Taught by the Spirit

The Wisdom of God and the Unity of the Church

Just a reminder, the series that we're in, we're in the series on Kingdom, Community and First Corinthians 1 -2, and we've been talking about unity in the Church, and Paul's focus has been on the wisdom of God and how the wisdom of God unifies and the wisdom of man divides.

So, something that's gone unaddressed at this point is, what is the mechanism by which you get this wisdom of God? We have all this wisdom of man accessible to us, but the wisdom of God, how can one access it?

What is the means by which you get this wisdom of God? And the answer is the Holy Spirit, and we'll see that in this passage. Today we'll be looking at verses 10 -13 of chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians. Let me go ahead and read verses 6 all the way down to the end of the chapter though, but we'll just be looking at verses 10 -13 in this message.

Please stand for the reading of God's word. Verse 6. But as it is written, So also,. But the Spirit who is from God,. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ. Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that as we come here this morning to contemplate this passage, that you would teach us by spiritual words, that we would be taught by the Spirit, that we would be able to understand this message, because we know that it is not by our own strength or intellect that your wisdom is known, but only by the Spirit.

I pray that you would open hearts and minds, and that you would use me as your instrument, that I would speak edifying words, and that you would use them by your power to change lives. In Jesus' name.

Amen. So, there are many people in this world who want to find the wisdom of God. I would say that everybody who is thoughtful about their own life really wants to access some higher wisdom, to understand who they are, what they are doing in this world, what their purpose is, what the wisdom of God is.

Now, there have been many different approaches to this. Some people deny that there is any wisdom of God. They would say that God doesn't even exist. Well, to deny that there is a wisdom of God, to deny that God exists, is to deny that truth itself exists.

Because truth is not something that is contingent on a physical world existing. It's not contingent on any particular person. You can talk to different people, and no matter what they say, one plus one is still going to be two.

But truth is something abstract and continuous, eternal, and mental. It is a property of the mind. So, there must be some ultimate mind. The wisdom of God exists, whether or not people acknowledge that it exists.

God exists, whether or not people acknowledge that He exists. There are some people who think that they can achieve the wisdom of God through psychedelic drugs. They think that this can open their mind and reach new levels of consciousness.

But anyone who is not already on drugs knows that drugs do not improve your state of mind. There are some people who think that we can have the wisdom of God by observing the world and studying it deeply.

God's fingerprint is on all creation. Even the Bible says that the heavens declare the work of His hands. So, you might think that by studying nature, we could understand the wisdom of God. We could get access to it that way.

The problem is that God is infinite, and the depth of His wisdom is infinite. And you cannot have access to this infinite knowledge from something finite like creation. It's just not available there. He has not made it available there.

Now, maybe you're a good Christian, and the answer that comes to your mind is, well, the Word of God, this is where He reveals Himself. Yet, many people come to the Word of God, and they come to wrong conclusions, or they don't believe it, they misunderstand it.

And there's all sorts of things that, even having the Word of God, keep people from really understanding the wisdom of God. Some people even believe it for a season, and then depart from it, now that they really have the wisdom of God.

They do not. So, you see, if we take that statement as unqualified, that the Bible is enough to have the wisdom of God, not quite. Something more is needed. The Bible is good, the Bible is a means through which we understand God's wisdom, but it is insufficient, apart from the Spirit of God, working in the heart to make the truth that is present here, known to the person He is communicating to.

It is only by the Holy Spirit that we can have the wisdom of God. And this wisdom of God is the difference between life and death. This wisdom of God is what He has for us, to save us from death, from eternal punishment, from our own corruption.

That is what Paul is addressing here. This wisdom of God being only accessible by the Spirit. The Corinthians think that they might receive this by other means, that they're sufficient without the wisdom of God, just by using the wisdom of man.

Not so. The wisdom of God doesn't come through these natural means, it only comes supernaturally, through the Spirit. Natural means are not sufficient. We need God's supernatural means of the Spirit making this truth known to us.

So as we look at this passage, verses 10 through 13, we're going to see that it's only by the Spirit that we can know the wisdom of God, and that God has given us the Spirit for the purpose of knowing His wisdom, and that if He has done so with that purpose, then we should be appealing to the Spirit to know the wisdom of God.

This is the means that we have to receive the wisdom of God, is to appeal to the Spirit. So let's begin talking about how this wisdom is only known by the Spirit of God in verse 10. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

The Spirit Reveals the Wisdom of Christ

Let's take each particle in turn. These things. What are these things? Well, these things, this is talking about the wisdom of God. In verse 6, it said, Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom. Okay, so he's talking about this wisdom that's offered.

And in verse 2, he said, For I decide to know nothing among you except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified. So what is the wisdom that he's imparting? It is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. So this wisdom of God, it's not some amorphous idea without a particular topic in mind.

The wisdom of God, the way that God has made Himself available to us in His depth to know His goodness is by Jesus Christ and His gospel. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Keep rolling back. Verse 30 of chapter 1.

Because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God. Who is the wisdom from God? Jesus Christ is the wisdom from God. Verses 23 and 24. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.

But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. So address this topic of the wisdom of God. Know that the wisdom of God is not some, as I said, amorphous thing.

It is specifically Jesus Christ and His gospel that is to be known. This is the wisdom. You want the wisdom of God, then you want the gospel. You want to know the good news of Jesus Christ. Now he says next in verse 10, these things God has revealed.

So God has revealed this gospel. It was hidden in times past and now has been made known. But the emphasis of this, the fact of the matter, was presented to many people at this time. And Paul has acknowledged this on these verses.

He says, although it is not a wisdom of this age, of the rulers of this age, none of the rulers of this age understood this. So they had the fact of the matter presented to them. So when he's talking about it being revealed to those who love God, he's not talking about the facts of it being made known.

Because the facts of it have been made known to many people. To have it revealed to us means something more than just the fact of it. It's also not just the truth of it. Because there are many people who have believed for a time, and they do not have the wisdom of God.

There is something more here. Paul said in verse 5, let me start at verse 4, that my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

He is acknowledging here that he might have persuaded people of the truth of the gospel by some means other than the spirit. Their faith would have rested on something unsteady and it would have left.

And you see this all the time where people believe the gospel for a season and then don't. So it's not just the fact of the matter. It's not just the truth of the matter. It's something more. What is being revealed here is the goodness of the gospel.

The goodness of the gospel has to be revealed. Because people may know the fact of the matter. They may know the truth of the matter. But the depth of God and His goodness are made known in the gospel when we experience the goodness of the gospel, its grace, its mercy, and forgiveness.

And you can tell somebody all you like about those things, but until you know Jesus Christ personally, until you've experienced His grace and mercy personally, you do not know Jesus Christ. You do not know the wisdom of God because Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God.

These are the means. This is the wisdom. This is the revelation. It's not just the fact. It's not just the truth. But it is the goodness. And that is communicated not merely through words, although words are used, but through the Holy Spirit.

These things God has revealed to us through His Spirit, through the Spirit. The Spirit is the one who makes these things known. You see, the problem, the reason we don't have access to the wisdom of God is because of our spiritual ignorance.

Ever since the fall, we have just been spiritually ignorant. There is a corruption that is set in that keeps us from truly knowing who God is, fully knowing Him. And the Spirit communicates to us the goodness of God by removing the spiritual ignorance so that we can know Him, so that we can know Christ.

You see, this is Christianity and the conversion to Christianity, living the Christian life. These things are not about our ability to change ourselves, our ability to convince ourselves of true things.

It is about the Spirit's ability to convince us, the Spirit's ability to transform us. We cannot transform ourselves. The Spirit transforms us. Now, why is this by the Spirit and not by some other agent?

How could it be by ourselves? How do you teach yourself something you do not know? What about an angel, for example? Why does it have to be the Holy Spirit? Well, the answer is that the depth of God, the wisdom of God, is infinite.

And angels, though glorious creatures, are still beings. And if you want the wisdom of God communicated to you in some meaningful way, an agent doing that must have full comprehension of that wisdom. And no creature on earth, including an angel, is capable of that.

And that's what Paul says in this next verse. He explains the importance of the Spirit knowing all things, even the depth of God. The Spirit searches everything. He searches everything. This is talking about Him knowingly.

But this is a way of explaining to us, people who are accustomed to having to discover things in order to know them, who the Spirit is and the fact that He knows all things. Genesis 1 illustrates this to us when it describes the Holy Spirit as moving over the face of the waters.

So when the universe was just one big mass of chaos and water, the Holy Spirit encompassed everything. The Holy Spirit knows all things, and it's not just this finite creation. He knows the depth of God.

He knows all of God, all His goodness, that which is not revealed just in nature. God reveals much of Himself in nature. He reveals His power. He reveals much of who He is. He reveals His justice. He reveals much of His goodness too, but the depth of His goodness that's known in His mercy is not available apart from something else, something else to plumb those depths and communicate them to us apart from His Spirit doing that work in our hearts.

Verse 11 says,. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? Who knows these thoughts? So an analogy is being used here to the human spirit. The Spirit of God is like a human spirit in the sense where if you have some thought, well, who knows it?

What knows it? Your mind knows it. In the Bible, spirit and mind are rough synonyms. It's not as modern-day people we think of the mind as being the physical brain. That's not the idea. The mind is nonphysical.

The mind is the spirit. They're rough synonyms. So for who knows a person's thought except the spirit of the person? My mind, my spirit is what knows my thought. Likewise, the Holy Spirit knows the thought of God.

If you want the thought of God, how do you get it? You have to get it through the spirit. Now, there are several ways that this analogy breaks down. For example, I don't perfectly know myself. I don't know all my thoughts very well.

There are scientists who get paid lots of money to try to understand people's thoughts by analyzing them both physically and mentally to try to understand them because people don't even understand themselves that well.

Jeremiah says that the heart is deeply wicked. How do you understand yourself when your heart is wicked? But the Holy Spirit actually does know all the thoughts of God in depth with perfect clarity. Another way that this is different, that the spirit of the person is different than the spirit of God in knowledge, is that a person can communicate his thoughts just by words.

But I've said here that words are not sufficient without the special, supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. Now, why is that? Well, if you think about it, words appeal to things that you already know in the world.

If I describe something to you, I ascribe it to you in terms of something that you're already aware of. Go to the dictionary, pick a word, and find any word that's not defined using other words from the dictionary.

Every definition in the dictionary is going to be circular, referring to itself, because it's coming with the assumption that you already have some of these words. You already know what they mean because you've already experienced some of them.

The depths of God are not something that exists in nature. It's perfectly available in nature. And so, for the Holy Spirit to communicate to us, it's not sufficient to make analogies to nature. That might be one way of explaining it to a degree, and that's why we're given the Word of God.

But if you want to really know these things, if you want that truth to be real to you, then the Holy Spirit must communicate this by some other means than mere words. He communicates the wisdom of God, despite our spiritual ignorance, to us directly, making known that goodness of God, making known that forgiveness, that when Jesus Christ died, that sacrifice that forgives us is something good, is something wonderful, and this is folly to the world.

But to those who are being saved, it is the wisdom of God because the Spirit makes it to them, the wisdom of God. Think about how impossible it would be to explain something to someone who doesn't have a related experience.

I think the best analogy I can come up with is imagine someone who's colorblind, completely colorblind, not just red-green, but all the colors, and you try to explain to them what color is. Now, you could describe wavelengths and things, but how do you get them to know what a color is?

Just imagine for a second you're trying to explain to them red. Come up with how you would explain to them what red is and what makes it different from blue. Chances are you're thinking, well, red's a hot color, blue's a cold color.

What does that even mean? That has hardly any meaning apart from having some experience and association of red already, being with hot things, being with cold things. This is not something just available to us in nature, in mere words.

The Holy Spirit communicates this goodness to us. This must result in our humility because we are not capable of knowing God's goodness apart from the working of the Spirit. If it's the working of the Spirit that does this, there's no room for pride, one person over another, that he knows God better than the next person doesn't or he knows God better than the next person because it is only by the Spirit that someone has this knowledge.

You know, pride divides. The whole theme here is unity, right? And pride divides, knowing that it's the Spirit by which we know God, that we know the gospel, that should cause us to have great humility and not exalt ourselves or exalt anyone over another.

It continues in this verse in verse 11. So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. No one knows the depths of God. No one is omniscient like the Spirit. There's no angel.

No one else has these depths, has that wisdom to be able to communicate it. Now, God has given us the Spirit for this purpose of knowing the gospel, of knowing Jesus Christ in this wisdom. Okay, so not only is it the case that you can only know this by the Spirit, but God did not give us the Spirit for primarily other reasons, but he gave us the Spirit with the express intent of us knowing this wisdom, of us not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.

So if we have the Spirit of the world, maybe the Corinthians would be justified in their focus on worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom not meaning corrupt wisdom or anything necessarily bad, but simply meaning natural wisdom.

Focus on things that cause people to differ because I have this kind of rhetoric, this person has this rhetoric, this person has this kind of boldness, this person has this kind of courage. This is not the Spirit that we have been given, a Spirit of just natural things.

We have been given a supernatural Spirit of God, someone who gives us a greater wisdom, a wisdom that unites us. That we might understand the things freely given us by God. The things freely given to us are the gospel once again, are all these benefits of the gospel.

God gave us the Spirit so that we can know that he has given us the Spirit with this explicit purpose. And that has to control, that has to control the implications of these things. You know, he has given us the Spirit that has implications for us and those implications are controlled by the purpose.

He has given us the Spirit so that we may know the gospel. We ought to know the gospel by the Spirit. When I was a kid, every few Christmases, my dad would give me a really special present, something better than the typical presents that he would give me.

And one year, he got me a paintball gun with all the extra accessories and things. And another year, I got a go-kart, like a go-kart with large wheels. We lived on a Christmas tree farm and so I was able to ride around the Christmas tree farm in this go-kart with a BB gun on my lap.

It was pretty incredible. However, the sad part of this story is that these really expensive, nice gifts, I only used maybe like three or four times. It was, I was, you know, I might have had gratitude in the sense of like knowing that he had sacrificed a lot for this, but in terms of actually using the gift the way it was supposed to be used, having that kind of gratitude, it was not present.

And so we are obligated to consider the implication of this gift, which comes to us by knowing the purpose of the gift. And the purpose is to know the gospel, is to know the goodness of Jesus Christ and the fact that he has died for the salvation of sinners.

Spiritual Words and the Spirit-Given Gift

Verse 13 says,. And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom.

Once again, the focus here is not on evil words. The focus here is simply on natural words. Words imbued with human elements of persuasion and rhetoric are not going to change someone's heart. You could try as much as you want, but it won't change a thing.

Instead, we impart words taught by the Spirit. It is only by the Spirit that we can know the goodness of the gospel. And so Paul is explaining his behavior before where he said that he did not come with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power.

He speaks in plain words, not because plain words in and of themselves have any more persuasive power, but he knows that the persuasive power that really changes a person's heart is not found in the quality of the words or the style of the rhetoric, but in the truth being revealed by the Holy Spirit to man.

This is something that God has done in the gospel. You know, Jesus Christ, when He died and He purchased forgiveness, He did not just purchase forgiveness. He purchased our sanctification, our eventual resurrection.

And one of the things He purchased, along with all those other things, He merited that we should receive this gift that we do not deserve of the Holy Spirit. He has merited this gift for us. You know, He knew that if He were to die and only grant other things apart from the Spirit, if He were to die to grant forgiveness and glorification, et cetera, to those who believe, but He did not also send the Holy Spirit, He would have died for nobody because nobody would have believed.

Only by sending the Spirit did He ensure that people would believe. And so it is only by words that are imbued with the Spirit's power that people are going to have changes of heart. And so Paul teaches in words, not with human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

Now the ESV interprets this a little and it says, spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And so the idea in this translation is that Paul's trusting that these people who are spiritual will understand his words.

However, what this more literally says is something like combining spiritual things with spiritual. So it's much more ambiguous. And I think possibly the right way of understanding it is that he's explaining what he's just, he's restating what he's just stated, is that these spiritual truths, these things that aren't known by our five senses, the goodness of God, the depth of Him that we experience in the Gospels, that these he combines with spiritual words.

Spiritual words here meaning words imbued with the Spirit. The Spirit might bring life to us through these words, not words imbued with human wisdom, but words imbued with spiritual wisdom because the Spirit may use them for His will.

If I were in an argument with someone and I wanted to convince them of something, I could try all I wanted, but if they speak a different language than me, there'd be no point. The kind of persuasion that is important in the Christian life is not a persuasion of, it's not a superficial intellectual persuasion.

It's a persuasion of heart. There has to be a real change in the moral character of someone in their spirit, which is otherwise corrupt. And this will not happen out of any kind of sheer force of power, any special giftedness that you might have.

This only happens by this supernatural working, and this is what Paul appeals to. You see, if we have been given the gift of the Spirit for the purpose of knowing the Gospel, for the purpose of knowing the goodness of the Gospel, then we should appeal to the Spirit to know it.

We should not speak in a different language. It's not going to accomplish anything, but we should be speaking in a language that will. Now what that looks like is that as we try to understand the wisdom of God, we should be using the means that He has given us.

First of all, very basically, we should be actually going to the Word of God because it is through the Word of God that God has guaranteed that the Spirit speaks. His Word does not return void. The reason is because the Spirit speaks in that Word.

There are a lot of people who think that they don't need the Word of God in order to maintain any kind of unity, but you will not have unity with your brothers and sisters if you are not united in the wisdom of God, if you are not united in the Gospel.

You need the Word of God where the Gospel is found. There are a lot of people who think that they're actually preserving unity by not going to God's Word because the Word of God, oh, well, that just has all these doctrines that divide.

You couldn't be more wrong, more foolish, if you think that because you aren't going to receive the wisdom of God through means other than the ones that the Holy Spirit has said that He will work through, and that is through the Word of God.

Now, as we appeal to the Spirit, as we're coming to the Word of God, it means we should be praying for God to reveal Himself to us through His Spirit. Now, this is something I've heard many people say before, but honestly, it was not until really thinking about this passage that I felt convicted that this needs to be true, for me, in my own life, is that when we read the Bible, we should be reading it prayerfully, that we should pray when we read the Bible, that we might understand it.

I have a tendency to come to the Bible and hope that out of my hard work, my intellect, I'm going to be able to draw God's truth out of it, and there's a sense in which we can draw truth out of it just by hard work and intellect, and many people do just that, but to know the wisdom of God, to know the Gospel in more than just fact and truth, but to experience a person out there, to know Him personally, that's not going to happen apart from the Spirit.

We should be appealing to the Spirit through prayer to know God, to know His Son, to know His Son's Gospel, and we should eschew all things that would otherwise divide us, that would elevate different people because of human wisdom.

I was watching a documentary about the famous preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones called Logic on Fire, and one of the things they said near the end of this documentary was that when Martin Lloyd-Jones died, just how many people, how much attendance at the church dropped.

Now, on one hand, that's a great testimony for how powerful he was as a preacher. On the other hand, it speaks very lowly of those who only came for the man and not for the message that continued to be preached from that pulpit.

It speaks very lowly of those who are looking for the human wisdom and not looking for the wisdom of God, which is only given by the Spirit, not by the man. By the Spirit, not by the man. We should not divide ourselves over preferences, over different teachers that we might appreciate more than others.

There are different things in natural wisdom that are good. God has made a good creation, including different ways of communicating, and he has made different people, too, are worth dividing over because none is truly any better than the other at persuading when it is only the Spirit that persuades one's heart.

This should be a real cure for any divisive spirit we had that would seek to exalt one over another or exalt ourselves over another. We should recognize that anything we have that another person doesn't, it is caught by the Spirit, not by man.

Anything of value. And if you do not know the wisdom of God, if you have not... If you know the fact of the matter that Jesus Christ died and was raised from the dead and that he forgives all those who believe, if you know that fact, but you have not experienced that forgiveness in your own life, relieving you of guilt, assuring you that you have an excellent eternity awaiting you with him, if that does not fill you with peace and with joy, then you don't have access to that wisdom, and you must be given access to that wisdom by the Spirit.

Appeal to the Spirit. Turn to him. Ask him to reveal to you who Jesus is. He never turns anyone away who comes to him. And for those who already have the Spirit, who, like the Corinthians, might be led astray to focus on other things other than the working of the Spirit, to elevate themselves or to elevate other men over others because of natural wisdom and not the wisdom of God, let us be united around the wisdom of God.

Let us be taught by the Spirit. There are all kinds of things in the world threatening to divide us right now, things based on preference or things based on real matters of truth and faithfulness. But if we come to those things with an attitude that we are taught by the Spirit and not by ourselves, if we come with that level of humility and gratitude, then I believe we will have everything we need in order to weather every divisive storm that comes our way.

We will be perfectly united in one gospel, one Jesus Christ, this one wisdom of God where we experience His goodness and grow together in holiness and joy, knowing Him fully, being taught by the Spirit.

Prayer for Humility, Gratitude, and Unity in the Gospel

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for this great gospel that has not only guaranteed us forgiveness and eternal life, but has also guaranteed us the Spirit by whom we can know truly the depth of God.

I ask that we would have a greater appreciation and gratitude for this. I ask that we would have a greater humility and that this would drive us to a greater unity so we are transformed more and more into the image of Your Son and know Him more and more and love Him and experience His love more and more.

In Jesus' name, amen.