THE MIND OF CHRIST – 1 Corinthians 2:14-16

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on June 24, 2018 under 2018 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; June 24, 2018 from 1 Corinthians 2:14-16

Theme: The redeemed man or woman in Christ has the mind of Christ, and can thus discern spiritual truth.

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

I have, as a treasured possession, my mother’s old King James Scofield Reference Bible. I love seeing it on the shelf; and I often pull it out and read from it. But it has more than a mere sentimental value to me because it was my mother’s. It also reminds me, every time I open it and read from it, of a great change that occurred in my life when I first believed on Jesus.

Many years ago, before I trusted Jesus as my Savior, I tried a time or two to read from that old Bible. My mother would keep it on the dresser; and I would occasionally sneak in, take it to my room, and try to read from it. And I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. I knew that the Bible was important, and so, I assumed that it would be good to get to know what it said. But it really didn’t make much sense to me. I even remember one time when I got it and tried to just read from the beginning—from Genesis 1:1 and onward. I was a little bit familiar with some of the stories that I was finding in the first few pages of that old Bible—stories about the creation and of the fall of mankind, and of Cain and Abel. But I struggled to see the value of these stories. They even seemed a bit hard to swallow. And then when I got to Genesis 5, and started to read from the ‘so-and-so begot so-and-so’ section—and then flipped ahead to how much more of the Bible there was yet to get through—I put it back on my mother’s dresser in discouragement and said, “Forget it!”

That pretty much described my relationship with the Bible—until the summer of 1973, that is. I was 16 years old; and it was one night in the middle of August of that summer that I watched Billy Graham on television, and felt the conviction of my sin, and prayed with him to receive Jesus as my Savior. I felt every burden of sin leave me; and for the first time, I felt God’s love and forgiveness and full favor.

Now, it must have been that Dr. Graham talked about John 3:16 in his sermon; because I went the next day or so to sneak away again with my mother’s Bible, found the Gospel of John, and started reading. And I was thrilled to discover that it made complete sense to me! I felt like I knew the very same Lord Jesus that those words were talking about. I felt as if what it was describing had actually happened to me. I remember going back to the beginning of the New Testament and starting to read. I can’t say I understood everything perfectly; but I got the basics, and I was eager to learn more. It was as if a part of my mind that had been shut off had suddenly been turned on, and a new ability to grasp what the Bible says had been awakened. I even got a Bible of my own (so I could quit stealing my mothers’ Bible), and started to read again from the beginning at Genesis. And it was all coming together for me!

I would even say that, after that first prayer, my mind was awakened in lots of other ways too. I began to grow in my faith in Jesus; and my place in this world as His follower was beginning to make more sense to me. I began to pray to Him more about the things that were going on in my life. I began to see from the Bible that certain things in my life needed to stop happening, and certain other things begin. I started to attend a church, and was listening to others as they described their relationship with Jesus. I was growing to understand the practical implications of what Jesus did for me; and it was changing my life—and changing my thinking—all the way around.

That will be forty-five years ago this summer. I have read through the Bible multiple times now; and have spent most of my life since then studying what it says both devotionally and academically. And after my mother had passed away, her old Bible was given to me. I don’t have to steal it anymore! And I love to keep it around as a reminder to me of how little of spiritual truth I understood way back then, and of how much my understanding has been opened since that time, and of how entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as my Savior was what made the difference.

* * * * * * * * * *

Now; the experience that I have been describing to you—that transformation in my understanding that I experienced through God’s grace—is something that I believe the apostle Paul is speaking about in our passage this morning.

We have been studying together from 1 Corinthians 2; and in it, Paul had been speaking about the limitations of mere ‘human’ wisdom. Paul had been telling his readers that there are two kinds of ‘wisdom’ in operation in the world; one is the fallen wisdom of man that is based on human capabilities apart from a relationship with God—a ‘wisdom’ in name only—a wisdom that cannot grasp the things of God. The other is true wisdom—the revealed wisdom from God—the wisdom that rightly understands and grasps the spiritual truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul spoke of this difference in 1 Corinthians 2:7-10;

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. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:7-10).

As Christians, we must not measure things by this world’s wisdom, but rather, by the revealed wisdom from God. The Christians to whom Paul wrote had been doing things on the basis of the wrong wisdom—measuring matters within the church on the basis of fallen human ‘wisdom’, and thus becoming divisive toward one another. Paul went on to explain that merely human standards of wisdom are inadequate when it comes to evaluating the spiritual realities that are ours in Christ.

He taught them that only the Holy Spirit—who alone can know the mind of God, because He is the third Person of the Trinity—can teach truths about the spiritual realities that are ours in Christ. These spiritual things, he says, are even put into words that the Holy Spirit Himself gives—things that the apostles and the prophets recorded for us in the pages of the Bible—so that we can accurately understand the truths about them. To know these things by the power of the Holy Spirit is to have true wisdom.

And then in verses 14-16—in the passage that I ask us to consider this morning—Paul writes what I feel is a perfect description of why it was that I could not understand the Bible before I came to know Jesus; and yet, after trusting Jesus, could understand it with what felt like an awakened mind:

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ (vv. 14-16).

I believe the difference can be summed up this way: The unsaved person cannot understand the things of God because she or he lacks something that only the redeemed person has—and that is ‘the mind of Christ’.

This is describing something truly remarkable to us. It is something that explains much that we see in our world today. It explains why it is that some people—unbelieving people with remarkable minds and remarkable capabilities of intellect—find the Christian faith to be absolute foolishness; and yet why other people—believing people with equally remarkable minds—can find it to be absolutely sensible and intellectually satisfying to embrace all that the Bible tells us. It’s not because one is smarter than the other. Rather, it’s because one has been given a spiritual enablement from God that the other does not have. One has been granted a capacity to receive spiritual wisdom that has not been granted to the other. The believer has the mind of Christ and can thus discern spiritual truth.

What an amazing thing this is!—to have ‘the mind of Christ’! It’s very much worth taking the time to carefully study what Paul says about it. And in fact, may God help us to yield ourselves to that very thing we’re studying—the mind of Christ Himself—as we seek to understand it!

* * * * * * * * * * *

Now; look first with me at verse 14. Paul writes, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” And it’s here that we are given an explanation for why it is that I could not understand the truth from the Bible before I became a believer. It’s because …

1. A ‘NATURAL’ MAN CANNOT DISCERN SPIRITUAL TRUTH.

What does Paul mean by a ‘natural’ man? The word that Paul uses in the original language is one that is drawn from the word for ‘soul’. It would be as if Paul was speaking of a “soulish” man. But because it is set in contrast to the ‘spiritual’ man, we should understand him to be speaking of a person who does not have the Holy Spirit, or who does not operate on the principle of the Holy Spirit’s enabling. He would be an ‘unsaved’ man who can operate only upon ‘sensual’ principles or on the basis of ‘human’ powers of reasoning and thinking; that is to say, the unredeemed inner dimension of a man. I think Paul gave a pretty good description of what he means in Ephesians 4:17-19;

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness (Ephesians 4:17-19).

That was how I lived my life before I trusted Jesus. I really couldn’t do anything otherwise. I had no capacity to do anything else but conduct myself by the futility of my darkened and God-alienated ‘soul’.

But though my mind was darkened, that didn’t mean I didn’t think or reason. I certainly did. Everyone, in fact, who is an unbeliever is still thinking and reasoning. But they are doing so in a darkened way—a way that’s out of kilter from the truth. As one theologian has put it, they’re like the carpenter who uses a table-saw with the blade set at the wrong angle. All the boards get cut all the way through; but they all get cut wrong.

Look at what Paul says about the ‘natural’ man. He says that he “does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him …” He hears these things. He could have heard Billy Graham preach the gospel just as I had. But just like in Jesus’ parable, it would have fallen upon unfruitful soil. The ‘natural’ man does not ‘receive’ those things because he considers them to be ‘foolishness’. That’s what Paul said earlier in 1 Corinthians 1:18; that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing …” “How can it be that a Man dying on the cross two-thousand years ago can have anything to do with me?” they would say. “What silly nonsense! And besides; if I needed a Savior, it should be someone who was mighty and noble and greater than me—not Someone who died a disgusting execution on a criminal’s cross!”

And as Paul makes clear to us, it’s not that they just ‘will not’ receive spiritual truth from the gospel. It’s that they cannot do so. They do not have the capability. Paul says, “nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” A man who operates only on mere ‘soulish’ human principles—a ‘natural’ man—an unredeemed man who has not experienced the grace of God—cannot examine or scrutinize or analyze or discern spiritual things.

Early in my time as a student at Bible college, several of us were given the opportunity to have lunch with Dr. Kenneth Kantzer. Dr. Kantzer was a remarkable man. He was the editor of Christianity Today. He had earned his Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Religion from Harvard; and came through it all with all his evangelical commitments intact. I’ll never forget that remarkable lunch meeting.

During lunch, he told some us students about one of his professors. It was someone that he took courses from on the Bible. This man, he told us, knew the text of the Bible backward and forward; and in the original languages. He had an astonishing and amazing grasp of what the Bible teaches. He was truly a brilliant scholar. And yet, he did not believe anything that the Bible taught. He had spent his life studying the Bible and interacting with its teaching—and to a depth that very few people would have the intellectual power to reach; and yet, he didn’t believe it or embrace it. Dr. Kantzer told us that, as a student, he asked this professor why he did it all. Why did he spend his whole life studying so thoroughly the Bible and its languages and its doctrines even though he didn’t believe what it said? Dr. Kantzer said that the man rubbed his chin and said that no one had ever asked him that before. “I don’t know,” the old professor said. “I guess it’s fun. It’s like working on a puzzle.”

Can you imagine a brilliant man like that spending his life studying God’s word—and coming away with nothing more than the fun of working on a puzzle? But it’s no wonder that it was a puzzle to him. Paul tells us why. It’s certainly not because that brilliant scholar couldn’t think. Rather, it’s because the natural man—the ‘soulishly-focused’ man—the unredeemed man who operates only on the principle of the capacities of the fallen human mind—even a brilliant natural man—does not receive and cannot know spiritual truth that can only be given by the gracious work of the Holy Spirit.

You know, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; we shouldn’t hesitate to tell people the truth of the gospel. We should share with them what God’s word says. We should pass on spiritual information to the unsaved people around us when we can. But if that’s all we do—if all we do is give them information—then we’re not appreciating the situation as God’s word tells us that it is. We would only be speaking to their unredeemed ‘natural’ minds. What we should also do—in fact, what we should do first—is pray that God would graciously give them the mind to understand and receive that truth to the saving of their soul.

We should behave toward them as Paul suggests to us in 2 Timothy 2:25-26;

… in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will (2 Timothy 2:25-26).

* * * * * * * * * * *

I sincerely believe that someone—somewhere—was praying for me while I was still an unbeliever. I believe that’s why God—at just the right time—opened my understanding to the gospel; so that when I heard it, I had the capability of receiving it; and as a result, I believed. And it was from then on that I could pick up the Bible, and continue reading it—even though I was certainly no scholar—and grasp the eternal spiritual truths it declared in a saving way, and grow to know and love and follow Jesus Christ.

Only someone who has experienced the grace of God in that way—someone upon whom the Holy Spirit has worked to give life to their spirit—can receive and understand and grow in spiritual truth. That’s the next point that Paul teaches us in our passage. A ‘natural’ man does not have the capacity to grasp these things; because …

A ‘SPIRITUAL’ MAN IS ENABLED TO DISCERN SPIRITUAL TRUTH.

In verse 15, Paul says, “But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.”

When Paul speaks of someone who is ‘spiritual’, he doesn’t mean it in the same way so many people mean in pop-culture today mean ‘spiritual’. Usually, when people talk about being ‘spiritual’ today, they mean that they are drawn toward an ‘inward’ look; and seek to find insight and understanding from within. But if a natural person tries to find true insight and understanding within, he or she is in for a bad let-down. There are no insights to be found there that are of any value; because we are fallen in sin. The truly ‘spiritual’ woman or man is someone who has experienced what Paul describes in verse 12. They are someone who has “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.”

And it’s that person—the truly ‘spiritual’ person—that, as Paul says, is able to ‘judge’ all things. The word that Paul uses for ‘judge’ here is one that means to discern or analyze or scrutinize or appraise things correctly. I don’t believe that this means that by becoming a Christian, you instantly ‘know’ all things. (I certainly hope that’s not the case, anyway; because I certainly don’t ‘know’ everything there is to know about ‘all things’.) I believe we should understand this only in the context that Paul spoke it; and that is, that we now have the ability to rightly judge and apprehend “all things” pertaining to what has been freely given to us in Christ. We can recognize the true from the false. I believe that the apostle John spoke of this in 1 John 2:26-27; when he wrote;

These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him (1 John 2:26-27).

As spiritual women and men, we are able to pick up our Bibles, read the truth that God has given us, and—by the work of the Holy Spirit—make right judgment-calls about the things of Christ and can correctly apprehend spiritual truth. And indeed, that does make a difference in all our ‘knowing’ about everything else in the world from then on.

And this is true, as Paul goes on to say, even when the ‘natural’ people of this world misunderstand and misjudge us. Paul wrote that the spiritual man “judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.” The word “rightly” isn’t in the original language, but I believe it is legitimate to understand Paul as meaning that we are not ‘rightly’ or ‘accurately’ judged by the unbelieving people of this world. Paul said in Chapter 1 that, as far as this world is concerned, we are the ‘foolish’ ones; the ‘weak’ and ‘base’ and ‘despised’. But that, again, is because the ‘natural’ man judges things on the basis of the powers of fallen human reason—and not on the basis of the wisdom that can only come from God.

* * * * * * * * * *

That leads us to one more thing that Paul tells us about the difference between the ‘natural’ man and the ‘spiritual’ man. And that is that …

THE DIFFERENCE IS BECAUSE THE ‘SPIRITUAL’ MAN HAS BEEN GIVEN THE MIND OF CHRIST.

Paul puts the ‘natural’ man’s uninformed judgment into perspective in verse 16. He quotes from Isaiah 40 and says; “For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’” Certainly no ‘natural’ man can do that. To instruct the Lord—or to be His ‘counselor’ as it says in Isaiah—would require that that someone would have to have a greater mind than that of the Lord. Such a person would have to have a greater understanding of things than God has. And that’s not possible. Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has for those who love Him. Those things, as Paul says, are only revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

And that’s when Paul makes that wonderful affirmation: “But we have the mind of Christ.”

What does it mean to have the mind of Christ? Well; I believe we should be very careful about how we understand this. I don’t believe that ‘the mind of Christ’ something that we can ever have independently from a deep, personal relationship with Jesus Christ Himself—as if we can now think great thoughts like He thought, and have a great mind like His, but all on our own—independently of Him. We can do nothing that pertains to the spiritual life independently of Him! Jesus Himself said so. He said, “without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Rather, I believe that to ‘have the mind of Christ’ simply means that we think His thoughts along with Him, in conformity to Him, in a deep union of love with Him and dependency upon Him, and in faithful obedience to His commands in the Scripture. The Bible tells us that in Christ are hidden “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Paul tells us that “in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him …” (vv. 9-10). And to the degree that we are walking in fellowship with Him, to that degree we have access to all wisdom through Him.

Do you remember the story of how Jesus, in His earthly teaching ministry, spoke to people in parables? The Gospel writer Mark tells us that Jesus’ disciples were confused about those parables; and later on, when they were alone with Him, they asked the meaning of them. Mark tells us, “And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples” (Mark 4:34). I can’t think of a better picture of what it means to have ‘the mind of Christ’ than that. We have Him; and in having Him, we have His mind. He has spoken to us in His revealed word. He has shared His mind with us plainly in the Bible. And by His Holy Spirit in us, He guides our understanding and grasp of truth. We should read the Scriptures in fellowship with Him by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. And if we don’t understand something—or if we need wisdom in any way—all we need to do is ask Him.

* * * * * * * * * *

That, I believe, was what happened to me. I remember being amazed at how my mother’s old Bible had suddenly come alive to me after I prayed that first prayer to receive Jesus as my Savior and had begun to walk in fellowship with Him. I was constantly hungry for the Bible. (In fact, I used to get into trouble because I was carrying a Bible around with me everywhere!) I was constantly seeking—and constantly learning—new things from the Bible about my walk with Jesus. And it wasn’t because of anything that could be attributed to my own capabilities. Something new was given to me—something that was not from within myself. I had entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ by faith; and now, I had Jesus Christ. And because I had Christ, I also had ‘the mind of Christ’.

Dear brothers and sisters; Paul doesn’t tell us in this morning’s passage to go out and “get” the mind of Christ. Rather, he affirms that we who are spiritual already have—right now—the mind of Christ as a present reality. It is ours through having Him; and His presence and help are constantly ours through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And so, I believe that the best thing you and I can do to grow in this present reality is to draw close to Jesus Christ personally.

I believe that we are given the best instruction on how to live and operate in the mind of Christ in Romans 12:1-2;

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2).

Give yourself wholeheartedly in love and gratitude to Him. And pick up your Bible and read, and faithfully do what it says. You will grow in conformity to ‘the mind of Christ.’

May we, by the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit, learn to live and walk and think and operate less and less on the basis of fallen human wisdom, and instead on the basis of the mind of Christ more and more every day—and all to His glory.