Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by 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. 1 Corinthians 2:12-16

In the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he spends a great deal of times underlining our essential need for the Holy Spirit. He begins the chapter recounting the decision he made after his disappointing stint in Athens (see Acts 17). While in Athens, Paul had rolled out his most eloquent arguments and debated with the philosophers on Mars Hill with little response. I’m certain that he spent a number of hours in soul searching and asking the Spirit why his strategy had so little effect. When he came to Corinth he had settled on an entirely different approach. “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom, as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God…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” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).

In his two letters to the church at Corinth, he speaks of power at least 25 times. He always relates power to the Holy Spirit as did Jesus, who had instructed the first disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from the Holy Spirit.

There are numerous ways in which the Spirit enables us to serve God. In this text, Paul emphasizes our ability to comprehend God and his ways. First of all, he says, the Spirit gives us understanding. Paul had a miserable experience trying to reason with the “wise men” of Athens. Ultimately, what he was telling them made no sense to their intellectual leanings. Paul begins the section I quoted at the beginning of this blog by telling us that God gave us his Spirit so that we could understand the things God has given us. Spiritual understanding is critical to faith and without the Spirit, there is no spiritual understanding.

For those of us who believe, we often marvel that some of the brightest minds of our time consider the complexities of the universe and still walk away as atheists. Paul, who was a brilliant scholar himself, said, “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” (1 Cor. 2:14). The word translated as “discerned” here means to make an appraisal, a judgment, or a right evaluation of something. In other words, without the Spirit of God in us, we cannot evaluate or judge truth accurately. So…don’t be surprised that university professors ridicule our faith.

It is not that spiritual things are not logical; it is just that spiritual logic is not the same as natural logic. When I was first studying to be a minister in a fellowship that did not accept the present- day ministry of the Holy Spirit, I was surrounded by very bright men who studied the scriptures daily. However, in an attempt to understand difficult passages, they applied Aristotelian logic to the scriptures. Their conclusions were inevitably legalistic. Think about it. They applied reasoning processes developed by pagan philosophers and applied them to truths of the Spirit and, I believe, consistently came away with false conclusions. If you don’t have the Spirit or don’t listen to the Spirit you cannot understand spiritual things. Spiritual logic turns natural logic on its head – the first shall be last, the least shall be greatest, the save your life you must lose it, and so on. To the man without the Spirit, those things sound naïve and foolish. To us they are cornerstone truths in the kingdom of God.

As Paul considered that truth, he put away his eloquent outlines that appealed to man’s wisdom and, instead, preached a simple gospel followed by demonstrations of the Spirit’s power. One of the great values of power in evangelism is that the power of the Spirit upsets the natural man’s paradigm – his way of understanding the world. When the rational or scientific man encounters the power of God in prophecy, healing, deliverance, raising the dead, walking on water, etc. his mindset cannot explain adequately what has happened and he experiences a paradigm shift – an openness to knew possibilities. Paul experienced that shift on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians while he was still known as Saul of Tarsus.

Even as Christians, I believe we have missed part of the implications of what Paul has told us in this text. The amazing truth he gives us is that we have the mind of Christ – the mind through which the universe was created. Too often, we limit spiritual understanding to theology rather than all understanding that comes from the mind of Christ. What if we believed that the cure to cancer was available to us because we are tapped into the mind of Christ who understands perfectly everything from the forces that created the universe to sub-atomic physics as well as the cellular structure and genetics of the human body? God cares about our health as well as our salvation. He cares about the suffering of men in this world as well as the world to come. Jesus said that his Spirit would lead us into all truth. We should be teaching ourselves and our children to ask God for spiritually creative pathways for music, art, literature, media, and architecture along with heavenly solutions to disease, world hunger, poverty, energy, and pollution. By restricting God’s truth to theology only, we have, in all likelihood, robbed the world of uncounted blessings.

The Holy Spirit is a game changer that opens us up to the very mind and heart of God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. His presence and power sets us apart from all people on earth. While some churches discourage any pursuit of the Holy Spirit and his power, we should be pursuing Him and all that He has with all of our hearts. It is the Spirit who gives us understanding and then empowers us to activate that understanding with the same power that raised Jesus from the grave. What a gift and what a privilege for those who believe in the Risen Lord. Make the most of his Spirit living in you today! Ask Him for answers to everything.