We read in John 1:4-5, “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
Here the Lord intimates that the human soul is indeed irradiated with a beam of divine light, so that it is never left utterly devoid of some small flame, or rather spark, though not such as to enable it to comprehend God.
And why so? Because its acuteness is, in reference to the knowledge of God, mere blindness.
When the Spirit describes men under the term “darkness,” he declares them void of all power of spiritual intelligence.
For this reason, it is said that believers, are “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” – John 1:13.
In other words, the flesh has no capacity for such sublime wisdom as to apprehend God—and the things of God—unless illumined by His Spirit.
In like manner our Saviour, when he was acknowledged by Peter, declared that it was by special revelation from the Father. Matthew 16:17