We don't have to rely on the world's guesses and opinions. We didn't learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we're passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.
1 Corinthians 2:6-16
I. The redemption of Jesus Christ is a great mystery of the Divine thought and heart.
The Apostle uses a singular term to designate those to whom the revelation is made. "We speak wisdom," he says, "among them that are perfect,"—among those who have qualifications for receiving the wisdom. Spiritual religion is utterly incomprehensible to many intelligent people. They can understand theology as a science of God; they can understand religion as a theory, but they have no conception of its spiritual character; they have no conception of it as a spiritual sentiment, as a passionate affection, as a fellowship with God, a yearning and joy of the man’s whole consciousness. This is what St. Paul means when he says—"The natural man discerns not the things of the spirit"; they are discerned only by a spiritual faculty.
This, then, is what is meant when it is said that the gospel of Christ is wisdom unto the perfect—that is, to the spiritual, to the susceptible, to the spiritual man with spiritual faculties.
II. The mission of Christ and the purpose of Christian teaching are to reveal this mystery to men—to men of spiritual faculty, to men whom the Spirit of God touches and teaches. Our poor human thoughts cannot compass infinite things.
All religion runs up into the mysterious, and must do so. Apart from Christianity, the mystery of the Divine Being is just as inscrutable as the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Instead of adding to the mystery of God, Jesus Christ gives us our highest understanding of God.
We understand more of God through Jesus Christ than we can on any other theory. And yet even so, how much remains that is impenetrable!
Who can fathom the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the atonement, the mystery of the quickening of spiritual life in men, the mystery even of moral feeling, moral principle, the working of moral life, the mystery of conscience, which is the consciousness of God?
In the love of Christ, in the love of God, there are heights and depths that pass knowledge.
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 Savior 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.
1 Corinthians 2:16
I. What is the mind of Christ? Is it some high intellectual attainment? Or is it some great moral victory over the affections? The expression is evidently a very full one; for you may take the words of a man and you may take the actions of a man, and still fall short of the mind of that man. For the mind of a man is the spirit of a man. It is the motive which actuates him; it is the feeling which is unconsciously molding his conduct every moment; it is the inner life which is continually giving the tone and the character to his outer being.
II. The believer is always striving after the mind of Christ. Nothing less will satisfy him, because nothing less will satisfy God. The soul of Jesus, infinitely stored with the Holy Spirit, becomes a fountain from whence again that Spirit is always pouring out into His own people; so that if ever we receive any grace of the Spirit, we are actually receiving a portion, however small, of the mind of Jesus Christ.
III. See, then, the way by which you are to obtain the mind of Christ. Every way you can, live close to Him, think of Him, meditate upon Him, hold communion with Him, lie at His feet, do constantly acts for His sake, suffer for Him, laud Him; talk of Him, lean upon Him, realise communion with Him, and invariably as you do this you are catching His mind.
IV. Note some of the advantages which belong to those who really have the mind of Christ.
(1) No man can really understand the Bible who does not bring to the study of it the mind of Christ.
(2) The possession of the mind of Christ is a wonderful clue to bear with us in the intricate windings of the daily labyrinth of life.
(3) They have the benefit of the mind of Christ who wish to pray rightly. Those who bring Christ in them to their knees, having the mind of Christian asking, know what is the mind of Christ in giving.
