1 Corinthians 2

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Section 3. (1 Corinthians 2:1-16.)The revelation by the Spirit, of things beyond mere human knowledge. Having thus shown Christ to be the fulness of divine wisdom, the apostle goes on to speak of the Spirit as the only revealer of Christ, and of spiritual things, as well as the only capacity for the apprehension of them. A very clear statement is given of inspiration, such as we find it in Scripture, the fullest assertion of it to be found: not even the words used are taught by human wisdom, but by the Spirit of God; an assertion, certainly, although questioned, of an inspiration that is, in some sense, “verbal.”

1. The testimony of God committed to the apostle was, then, as to the whole matter of it, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He was determined to “know” nothing else: here was his sole occupation and delight. He does not say or mean that he knew nothing but the Cross. The crucified One is a theme wider than the Cross; though that indeed is to every eye divinely opened the display of an infinite glory. But Christ in His full reality is, in fact, the Centre of light, the full revelation of God, the Truth, by which every thing passing for truth is to be tested. The mind that is wholly filled with Christ is not contracted, but enlarged to its uttermost capacity. If He is the wisdom of God, it must of course be so. Nevertheless He was the Crucified; and the apprehension of this gave peculiar character to the apostle’s ministry. He had come among the Corinthians in the consciousness of his own impotence, along with the sense of the gravity and importance of such a message. He was with them, therefore, in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. Instead of trusting to persuasive words such as human wisdom would have taught him, he relied entirely upon Him who was come to glorify Christ in the world, so that his preaching was in the demonstrative power of the Holy Spirit. Thus he would have their faith to stand, not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. How blessed a result, when this is indeed so!

How impregnable must be the faith that stands in the power of God! This was no question, as is plain, of the truth itself -of their getting that; but of how they got it; whether from God Himself by having to do directly with Him about it, or from man merely, apostle though the man might be. This has been already spoken of; but how necessary that it should be insisted on! With all the care that such an one as Paul had manifested in this way, yet how much was coming in now that was swaying them from the truth! Can we wonder then at what we find to be the condition of things today? But shall we therefore hopelessly give way to it? or steadfastly resist it, as we know that he did? 2. The wisdom that was in his message was “wisdom among the perfect.” He means to say that the maturest spirituality knew it as such: it stood all tests of heart and conscience with those who knew it best; while yet it was not the wisdom of this age, nor even of the highest, the rulers of this age, who pass and perish. They could not penetrate to the Source from which this emanated, which was also indeed a mystery, a secret now revealed, but hidden formerly, though predetermined by God before the ages, filled so much since with these perishing human thoughts. The thoughts perish, but the predetermination of God has appointed to us a glory which will not pass away. But the rulers of this age have demonstrated their ignorance of it all: they have crucified the Lord of it. Isaiah too has borne witness that the things which God has prepared for them that love Him are outside the knowledge of man naturally; strange as they are to eye and ear and even mental conception. Revelation alone can give them to us. 3. It is not meant by this then, as so many strangely quote it, that such things are still beyond our ken. The apostle immediately goes on to assure us of the very opposite of this, and of the perfect competency of the Teacher to whom now we are committed: “But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” It seems at first sight a singular expression to be used of a divine Person. We might ask with surprise, How can the Spirit of God need to “search” the things of God? Is He not necessarily participant with the Father and the Son in all divine knowledge? Surely, and absolutely so; but it is the Spirit in us that is spoken of in this way, in that blessed, mysterious working in the people of God which is at once so unfathomable a profundity and so clear a reality. It is He who works in the working of our minds as led of Him; and thus He brings us into ever fuller communion with the Father and the Son. Are we conscious, every one of us, of this impulse within us, ever to reach out after that which is still before us, -things which, the more we learn of them, fill us with an unutterable longing to know more? It is strange that with even the mass of Christians, there seems to be little known of it. How often you hear the value of such things discounted just by reason of their “depth”! How often “too deep for me” is said with what one may call a kind of earnest levity which reveals the heart, or want of heart, behind it! Are not the revelations of Christ’s love and glory of necessity attractive to those whom He has redeemed to Himself? Are any of the communications of God to His people dull and uninteresting to those who are thus recipients of His grace?

Has He told out His heart with so profuse an expression as to be only tedious and unprofitable to those upon whom all this wealth of tenderness is lavished? Can Christians think slightly of communion proffered with Himself? What less or else than this is meant by the practical contentment to remain with but the slenderest knowledge of that which the Spirit of God is, if this scripture be true, continually leading us on after? We may have grieved Him indeed until His voice is well nigh silenced within us; but was it always so? Have we never realized such invitations to possess ourselves of what Christ has made our own? never longed to know better what, just as beyond our fullest knowledge, is ever beckoning us to enjoy it? or been aware that, if once we did so, and do so no more, this is only the unmistakable evidence of first love gone from us -of decline in our souls which it would startle us to begin to measure? But this Spirit -indefatigable, wondrous Searcher of the deep things of God -we all of us have if Christians: for “if any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” And here is indeed for us -for the feeblest babes -an unlimited capacity of acquisition which it is impossible to overrate, impossible even to estimate at its full value. Well, surely, will it be to ask ourselves how far it is realized by us in practice that we have dwelling in us a Divine Person, the perfect Judge of all doctrine, the Teacher of all teachers, whose presence with us it can never be humility to forget; whom if we listen to we shall never be deceived or go astray. In this respect it becomes no question of cleverness, or in the semi-materialistic phrase of the day, of “brains,” nor of mental capacity. The question is of eagerness of desire for, and earnestness to obey without reserve the voice of the Revealer. This it is which, if fully apprehended, brings the conscience into exercise before God, and delivers at once from all indifference as to teachers, (for the Spirit uses His instruments with us as He will,) and at the same time from all exaggerated deference to them. “Let the prophets speak, and let the rest judge.” The true teacher will be the first to desire to have everything searched out as before God, and judged by those Scriptures which the living Spirit has Himself indited. Thus alone will the truth taught become living truth in the soul. “For who among men hath known the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? So also the things of God has no one known, save the Spirit of God.” How worse than empty then the speculations of the wisest men as to the things of God! The spirit of man is indeed a wonderful and most important gift of the Creator, and which, therefore, God who has given it will not set aside or minimise in its own sphere. It is that by which man is distinguished from the beast, and made in the image of God. He is by it according to his creation place a son of God, as the beast is not; for God is “the Father of spirits” only (Hebrews 12:9). Thus he can recognize God, and has a God, in a way wholly different from the unknowing, and therefore unmoral, and so never immoral, beast.

God never dishonors or degrades the creature He has made, as some wild modern theorists do. He never speaks of the mind of man as an evolution from bestial instincts or faculties. He appeals to reason, even with the wicked: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 1:18). And the unbeliever, to refuse faith, has to refuse reason also. God never advocates credulity, or applauds the man who “believes because it is impossible,” and thereby puts God in contradiction to the faculties that He has made. But there are two things which reason itself should make him aware of, and which fully recognized would set him on the path of divine wisdom.

Neither of these can he possibly discredit, however much he may ignore them, or evade the consequences. First, he is a sinner; which if he denies, all his neighbors at least will acknowledge for him. Sin has morally damaged him, to an extent which it is hardly possible for him to estimate; and this must be a hindrance in the way of all right understanding, until he has found a remedy for it. The gospel is thus truly logical in treating him first of all as a sinner and inviting him to accept at the outset a remedy for this condition. This done, he will be brought into that right attitude toward God, which will alone enable him to make progress in the things of God. The next thing is of no more difficulty than the first, that, as far as God is beyond man, so far must the things of God be, except as he is taught of God. The confused and contradictory efforts of man in this direction only illustrate and confirm the saying of Zophar, “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” (Job 11:7-8). But though the things that are thus in the special sense God’s things, need to be revealed to man, yet in the revelation of these also God is careful not to confound his faculties: the wisdom of God is ever “wisdom” to the perfect, and not something that is “impossible,” but has to be revealed none the less. He does not even, as men profess for Him, use wafer in a magical way to do what water was never designed to do, or change bread into a divinity for men’s adoration, or justify the fetishism of superstition in any other way. He does not baffle the common instincts, perceptions, understanding of the being He has created. But thus how marvelous a gift is that of the Spirit who searcheth the deep things of God! What dishonor must we do to such a guest when His presence is ignored or scarcely realized! when Aristarchus is but a passenger on board the vessel, of which He is the rightful supreme Ruler! (See Acts 27:2, notes) Yet “we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are graciously given us of God.” The apostle is going on to speak of what was peculiar to the vessels of inspiration; but what he speaks of in these words is, as we know, common to us all; and by and by, he will insist upon this. But there was with such as these a special apprehension of the things of God, which the Spirit furnished. This also was for us, to whom they ministered. The apostle adds that the transmission also of what was revealed was perfectly secured: “which things also we speak, not in the words taught of man’s wisdom, but in those taught of the Spirit, communicating spiritual things by spiritual means.” The latter clause is sometimes translated as “explaining spiritual things to spiritual men;” this introducing to what follows, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; and looking back to the statement that “we speak wisdom among the perfect.” But the apostle seems here rather to be speaking of the character of the communication itself; and this is supported by the primary meaning of the word for communicating or expounding, which is “mixing,” combining." He seems evidently to be showing us how perfectly the revelation has been secured to us; the fallibility of the human instrument not being permitted to affect that which was conveyed. The very words were guarded, as well as the matter given. How suitable is it that this should be so, when divine love and wisdom were bent upon the effectual enlightenment and salvation of men! How could we imagine that these should after all be made dependent upon an imperfect and unstable medium! that the mind of man, feeble and limited as it is, should be left to give the best expression that it could to such amazing and transcendent thoughts as are enunciated in Scripture. But, of course, it is answered to this that, nevertheless, we find in fact the individuality of the different writers manifesting itself in their several writings; and thus an undeniable “human element” in them which needs to be accounted for. And this is continually urged as involving their being suffered to fall into such slight mistakes -or shall we say, awkwardnesses of expression? -as would prevent our arguing from the mere words used, and shut us up to insistence only upon the general idea of the thought meant to be conveyed. It has been urged that “the term here is logos, which denotes rather propositions than mere words.” But we need not contend for its applying to “mere” words. There is never absent from logos the idea of reason in the words, or, as Trench says, “The orderly linking and connecting together in connected discourse of the inward thoughts and feelings of the mind.” This is no loss, but gain to the apostle’s statement, to find that it claims the whole rational utterance of the divine revelation by the inspired writers to be taught not of human wisdom, but of the Spirit. It should be plain that this involves no less than the choice of words, wherever the words are not most perfectly synonymous. It is as plain that we may as much insist upon the actual words as if they were given (as it is not necessary to hold) by direct dictation.

God certainly used the “human element,” as He used the humanity of the Lord Jesus, not to be further from us, but to be nearer to us; we need not shrink from the full acknowledgment of it in this way. He fitted for His purpose the vessel that He used, and used it frankly for all for which He had fitted it. He uses man, therefore, as man, not as a mere pen in His hand, -not as something passive as that might be, but rather quickened to fullest activity; all faculties in fullest exercise, as well as in perfect freedom, energized, not crippled, by that which lifted the Spirit-moved man beyond his common self, often without the consciousness of what was moving him, or that anything was. An apostle might even for a time “repent” of having written what was nevertheless an inspired letter (2 Corinthians 7:8). Who can doubt that thus the divine Maker can use the being He has made; not to the injury or repression of any part of it but the reverse; yet so as to make it entirely His own? “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” This, then, is what is meant by an inspired utterance. We may debate with very little result the manner of God’s working. The finished product is that which very much more concerns us, although that which we can learn as to His ways has unfailing interest and profit for us. But the great matter for us now is, have we in inspired Scripture, as God gave it to us, something that we can wholly trust and build upon as that which will never fail us? If the human element confessedly in it is to assume such character and proportions as to make it necessary to be constantly sifting the chaff from the wheat, -if we are to sit over it as judges before we can bow to it as judging us, -if we need specialists to point out to us how many hands were at work in every document, how much patching and revision and modification of various kinds has taken place in that which has come down to us as the work of Moses, or of Isaiah, or of Paul, -if it can be proved that the writers made mistakes upon most subjects that are not directly moral or religious in their character, -if in short they are not wholly to be trusted on any point as to which we can test their knowledge, -how can we confide our whole spiritual interests with rest and assurance of heart to those who have so failed, with all their manifest claim to more than human equipment, to establish their credibility as to what this enlightened and scientific age claims to have made common knowledge? Thank God that our Bible is not the thing of shreds and tatters which this folly asserts; and that those who have in truth of heart listened to its lessons of holy and lofty wisdom, -who know the unique glory of the Christ that it has made their own, -know that it is not. It is not by looking deeply into it that the vulture-critics, who would rend its sacred form, have discovered the disfigurements which they so eagerly point out. It is shallowness and unspirituality only that has deceived them. Still He taketh the wise in their own craftiness;" but it will not be those who have most diligently and with heart-exercise searched the Scripture who will be persuaded that they are not, with the wisdom they have found in it, “wiser,” as one of old says, “than all their teachers.” The more they have examined it, the more critically they have studied even its minutiae, the more the awe of a divine Presence has been upon them, the more the sweetness of divine love has drawn and enwrapped them. And as to the mere understanding of them, the less we are content with mere generalization, the more we look with reverent care into every detail, and weigh the import of every word, the more we attain to an apprehension of a perfection everywhere which manifests in whatever human guise the glory of the divine. 4. A warning follows here which enables us to understand the mystery of much of the so-called “higher criticism,” as well as other abundant forms of unbelief in every age: “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him, and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The word translated “natural,” and for which we have, as far as I am aware, no satisfactory substitute, is psychikos, “psychical:” It is an adjective formed from psyche, “soul,” and for which some would propose a word which we have not, soulual." We might render it freely as “soul-governed;” this is, at any rate, the force of it: the spirit of man (as that which truly makes him man and by which he is constituted naturally in the image of God) is of necessity that which should govern him. The spirit is the seat of the mind proper -of the mental and moral faculties; the soul is that of the emotions and instincts, which should be under the guidance and control of these. It is the sign of a fallen condition that the spirit has given way to the soul: the senses, passions, bodily appetites rule over the judgment, and darken it. The man is sensual, therefore carnal, though not necessarily in the grossest forms, the things of time and sense shut out God and all that is beyond the earth. This is truly now the natural condition of man as fallen; and with this understanding of it, we may speak here of the natural man. As such the things of the Spirit are alien to him, the new-creative power of God must work in him before he can discern them. They are too remote, make too much demand upon him, stir too much his apathetic conscience. The light shines, but amid the darkness; men love the darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil: the darkness is real, but it is the soul’s choice for itself, not God’s choice for it. He cometh not to the light, because he will not submit to the condemnation of his evil deeds. The acceptance of this condemnation is the way out of his condition, through the ready grace which is at hand to meet him. The Spirit of God is alone able to lift man out of this ruin, and restore God and the conscience to their rightful supremacy. The spiritual man is therefore in the light, and discerns all things. That does not, of course, mean that he is omniscient, or that he has not to grow in knowledge; but he has his eyes open, and is in the light. In this condition he necessarily now becomes an enigma to the natural man. He has now the mind of the Lord, -a mind all-competent; for who shall instruct Him? We are brought into fellowship with Him, though learning but gradually things which surpass all man’s powers to attain full knowledge of; still it can be said already, we have the mind of Christ. But the world crucified Him.