“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” –  2 Corinthians 4:3-4

Those who are perishing refers to those who do not believe in Christ (John 3:18). The god of this world is Satan. They cannot see the light of the Gospel of Christ and by extension cannot understand what they cannot see. How selbstverstandlich (self-understood) is that? DUH!!!!! Of course we can’t understand what we cannot see!

When it comes to things spiritual, the implications of that principle are huge, especially when believers in Christ attempt to engage in intellectual discussions over matters of faith with unbelievers. It’s like driving up to the home of a friend who is physically totally blind in a new car and exclaiming “Look at what I just bought!” It ain’t happenin’! We do have a possible solution when we know that our friend is not yet a believer and ‘spiritually’ blind. When we are called to share the Gospel with him/her (I said when not if) we can pray and ask God to open that person’s heart to receive the Gospel that we will share. I call that the Lydia Prayer (see Acts 16). We can then share the Gospel confident that God will accomplish the rest in His time, thus avoiding the trap of thinking we can actually ‘persuade’ someone to follow Christ.

We run into more serious issues when we discuss things spiritual with someone who professes Christ,but might have been the ‘victim’ of a false conversion. That is often the case when someone is led to the Lord with promises of ‘their best life now’, finding their ‘special purpose, or any other evangelistic method that leaves out sin, judgment and the need for repentance. We assume because someone professes Christ that he/she actually possesses Christ. So what you have is a discussion ensuing between a “sighted” person and a “blind” person. The problem is that you both think you are equally “sighted”.

It’s not difficult to imagine the outcome of such a discussion. I won’t go into all the details – you have probably been there. I will say that such a discussion often includes multiple exclamations of “Can’t you SEE it?”, or “It’s right there in the text on the page!” While it is expected, and not necessarily wrong, that there not to be total agreement on every little point of the text, important (to God anyway) central truths of the text are completely missed by the ‘blind’ person in the discussion.

The one who can

as Savior. That person might even sincerely believe they know Christ