Paul's reference to the Holy Spirit's power (vv. 4-5) led him to elaborate on the Spirit's ministry in enlightening the minds of believers and unbelievers alike. The Corinthians needed to view ministry differently. The key to this change would be the Holy Spirit's illumination of their thinking. People who are pursuing wisdom (sophia) cannot perceive it except as the Holy Spirit enlightens them.
Paul constructed his argument in this section with three contrasts that overlap slightly. The first contrast is between those who receive God's wisdom and those who do not (vv. 6-10a), and the second one is the Spirit of God and the spirit of the world (vv. 10b-13). The third contrast is the "natural"person and the "spiritual"person (vv. 14-16).48
"Paul is not here rebuilding what he has just torn down. He is retooling their understanding of the Spirit and spirituality, in order that they might perceive the truth of what he has been arguing to this point.
"While it is true that much of the languageof this paragraph is not common to Paul, the explanation of this phenomenon is, as before, to be found in his using theirlanguage but filling it with his own content and thus refuting them. The theology, however, is his own, and it differs radically from theirs. . . . Paul's concern throughout is to get the Corinthians to understand who they are--in terms of the cross--and to stop acting as non-Spirit people."49
2:6 Even though Paul's preaching of the gospel was simple and clear, there was a depth to his message that he did not want the Corinthians to overlook. Immature Christians cannot understand the real depths of the gospel fully. Later Paul would say the Corinthians were not mature (3:1-3).
Paul could have been using the word "mature"as synonymous with "Christian."He may have selected the word "mature"because the Corinthians apparently loved to apply it to themselves.
"All Christians are mature' in the sense that they have come to terms with the message of the cross, while all others, by definition, have not."50
However, Paul later distinguished the natural person, the spiritual person, and the carnal person (2:14-3:4). Consequently by spiritual he may have meant one who has followed God's Spirit for some time, not just one who has His Spirit (cf. Heb. 6:1).
The deep things of God require a type of wisdom that is different from secular wisdom. Presently those who control the climate of public opinion dominate secular wisdom. These rulers are those individuals who set the standard of what people who disregard God's revelation consider as true (cf. 1:20, 26), particularly those who were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion (v. 8). However these people are on the way out because the popular perception of what is true changes and because Christ will end their rule eventually (15:24-25; Col. 2:15).
2:7 The wisdom Paul proclaimed was wisdom that God had not revealed previously. It was not a revelation in addition to the gospel. The message about Christ crucified embodies the wisdom of God. This message was unknown before Christ came. The message of the Cross is a further unfolding of God's plan and purpose beyond what He had revealed and what people had known previously.
Paul expounded on the fact that God had decreed this mystery from before creation in Ephesians 3:2-12. The Ephesian church was more mature and better able to understand this revelation than was the Corinthian congregation.
The end purpose of this new revelation was the saints' ultimate glorification by conformity to the image of God's Son.
2:8 The rulers of this age are probably the intellectual trend-setters Paul mentioned above (v. 7). Those responsible for the death of Christ were members of this group (cf. Acts 3:17-18; 4:25-28). If they had understood the central place that Jesus Christ occupied in God's plan, they would not have crucified Him thus assuring their own doom (cf. Luke 23:34).
"The key [to this section of Paul's argument] is verse 8. The rulers of this age (whether understood as political and religious figures or as apocalyptic powers) demonstrated their ignorance of divine wisdom when they crucified the Lord of glory. The very mention of the crucifixion shows the argument very much in continuity with the preceding section and reminds us that the wisdom of God, which is incomprehensible to the world, is nothing other than the word of the cross (1:23-24)."51
The phrase "Lord of glory"implies the divine fullness. It also ties in with the saints' glory (v. 7). It is through union with Him that we will experience glory.
2:9 The source of this quotation is evidently Isaiah 64:4 and 65:17. It summarizes Paul's point well. There are many things we can know only by revelation. The more God reveals the more clearly we see that He has designed His plans for humanity for our blessing.
"Paul's thought is that there is no method of apprehension open to man (eyes, ears, or understanding) which can give him any idea of the wonderful things that God has made ready for them that love him(cf. Rom. viii. 28)."52
2:10 The wonderful mysteries God has prepared for those who love Him are not knowable only by a select group of Christians. Any and every believer can understand and appreciated them because the indwelling Holy Spirit can enlighten us. The mystery religions of Greece promised deeper insights and new knowledge to their devotees. However any Christian can apprehend the very best that God has revealed because we all possess the spiritual organ of perception, namely the Holy Spirit. "Searches"(Gr. ereuna) means continually examines.
"Apparently they have thought of spirituality mostly in terms of ecstasy and experience, which has led some of them to deny the physical body, on the one hand, and to a sense of having arrived' (cf. 4:8), on the other. . . .
"They considered Paul's preaching to be milk'; on the contrary, he implies, redemption through the cross comes from the profound depths of God's own wisdom, which his Spirit, given to those who love him, has searched out and revealed to us."53
2:11 It is necessary for someone to be a human being to understand things having to do with human life. Likewise it is necessary for someone to have the indwelling Spirit of God to understand the things of God.
2:12 "We"is emphatic in the Greek text. All believers have received the Holy Spirit (12:13; Rom. 8:9). He helps us understand the mind of God and the things God has given us. This Spirit is vastly different from the spirit (viewpoint) of the world. Unbelievers cannot understand the things of God as believers can because they have no one who can help them perceive these supernatural things.
". . . as a man's own spirit best understands his inner thoughts, so the Spirit of God alone can grasp divine truths (verse 11), and alone can interpret to those within whom he dwells the things that are freely given to us by God' (RV)."54
2:13 Paul and the other apostles spoke the truths that the Holy Spirit had helped them understand (cf. vv. 6-7). They did not choose their words because of what people generally regarded as the best ones to persuade. They did not rely on the rhetorical forms that the orators used either. The Holy Spirit guided them in their communication of divine truth as well as in their perception of it. Spiritual thoughts or truths are concepts the Holy Spirit enables us to understand. Spiritual words are those He guides us to use in expressing these thoughts. The Spirit enables us to speak in language appropriate to the message rather than with human wisdom. In short, the Holy Spirit plays an indispensable role both in our understanding and in our communicating God's revelation.
2:14 The natural man is any person who does not possess the Holy Spirit, namely unbelievers.55Every human being is a natural man until he or she trusts Christ and receives the Spirit. Paul called this person a natural (Gr. psychikos) man because he or she is only natural. He has no supernatural Person indwelling him, and his viewpoints and ideas are only what is natural. He cannot accept all that God has revealed because he does not possess the indwelling Spirit of God.
The natural person can, of course, understand the gospel and experience salvation but only because the Holy Spirit illuminates his or her understanding. Paul did not mean that an unbeliever is incapable of understanding Scripture. However an unbeliever rejects and does not acceptall that God wants him or her to have. One of these things is eternal life through faith in His Son. It is as though God is speaking in a language that the unbeliever does not understand. He or she needs an interpreter. That is a ministry that only the Holy Spirit can perform.56
"It will help us to think clearly about this issue if we recognize that 1 Corinthians 2 is not concerned with the mechanics of how people understand their Bibles generally, or with the quality of a particular scholar's exegesis of some specific Hebrew text. . . . His focus is the fundamental message of the crucified Messiah. And this, he insists, is fundamentally incomprehensible to the mind without the Spirit."57
2:15 In contrast to the natural man stands the spiritual (Gr. pneumatikos) man. He or she is a natural man who now has the Holy Spirit dwelling within. Consequently he or she is a different person and has a different outlook.
One of the things the spiritual person is able to do is appraise or make judgments (Gr. anakrino) regarding all things. In other words, the spiritual man looks at everything somewhat differently than the natural man because he has spiritual perception. This affects his values and decisions. For this very reason he is a puzzle to the natural man. The profane person cannot understand holiness, but the holy person can understand the depths of evil. Even carnal fellow believers cannot fully understand the spiritual person. That is all right because the spiritual person's judge is ultimately God, not other people.58
This verse is not saying believers are responsible only to God but that the Christian is answerable to God alone ultimately (cf. 4:3-4). Paul recognized the value of church discipline (5:3-8), constructive criticism (11:17-18), and self-judgment (11:31) as having immediate value.
2:16 To summarize his thought Paul again cited Isaiah (40:13; cf. Rom. 11:34). That prophet marveled at the mind of God. Who can fully understand what God understands? Certainly no one can. On the other hand, believers can understand to a much greater degree than unbelievers can because we have the Spirit of God in us. Since we have Him, we have the mind of Christ. That is, we view life to some extent as Jesus did because we understand things from God's perspective at least partially.
In his epistle to the Philippians, Paul urged his readers to adopt the mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5). Even though we have the mind of Christ we need to adopt it and use it to view life as He did. One evidence of Christian maturity is the believer's consistent employment of Christ's attitude and viewpoint in all of life.
In this section (vv. 6-16) Paul elaborated on the subject of the Holy Spirit's ministry of illuminating the believer about what God has revealed. He had previously reminded his readers that he had conducted himself in their midst with this supernatural viewpoint (vv. 1-5).
The basic theological point of tension between Paul and the Corinthians in this epistle was over what it means to be pneumatikos, a Spirit person. Because of their experience of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) they considered themselves to be "as the angels"and in need only of shedding their bodies. The sources of this distorted view were popular philosophy tainted with Hellenistic dualism.59The result was a "spirituality"and "higher wisdom"that had little connection with ethical behavior.60
"The concern from here on will be to force them to acknowledge the folly of their wisdom,' which is expressing itself in quarrels and thereby destroying the very church for which Christ died.
"Paul's concern needs to be resurrected throughout the church. The gift of the Spirit does not lead to special status among believers; rather, it leads to special status vis-à-vis the world. But it should do so always in terms of the centrality of the message of our crucified/risen Savior. The Spirit should identify God's people in such a way that their values and worldview are radically different from the wisdom of this age."61
