1 Corinthians 2
McGeeCHAPTER 2THEME: The clarity of the Holy Spirit corrects human wisdom
1 Corinthians 2:1
First, I would like to call your attention to the fact that Paul did not use the philosophic method of preaching. He was not a textual or a topical preacher; he was an expositor of the Word of God. I personally believe that is God’s method. It was the method our Lord used, by the way. Neither did Paul use flowery nor oratorical language. Secondly, Paul did not come in the wisdom of the world, declaring the testimony or the mystery of God. What does he mean by a mystery? We will be confronted with this word again in the epistle. A mystery simply means “that which had not been revealed before.” The mystery of God which Paul preached was that Jesus Christ had been crucified. That had not been preached before but now had been revealed. In the Old Testament the crucifixion of Christ was revealed in type and in prophecy only. The actual event was something new, something not previously revealed.
1 Corinthians 2:2
Paul did not enter into philosophical discussions that gender strife. He simply stayed right with the preaching of the Cross of Christ. He preached a crucified Savior, One who had died for the sins of the world. That is the type of ministry which is so desperately needed today.
1 Corinthians 2:3
Paul opens his heart and lets us see his inmost thoughts. He makes it very clear that while he was among them he was greatly disturbed. He was “in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Little wonder that he could say that God had chosen the weak things of this world. Paul had no exalted conception of himself; yet he was a great intellect and a great man in many ways. Obviously, he never thought of himself as great.
1 Corinthians 2:4
In our day we have a great many words of man’s wisdom. There is a great deal of preaching, but very little of it is done “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” The feeling is that we only need the right method or the right topic or the right style. Oh, how we need the power of the Holy Spirit in our preaching!
1 Corinthians 2:5
In other words, if human wisdom is used to win a man, then his faith stands on human wisdom. If a man is brought to faith through the power of God, then his faith rests upon that. This is the reason I sincerely question a great deal of this apologetic preaching todaysuch as trying to prove that the Bible is God’s Word or that the first chapter of Genesis is scientific or that the Flood really happened. Don’t misunderstand me, there is a place for that, and I thank God for men who have specialized in those areas. But we need to understand that salvation does not rest upon whether we can actually prove the inspiration of Scripture, although I certainly believe we can prove it. The question is: What does your faith rest upon? Apologetic preaching will call our attention to the Word of God, but our faith must rest on the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:6
Paul says, “I do not use the worldly methods at all.”
1 Corinthians 2:7
Again here is this word mystery. Let’s be clear on this word. It has no reference to what we commonly think of as an enigma or with a “who-done-it"that is, a story dealing with the solution of a mysterious crime. It is not something of a secretive quality or character. The word mystery, as used in the Scriptures, refers to something which was not known in the past but is now revealed. This word occurs about twenty-seven times in the New Testament.
Our Lord used it when He said “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven …” (Mat_13:11). The parables that follow in Matthew 13 are the “mystery parables.” Why are they called the mystery parables? It is because in them Jesus explains the direction that the kingdom is going to take in the interval between the rejection of the King and the time when He comes to set up His Kingdom. That segment of history was actually not revealed in the Old Testament at all. God had not yet revealed that to men. When Jesus spoke the mystery parables in Matthew 13, He was revealing this for the first time.
What had been previously hidden, Jesus revealed. Now here in the Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul says, “God’s wisdom in a mystery.” This is quite interesting because it is a word that came out of Greek schools of philosophy, of the occult, and of science. Paul fastens on this Greek word, and he says, “We speak God’s wisdom in a mystery,” but he gives it an entirely new meaning. Mystery comes from the word meaning “mouth,” and it means to shut the mouthit is something secretive. However, Paul never used it in that way. Rather, that which had been silent has now become vocal. That which had not been known and could not be known by human investigation now is known. “Mystery” in the New Testament always means something undiscoverable by the activity of the human intellect but is revealed so that human intellect can apprehend it. “We speak the wisdom of God"Paul says, “We have a philosophy.” It is not of this age, not of this world, but it is God’s wisdom, and it pertains to the Cross of Christ. “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.”
1 Corinthians 2:8
You see, they did not know.
1 Corinthians 2:9
This verse surely has been misunderstood. It has gone to a funeral too many times. This is a verse that should never go to a funeral. It has been wrongly used so many times to imply: Here lies dear Mr. So-and-So. His remains are here before us.
In this life he didn’t understand too well, but now he is in glory and he understands all things. This is not what Paul intended this verse to convey! Paul is saying that right here and now there are certain things that the eye has not seen. We get a great deal of information through the eye-gate. We learn more through our eye-gate than we do in any other way. Another way we gain human wisdom is through the ear-gate.
We certainly learn by hearing. Paul says there are certain things we simply cannot learn by hearing. Then he says, “neither have entered into the heart of man,” that is, by cogitation, thinking, or reasoning. There are certain things which cannot be attained by human means. You cannot discover God by searching for Him. The things which God has prepared for them who love Him are not gotten through the eye-gate, the ear-gate, or by reasoning.
Then how are you going to get them?
1 Corinthians 2:10
What we cannot get through the eye-gate or the ear-gate, the Spirit of God can teach us. There are many things we can learn by studying the Biblesuch as the history of it, the poetry of itbut we cannot get spiritual truths that way. Why? Because “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” There are certain things that only the Spirit of God can reveal to us.
1 Corinthians 2:11
You and I can understand each other because we have human spirits. For instance, I know how you feel when you fall down. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? One snowy morning in Nashville I watched an elder of my church come out of his house with two scuttles full of ashes that he was taking out to the alleyway to dump into his garbage can. He slipped and fell, but he held onto the scuttles. He didn’t spill an ash, but he really fell hard.
He got up and looked all over the landscape to see if anybody had watched him. Why did he do that? He was embarrassed. I knew exactly how he felt because it sure did look funny and I couldn’t help but laugh. Because I have the spirit of man and he has the spirit of man, I knew exactly how he felt. However, I do not know how God feels.
If I am to understand anything about God, He will have to reveal it to me.
1 Corinthians 2:12
There are certain things that we can understand only if the Spirit of God reveals them to us, and He does this freely. He wants to be our Teacher!
1 Corinthians 2:13
Now Paul will make a very profound statement, and it is one of the axioms of Scripture.
1 Corinthians 2:14
The natural man cannot receive the things of God. Why not? Because they are foolishness to him. If you are not a Christian, my friend, what I am saying seems foolish to you. If it doesn’t, there is something wrong with you or there is something wrong with meone of us is wrong. God says the natural man finds the preaching of the Cross of Christ for salvation foolish. It simply does not make sense to him. “Neither can he know them.” When I was a student in college, I had the high-minded notion that anything that any man wrote I could understand. Well, I have found that isn’t true. Certainly I cannot understand the Word of God until the Spirit of God opens my heart and mind to understand. It is spiritually discerned. Only the Spirit of God can take the things of Christ and show them unto us. The Lord Jesus said that: “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (Joh_16:13-14). My friend, unless the Spirit of God shows you the things of Christ, this Epistle to the Corinthians will mean very little to you.
1 Corinthians 2:15
“He that is spiritual” is the one who has the Holy Spirit within him; he is a child of God. He “judgeth all things” means that he understands these things. “Yet he himself is judged of no man” means that he is not understood. The spiritual man is in contrast to the natural man. He understands divine truth, but he is misunderstood by the natural man. “Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?” Who can instruct God? Who understands the mind of the Lord? We cannot tell God anything, but God can reveal a great deal to us. However, the Spirit of God cannot reveal spiritual things to us until we have the mind of Christ. If you are not a saved person, don’t you really think that the preaching of the Cross is foolishness? Don’t you think that a man dying on a cross is totally defeated? Doesn’t that impress you more as a bit of foolishness rather than the actual way of salvation? Yet God says that His method and His wisdom was to give His Son to die on the Cross for us in order that we might be saved and that we must put our trust in Him. If you are being honest, I believe you must admit that it does sound foolish. The other day I read a letter from a man who is a comedian. He says he is a comedian in a nightclub. He listens to me teach the Bible by radio, and he thinks I am an oddball. In fact, he thinks I am funnier than he is! Well, that is the way he should feel. Why? Because he is a natural man and cannot discern spiritual things. You will remember that we labeled this chapter The clarity of the Holy Spirit corrects human wisdom. Paul has presented two classes of mankind: the natural man and the spiritual man. The natural man is the man who is the son of Adam, born into the world with a sinful nature, a propensity to do evil. In fact, that is all the natural man can do. Even when we “do good,” we act from mixed motives. (After we become believers, we ought always to search our hearts to see if we are acting from mixed motives, even when we are trying to do the Lord’s work.) Paul says that the natural man will not receive the things of the Spirit of God; they are foolishness to him. Yesterday in the mail I received a letter from a politician, a representative from this area to Washington, D.C. Reading this letter would lead one to think he is going to bring in Utopia and the Millennium altogether. My, he has happy solutions for all the problems of the world! Of course, the opposite party doesn’t have the benefit of his vast wisdom and knowledge. When I read his letter through, I had the feeling of keen disappointment. First of all, I know he cannot do what he is saying he will do.
Secondly, I realize that he is a natural man. He has no understanding of that which is spiritual. He is not interested in any spiritual solutions to the problems. He thinks he knows how to solve the drug problem, but not in a spiritual way. He promises to solve lawlessness, but not in a spiritual way. He knows no more about spiritual matters than a goat grazing upon grass on the hillside.
Years ago it was Gladstone who said that the mark of a great statesman is that he knows the direction God is going to take for the next fifty years. This politician would certainly not qualify by that definition. Actually, we cannot expect too much of the natural man. He will tell you, “I do the very best I can,” which is probably an accurate statement. Then there is the other man, the spiritual man. Paul says that the spiritual man “judgeth all things,” meaning he understands, he has a spiritual discernment. His spiritual discernment causes him to be misunderstood by the world because the natural man simply cannot understand why he does the things he does. That is the difference between the spiritual man and the natural man. You will note that they are the kind of men they are because of their relationship to the Book, the Word of God. To the natural man it is foolishness. The spiritual man discerns the Word of God and recognizes its importance.