WISDOM BY THE SPIRIT – 1 Corinthians 2:10b-13

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on June 10, 2018 under 2018 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; June 10, 2018 from 1 Corinthians 2:10b-13

Theme: The deep things of divine truth are only known through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

The apostle Paul was writing to the Christians in the ancient city of Corinth about something that ought to be of interest to all of us: true wisdom from God.

These ancient believers, however, were becoming distracted from Gods wisdom.  They were overly focused on measuring one another, favoring some over others, and being divided from each other by—not true wisdom from God—but the so-called ‘wisdom’ of this fallen world.

Paul reminded these believers that when he first brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to them, he didn’t come to them with the kind of flashy displays of the ‘worldly wisdom’ that they were admiring.  Instead, he came with the simplicity of the gospel—spoken in clear, straight-forward terms—of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”  Though he avoided the world’s form of wisdom, he told them in 1 Corinthians 2:6-10;

However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.  But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:6-10a).

And please give special attention to those last few words.  The wisdom that Paul spoke of is the wisdom from God—the wisdom that revealed glorious spiritual realities to us.  It dealt with the eternal things that God has prepared for those who love Him and who are made right with Him by faith in the cross of His Son Jesus Christ.  These are great treasures of wisdom concerning the glorious riches of an eternal inheritance kept for us in heaven—things that human eye has not seen, nor of which human ear has heard, nor that even the most brilliant efforts of human reasoning ever conceived.  They are things that can only be revealed to us by God.  And as Paul wrote in verse 10, they are things that God has revealed “through His Spirit”.

And to bring us to our passage this morning.  It is that ‘revealing’ ministry of the Holy Spirit that Paul goes on to write about in verses 10-13;

For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.  For what man 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 the Spirit of God.  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.  These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual (vv. 10b-13).

In verse 9, Paul spoke of the inability of mere ‘human wisdom’ to conceive of “the things which God has prepared for those who love Him”; and in verse 12, he speaks of our knowing “the things that have been freely given to us by God”.  So; how is it that these glorious ‘inconceivable’ spiritual realities can truly be ‘known’ by those who love Him?  It would take great wisdom to know them; but clearly, it cannot be by frail, weak, fallen ‘human wisdom’.

Paul tells us the only way that these things can be known by us.  And that is by what He said at the beginning of verse 10—that “God has revealed them to us through His Spirit”.

* * * * * * * * * *

Dear brothers and sisters; I don’t believe we give near enough thought to what a wonderful thing it is that God has placed His Holy Spirit in us.  How thankful we should be for the Spirit’s ministry to us!

I have to make a confession to you.  I didn’t grow up in a home where the Christian faith was emphasized; and I wasn’t raised in a church.  So when I first heard the gospel and believed, and invited Jesus to be the Lord of my life, I went along for a long time not really knowing or understanding who or what this ‘Holy Spirit’ was that other Christians were talking about.  I’m rather embarrassed to say this—and I hope I don’t seem irreverent in sharing it—but for the longest time, I thought the Holy Spirit was basically an impersonal ‘attitude’—a really excited kind of enthusiasm.  I was in high-school at the time.  I knew what “school spirit” was.  It meant that you were rooting for your school.  And I honestly thought that that’s was what the “Holy Spirit” was—a non-personal feeling of holy excitement; a matter of really rooting enthusiastically for the things of God.  And as far as I understood it, I certainly was all for being excited about the things of God!  I’m so glad, though, that my very primitive misunderstanding got corrected along the way.  It was, in fact, that very Holy Spirit who helped me to grow.

As I grew up in the faith, and as I read the Bible more, I came to understand that the God of the Bible that we worship is one God—but that He eternally exists in three co-equal, co-eternal Persons.  I cannot pretend to understand the mystery of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But I most certainly believe it, because the Bible teaches it.  And as I grew in the faith, I also came to appreciate the wonderful role these three Persons—each fully divine—play in my salvation.  I grew to understand that the Father—the first Person—is the one who created me, who in love chose me for adoption, and who sent His Son to die on the cross for my salvation.  I grew to understand that the Son—the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ—is the one who obeyed the Father’s will, who took full human nature to Himself and became one of us, who died on the cross for my sins, and who now shares His inheritance with me.  And I grew to understand that the Holy Spirit—the third Person—is the one who is sent by both the Father and the Son to guide me to a saving faith in Jesus, to indwell me, to seal me for eternal salvation, to reveal the realities of that inheritance to me, and to help me live like what I now am in the sight of God.

I have grown over the years to truly love the Holy Spirit and His ministry in my life.  If you’re a believer in Jesus, then the same Holy Spirit is at work in you.  And I sincerely believe we do not think about His ministry near enough.  How helpless we would be without Him!  How thankful we should be to Him!  How much we should love Him!

Well; this morning’s passage talks about the ministry of this divine Friend and Helper in our lives, the Holy Spirit—and particularly as His ministry relates to the whole question of ‘wisdom’ with which the Corinthians were struggling.  Mere human wisdom cannot grasp the gospel of Jesus Christ.  As Paul wrote earlier, the very message of the cross of Jesus that saves us comes across as complete ‘foolishness’ to the so-called ‘wisdom’ of this world.  Fallen human wisdom certainly can’t help us to grasp the truths of all that God has given us in Jesus Christ.  For such wisdom as that, we need the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Putting the Holy Spirit’s ministry in place in our thinking will also put mere ‘human wisdom’ into perspective.  It will help us to see how frail mere ‘human wisdom’ is.  It will help us learn not to divide from one another over ‘the wisdom of this age’.  And that’s why Paul wrote to the Corinthians about it.  The words he wrote in verses 10-13 tell us that the deep things of divine truth that are given to us in Christ are only known to the believer through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

How very essential the ministry of the Holy Spirit is, then, when it comes to true wisdom!

* * * * * * * * * *

Now; as we look at what Paul had to say, we find that his words had a very logical order to them.  He was laying things out a very careful argument.  And the very first point he made was that …

1.  ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT KNOWS THE DEEP TRUTHS OF GOD.

Mankind cannot, in and of its own powers of reasoning and philosophy and insight, grab hold of ultimate truth.  Humanity is fallen in Adam; and it cannot pull itself up by its own intellectual ‘boot-straps’.  Ultimate truth about the nature of God and of the universe that He has made—and particularly the truths about God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ and the rich blessings He bestows upon those who believe on His Son—can only be rightly known in the way that Paul identified to us; and that is by ‘revelation’.  “God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.”

And so; to elaborate on that, Paul goes on to say in verse 10; “For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.”

Please take a moment and think with me about that.  The word that Paul used for ‘search’ is one that means to diligently examine and scrutinize a thing.  It’s the same word that the Bible used when it spoke of people ‘searching the scriptures’ or of ‘searching into a matter’.  Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit does that too.  In fact, he tells us that the Holy Spirit does it with respect to all things.  There is not a single thing in all of the created universe that the Holy Spirit does not search out and completely examine and perfectly scrutinize; because He is co-equally divine with the Father and the Son.  Nothing is hidden from the Holy Spirit’s view.  And Paul is not telling us that the Holy Spirit searches and examines all things in order to learn something that He doesn’t already know; because, as God, His knowledge is perfect.  Rather, He searches and examines all things as an expression of the fact that He already completely knows all things infinitely!

This includes us, by the way. In Psalm 139:1, King David wrote, “O LORD, You have searched me and know me.”  There isn’t even a thought that is about to be conceived in our mind, but the Holy Spirit already knows it completely.  And as believers, we should be grateful for the Spirit’s perfect knowledge of us; because by His perfect ‘searching’ of our hearts, He is able to help us in our relationship to the Father.  Paul wrote in Romans 8;

Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses.  For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.  Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27).

The Spirit knows our deepest thoughts and longings and yearnings of our heart; and because the Father knows all that the Spirit knows, then the Father knows how best to answer our prayers—even when we don’t know for sure how to pray them.

Now; the point that Paul is making in this is that because the Holy Spirit searches all things—including our own hearts—He also searches even “the deep things of God.”  The Holy Spirit—and He alone—is able to search out, and examine, and know perfectly “the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” in Christ.

Paul went on in verse 11 to explain all of this by way of analogy.  He wrote something that we would all know personally.  “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?”  You have certainly experienced that, haven’t you?  Someone might say to you, “I know what you’re probably thinking …”; and then they go on to completely misunderstand you and misrepresent your thoughts.  It’s a little irritating; isn’t it?  You know they were wrong; because you’re already inside yourself—and you know better than any other human being what was going on within.  It’s like it says in Proverbs 14:10;  “The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its joy.”

And that’s when Paul goes on to say, “Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.”  Just as the spirit within a woman or a man knows perfectly well what is going on within, so also the Holy Spirit knows perfectly the things of God.  This would mean that the only way for us to know true wisdom from God is from the Holy Spirit.  Whenever any human being presumes to rise up in their own powers of reasoning or in their own pretended spiritual insight and proposes ultimate truth apart from the Holy Spirit, we can know that they’re wrong and utterly untrustworthy in what they say.  Only the Holy Spirit of God can know and tell us the things of God.

* * * * * * * * * *

So; that’s the first point in Paul’s careful argument—that only the Holy Spirit knows the deep truth of God.  And that leads us to his second point; that …

2.  THESE TRUTHS ARE TAUGHT ONLY TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE HOLY SPIRIT.

If only the Holy Spirit knows the things of God, then it follows that the only human beings that can know the eternal truths from God are the ones to whom that truth has been revealed—to those who are taught by the Holy Spirit.  And Paul made just such an affirmation in verse 12.  He wrote, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God …”

Now; I believe that when Paul says “we”, he means all believers.  The Bible teaches us that everyone who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ and has been born-again has been given the Holy Spirit.  To be a redeemed believer in Jesus Christ is the same thing as being someone in whom the Holy Spirit dwells; and there is no such thing as a truly redeemed woman or man who does not have the Holy Spirit.  Paul put it this way in Romans 8:9;

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His (Romans 8:9).

So you can be assured, dear brothers and sisters, that if you are truly ‘in Christ’, then the Holy Spirit is truly in you.

And then, note carefully why Paul says that we have received, not ‘the spirit of the world’ (that is, the whole influence of the system and values of this world; the fallen ‘wisdom of this age’), but “the Spirit who is from God”.  We have been given Him for a reason.  It’s “that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

Think of that!  One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit toward us—one of the things that the Father sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us in order to do—is that He might reveal the things of God to us so that we might know, in a perfect and complete way, the things that have freely been given to us by God in Christ.

Did you know that that’s one of the things that the Lord Jesus told His disciples before He went to the cross and was raised and ascended to the Father?  He told them in John 16;

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.  All things that the Father has are Mine.  Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you” (John 16:12-15).

So; the Lord Jesus affirmed that the Holy Spirit was sent to dwell in us so that “we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God”.  And the apostle Peter also affirmed this to us.  He wrote about our salvation in Christ in 1 Peter 1; and said,

Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.  To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things which angels desire to look into (1 Peter 1:10-12).

So; it’s an absolute fact that ultimate truth—the true wisdom from God—cannot be arrived at or grasped by fallen human wisdom.  Only the Holy Spirit knows the deep truths of God.  But it’s also an absolute fact that these truths can be known by human beings.  They are revealed to those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit through a relationship by faith with Jesus Christ.  All those who have placed their faith in Jesus and are redeemed by His blood are indwelt by the only one who knows the deep things of God—and so, only those who have the Holy Spirit can be taught these truths.

* * * * * * * * * *

And He does teach those truths to us, dear brothers and sisters!  He reveals them in propositional form in words—reliable words that we can read, and understand, and think about, and learn from.  That’s the last point in Paul’s argument in this passage; that …

3.  THE HOLY SPIRIT EVEN GAVE THE VERY WORDS BY WHICH THESE TRUTHS MAY BE UNDERSTOOD.

In verse 13, Paul wrote; “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”

Now; I believe that the “we” of verse 13 is different from the “we” in verse 12.  I believe that in verse 12 he was speaking of all Christians, but in verse 13, he is speaking specifically of the apostles.  They, after all, were the ones entrusted by our Lord with the first-hand testimony of His ministry and His teaching; and it was they who were given the task of writing that testimony down for us in the Scriptures.

And Paul wanted to make very sure that his Corinthian brothers and sisters did not think that he was speaking to them from out of his own powers of wisdom and insight in telling them the truths taught by the Spirit.  Neither did he rely on human wisdom, nor did any of the other apostles.  Nor did they write it all down in the power of human wisdom.  The Holy Spirit even guided them in their very words; so that the truths of God’s eternal wisdom could be understood by us accurately—combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words to Spirit-indwelt people.

This, of course, does not mean that Paul and the other apostles were mere ‘machines’—as if the Holy Spirit somehow took over their wills and wrote through them in spite of themselves.  All you have to do is read what the apostles wrote to recognize that they all wrote with their own personalities and styles.  But in what they wrote, the Holy Spirit—as it were—’carried them along’; so that what they chose to write was exactly what the Spirit wanted them to write.  The apostle Peter puts it this way;

… knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 2:20-21).

What a powerful argument this is, then!  Paul affirmed first that only the Holy Spirit can know the deep truths of God (and that He indeed does); and second that these truths are taught only to those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling them (which is true for all those who have faith in Jesus Christ); and finally that the Holy Spirit has provided this truth to us in such clear and unmistakable form that He has even guided that it be written down—providing even the very words—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”

How grateful we should be that the Holy Spirit ministers true wisdom to us!

* * * * * * * * * *

I would like to close with a reading from the Old Testament book of Job.

In Chapter 28, we find an amazing description of the search for wisdom.  Job spoke of how men engage in great works of mining beneath the ground—seek precious gems and rare stones from out of the deep places of the earth.  It’s a remarkable passage to read.  And near the end, he says this:

“From where then does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hidden from the eyes of all living,
And concealed from the birds of the air.
Destruction and Death say,
‘We have heard a report about it with our ears.’
God understands its way,
And He knows its place.
For He looks to the ends of the earth,
And sees under the whole heavens,
To establish a weight for the wind,
And apportion the waters by measure.
When He made a law for the rain,
And a path for the thunderbolt,
Then He saw wisdom and declared it;
He prepared it, indeed, He searched it out.

And to man He said,
‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
And to depart from evil is understanding’” (Job 28:20-28)

Dear brothers and sisters; let’s be careful not to elevate human wisdom out of proper perspective.  When we do, we only hurt ourselves and our fellowship with one another in Christ.  Let’s instead remember that true wisdom is not accessible to human beings in their own power.  God alone has it.  Only the Holy Spirit knows the things of God, and only He can reveal them to us in Christ.  And He has done so—in the Bible.