You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
2 By [dia] whom [hos] also [kai] we have [echo] access [prosagoge] by faith
[pistis] into [eis] this [taute] grace [charis] wherein [en][hos] we stand [histemi], and [kai] rejoice [kauchaomai] in [epi] hope [elpis] of the glory [doxa] of God [theos]. KJV-Interlinear
2 Through
him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand,
and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ESV
By whom, is a reference to Jesus Christ. He is our one and only access to God, or to deity, if you will.
God here, ‘theos,’ is a reference to the entire Godhead.
And our access is due to faith, not of anything we do or think we can do. Mans works are out, as far as access to God is concerned.
Therefore, by faith, is our access. But faith is not simply believing in something or anything. Faith comes by means of substance.
In salvation, faith is by means of the gospel of Christ. The gospel of Christ refers to the entire subject and person of Jesus Christ. Who He is, eternal God. What He is, God and man. What He has done, His work on the Cross, the promised Messiah, our savior, our Lord and so forth.
So, the entire subject of faith in Christ wraps up this entire package of facts regarding Christ.
But faith after salvation, takes on a different approach to God. After salvation we have to have an ongoing and active relationship with God.
This requires confession so as to place us positionally in Gods presence. We call this being in fellowship.
This requires learning of God, learning of Gods plan, learning of Gods will, and that all leads to learning of everything there is to learn about the world and life around us. This learning comes by means of a daily study of Bible doctrine.
Now, you read or are taught the material in the Bible, and you read of Adam and Eve, and Noah and Abraham, and David, and the baby Jesus, and on and on and on, and you wonder what are you learning really!
But learning the words in the Bible is only a small part of your spiritual activity and growth.
When you are in fellowship, which means that you have confessed your sins and are now in fellowship, then the Holy Spirit is now in control of the learning operations of your soul.
You cannot feel Him or sense Him. There are phony folks out there that claim that have the ghost and go into all sorts of drama gyrations to convince people, but it is all phony and false. The Spiritual and the physical world, are separate and apart from each other.
But when the Spirit is in control, then what you learn is funneled into your human spirit, and then channeled down into your soul and transformed in your soul, into a spiritual structure within your soul. What you learn in the Bible are the words that you read or hear, but what is happening in your soul is a supernatural activity which you do not see or feel or sense, but it is there.
The discipline of a daily Bible study, creates within you, and spiritual life and structure, which is not caused by you, but by God.
Christ is the doctrine, the Spirit is the mechanism, the Father is the representative objective.
So, by this faith, which is the spiritual growth process, we gain access to the grace of God. Grace is Gods favor. God is perfect and thorough and complete. And therefore grace is the ultimate mechanism through which we receive Gods perfection and life. God does all of the work, we receive the benefit of that work.
No doctrine, no spiritual life. No spiritual life, no grace. It is just that simple.
And because of all of this, we have hope.
Hope is not an empty wish.
Hope is the target of a desire for something and the expectation of obtaining it, as far as this world is concerned.
But in the spiritual world, hope has one more attribute, and that is confidence, and confidence is based on substance. That substance is truth. And truth is God.
So, through learning Bible doctrine, we gain a spiritual structure in our soul.
Using that doctrine, while in fellowship, we then have spiritual production, or the finishing touches with our soul.
This growth advances us in knowledge, in understanding, in wisdom, is faith, and ultimately in confidence. This is then, hope, and not a wish, but a certainty.
The glory of God is the final piece of our spiritual life. That will occur in the next life, when God rewards us, based on our spiritual content within our soul, and based on our consistency in following His spiritual process, which results in the completion of our soul, thus fulfilling our meaning and purpose, which He intended for us. And this we will have forever and ever.
But then you can ignore all of this, and what will you have?
