For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge.
Some may not have fully understood it, so it bears repeating. You’re not like other people. There is something very different about you. You received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you passed from one state of being to another state of being altogether. Spiritually, the whole human race can be divided into two camps—non-Christians and Christians. When you received Christ, you passed from the former and transitioned to the latter.
What is it, precisely, that makes your spiritual state of being so different from the non-Christian? The Apostle Paul says “you have been enriched.” You have been enriched with something non-Christians do not have: the Holy Spirit. You have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, and He now dwells within you.
As Paul goes on to say in verse 7, this means you have spiritual gifts. As a result, you can do things that non-Christians cannot do. There are many different gifts of the Holy Spirit, but in our verse for today, Paul emphasizes two gifts that every Christian manifests. Every Christian has been enriched by the Spirit “with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge.” Christians know things and say things that non-Christians do not know and do not say.
What is it that Christians know? They know the most important things one could ever know. They know what the world is all about and how to live in it. They know that the world is God’s world and that we are His subjects. They know that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and they know that those who accept Jesus Christ “are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus,” (Romans 3:23-24). They also know that the redemption we have in Christ allows them to participate in the life to come in the new heaven and the new earth.
If you are a Christian, you know all these things and your speech reflects what you know. And that’s why you’re not like other people.
By John Huisman, friend of Bible League International
