The Common and Special Operations of the Spirit

With the eighth and ninth plagues, the book of Exodus testified to the concept of God’s common grace, which is both a restraining of evil and the provision of a mostly orderly creation for the purpose of providing a stage for the drama of redemption to play out. In reflecting on God’s common grace, it should not be deistically construed as some static superstructure upholding the creation order until God’s purposes are fulfilled. Rather, God’s common grace is a personal, dynamic idea, if for no other reason than that grace is not a thing but a positive experience of God’s omnipotent presence through time and space. With that distinction in mind, it is not a large leap to see the relationship between God’s common grace and general revelation. General revelation is God’s continuous self-disclosure in his relation to the world and man.

The most obvious nexus of common grace and general revelation is the enduring idea that there is a higher power beyond our creaturely existence. Paul taps into this idea during his missionary journeys as he engages with the Greeks in different cities. In Lystra, Paul declares to the people, in opposition to their attempts to offer sacrifices to him and Barnabas (whom the citizens thought were Hermes and Zeus): “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. 17 Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:15-17 ESV). And again, to the Athenians Paul proclaimed: “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the+ boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’” (Acts 17:26-28 ESV).

This idea of God’s active involvement with the world and with man is often attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. In the general sense in which it is utilized by Paul in Lystra and Athens, it is called the common operation of the Holy Spirit. This is what is revealed in Exodus 11 as we read about God’s active involvement specifically in Egyptian society and conscience. That particular operation of the Holy Spirit to work in the consciences of the Egyptians so that they would regard the Hebrews with favor is a part of the general work of the Spirit to uphold and direct all things for the sake of God’s glory and the salvation of his people.

There is also a special operation of the Holy Spirit that is worth considering briefly. In part, this special operation is the illuminating presence of the Spirit with and in us as we read the Scriptures. This, too, is an aspect of the hidden hand of God in that the Spirit’s illuminating, testifying work allows us to find the God in whom we live and move and have our being, to turn from vain things to a living God as we read Scripture. Henk van den Belt writes that we “can indeed speak of a revelation, not because the testimony adds new information to the Word, but because our eyes are really open to the message of the Word. Though the work of the Spirit remains hidden, the effect thereof is the enlightenment of the understanding and the sealing of the message of salvation in the heart. That seal is the deep conviction of the truth of the message of Scripture in which the believer finds rest and a firm hope of the fulfillment of God's promises.”[1] Great and comforting, indeed, is the hidden hand of God at work even in the most ordinary of times.

[1] Henk Van Den Belt, Geestspraak: Hoe We de Bijbel Kunnen Verstaan (Utrecht: KokBoekencentrum, 2024), 235–36.