continuous living of the Christian life.”
God explains general revelation several times in the Bible. Psalm 19:1-2 explains, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.” In Romans, we read, “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” (Romans 1:20-21). We can best describe general revelation as God’s declaration through His creation that He exists.
Everything we know about Christianity and living a life that glorifies God has been revealed to us by Him. By observing general revelation, we can see the beauty and majesty of creation, and how it points back to a sovereign and all-powerful God. General revelation does not give us the details of how to live for God’s glory like special revelation does. Through special revelation, we know who God is and His revealed will for how we interact with Him.
We need to remember that God only speaks to us through the Bible. What He tells us in Scripture is the most significant and life-shaping information we can receive. The only way to know Him in truth and completely is to rely on what He tells us about Himself in His Word.
Knowing God, particularly how He reveals Himself to us, is more valuable than the greatest wealth this world can provide.
[1] Paul David Tripp, Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life (Wheaton IL, Crossway, 2024), 33.
[2] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 136.
