1 Corinthians 2:6-16

1 Corinthians 2:6-16

The Gospel and the Intellect.

I. The natural man in Paul's eyes is like an undeveloped organism. A man as he grows, in the true sense of growing, as he attains his full stature or perfection, becomes spiritual. The natural man is stunted; growth has been in some abnormal way arrested. The natural man only exists to become the spiritual man, just as a chrysalis only exists to become a butterfly. Who are the natural men nowadays? (1) Those who tell us that matter can explain spirit the people whom we call Materialists. They cannot apprehend the wisdom of the gospel. (2) Those who speak as of the understanding could answer all the questions and meet all the needs of the human spirit.

II. The wisdom which Paul speaks among the perfect is nothing less than the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the spirit of the Christian man. Just as consciousness alone can be aware of our own inward life, so God's consciousness alone can understand the depths of God; and only by being made partakers of God's consciousness can we search those depths. But we, as believers in Christ, are partakers of that consciousness. A Spirit of God given to a man through faith in the incarnate Son of God takes all the things of the revealing Christ His person, His word, His work and slowly unveils them to the amazed and enraptured heart. He who is the Saviour is also the key to creation.

III. Paul found in the good news of the gospel a wisdom far surpassing the wisdom of this world. Many Christians do not exercise the reason, and have no special desire for its satisfaction. But those who dare not in honesty suppress or violate that master-faculty are permitted to have the thirst quenched, the reason satisfied. In Christ, the manifestation of God, they find certain things which are revealed, they find a clue to God, a clue to life, a clue to the world. The mystery is an open mystery, though losing none of its charm.

R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 317.

References: 1 Corinthians 2:9 . G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons, 2nd series, p. 23; Preacher's Monthly, vol. viii., p. 249; Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith, p. 143.