Comments on 1 Corinthians 2:9-16

  We kind of stopped in the middle of the thought last time in 1 Corinthians 2 so we’ll be picking up in verse 9:

but just as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

He had just finished telling them that the gospel was not based on human wisdom at all. That he himself had come to them in weakness and trembling in order that the power of the Spirit might be displayed to them, rather than anything of himself. The concluding thought from last time was that if the rulers of the age had known and understood the wisdom of God, they would not have crucified the Lord Jesus. 

    Then he paraphrases Isaiah 64:4. Here are verses 3-5 for context: “When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence. For from the days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, Who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry for we sinned, We continued in them for a long time; And shall we be saved?” The context here is Israel crying out from Babylon, waiting for God to deliver them from their bondage. Paul takes this same principle and applies it to the church, noting that we are secure in Jesus Christ and that the counsels of God are “prepared for those who love Him.” The Corinthian believers had forgotten how great their salvation was and had become distracted with worldly matters because of it. 

Quoting Ironside on this verse, he wrote, “The quote in the New Testament is the translation of the Greek version of the Old Testament - hence the difference in words, though the meaning is exactly the same. Isaiah was telling us that no man apart from the divine revelation can understand what God has in store for His people in times to come. That was true in Old Testament days, but now God has revealed Himself in the person of His Son and given the revelation of the new covenant in the Gospels and the Epistles, so when we read the New Testament, we must not stop at 1 Corinthians 2:9. We must not be content to take for granted that we are still where God’s people were in the Old Testament days, for that is the very thing the apostle told us is not the case.” 

As an aside, brother Don Lewis once mentioned that this verse reminds him of Job’s three friends. In Job 4 Eliphaz says “Behold,” yet he needed to remember that eye hath not seen. In Job 8 Bildad complains about Job’s words, but ear hath not heard. And in Job 20 Zophar says “the spirit of my understanding answers me,” yet these things had not entered the heart of man. Job’s friends thought they understood God’s ways, but in reality they did not.

    Getting back to our text, in verse 10 Paul reminds the Corinthian believers that the Spirit of God has revealed these things to us. He quoted Isaiah to remind them that in times past the people of God could not ever know what was in the heart of God as far as His plans and purposes went, but now things are different. There were those Old Testament believers that had the Holy Spirit come upon them, but as New Testament believers we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. I cannot overstate how great a difference this makes in our lives. 

Ironside was mentioning that there are certain groups of Christians who imagine that if they come to God in worship, singing the words of Scripture, that somehow their worship will be of a higher character than those who sing what they call man-made hymns. But if you become stuck in the Old Testament passages for your worship you will never make it to the truth of the Christian position today. Our place is in the holiest (Hebrews 10:19) and we are accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). The Old Testament does not have these truths as they were hidden in mystery at that time, even from the prophets. The Old Testament Law, we’ve mentioned many times, is a school-master, showing that we cannot get to God on our own. Paul spent the first part of this chapter reminding the Corinthians that human wisdom couldn’t bring them to God either. But we have the Spirit of God who “searches all things, even the depths of God.” He indwells us.

When we read that the Spirit “searches all things, even the depths of God,” we should not imagine that He is discovering something He did not already know. The Spirit of God is fully God and therefore knows the mind of God perfectly. The thought here is that the Spirit alone has access to the depths of God’s wisdom and is able to reveal those things to us. And that is exactly what He delights to do through the Scriptures.

    So Paul continues in this vein in the next verse, pointing out how the spirit of man is really the only one who knows what’s going on inside his own head. You cannot read my mind, nor can I read yours, but my spirit knows my mind and your spirit yours. Now I can try and express what is on my mind in certain ways but there is always the possibility of misunderstanding as our communication is imperfect. For example, in 1 Samuel 1 verses 12 through 18, “Now it came about, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli was watching her mouth. As for Hannah, she was speaking in her heart, only her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. Then Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make yourself drunk? Put away your wine from you.’ But Hannah replied, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman oppressed in spirit; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maidservant as a worthless woman, for I have spoken until now out of my great concern and provocation.’ Then Eli answered and said, ‘Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of Him.’” We see here that Eli saw Hannah’s face and made certain assumptions about her because of this imperfect human communication.

But the Holy Spirit knows the thoughts of God and can translate them directly to us. In the 1 Samuel passage above, Hannah was able to explain herself and Eli believed her and blessed her. The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God and communicates it clearly to us, if we are in the right place to receive it. Another point that Ironside made in his commentary that I really appreciated was this, “If a poor, simple, ignorant Christian who can barely read or write sits down with his Bible and reads it in dependence on the Holy Spirit of God, he will get more out of a given passage of Scripture than will a doctor of divinity or a doctor of psychology with a lot of learned tomes about him who depends on his intellect instead of the Holy Spirit.” My brothers and sisters, as we read the Word of God we must depend on the Spirit of God to communicate its meaning to us. I’m not saying we should not use commentaries, as the hope is that those were written by men that were also depending on the Holy Spirit as they read the Scripture. Rather, I’m saying that the Holy Spirit is our guide to understanding the mind of God.

    This Spirit, Paul reminds the Corinthians in the next verse, they received the moment they trusted in Jesus Christ. The spirit of the world, the zeitgeist, is the world system that crucified and cast out the Christ. Paul wrote to the Ephesians of this spirit describing : “the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (2:2). And in the gospel of Matthew chapter 4 that same spirit, the devil, tempted our Lord in multiple ways, even trying to twist Scripture to his own purpose. But, of course, the Lord knew it better and had the mind of God and could rebuke the devil each time. So, Paul tells the believers that this was not the spirit they had received, but rather the Spirit of God Himself. 

When Paul was writing to encourage Timothy, he reminded him, “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7). The power that worked the resurrection, the very power of God has been given to us, as long as we are doing His will. Now I’m not saying that our salvation can be lost, but the joy of this new life with Him can be. I really appreciated how Ironside put it and so I will quote him in full here, “This blessed Holy Spirit has been received by believers. He has come to indwell us, to control us, for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and in order that we might understand the truth. That is the secret of learning the Bible: if you come to the Book and study it in dependence on the Holy Spirit who dwells within you, He will make the truth clear. But let me give you another secret: He won't do that if you are grieving Him. As long as the Spirit is happy within you because you are living in a godly, unworldly, consistent manner, it is His delight to take the things of Christ and open them up for you. But the moment you give yourself to unholy thoughts or worldly behavior, the moment you yield to carnality or to things contrary to the character of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you are called on to represent here, you grieve the Spirit of God. Then instead of the Holy Spirit being free to do what He delights to do - that is, to show you the things of Christ - He has to take the time to show you your failures and sins and shortcomings in order to bring you to the point of repentance and confession where you will seek to put everything right before God. So the secret of getting the mind of God as you study His Word is to live in the power of an ungrieved Spirit and to go to the Book in dependence on Him.” This lovely truth is what Paul is using to encourage the saints there at Corinth.

    In the next verse Paul goes on to say that these words from the Holy Spirit are what he has been using to teach them as well. Paul was a learned man, but he wanted the Corinthians, and we can apply this to ourselves as well, to understand that the message he preached was inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself. In the high priestly prayer of John 17, Jesus even said, “for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me” (v8). It is important to note the sequence here for both. Jesus is thanking God that his disciples took the words from Him that He had received from God. Paul also was taught of the Holy Spirit and then taught others. We need to follow this pattern because the truth of God is found in the Word of God as revealed by the Spirit of God. We cannot learn God’s things in a worldly way.

So it is good for us to develop a Christian vocabulary. It is good to know the meaning of justification, sanctification, adoption, propitiation, election, and inspiration. I know these are big words, but they do convey deep Christian meaning incredibly well and help us to communicate Christian truths better. Engineering students must learn engineering terms, doctors and nurses learn medical terms, surely we as believers should learn the proper words for the ideas that we are called to share. 

Paul also mentions the Spirit combining spiritual with spiritual. You’ll notice the other words are in italics in my translation to indicate they are not in the original text and the KJV didn’t add any words at all. So we have here: πνευματικὰ and πνευματικοῖς. Both are derivations of the word πνευματικός which simply means relating to the spirit or spiritual. Ironside had mentioned three possible translations here but concluded that the best was “communicating spiritual things by spiritual methods.” In other words, when we go to spread the gospel or teach doctrine we ought not to devolve into cheap tricks or worldly methods. We need to be reverent, being careful of our words as we communicate the testimony that the Holy Spirit has given us to share.

    The next verse starts a new section that I think logically extends to verse 8 of the next chapter, but we will stop at the end of this chapter for now. In this section Paul details three different kinds of people. You can easily argue that there are the saved and the lost which are only two types, but Paul divides the saved into two groups in this letter, the spiritual and the carnal. We’ll get to the carnal next time and so in this we’ll deal with the lost, unregenerate, natural man and the saved, regenerated, spiritual man. Verse 14 starts with the natural man not accepting spiritual things because he cannot understand them. Quoting Ironside again, “When you remember that the soul is the seat of man’s emotional nature, you will realize that the natural man is a creature led not by conscience, and not by an enlightened spirit, but by his own affections and desires. Every sin appeals in some way to the emotions of the natural heart. We sin because we think we will find a measure of satisfaction in that sin. Sin is always selfish and the natural man is a selfish being. He is self-centered, for the soul is the self. The natural man therefore is the man who lives the self-life, the man whose spirit has never been quickened into newness of life.” 

I’m not saying that the natural man cannot seem good, or gracious, or helpful, or kind but he would be this way because of the feelings that he gets from those actions. Now some natural men do enjoy the more wicked things of the world and they are easy to spot, but there are probably sitting in many church pews natural men who do not accept the things they hear from the pulpit because they cannot understand them. He can do good, but has no thoughts of doing it for the Lord’s glory. The beautiful truths of Scripture are as pearls before swine to him in that they hold no value for him at all.

    Paul then contrasts that man with the spiritual man. He can see in the Scriptures the beauty of the truths held there for him. He can read in Ephesians of being seated in the heavenly places with Christ and rejoice. He can understand the warnings that hard times will come but they are for the glory of God as well. The spiritual man can see the reality of things on a spiritual level and so the “sight” that he has pierces deeper than the natural man who is “walking by sight.” A spiritual man can discern what the will of God is, and by the power of the Spirit can walk in that same way. That word “appraise” in the NASB and “judgeth” in the KJV is the Greek word: ἀνακρίνει which really has the thought behind it of discernment or the ability to judge between two things. Some have attributed this quote to Spurgeon and I think it gets this point across well: “Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather, it is telling the difference between right and almost right.” So the spiritual man can tell the difference there.

In the second half of the verse, Paul mentions that this same spiritual man who can discern all things, is himself discerned of no one. When we are living “in the good of it” as our brother Sid Osborn would say, our lives, our actions, our attitudes do not make any sense to the world around us. We can be going through financial destitution and say, “Praise the Lord, for He is good!” We can suffer the loss of a child and say, “I know this too will be for His glory.” The world looks at this without understanding and cannot fathom the peace that is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ. I share here a poem that Ironside quoted in his commentary about this spiritual man: 

There is no glory halo around his devoted head

No luster marks the sacred path in which his footsteps tread

But holiness is graven upon his thoughtful brow

And all his steps are ordered in the light of heaven e’en now

He often is peculiar and oft misunderstood

And yet his power is felt by both the evil and the good

And he doth live in touch with heaven a life of faith and prayer

His hope, his confidence, his joy, his all are centered there

    Paul then quotes Isaiah 40:13 which reads in full: “Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has informed Him?” God is the uncaused first cause. He is the beginning of all things, the Creator, the Almighty. Who on earth could presume to teach Him anything? Who could possibly add to His wisdom or improve upon His plans? The very idea is absurd. All human knowledge is derived, limited, and dependent, but God’s wisdom is infinite and eternal. He never learns, never discovers, and never corrects Himself. Everything that is known was first known perfectly by Him because He is perfect.

Yet, Paul ends this chapter with the blessed truth, that we, as believers, have the mind of Christ. He instructs the Philippians believers in chapter 2 and verse 5 of that letter to “have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,” but here he tells the Corinthian believers that that mind is already theirs. We need to realize this by thinking God’s thoughts after Him, that is, viewing everything from His perspective. If we could truly lay hold of this, as the song-writer put it, “the things of earth would grow strangely dim.”