Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
The Mind of Christ
1 Corinthians 2:11-16
11 For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except God’s Spirit. · WEB
Spiritual things are known by the Spirit, so the natural man's dismissal of them is not evidence against them — and the chapter ends by granting the church what it wanted.
For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except God's Spirit 1 Corinthians 2:11.
An argument from the ordinary. A person's inner life is inaccessible except from inside — a reader can watch someone all day and not know what they are thinking. If that is true of a man, it is true of God at an infinitely greater distance, and the conclusion is that God can be known only if God discloses himself. Every other route was closed in the preceding verse 1 Corinthians 2:9.
But we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God 1 Corinthians 2:12.
The purpose of the gift is knowledge of a specific kind: the things freely given. Even the Spirit's teaching work in this letter points at grace — a church boasting about what it possessed 1 Corinthians 4:7 is told that the Spirit was given precisely so they would recognize their holdings as presents.
Now the natural man doesn't receive the things of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; and he can't know them, because they are spiritually discerned 1 Corinthians 2:14.
The natural man is the person as he comes, without the Spirit — not the stupid man or the wicked man. And two things are said of him: he does not receive these things, and he can't know them. The incapacity is not moral failure or low intelligence but a mismatch of faculty, like asking a good ear to judge a color. This explains the verdict of chapter one: when the world calls the cross foolishness, it is reporting accurately what it perceives, and the report is not evidence about the cross.
But he who is spiritual discerns all things, and he himself is to be judged by no one 1 Corinthians 2:15.
A sentence easily misused, and the next chapter guards it. The one who is spiritual is not exempt from correction — Paul is about to tell these people they are anything but spiritual 1 Corinthians 3:1, and he submits his own work to the Lord's assessment 1 Corinthians 4:3–4. What the verse says is that spiritual realities cannot be adjudicated by those without the faculty to perceive them. The believer's standing is not subject to the world's tribunal, which is a claim about jurisdiction rather than a claim to immunity.
"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct him?" But we have Christ's mind 1 Corinthians 2:16.
The question comes from Isaiah, and its expected answer is nobody Isaiah 40:13 Romans 11:34. Then the astonishing reply: we have Christ's mind. The wisdom Corinth was competing for is not withheld from them and not distributed by degrees to the impressive — it is given, corporately, to a church whose members were mostly nobodies 1 Corinthians 1:26–28. And we is plural throughout, which the next chapter will exploit: a congregation that has the mind of Christ and is behaving like infants.
held with reason What this mark means