The Wisdom of the Cross (1 Cor. 2:6–16)

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Don Carson: We are focusing this morning on First Corinthians, two verses six to 16, but I shall read from verse one, when I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom, as I proclaim to you the testimony about God, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling, my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began, None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. However, as it is written, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him, But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him. In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. A spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.

For who has known the mind of the Lord that we may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. May the lord of the church give us the mind of Christ this morning to understand these words

I may have told you at some point in the past of my experiences with my future brother in law. When my sister first became engaged to him, he was of a more than usual enthusiastic persuasion, and as the family was getting adjusted to these you developments, we met together in my parents home near Ottawa, Canada, I came back for a weekend from University in Montreal, and my sister came down from her nursing job and brought her fiance with her, and on this afternoon, we went for a ride along one of Ottawa’s scenic routes. There are many, and as we wound our way through the city, at some point, my future brother in law said to me, the Lord told me this morning, as I was having my devotions, that a certain passage in Matthew meant such and such. Now in the peculiar providence of God, it had so happened that I had recently read that same passage in Greek at university. I was reading chemistry and mathematics in those days, but I picked up some classical Greek on the side, and was working my way through the Greek testament. And I had read the passage, and I thought about it, and I thought I understood it, and I had not understood that. So being even more young, even younger and more foolish than today, it says, After all, almost 30 years ago, I said to him, Well, unless I’m mistaken, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means such and such. He said, Oh, that can’t be the Spirit told me that it meant such and such. But you know what youth is, it can’t easily be corrected. So I plunged in and quoted the Greek to him, then tried to explain the rudiments of Greek syntax, to explain what this text meant. And he said, you may have all the book learning in the world. Old, but the Spirit told me that the passage means such and such, and my sister, newly won to this persuasion, said from the back seats behind me, Spiritual things are spiritually discerned dog which told me where I sat in the sphere of things. But feeling extraordinarily perverse that day, I plunged ahead one step further and said, well, in point of fact, the Spirit told me that my interpretation was correct. I

The silence in the car was stunning. We went around several bins. I remember exactly where we were. And finally he said, and I quote, well, I guess that means the Bible means different things to different people.

Do you hear the sheer subjectivity in that one yet at the same time, you have to come to grips with some very interesting texts here. What does this text say we have not received? Verse 12, the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us. Verse 15, the spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. If, in fact, we are to make sense of this passage, we must do two things. First, we must steadfastly grasp that it is a continuation of the argument from the preceding verses that we looked at last week. Now I don’t have time to run through a complete review, but those of us who were here last week may recall that from chapter one, verse 18 to the end of chapter two, verse five, Paul sets forth the word of the cross, the message of the cross, over against all the putative wisdoms, the philosophical structures, the claims of this world, to insight and and power and and and wisdom, over against all of that, God sets the wisdom of the cross. And all of our isms and our philosophies do not gravitate toward the cross. They run from it. But God’s wisdom is wiser than anything human beings have concocted, and His plan for redeeming a fallen race rests exclusively in the cross. In fact, Paul says the Corinthians themselves should have inferred this even from who they are themselves. They were not the wise and the bright and the intellectual, intellectual elite. They were an ordinary bunch of people, not nobly born, not particularly wealthy, not very wise. So for them to clamor after these things now when they had been granted insight into the most important wisdom of all, the wisdom of the cross is simply idiotic, not only so he says at the beginning of chapter two, but even from the way I preach the gospel to you, you should have learned that message for when I came to you, I didn’t strut my stuff. I didn’t put on a whole academic display. I didn’t try to wow the crowds. No. Verse four, my message in my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. This means that whatever this wisdom is, that Paul is here talking about this insight that we gain from the Spirit, we must recognize that it is nothing other than the message of the cross. It is not some esoteric inside track for the super elite of the wonderfully sanctified. This is just basic Christian truth. It is the cross that’s the first thing we must grasp. That is why Paul goes on verse six to say, We do, however, speak a message of wisdom, which has to be the wisdom of the cross in the context. Why? Again, in verse eight, None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory still talking about the cross. Do you see the whole focus is still the cross, the cross, the cross. The second thing that we must do to understand this passage is this, we must observe that its argument is largely set up in terms of three controlling content contrasts, and to each of these three, we now turn first contrast those who receive God’s wisdom and those who do not those who receive God’s wisdom and. Those who do not. Verses six to the first part of 10, Paul begins, we do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature. That is, you must not think that because, because I have set aside mere rhetoric and eloquence, therefore what I am preaching is somehow second class or or verging on folly. It is, in fact, a message of wisdom. It is God’s wisdom. It is the wisdom of the cross, and we do preach it, and we preach it among the mature. Now, what does that mean? It is that word that has generated any number of disputations on the interpretation of this passage. For it is true to say that in many places in the New Testament. When the word mature is used, it is used to refer to those who are a little farther along on the Christian way. In fact, in the very next chapter, as we shall see when we study first Corinthians three next week, Paul can write to the Corinthians and say, I could not write to you as though you were mature, but as to infants, mere babes in Christ. So Paul, of course, is the first to acknowledge here and elsewhere that there are degrees of maturity. One does not become a Christian and suddenly become a senior Saint with 60 years experience of walking with Christ overnight. Of course, there are degrees of spirituality in that sense, but there are also places where the same word is used simply to define Christians. They are the perfected, if you like, because they have been perfected in Christ. They already take in a whole full orb of experience because they have closed with Christ and His cross work. And in this context, there is no other way it seems to me to take this passage than to say that the mature refer exclusively to Christians. The mature here are nothing but Christians. That is why there is a we, us contrast against you and the world throughout this passage. So we read, we do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age, that is, it’s the wisdom of the cross which defines being a Christian over against the wisdom of this age, which the rulers of this age espouse. The rulers here, doubtless including the wise and the philosophers and the debaters and the opinion makers and the sophisticates that we looked at last week from chapter one. No, no. This is the message of Christ crucified, and by definition, it is for all believers. The question is, why Paul should use this word? And my guess is that Paul uses this word against the Corinthians. They thought of themselves as mature. They thought of themselves as the elite of the elect. They thought of themselves as being on the inside track, and they had suspicions about how mature Paul was. After all, he wasn’t very sophisticated, in their view. He wasn’t very prepossessing. He didn’t ask for large sums of money, which was the standard procedure amongst itinerant Proclaimers in the ancient world. He was obviously second class, and they didn’t like to think of themselves as second class, so they were the mature and some other believers worse, one of the things that Paul must do again and again and again in this book is to relate this church to other churches and say, and this is our practice in all the churches, and this is our practice in all the churches, and this is our practice in all the churches we shall see two Sundays hence. That is exactly what Paul does, for example, in 417 this Timothy, when he comes, will remind you of my way of life in Christ, Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church, the Corinthians thought of themselves as a cut up on all the other churches. Thank you. They thought of themselves as mature. So the reason Paul uses this term, I suspect, is simply because he wants them to understand that the greatest maturity, the only significant maturity, from God’s perspective, is that which is bound up with faith in the Christ of the cross, nothing else. If you grasp that message, truly grasp that message, you are among the mature. And the whole contrast throughout this chapter turns on that category, this wisdom, this wisdom that is grasped by the mature is not of this age which is passing away. We are told it is not recognized by the rulers of this age who are passing away. It may be that we are mightily impressed by whoever holds the Regis chair of this or that here at the moment, it might be that we think John Major is a wonderful Prime Minister or not, as the case may be, or that we think that the particular leader, a Gorbachev, who comes along deserves every respect, and maybe many, many will follow in his train. But but in two years, five years, 20. Years, 50 years may past, and the Roman Empire passes, and the British Empire passes. All empires pass. And therefore to link our wisdom with the wisdom that seems to be the given of a transient age is at best, stupid. It is falling. We must anchor our wisdom to the wisdom of the Cross, which endures forever and has significance both for this world and for the world to come. This world, with its leaders, are passing away, and the Corinthians are far too impressed with the academics and the sab of their day. No, Paul says that is not the kind of wisdom we preach at all. We speak God’s wisdom, and that wisdom, he says, is characterized by three things. First,

it is God’s secret wisdom. The text says we speak God’s secret wisdom. Some versions have God’s wisdom in a mystery. What does that mean? It does not mean either of the two things that mystery commonly means today. It does not mean God’s mysterious wisdom in the sense that the Trinity is mysterious, or how to affirm simultaneously the deity of the sun and the humanity of the Sun involves us in some mystery. That is true, but it is not what this word means, nor does it mean it’s a mystery in the sense that it is esoteric, and if you have the right detective, you can sort it out, somebody with great insight, or somebody with wonderful deductive capacities can come along and unpack it for you, all you need is the key, the right clue, and then suddenly the mystery is a mystery no longer. The mystery is merely something to be explained. It is esoteric, and we are on the inside trap. It doesn’t mean that either. No, the word mystery in all of its in almost all of its occurrences in the New Testament, in about 24 of its 27 occurrences in the New Testament, always refers to something hidden in the past, but that is now revealed. And in fact, that’s what Paul carefully unpacks for us here. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. Now it is important to pause and think about that for a moment, for it is extremely important. For in the New Testament, the Gospel can simultaneously be presented as two things which seem, on the face of it, contradictory. On the face of it, the gospel is said to be predicted in time past and now fulfills. In the past, there was an expectation to look forward to a Messiah who was to come. Do we not read endless passages about how, how the scriptures attest to the coming of Christ, into the birth of Christ, into the death of Christ, into the ascension of Christ. This was predicted in time past and is now fulfilled. On the other hand, we are repeatedly told that the same gospel is hidden in times past and is now reviewed. The question, then, is this, how can one and the same Gospel be revealed in time past, predicted, prophesied in time past and be now fulfilled and hidden in time past and only now revealed? If it was prophesied, in what sense was it hidden? If it is now fulfilling an old prophecy, in what sense is it only now being revealed? But when you go through the pages of the New Testament and start looking for these secret words, these mystery words, they’re scattered all over the place, and the same thing is taught again and again. Why? Why it’s at the heart of this passage. Perhaps one of the best commentaries is found in the last three verses of Romans. If you turn back a page where Paul brings these two themes together, this is what Paul says in it Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ. So we’re talking about the gospel, the gospel of Jesus and the cross, to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, the same word, hidden for long ages past, there’s the gospel, hidden for long ages past, but now revealed through the prophetic writings, by the command of the eternal God. All so that all nations might believe and obey Him, that is through the eternal writings which have talked about it the whole time. There you have the same gospel tied to the prophetic writings, yet at the same time, declared to be hidden in time past and only now revealed. Why? Let me put it to you this way. Have there ever been times when you read the Old Testament where, quite frankly, you haven’t wondered just a wee bit why God didn’t express himself more clearly? You don’t want to be irreverent, and I’m not suggesting you would, but you read some of those prophets, and quite frankly, they’re a bit obscure. I you know that Jose 11 is picked up by by Matthew and and this is a prophecy of Jesus going down into Egypt and coming back. But you think, well, he you don’t want to criticize, but it might have been said a little more clearly. Haven’t you ever thought that, am I the only one who has entertained such questions? But when you stop to think about it, any other route would have been utter folly. It would have destroyed the gospel, suppose, for argument’s sake, instead of Isaiah 53 the grave servant song that pictures the servant wounded for our transgressions, supposing instead of that, we have had a prophecy like this in years such and such, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, there will be born in Bethlehem on A night when, in fact, the whole world is being shunted around for the sake of enrollment in their proper countries by decree of Tiberius Caesar of Augustus Caesar, there will be born a child who will be given the name of Jesus. His mother will be Mary, and his punitive father will be Joseph, and they will have descended by donkey from Nazareth, where, in fact, the employment of Joseph will be carpenter. He will be born, and then he will have to flee, because certain wise men will have come from the east and Herod, who will then be ruling, will be in such a bad frame toward the end of his reign that he will try to kill this new messiah. Therefore he will have to flee down to Egypt, and then eventually, in such and such a year, Herod, the great will die, and Archippus, his son, will reign in his stead. He will be a bit of a scoundrel, so that when the family returns, they will go back to Nazareth and so on and so forth. Supposing we have had prophecy along that line written 700 years before Jesus came. Wouldn’t that be impressive? Wouldn’t it?

Now put yourself in the place of Pontius Pilate or Herod Antipas, and you find your name and these prophecies with all the details, and you want to destroy this Jesus utterly. What would you do? You’d ignore him. The last thing you do is crucify him, because that’s all predicted. The last thing you do, oh, in fact, that’s inconceivable, because if it’s all predicted, then you’d have to, but then you would be a robot. It wouldn’t be a choice anymore. You say, Well, I don’t really want to, and I can see that I have to. It’s predicted, so I, I suppose I must. I don’t really want to, but, but something constrains me. The whole thing becomes farcical very quickly. Do you see? What do you have instead? You have a sacrificial system that speaks endlessly of death in order that sinners may be brought near to God. You have a priesthood system that that shows you what it takes for for someone who is alienated from God, to have a mediator to stand between God and sinful human beings to bring you together, you have a temple carefully cordoned off with various courts, and only those who follow God’s prescriptions and sacrifice to the letter, only the high priest can enter into his glory, and only then, once a year, to stand before God’s display of glory in the Shekinah magnificence in the inner court of the temple. You have some prophecies that are propositional, explicit verbal predictions of someone coming in David’s line. And you have some prophecies bound up with models types, we call them, structures which look forward and anticipate. You find God saying, I will come to you and lay bare my arm and I will save you. And then you find God also saying, and I will send my son David to do so too. And only once in a while do those two strings come together in a prophecy like that in Isaiah chapter nine, where one comes who reigns on David’s throne, but it was nevertheless called the mighty God, The everlasting. Father, the Prince of Peace. And in fact, these prophecies are sufficiently difficult that even in Jesus day, many Jews thought there would be two Messiahs, a priestly Messiah and a kingly Messiah. No one, so far as we know, thought that either one of those messiahs would also be suffering servant in but after the fact, you see, the reason why we did not see those things is because we’re so alienated from God, we couldn’t understand that God’s ways in terms of sacrifice. We’re so alienated from God, we don’t really appreciate the dimensions of the grace of God. I submit to you that if there had been a perfect human being through all of those years. He or she would have sussed out the direction of Scripture far more capably than any of us ever did, than any Jew ever did. It is the mark of our losses that we don’t see it until it’s placard before us. But after the fact, when Jesus comes, and we find that in his coming he brings together the priestly elements and the kingly elements and the prophetic elements. We find that he brings together the prophecies that are clear and verbal and propositional, the prophecy prophecies that are hidden and dark and typological. He brings them all together in one person himself, and he goes to the cross, and the early church sees it and says, Thus, it is written that Christ must be crucified, that he must be buried, that he must rise the third day, according to the Scriptures. Thus, the very same gospel that has in some measure been hidden in time past is now revealed through the prophetic writings. For In fact, it is truly there, and God has done it this way. He has done it this way, precisely to bring to full flower, to full fruition the glories of His own wisdom, as his hidden plan now becomes clear, and his own children admire it with breathtaking devotion, this wisdom of God is wisdom in a mystery. The second thing that Paul says is that although this has been hidden, it has always been God’s plan. That’s what the text says. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, of wisdom that has been hidden in the god destined for our glory before time began. We must not think that the cross was plan B, or that he was getting out, which it a wee bit by all those nasties, and therefore he thought of a better one, or that those Jews didn’t submit adequately to the kingdom. So we had to think of another way. This has always been God’s plan, always, in fact, in First Corinthians 13, as we shall see this evening, Paul can act John can actually speak of Christ crucified from before the foundation of the world. That is what the text means, all right. Which doesn’t mean that Christ has died again and again and again and again and again, but that in God’s mind, the cross has always been central, always, always so that although it’s been hidden, it has always been central, and it has been for our glory, planned before the foundation of the world. And the last thing he says about wisdom is this, even though God brought this wisdom to fulfillment in the death of his son, people still do not believe verse eight is very important. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. You see, we must not think that Paul is saying, poor chaps, if they just had a better understanding, then, of course, they wouldn’t have done what they did. They thought he was just an ordinary human being. They weren’t really all that bad. No one would be so stupid as to crucify the Lord of Glory. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying something far more damning than that. He’s saying that if God had laid out all the wisdom in great detail in advance, then of course, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of Glory. That would have been the way to thwart him. But in God’s great wisdom, at the very moment when they thought they were doing away with a messianic pretender, they were fulfilling the very scriptures they didn’t want to have to do it at the very time that they thought that they were destroying. In fact, at that very time they were bringing God’s great wisdom to pass. At the very time that they thought they were being so wise, politically expedient, like Caiaphas, This man must die so that we don’t all die, so that the nation doesn’t die. They thought they were being so wise. In fact, they were being stupid and foolish, and they were bringing God’s wisdom to pass. And if they had had any of that inside, they wouldn’t have done it. Of course not. They had no desire to fulfill God’s plans. They would not have crucified the Lord of Lord. It so that even in the very moment of revelation when God brings all of these things to pass, when these things are placarded on the very pages of history, people still don’t believe. And that remains true today. You see, the events of the gospel are so, far as any past events are concerned, accessible. There’s far more public historical attestation about the coming of Jesus and the birth of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, than any event in the Roman Empire. Far more documentation, far more historical witness. Does that make everybody Christian today? For in addition to God’s gracious self disclosure in public event in history, in space time, event to which there are witnesses, what we also need is another kind of Revelation, a revelation that opens up our minds. Even apart from the public Revelation, we need revelation that opens up our minds, and that brings us to the second contrast. This is the contrast between God’s Spirit and the human spirit. You see in verse nine, Paul has said, quoting scripture from Isaiah and adapting it a wee bit, paraphrasing it. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. We cite these words often at funerals and so apply. They are certainly true. But Paul is not here talking primarily about what takes place after death. He’s not taking he’s not focusing primarily on on the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. He is talking about what has been hidden in the past, in God’s secret wisdom, which is now revealed to us by His Spirit, as it is written. No eye has seen, no ear is heard, no mind is conceived. What God has prepared for those who love Him, we’re still talking about the mystery of the cross, and God has revealed this to us by His Spirit, even now, he is not waiting to reveal these things to us later by the Spirit. We have already grasped God’s great wisdom in the cross. That’s what Paul says.

And then he unpacks this a bit, the Spirit, he says, searches all things, even the deep things of God. By spirit, he means the Holy Spirit. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him. Spirit here, in this context, is simply used for the interior of a human being. Paul is not trying to establish a whole doctrine of of human beings, what we’re like and how the spirit is connected with a with a body and the soul and so forth. It simply says what you are inside. Nobody else can tell. Oh, it’s true that over the breakfast table, you might look at your spouse, and you’ve been married for a number of years now, 20, 3040, you know all the little sticks, and when she holds the coffee cup a certain way and looks at a certain something in the room and smiles, then you know that she’s thinking of a shared event back then. And you can say, I know what you’re thinking, but usually you don’t even know what your spouse is thinking. Do you except within certain frames? How do you find out what is in somebody else’s mind,

unless that person chooses to reveal it? If we cannot even find out what is in another human beings mind, how are we going to find out what’s in God’s mind?

In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, if we are to think God’s thoughts after him, God must reveal them to us, and at one level, he has revealed himself in the public arena, in the cross. But we are so twisted, we are so blind, we do not see the obvious, that we need to have another kind of revelation within us, so that we learn to see the Cross’ significance. We need to see it applied to ourselves. We need to have our eyes opened, for we are dead in trespasses and sins. Indeed, Paul goes on one step further. We have not received the spirit of the world, he says, but the spirit was from God. That is what defines Christians. We have the Spirit of God so that we see God’s wisdom in the cross, that we may understand what God has freely given us, the mystery of the cross, the wisdom of the cross, his own wise plan for reconciling sinners to himself. And now he goes one stage further. That also is the same spirit. That has enabled me to proclaim the cross. He says, This is what we speak. He is now harking back to chapter two, verses four to seven. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit power, the same spirit who has come to awe us just because we are God’s people by definition. This is what what constrains us as God’s people. It is what defines us as God’s people and given us an insight into the cross. Is the same spirit who has enabled me to preach the cross. This is what we speak now, if you look at the footnotes of this verse, you will discover that it is translated in a variety of ways. I think the NIV has it right, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths and spiritual words. What Paul means is this, when I come explaining the cross to you this spiritual truth, I explain things by means of words taught by the spirit that is in language appropriate to the message, not in the rhetoric and manipulation of a fallen world order. But the spirit is also the one who moves me to preach this in the right way with spiritual words, not mystical words or magical words. That’s not the point, but words that are that are genuinely in line with the Spirit prompted by the Spirit, in order that the message of the cross should be seen in all of its stark clarity and simplicity, I do not come to manipulate you with my eloquence and my rhetoric. Paul is still on with the same matter of pride. We always want to present a leg up as if we are on an inside track. And we have special eloquence and we have special power. We have special insight. That is not the way I have done it. Paul says, no, no, no, the same spirit that gave us insight gave me special words to preach to you, and those words are simply words appropriate to the message of the cross. So the second contrast, then, is the contrast between God’s Spirit and the human spirit. For the human spirit, even in the religious arena, let it be said, even in the church, constantly wants to find a way to prove itself better, not more humble, better, to be thought better, brighter, faster, clever. This last week, my wife and I were in Wales. Now that is with speaking at a convention there, and one of the pastors said something to me privately, but I thought was very insightful. As you know, Wales is that a history revival, revivals of which some Welsh are very proud, and even revival can be a temptation to pride. Can it not? He said to me, we were talking amongst ourselves a while ago, and one pastor said, how would we well feel if God sent revival in England first? Isn’t that shattering. You see, even when you are pursuing the best of things, The natural man can pervert them. It is so sad. But Paul says, when he preaches the word of the cross, he does so in a way that is in line with the cross, with words that are not full of pomp and self promotion and vain glory. He does so in a way that is lined up with a message that he preaches, and that brings me to the last contrast. It is the contrast between the natural person and the spiritual person verses 14 to 16, there is a sense in which Paul’s argument has reached the culmination already, but the apostle wants to make sure that that our utter dependence on the Holy Spirit is fully appreciated. So he draws this contrast as well. Here, the natural man in older translations is simply the person without the Spirit. That is what is meant. It means a human being apart from the Spirit of God. Three things are said of such a person. First, those without the Spirit do not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. The Man Without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. Verse 14, that is simply an empirical fact. You see, if you make some wonderful discovery in the realm of mathematics, some new proof for some long forgotten theorem, and publish a paper, then everyone who is bright enough, whether he or she be Hindu or Buddhist or Christian or atheist, doesn’t really make any difference whether you come from the east or from the west, so long as you have the mathematical equipment to understand the argument, you can find out whether the argument holds water or not. If you make some new compound, and in the organic synthesis laboratory, you put together something that has the potential for being a new drug, and you lay it exactly how you do it, then it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist or whether you’re an atheist or. Whether you’re an animist or whether you’re a New Age astrologer, it doesn’t really make any difference if you follow the instructions and cook things the right way. If the experiment has been honest and properly recorded, you can repeat the whole thing. It is in the public domain. So now, shall we say all we have to do is lay out the evidence for the Christian gospel, and then anybody who’s bright enough can see what the facts are, and that’s it. You see it, don’t you? Isn’t that the kind of proof that many people demand for Christianity? Isn’t it? If Christianity were as true as it says it was, as it says it is, that everybody would believe it by now, this has to do with the message of the living God, and we are so lost and so alienated that, in fact, empirically, what we discover is that the person without the Spirit of God simply doesn’t accept these things, whether in Paul’s age or ours. That’s the empirical reality. They’re foolishness, and you have to have the spirit for them even to make sense. Then Paul says that these people not only don’t accept them, but more forcefully, he says they reject them for as they come closer and closer and closer to the doctrine of the cross, to to the teaching that that the eternal Son of God died for our sins and took upon himself our guilt in his own body on the tree. As you come closer and closer and closer to those things, the more they force you to divide. You are either humbled by them and bow before this living God, or you say that just can’t be it’s ridiculous and you reject it. So it’s now not just a question of finding them incoherent and turning away. Now you self consciously turn your back on it, you reject it, you walk away from it. And then Paul says the strongest thing. He says, they cannot understand. Here, there is a focus on their inability, not simply the empirical fact that they don’t accept it, or the empirically observed fact that they actually reject it. But now their constitutional inability, they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Of course, Paul has just made the same point. How can you have the mind of God unless you have the Spirit of God? And then Paul turns by contrast, to the spiritual person, the person with the Spirit. That is the definition of the spiritual person. Here. You have the spirit in common with all Christians. The spiritual man, by contrast, he says, makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment. What does that mean? It does not mean all things without exception, as if the spiritual person can automatically make judgments about all quarks for all the significance of the binomial theorem. It does not mean all without exception, as if this guarantees some some omniscience characteristic in the human frame. Now, what it means is all things right across the spectrum of experience, as opposed to the limitations that are implicit in the natural man. The natural person you see is constrained by by no experience of God or of the spirit. Thus, the person who is tasted of forgiveness and holiness knows not only what holiness and forgiveness taste like, but also what sin and profanity and guilt look like. But the inverse cannot be said. The person who is lost in the profanity and the self centeredness and the absence of the knowledge of God and the guilt does not know what freedom and holiness

and pardon look like that’s what Paul says. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things right across the realm of Christian experience, right across the realm of human experience. But he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment. Of course, not those any men out there are the people who are still lost in the natural world. They will say, Oh, you Christians, you’re so narrow and bigoted. And if we listen to Paul, we must smile back and say, My dear friend, Paul tells me, in all respect, it’s not I who is now in bigoted but you are, because your experience is so constrained you don’t know God. And if you submit to their sorts of judgments and their sorts of value systems and their sorts of structures and their sorts of priorities, in fact, you are constraining yourself back to a lost worldview. But Christians can put all of those things that they enjoy and experience, gifts of God, God’s common grace, and all the sins that we have developed to corrupt them into a still larger framework, the framework of human experience. This. Side of the cross, this side of the gift of the Spirit, this side of what it means to be forgiven, this side of what it means to taste of heaven. Paul quotes from the Old Testament, who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him, on the one hand, that should teach us humility we can’t teach God, but if we have his mind, then our horizons are enlarged. Are enlarged. That’s what Paul says. We have the mind of Christ. That leads me then to these two remarks in closing, it would be wrong simply to expound this passage and not tell you what this means for us today. Let me mention two things that it means for us today. First, it means that, according to the Word of God, spirituality is profoundly tied to the cross, to the gospel and to nothing else. Now, the Gospel has many entailments. It has entailments of obedience and transformed life and all the rest. But having said that, it is tied to the cross, to the wisdom of the cross and to nothing else, it is not the cross plus a special experience, it is not the cross, plus a special gift, it is not the cross, plus a particular form of worship, it is not the cross, plus a necessary 26 years, the fundamental cleavage of the race in this passage is between those who have the spirit and those who do not and those who do cherish the cross.

They know what it means to be forgiven. They gaze in the face of God and they say, Abba Father. They know what it means to have guilt behind them.

They return to the cross for cleansing. They see that in the cross is the supreme climax of God’s gracious self disclosure to men and women. It is in the cross and that is the great turning point. It is the cross, always the cross, and therefore it is always sad when those who name the name of Christ forget the cross or simply assume the cross or put it in the background of their mind, but actually identify themselves, no longer with the gospel anymore, but always with the gospel, plus the gospel plus my wrinkle, makes me more Spiritual than you, because you don’t have my wrinkle. And pathetic. How do you get to be more spiritual than to see all of reality in the light of the cross? The very notion verges on blasphemy. I

It is important always to recognize that being spiritual does not lead to elitism. It does not lead to arrogance. It leads to a deeper understanding of God’s profound mystery of redemption through A crucified Messiah, and those who are most godly, most spiritual, for there are degrees always most magnify the cross. There are no exceptions. And finally, this insight into the cross cannot be gained apart from the work of the Spirit. It cannot be gained apart from the work of the Spirit. This is true in individual conversions. It is also true when God comes through and revives the church. The church does not then enter simply into some level of experience divorced from the cross. The Church, by God’s Spirit, is brought back to the cross and deals with God Himself through the message of forgiveness at the cross. And then perhaps in a great display of power, there may be many, many, many swept into the kingdom, but they will be swept into the kingdom not because you preach the Spirit’s power, but because you preach the cross strengthened by the Spirit’s power. The Cross, always the cross, the Gospel, always the gospel, and apart from the Spirit’s powerful work in our lives, we will always end up short, changing that message, assuming it, but depreciating it, failing to come to grips with the fact that we stand where we stand before the living God. Because Christ Jesus died for sinners and.