1 Corinthians 2:13

1Co_2:13-14

Which things also we speak, not in the words which mans wisdom teacheth.

The true evangelical preacher speaks

I. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

1. He has received the Spirit.

2. Is instructed by the Spirit.

3. Speaks with the demonstration of the Spirit.

II. After careful study of Gods Word. Comparing, selecting, with much humility and prayer.

III. He cannot, therefore, accommodate himself to the wisdom of this world--

1. Either by modifying his doctrine to please worldly men--

2. Or adopting a worldly method of address. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The illumination of the Holy Spirit

To teach, to enlighten, and to illuminate, have equivalent meanings.

I. Its need. The natural condition of the mind is spiritual darkness: hence illumination is necessary to the apprehension of spiritual things (Luk_11:36; 1Co_2:9-14; Eph_1:18).

II. Its author. It is ascribed to each person of the Trinity.

1. God (2Co_4:6).

2. The Son (Joh_1:9; 1Co_4:5).

3. The Holy Spirit (Joh_14:26).

III. Its instrument. The revealed Word of God (Psa_119:105).

IV. Its agency. The ministry of reconciliation. Preaching may awake men to their need of spiritual illumination (Eph_3:9).

V. How obtained.

1. By the careful reading of the Word.

2. By prayer (Psa_119:18). (L. O. Thompson.)

The dispensation of spiritual truth

I. How spiritual things are to be dispensed.

1. Not according to human rules.

2. But under the teaching of the Spirit.

3. In conformity with the Word of God.

II. By whom they are to be dispensed.

1. Not by unconverted men, for they cannot understand them.

2. But by those who are spiritual, who are indifferent to the judgment of man, and have the mind of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Various meanings have been attached to this expression.

I. Adapting spiritual words to spiritual things, and not language incongruous, as we should be doing if we spoke the things of God in words taught by human wisdom. But the apostle has already said this in effect, and according to this view there is a play on the word spiritual which is not in his manner; for spiritual words can only mean words taught by the Spirit (Eph_5:19), but spiritual things must mean things that reveal God.

II. Adapting spiritual things to spiritual men. But this is the direct opposite of what Paul declares, that spiritual men understand spiritual things, so that no adaptation of them to their capacity is needed.

III. Interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men. But it is only in reference to dreams and visions that the word συγκρίνω means to interpret, and that with few exceptions in the LXX. In no passage are the things of God represented as dreams to be interpreted, or allegories of which the apostles have the key.

IV. Interpreting spiritual things by spiritual words is open to the same objection.

V. Proving the truth of spiritual things (whether Old Testament types or the teaching of the Spirit) by the demonstration of the Spirit. But the word does not elsewhere signify to prove.

VI. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual is satisfactory. Christianity is a Divine wisdom. But this means from the side of teacher and of learner that revealed truths are combined so as to form a consistent and well-proportioned system of truth in their correlation. The higher Christian training resembles Platos criterion of dialectical power, the faculty to see the relation of the sciences to one another and to true being. (Principal Edwards.)

The Spirits work

The Holy Spirit is the source and standard of all spiritual things. Wherever found, in heaven or in earth, in time or eternity, they all come first from the Spirit of Life. In the New Testament sense, spiritual things are just the things of God; does that convey any thought to you? These are altogether different things from those we have been born into, live in, and take to so naturally. This is our misery, that we are antagonistic to the things of the spiritual world. No one had so much of Gods Spirit as our Lord; and there is nothing so suited to receive the Spirit as the soul of man. No spirit was more receptive than Christs. His heart was full of the Holy Ghost; and His words and works were less from Him than from the Spirit. The next best example of the Holy Ghosts workmanship is the Bible. All parts are not equally full of Him; Job is not so full as John, nor Ruth as Romans; but he who is most spiritual will dwell most in those parts which reveal most of the mind of the Spirit of God. The Old Testament is penetrated with the Spirit even in its most secular and legal parts; and the spiritual mind can find spiritual meaning even in its laws, ordinances and ceremonies. But as Christ was most spirit-filled, so the New Testament is richer, and those hooks are most to be prized which hold most to New Testament doctrines. A preacher should be much in the New Testament, and if he is led into the Old he should always take the New back with him. His people have not a thousand years to spend in discovering its meaning, and it is not fair to keep them always in the elements, to the retarding of spiritual growth. Could you tell why you are a member of your Church, or are you ashamed to tell the reason? Did spiritual reasons take you there, and are spiritual results coming from the change? There is nothing we do on earth so spiritual and which demands so much spirituality as prayer. (A. Whyte, D. D.)

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,… because they are spiritually discerned.--

St. Pauls trichotomy

This may be roughly compared to a cathedral: the body corresponds to the nave, the spirit to the chancel, the soul, which divides and unites the body and the spirit, to the transept, which divides and unites the nave and the chancel. The cathedral is one consecrated building with three main compartments, and man is one person in three natures, all consecrated in baptism to the Triune God. Furthermore, the human spirit is the highest and noblest of the three natures, and akin to the Divine, and therefore that which is immediately controlled by the Holy Spirit, who through it acts upon the soul, and through the soul upon the body. In like manner the chancel is the highest and holiest compartment of the cathedral, in which also is the altar or table of the Divine Presence. This illustration must not be pressed, but it may serve to smooth the way for some apprehension of the difficult question of mans trichotomy. A psychical man, the mere soul-man--animalis (Vulgate) from anima, not animosus full of spirit from animus--is one in whom the psyche, or lower principle of life dominates. He moves not in the sphere of Divine light and truth, but in the world of sense. If he is intellectual, he delights in a mental activity purely human, and exerted on objects merely mundane, and is attracted by worldly philosophies that fail utterly to lead the mind up to the high truth of God. The mental side of the psychic man comes to view in this text; the intellectual rather than the ethical, not to the exclusion however of the latter, for between the moral and the mental there is a mutual relation and interaction. In this homo animalis the higher principle of life, the human spirit illuminated and quickened intellectually and morally, does not dominate, has no activity, is dormant. He is one, as St. Jude says, not having [in his own consciousness] spirit. Such a one does not receive, indeed cannot admit into--that which he has not--a prepared spirit anything that is of the Spirit of God. He is psychic, not pneumatic: how can he entertain truths that are purely pneumatic? They are an absurdity to him. His habits of mind, modes and centres of thought, aims in life, lust of fame, pride of intellect, are all soul-like and sensuous, all of the cosmos and to the cosmos. Thus he is simply incompetent to apprehend what is extra mundane and supernal; indeed, he is not in a position to do so, for there must always be a correlation and mutual congruity between that which perceives and that which is perceived. Wherefore spiritual truths are foolishness unto him, because they are spiritually estimated, i.e., are tested and sifted by a process spiritual in the court of the human spirit, enlightened by the Divine, and there subjected to an anacrisis, or preliminary scrutiny ere they are admitted. (Canon Evans.)

The natural man

I. His character described. Assumes three phases:

1. The prejudiced, who oppose the truth.

2. The indifferent, who do not trouble about it.

3. The unenlightened, who cannot understand it.

II. His sad condition. Naturally without--

1. Knowledge.

2. Concern.

3. Hope. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The natural man

I. Here are two objects set before us.

1. The natural man in contrast with the spiritual man. Note Pauls classification.

(1) The carnal man lives after the flesh. His whole nature is the servant of sin.

(2) In the natural man the ethical element may be predominant. He may be a man of culture, sympathy, and a believer in the objective facts and formal sanctities of religion; and yet so long as he is only all that, he cannot discern the things of the spirit.

(3) The spiritual man is such by virtue of a new creation. He has put off the old man and his deeds.

2. The things of the spirit.

(1) They are spiritual things. Religion deals with supernatural objects--God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, &c. These are spiritually discerned. There are windows in the soul of the spiritual man through which he looks into the mystery of invisible worlds. The Spirit searched, &c. God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.

(2) They are revealed to faith. They occupy a sphere and deal with realities which eye hath not seen, &c. They are emphasised as the things of God, they are the product and expression of His thought. We have no faculties by which to apprehend a Being whose attributes are infinity and eternity. But what cannot be discerned may be revealed. That is what has taken place, and the verifying power of this revelation is a spiritual discernment, a faculty of faith, inwrought by the Spirit in the soul; and the eyes of the understanding being enlightened, we know what is, &c.

(3) They become real in the consciousness of the believing man, who is translated into a new order of being, is born again. God and the soul touch.

II. Some illustrations of the apostles teaching.

1. There is a class of outward things which we can only know by the senses. There is no rainbow to the blind man, no music to the deaf. So it is with the things of the spirit.

2. The senses bring in their report of things, but they know nothing of the science or philosophy of things. This is the work of trained intellect.

(1) To the ordinary man nature looks like a jumble of accidents; to the scientific there is a place for everything and everything is in its place, from the atom to the sun. To ninety men out of a hundred the pebble, or bit of coal or chalk, is merely a thing for use; to the trained eye it is a revelation of cycles of duration, in which now vanished dynasties of animated beings sported. Nature is a book of hieroglyphics which only science can interpret--it is scientifically discerned.

(2) Look at the Bible, at the seemingly discordant but really concatenated departments of revealed truth. But the Bible as a harmonious whole only yields itself up to the discipline and culture of the student.

3. Another class of realities we can know only as they come through experience. They are, in the strictest sense, spiritual things(verse 11).

(1) The things of a man--his joys, hopes, fears, griefs, &c.

what man can know these, save the spirit of a man that is in him? Language is a system of signs for the expression of unknown things; but there are things of which it can be neither the sign nor the expression Thoughts lie deeper than speech, feelings than thoughts: consciousness the deepest of all, is the only witness of what passes in the mysterious world of mind. Sin, remorse, &c., have no sign and can never be interpreted but by the reality which calls them forth.

(2) So the things of God can be known only by the consciousness created by the Spirit of God. Coleridge speaks of a philosophical consciousness lying behind the ordinary consciousness before he can be a philosopher. To know what the reality of life is, we must live, not dissect it. To feel the bitterness of sin we must repent, not speculate about it. To taste the sweetness and power of Christs forgiveness we must believe in Christ, not just catalogue or canonise His virtues. These things belong to the new name written, which no man knoweth, &c.

(3) Hence the reason why so many unspiritual though gifted minds miss the entrance to the kingdom of God. They are natural men and cannot discern, &c. They are as blind men groping in the dark. Let us be consistent. I, as a non-scientific Christian, am warned off the ground of scientific induction as a territory on which I have no factor of investigation. My religion is not the organ of physical discovery. Very well: the scientist is warned off the ground of spiritual consciousness as a territory on which he is equally at fault. Conclusion: Note--

1. The limit which these considerations set to the possibilities of mental culture, and the rebuke which they administer to the audacity and irreverence of the unsanctified intellect.

2. The need of regeneration.

3. If any man will do Gods will he shall know of the doctrine.(J. Burton.)

The natural man

I. His character.

1. Earthly.

2. Sensual.

3. Devilish.

II. His spiritual obliquity.

1. Moral. He receiveth not.

2. Intellectual. He cannot know.

III. His hopeless condition without Divine help. The things of God--

1. Are foolishness to him.

2. Must be spiritually discerned. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

A natural mans ignorance of spiritual things

I. The character of the unrenewed man.

1. He follows the dictates of his own appetites.

2. He is under the control of his passions.

3. Being chiefly occupied about the perishing things of this world, he is dead to a future state.

4. Though man too much resembles the animal in many things, yet in this he differs widely from every other creature--he will be responsible for his conduct at the judgment-seat of Christ. Whatever be the sinners moral inability, his natural powers qualify him to serve God; and it is sin only that prevents him from using those natural powers in a manner in which he would please God. While the natural powers remain, though the inclination be absent, his accountability is continued. We say, God actually treats the want of disposition, not as an excuse, but as a sin; and we take it for granted that what God does is right, whether we can comprehend it or not. Howbeit, in this case, it happens that with the testimonies of God accord those of conscience and common sense. Every mans conscience finds fault with him for the evils which he commits willingly, or of choice; and, instead of making any allowance for any previous aversion, nothing more is necessary to rivet the charge. And with respect to the common sense of mankind in their treatment of one another, what judge, or what jury, ever took into consideration the previous aversion of a traitor or a murderer, with a view to the diminishing of his guilt?

II. The dispositions of the sinners mind towards God. He does not receive the things of the Spirit.

1. What the Spirit reveals. These things are found in the Holy Scriptures, which are the lively oracles of God. If the Spirit had made known a plan of salvation which had flattered the pride of the human heart, his testimony would have been cheerfully received.

2. What the Spirit imparts. Man, as a fallen creature, requires something done in him as well as for him. How much soever men may boast of their reason, their intellect, and their discernment, they must be Divinely illuminated before they can rightly understand the things which the Spirit either reveals or imparts. The natural man does not believe this. If you were to examine the opinions of a very large majority of those who are called Christians, they are either careless about the renovation of their own hearts, or they reject the doctrine altogether as a useless, unmeaning dogma. They fancy themselves virtuous and good, and that they are capable of making some amends for their disobedience of the law of God; they think that they will at some future time do some good thing that they may inherit eternal life, though their conscience often reproves them, after their best efforts, till they are ready to believe themselves but unprofitable servants.

3. What the Spirit requires. He requires of all men to turn from darkness to light, from the power of sin and Satan unto God. The animal man may love his sin and persist in committing it, but this he cannot do with impunity, for God will bring him into judgment! There is a method by which that sin can be forgiven, its dominion destroyed, and its love eradicated from the soul; and that is by the atonement of Christ. If he refuse this means of repentance and sanctification he must die in his sins; there remains no other sacrifice for sins. The Spirit requires that men should receive Christ. All the information which He imparts to the mind concerning the purity, spirituality, and extent of the holy law of God; every conception which He enables the mind to form of the holiness of God, exhibited in that law; and all the humbling convictions which He produces upon the soul in a state of penitence, are intended by the Holy Spirit to prepare the sinner for the reception of Christ as a suitable and all-sufficient Saviour. The natural man does not receive these things of the Spirit of God. He does not believe them. He calls them the words of God; but it is the language of the lip, not of the heart.

III. The reason which the apostle assigns. They are foolishness unto him. What dreadful havoc sin has made of the human soul l What haughty conduct towards God! How proud, how ignorant, and how unfeeling is the heart of man! This revelation was given to him for his instruction, to correct his errors and to remove his ignorance. After the divinity of this revelation had been fully and rationally ascertained, it was the duty of this rational being to submit to its teaching and decisions, without hesitation, thankful that God would condescend to instruct the undeserving and the sinner. The Spirit has revealed the infinite perfections of the Deity, so far as that revelation was connected with mans duty and happiness, in a manner likely to excite him to fear, venerate, love, and worship Him as the ever-blessed God. What the Spirit has revealed must limit his inquiries and check his presumption. Let him regard what the Spirit of the Lord declares in His Word, and seek an experimental knowledge of those heavenly blessings which are provided in the new covenant for the penitent and believing. He does not understand them because they are spiritually discerned. But the Spirit can and will restore the spiritual faculty if he will ask Him. Let him not call them foolishness; for the preparation of them was the highest manifestation of the wisdom and love of God. His not perceiving them is not to be considered as a reason why they are not good in themselves and suited to relieve his misery. This is to be traced to his want of spiritual vision, for sin has blinded his mind! (Wm. Jones.)

The natural man blind to the things of the Spirit of God

Set a man down on one of the jutting crags of the Andes, and with the shadows of midnight or the scarf of a morning mist hanging around him he sees nothing of the shaggy fantastic grandeur with which he is environed. He stands on one of the altar thrones of creation, with the sweep of the firmament above him, and the jewelled earth beneath him; but until the sunshine sifts its radiance on his sightless eyeballs, darkness confused and confusing shuts him in on every side. So with the spirit world in its relation to the natural man. That world envelopes him like an atmosphere or sea of life, touching him at every avenue of soul and sense with its glory; but the perceptive faculty is wanting and he cannot behold it. The flashing skies are dark to his closed eyes. Neither can the dark mind see God. (J. Burton.)

The ignorance of the natural man

I. Explain the truth affirmed.

1. Who is the natural man?

2. What are the things he cannot receive nor know?

3. Whence his incapacity?

II. Confirm it.

1. It was so in our Lords day.

2. In the times of the apostles.

3. Is so now.

III. Improve it. Learn--

1. To appreciate Divine knowledge.

2. How to seek it.

3. How to employ it. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Natural or spiritual

The apostle knows of only two classes of men--natural and spiritual. Under natural, he includes all who are not partakers of the Spirit of God, no matter how excellent they may be. On the other hand, all into whom the Spirit of God has come he calls spiritual men.

I. The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, but counts them foolish.

1. Some oppose them violently, and do their best to put down such folly.

2. A greater proportion secretly despise and condemn. They dare say that religion is a good thing for old women, &c., but utterly repudiate it as a thing worthy the attention of wise men.

3. The great mass are indifferent. For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight, he cant be wrong whose life is in the right.

II. There is nothing whatever in the things themselves to justify such an estimation. You do not know what you say when you declare that the gospel of Christ is absurd. It is generally pretty safe to ask a man who rails at the Bible, Did you ever read it? These learned gentlemen are like those critics who, when they meet with a new volume, take the knife and cut the first page, smell it, and then condemn or praise. The mightiest intellects confess that the truths of this book are above their highest flights. Even Newton said there were depths here which no mortal could fathom. As these things of the Spirit of God are wise and profound, so they are most important, and if not received, it is not because they are uncongenial with our necessities. There are some speculations which a man need not enter upon, but the doctrines of God teach you your relationship to your Maker; your condition before Him; how He can be just to man, and yet be gracious; how you can approach Him, and become His child; how you may be conformed to His image, and made a partaker of His glory.

III. The reason for the rejection of the gospel.

1. Want of taste. You have sometimes seen an artist standing before a splendid picture. What a fine conception! says he, I could stand a week and admire that. Some bumpkin, however, says, It looks to me to be an old decayed piece of canvas that wants cleaning. Then leaving the gallery, he notices on the wall outside a picture of an elephant standing on his head, and a clown performing in some circus, and he says, Thats more to my taste. Just so is it with the natural man. Give him some work of fiction--a daub upon the wall--and he is satisfied. But he has no taste for the things of God.

2. Want of organs. Just as a blind man cannot appreciate a landscape nor a deaf man music; so the natural man lacking the eye and ear of faith cannot appreciate the beauties and music of the gospel.

3. Want of nature. The brute cannot appreciate the studies of the astronomer because he lacks an intellectual nature; and so the mere man of intellect cannot appreciate the things of the Spirit because he lacks a spiritual nature.

IV. The practical truths which flow from this great though sorrowful fact.

1. The absolute necessity for regeneration, or the work of the Spirit. You may educate a nature up to its highest point, but you cannot educate an old nature into a new one. You may educate a horse, but you cannot educate it into a man. You may by your own efforts make yourselves the best of natural men, but still at your very best there is a division wide as eternity between you and the regenerate man. And no man can help us out of such a nature into a state of grace. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

2. If any of us have received the things of the Spirit, we ought to look upon that as comfortable evidence that we have been born again. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Mans mortal inability to understand the things of the Spirit

Note--

I. Some of those sublime and interesting truths which the natural man does not receive.

1. The equity and goodness of the law of God, and the evil and desert of every transgression of it.

2. The suitableness and excellency of the method of redemption by Jesus Christ.

3. The necessity of union to Christ by faith as the source of holiness and strength.

4. The necessity of reconciliation to God and conformity to the Divine image to all true happiness both here and hereafter.

II. The alarming extent to which this want of spiritual discernment prevails, and the inadequacy of the highest advantages to communicate it.

1. We see some men endowed with great strength of mind, and their natural powers much improved by a liberal education, but they do not receive the things of the Spirit of God.

2. We observe other men who have great discernment and assiduity in the concerns of this life, and who discover a particular tact in the management of business, and considerable ability in improving the advantages afforded them of amassing wealth, but they receive not the things of the Spirit of God.

3. We see other persons favoured with the advantages of a religious education, but they have not received the things of the Spirit of God.

4. Some men have an undoubted conviction of the truth of the gospel, and their passions are occasionally moved with its important discoveries. Still, except a Divine change takes place in the heart, they do not receive the things of the Spirit of God.

III. The important reflection which the subject suggests.

1. That the disaffection of man to God is not accidental, or the result of some circumstances in which he is placed, but is an evil principle, natural to the whole species, and the consequence of the fall.

2. The great gratitude we owe to God for the gospel of His Son, as a discovery of enlightening and renewing grace, as well as of pardoning mercy.

3. The indispensable necessity of Divine influence in general, and in respect to our own personal experience in particular.

4. The importance of accompanying the means of grace with humble and earnest prayer. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

Spiritual discernment

Not only have excellent photographs of the heavenly bodies been obtained, and an absolutely accurate picture of the skies obtained for permanent examination, but it has been found that the camera reveals stars invisible even with the aid of the most powerful telescope in existence. This is due to the fact that the camera is able by continued exposure to obtain an image of an object which may be so faint that a shorter exposure would give no image. This, of course, is a power the eye does not possess. It is equivalent to being able to see plainly by long gazing what cannot be seen at all by a brief inspection. A notable instance of this power is seen in photographs of the Pleiades, the group of stars mentioned in Job_36:31. Here a nebula is shown in the photograph which the eye cannot perceive in the sky, but which undoubtedly exists. Astronomers believe in the revelations of the camera, though they are not confirmed by actual observation. Their example may be commended to men who reject the inspired revelation of the Bible, and refuse to exercise faith when they are asked to accept spiritual truth not perceptible to the senses. (New York Sun.)

Spiritual discernment

I. There is nothing here which is not acknowledged and insisted on in every-day life. There are things that are only instrumentally discerned.

1. Here is a large brilliant diamond, and you pronounce it to be without fault; but the lapidary gives you a magnifying glass of great power, and bids you look at the centre of the stone; and there sure enough you see a black spot. The lapidary says the naked eye can neither receive it nor know it because it is microscopically discerned. And nobody arises to say, Sir, you have introduced a painful mystery into human thought and inquiry. People are rather glad that a medium has been supplied by which the hidden truth may be brought to light.

2. Yonder are two shining surfaces, and you say there must be a great fire there. The scientist who overhears you, however, says, One of those surfaces has no light at all. But cant I believe my own eyes? No, he says, just look through this instrument--the polariscope--and now you see that the one surface was primary light and the other but reflected. The naked eye can neither receive nor know it because it is polariscopically discerned. And you thank him for the information.

3. Yonder are two men who have undertaken a mineral survey. One is a mineralogist, the other a man who believes that if he cannot find things out with his naked eyes and fingers that nothing can or shall be found out. The former walks slowly over the ground holding in his hand a little crystal box, watching the instrument within. Presently the needle dips, and he says, There is iron here. Can you see it, touch it? No. But the scientific man digs for iron and finds it, and then turns round to hear what the other has to say, and remarks, The senses cannot receive or know it, for it is magnetically discerned, and then receives the confidence he deserves.

4. Look at this ruddy-faced boy. You cannot walk out with him, but he challenges you to leap a five-barred gate; and you say, What a vigorous lad! There will be a long life and a happy one. A physician, however, drops in on your return, and hearing your verdict, applies an instrument to the region of the boys heart, and then, taking you aside, says, He will never see five-and-twenty. He has had rheumatic fever and contracted valvular affection of the heart. The untrained ear can neither receive it nor know it because it is stethoscopically discerned. Now in all these things we confess our need of instruments. Suppose that everything were taken away that cannot be discovered or read by the naked eye! Shut up the heavens, for astronomy must go; cover up the fields, for botany tells little to the naked eye. All science indeed would be impoverished and degraded. Yet the man who cannot read his own mothers letter without an eyeglass insists upon reading the infinite and eternal God by his unassisted powers.

5. The same principle holds good in spheres where instruments are not required.

(1) Here are two men listening to the same piece of music. The one is inspired, enraptured, and says, I would this might go on for ever. The other says, I wonder when they will be done. The best ear cannot receive these things or know them, for they are musically discerned. The one man would be tormented if one note were the thousandth part of a shade wrong; but all the notes might be wrong so far as the other man knew.

(2) Here are two men looking at the same picture. The one is chained to the spot; the other, with a thick shilling catalogue, does not see much in that, and hastens on to something that has superficies, no matter what the superficies may be: only let it be extensive enough. Paint for such men with a broom,

II. The application of these things is to the things of God as accessible to the spirit of man. There are blind minds as well as blind eyes. Except a man be born again he cannot see.

1. As ministers, therefore, we are not to be discouraged because some people cannot understand us. There will always be men to whom the best preaching will be foolishness, because they have not the spiritual faculty.

2. Do we wish for this discernment? If ye being evil, &c. If any man lack wisdom, &c. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Spiritual insight in possible to unspiritual men

1. No painter was ever yet so unwise as to submit his work to the criticism of a committee of blind men, however learned such men might have been in history, logic, or law. Igor has any company of blind men assumed to sit in judgment upon Murillo, Raphael, or Titian; still less that they have fallen to raving because their censorship in art had not been accepted as final. The men in the Patent Office in Washington, who examine the thousand models that yearly come to them, are men who have an eye for machinery. Men who did not know a wheelbarrow from a spinning-wheel could scarcely get an appointment to such a place. In general it matters not how much a man may know nor how keen his power of discernment in some other line of human thought or knowledge, men give little heed to his talk unless he has capacity and culture in the very things of which he assumes to be a critic and a judge.

2. The elements of our complex nature are many; and a man may be strong in some things and weak in others. Lord Macaulay was almost a blockhead in mathematics. Sir Isaac Newton had hardly patience enough to read the Paradise Lost and only asked contemptuously, What does it prove? Milton might very likely have asked the same of the Principia. Many a great scientist has never been able to distinguish between the highest strains of music and any mere jargon of discordant sounds. Eminent lawyers and judges have been utterly blind to the beauties of the most perfect machinery, and many an inventive genius would have been utterly swamped in the commentaries of Blackstone.

3. Why, then, should it be thought any argument against the reality of spiritual things that here and there a man--with large genius for invention; for oratory; for science; for philosophy; for music; for art--has no appreciation for things unseen and eternal? It weighs less than a feather to him who revels in the demonstrations of geometry to know that hundreds of college students have never fully comprehended a single demonstration I Poor fellows! is all he can say, I pity their obtuseness! In like manner it weighs less than a milligramme to any Christian believer, whose soul has been illuminated from on high, that Darwin lived and died blind as a bat to all the glories of the spiritual universe. But unlike many another blind man, Darwin did, in a measure, realise his condition. He recognised the fact that his spiritual nature had died out! He calls it atrophy. In his boyhood he had a consciously religious nature; in later years it was starved to death! He tells us, also, that in early life he had a poetical nature. That, too, had been famished. His soul had died--at the top! Alas! how many another soul has died in the same way! Shall the Christian believer find his faith disturbed because of these great men whose souls have been lopped off? No! He still knows in whom he has believed. A blind man may tell me that he sees nothing in the glory of the evening sunset, or in Raphaels Transfiguration. Poor man! I say, with deepest pity; thats all. I do not forthwith put out my own eyes, because he has put his out; or, peradventure, may have been born blind. God forbid! I only cherish my eyesight with the more thankfulness and care. When even Humboldt, Darwin, Ingersoll, and Renan tell me that they see nothing of the spiritual and Divine in this revelation of the Divine life and glory of the Christ of God among the sons of men--Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, Paul, John, and Luther, Knox, Wesley, Bunyan, and the unnumbered hosts of the Lord Almighty, will still continue to enjoy the seraphic vision and know whom they have believed.

4. A legislator may wisely study the Bible to help him in making laws. The historian may ponder its incomparable histories. The sociologist may turn over its leaves to find the profoundest teachings known to the world in his department. The lover of sublime and beautiful poetry may discover here some of the rarest gems that can be gathered from all the seas and from all the lands. But only the spiritual man can discern within these lids their choicest treasures of spiritual truth, and it would be passing strange if it were otherwise. What would your five-year-old boy think of conic sections, or your ten-months-old baby of a treatise on optics? I wonder what grandfather can find in that old book!--its a very dull book to me. So said a young man just entering college many years ago. But when the Spirit of God had opened his eyes, the young man marvelled no more at the absorption of his grandsire in the study of the old book, and himself lived to revel in its pages more than in all things else. Had sin never come, our vision had been clear. Oh, that every soul might cry out as Bartimeus, Lord, that I may receive my sight!

5. What is the Bible? Only Christian experience can fit any person to answer that question. I see a cherub of three short years over the way, and I ask, What is that child? The analytic chemist will tell me how much oxygen, and hydrogen, and nitrogen, and phosphorus enter into the forty pounds of avoirdupois of that beautiful form. The anatomist will tell me the number of bones and muscles and the names of them all that enter into her perfect body. But you are the childs mother. And I ask you to tell me what she is. While I speak the angel of death has come, and she lies by your side a corpse. Her sweet face has a heavenly smile upon it, for she has had a vision of the Son of God, who has taken her into His arms. What is that child? You need the gift of tongues to tell me. The lips cannot utter it; your tears even can scarcely suggest it. The love of father and mother alone can conceive the answer. What is the Bible? Only he who has learned to love the Christ that shines through it can answer that question. And then his answer will grow as he grows, through all his years. He will find more in it as his experience deepens. The only proper test of the gospel of Christ is the trial of it. No soul was ever yet made worse by believing it. No Christian ever yet, as he came near to death, regretted his faith or recanted his trust in Christ. (E. B. Fairfield, D. D.)

Unsanctified men cannot read the Bible to profit

If you bring me a basket full of minerals from California, and I take them and look at them, I shall know that this specimen has gold in it, because I see there little points of yellow gold, but I shall not know what the white and the dark points are that I see. But let a metallurgist look at it, and he will see that it contains not only gold, but silver, and lead, and iron, and he will single them out. To me it is a mere stone, with only here and there a hint of gold, but to him it is a combination of various metals. Now take the Word of God, that is filled with precious stones and metals, and let one instructed in spiritual insight go through it, and he will discover all these treasures; while, if you let a man uninstructed in spiritual insight go through it, he will discover those things that are outside and apparent, but those things that make God and man friends, and that have to do with the immortality of the soul in heaven, escape his notice. No man can know these things unless the Spirit of God has taught him to discern them. (H. W. Beecher.)

The ignorance of the natural man

Suppose, says an old divine, a geometrician should be drawing outlines and figures, and there should come in a silly, ignorant fellow, who, seeing him thus employed, should laugh at him; would the artist, think you, leave off his employment because of his derision? Surely not; for he knows that his laughter is hut the fruit of his ignorance, as not knowing his art, and the ground upon which it goes: and therefore he holds on drawing, though the fellow should hold on laughing.

The natural mans view

One may be a diligent student of science and have a large acquaintance with the facts and forces, processes and laws of the physical universe, and yet be insensible to all by which its higher meanings are revealed. The man of this spirit may cultivate his fields with judicious husbandry, but all the harvest goes into the barn, or to market; none is for the soul He may note the seasons circling course, but finds no meaning in their storied succession, save calls to a varied round of toil and use; no pulsings of a life Divine, no ebb and flow of supernal tides, bearing outward the flow of a Divine energy, and then with refluent flood coursing backward to the infinite deeps. He may view the stars, perhaps know their names, orders, distances, and seasons, but catches no glimpse of the Hand that moves them, nor hears the resonances of their silent song. He may climb the mountains, but it is only as tourist, or engineer, not as worshipper, or to find the uplands of God. (J. W. Earnshaw.)

Spiritual discernment impaired

Darwin gives an account of two blind men with whom he was in the habit of conversing for some years. They both told him that they never remembered having dreamed of visible objects after they became totally blind. So, when men give themselves to lower and meaner things, the higher and nobler faculties of the soul come in to trouble them less and less. By and by the spiritual and the unseen is to them as though it were not.

The natural versus the spiritual man

Different persons shall stand before that Natures wonder of wonders, the mighty cataract of Niagara, and how differently they will regard it and be affected by it! To one it will be simply an immense volume of water rushing down swift rapids and leaping a tremendous precipice, with stunning effect to the observant senses, but with no glory in its gliding, gleaming, plunging mass, and no music or meaning in its rhythmic roar. Another will be mainly impressed with the probable energy of the descending mass, and occupied with the problem of its utilisation. He will measure it according to the principles of hydro-dynamic science, and estimate what engines it would move, what machinery impel, and what work perform, if properly yoked, or what cities it would illumine, if converted into electricity, but find in it no power to draw the soul to God. Another, bringing to it a more aesthetic sensibility, will be impressed with its beauty and grandeur; but the beauty will be soulless, the grandeur only that of physical magnificence. But another shall bring to it a true spiritual sensibility, and to him it will open all its meaning, and become a wondrous revelation of the mighty power, grand designs, and sovereign laws of the infinite Creator, an apocalypse, through Nature transfigured in her own process, of Him who is Natures God and soul; and awed into silence, or thrilled with adoring wonder, he will stand as before the Holy of holies of Natures vast and solemn temple. The difference of impression and effect appears not only in relation to Natures more majestic scenes, but to all, from the greatest and rarest to the lowliest and most common. Dull sensibility passes unheeding, but to a Cowper, a Wordsworth, a Bryant, or a Ruskin, the very heath hath a voice, and the desert shrub becomes aflame with God. And so, too, with those works of art in which God speaks to us as it were by an interpreter. Different persons shall view some masterpiece of painting. To one it will be but a representation of sensible forms, beautiful or unbeautiful as the case may be, and with pleasant or gruesome effect according to the subject. Another shall note its fidelity to nature or history, and feel the charm, life, and dramatic movement of the piece. But another shall catch the very meaning and spirit of the work, and see what the artist has not painted yet could not but represent; could not treat his subject faithfully and not bring into view the great white throne. And so with a poem, a piece of music, or a sermon. One shall catch but the thunder of the sound and sensuous effect. To another it shall have a certain articulate coherence, as it were the voice of an angel, sweet perhaps, perhaps sublime, but its meaning unresolved. While to yet another it shall penetrate the soul as a voice from the unseen, holy, touching responsive chords of spiritual sensibility, and quickening, uplifting, and purifying the very inmost life of the soul. (J. W. Earnshaw.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

words

(1) The writers of Scripture invariably affirm, where the subject is mentioned by them at all, that the words of their writings are divinely taught. This, of necessity, refers to the original documents, not to translations and versions; but the labours of competent scholars have brought our English versions to a degree of perfection so remarkable that we may confidently rest upon them as authoritative.

(2) 1Co 2:9-14 gives the process by which a truth passes from the mind of God to the minds of His people.

(a) The unseen things of God are undiscoverable by the natural man (1Co 2:9). (b) These unseen things God has revealed to chosen men (1Co 2:10-12). (c) The revealed things are communicated in Spirit-taught words (1Co 2:13). This implies neither mechanical dictation nor the effacement of the writer’s personality, but only that the Spirit infallibly guides in the choice of words from the writer’s own vocabulary (1Co 2:13). (d) These Spirit-taught words, in which the revelation has been expressed, are discerned, as to their true spiritual content, only by the spiritual among believers; 1Co 2:15; 1Co 2:16; (See Scofield "Rev 22:19").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2:13 using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths: Just as spiritual wisdom is different from human wisdom, so the way spiritual wisdom is taught must be different from the way human wisdom is taught. The communicating and learning of spiritual truth must be done in the dimension and power of the Spirit; it is not simply a rational, human exercise.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Co 2:13. Καὶ, also) Thus the phrases, we might know and we speak are joined.—διδακτοῖς, taught) consisting of doctrine and instruction. The word σοφίας with λόγοις is not to be resolved into an epithet; wisdom is the gushing fountain of words.—ἀλλʼ ἐν, but in) an immediate antithesis; nor can it be said, that the apostles compared merely the natural power of speech, as distinguished on the one hand from art, and on the other, from the Spirit.—διδακτοῖς) διδαχῇ[22] by the teaching, which the Holy Spirit[23] furnishes through us seems to be a better reading. That doctrine comprehends both wisdom and words.—πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ, spiritual things to [with; Engl. Vers. and Vulg.] spiritual) We interpret [But Engl. Vers. and Vulg. comparing) spiritual things and spiritual words in a manner suitable to spiritual men, 1Co 2:6; 1Co 2:15, so that they may be willing and able to receive them; συγκρίνω, ΣΎΓΚΡΙΜΑ, ΣΎΓΚΡΙΣΙς, are frequently used by the LXX. for example, in respect to the interpretation of dreams, Genesis 40, 41; Dan. 2 4 5 7.

[22] The Germ. Ver. agrees to this reading, although the Greek editions have left the matter undecided.—E. B.

[23] The Germ. Vers., with the margin of Ed. 2, approves of the omission of the adjective, ἁγίον, more distinctly than the margin of the older edition.—E. B.

Διδακτοῖς is the reading of ABCD(Λ)G Orig. (B, according to Bartolocci, reads διδακτῷ). But fg, Vulg. Syr. read διδαχῇ. Ἁγίου is placed before or after πνενματος in the later Syr. and Rec. Text. But ABCD corrected later, G, Origen 1, 197b, Vulg. omit ἀγίον (Vulg. corrected by Victor has Sancti).—ED.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_2:13. Having thus in 1Co_2:10-12 given the proof of that ἡμῖν δὲ ἀπεκάλ. κ.τ.λ[401], the apostle goes on now to the manner in which the things revealed were proclaimed, passing, therefore, from the εἰδέναι τὰ χαρ. to the λαλεῖν of them. The manner, negative and positive, of this λαλεῖν (comp 1Co_2:4) he links to what has gone before simply by the relative: which (namely, τὰ … χαρισθ. ἡμ.) we also (in accordance with the fact of our having received the Spirit, 1Co_2:12) utter not in words learned of human wisdom (dialectics, rhetoric, etc.), but in those learned of the Spirit. The genitives: ἀνθρωπ. σοφ. and πνεύματος, are dependent on διδακτοῖς (Joh_6:45). See Winer, pp. 182, 178 [E. T. 242, 236]. Pflugk, a[403] Eur. Hec. 1135. Comp Pindar, Ol. ix. 153: πολλοὶ δὲ διδακταῖς ἀνθρώπων ἀρεταῖς κλέος ὤρουσαν ἑλέσθαι· ἄνευ δὲ θεοῦ κ.τ.λ[405], comp Nem. iii. 71. Sophocles, El. 1Co 336: τἀμὰ νουθετήματα κείνης διδακτά. It is true that the genitives might also be dependent upon ΛΌΓΟΙς (Fritzsche, Diss. II. in 2 Cor. p. 27); but the context, having διδακτοῖς πνεύματος, is against this. To take ΔΙΔΑΚΤΟῖς (with Ewald) as meaning, according to the common classical usage, learnable, quae doceri possunt (see especially Demosth. 1413. 24; Plato, Prot. p. 319 B: οὐ διδακτὸν εἶναι μηδʼ ὑπʼ ἀνθρώπων παρασκευαστὸν ἀνθρώποις), does not agree so well with 1Co_2:4; 1Co_2:15.

The suggestio verborum, here asserted, is reduced to its right measure by διδακτοῖς; for that word excludes all idea of anything mechanical, and implies the living self-appropriation of that mode of expression which was specifically suitable both to the divine inspiration and to its contents (verba rem sequuntur, Wetstein),an appropriation capable of being connected in very different forms with different given individualities (Peter, Paul, Apollos, James, etc.), and of presenting itself in each case with a corresponding variety.

ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟῖς ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚᾺ ΣΥΓΚΡΊΝΟΝΤΕς] connecting[407] spiritual things with spiritual, not uniting things unlike in nature, which would be the case, were we to give forth what was revealed by the Holy Spirit in the speech of human wisdom, in philosophic discourse, but joining to the matters revealed by the Spirit (πνευματικοῖς) the speech also taught by the Spirit (πνευματικά),things consequently of like nature, spiritualibus spiritualia componentes (Castalio). So in substance also Erasmus, Beza, Calvin, Balduin, Wolf, Baumgarten, Kling in the Stud. und Krit. 1839, p. 437, de Wette, Osiander, Maier, etc., and rightly, since this sense suits the connection singularly well, and does not in any degree clash with the classical use of συγκρίνειν (Valckenaer, p. 134 f.; Porson, a[408] Med. 136). Plato has it frequently in this meaning, and in contrast to διακρίνειν. See Ast, Lex. Plat. III. p. 290 f. Other commentators, while also taking πνευματ. as neuter, make συγκρίνειν, explicare, namely, either: explaining the N. T. doctrine from the types of the O. T. (Chrysostom and his successors[409]), or: exponentes ea, quae prophetae Spiritu Dei acti dixere, per ea, quae Christus suo Spiritu nobis aperuit (Grotius, Krebs), or: spiritualibus verbis spiritualia interpretantes (Elsner, Mosheim, Bolten, Neander). But the first two of these renderings are against the context, and all the three are against the usus loquendi; for συγκρίνειν is never absolutely interpretari, either in profane Greek (in which, among later writers, as also in 2Co_10:12, Wis_7:29; Wis_15:18, 1Ma_10:71, it very often means to compare; comp Vulgate: comparantes, and see Lobeck, a[411] Phryn. p. 278) or in the LXX. With the latter it is indeed the common word for the interpretation of dreams (פתר, see Gen_40:8; Gen_40:16; Gen_40:22; Gen_41:12; Gen_41:15; Dan_5:12); but in such cases (comp the passages from Philo, where ΔΙΑΚΡΊΝΕΙΝ occurs, in Loesner, p. 273) we have to trace it back to the literal signification of judging,[413] namely, as to what was to be indicated by the vision in the dream (comp κρίνειν τὸ σημαινόμενον τῶν ὀνειράτων in Josephus, Antt. ii. 2. 2, also the Ὀνειροκριτικά of Artemidorus). The meaning, to judge, however, although instances of it may be established in Greek writers also (Anthol. vii. 132; Polybius, xiv. 3, 7, xii. 10. 1; Lucian. Soloec. 5), would be unsuitable here, for this reason, that the phrase πνευματικοῖς πνευματικά, both being taken as neuter, manifestly, according to the context, expresses the relation of matter and form, not the judging of the one πνευματικόν by the other (Ewald), notwithstanding that Luther, too, adopts a similar interpretation: and judge spiritual things spiritually. Lastly, it is incorrect to take πνευματικοῖς as masculine, and render: explaining things revealed by the Spirit to those who are led by the Spirit (the same as τελείοις in 1Co_2:6; comp Gal_6:1). This is the view of Pelagius, Sedulius, Theophylact (suggested only), Thomas, Estius, Clericus, Bengel, Rosenmüller, Pott, Heydenreich, Flatt, Billroth, Rückert. To the same class belongs the exposition of Hofmann, according to whom what is meant is the solution of the problem as to how the world beyond and hereafter reveals and foreshows itself in what Gods grace has already bestowed upon us (1Co_2:12) in a predictive sign as it were,a solution which has spiritual things for its object, and takes place for those who are spiritual. But the text does not contain either a contrast between the world here and that hereafter, or a problematic relation of the one to the other; the contrast is introduced into τὰ χαρισθέντα in 1Co_2:12, and the problem and its predictive sign are imported into συγκρίνοντες.[416] Again, it is by no means required by the connection with 1Co_2:14 ff. that we should take πνευματικοῖς as masculine; for 1Co_2:14 begins a new part of the discourse, so that ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος only finds its personal contrast in ὁ δὲ πνευματικός in 1Co_2:15. Tittmanns explanation (Synon. p. 290 f., and comp Baur) comes back to the sense: conveying (conferentes) spiritual things to spiritual persons, without linguistic precedent for it.

Note the weighty collocation: πνεύματος, πνευματικοῖς, πνευματικά.

[401] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[403] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[405] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[407] Not proving, as Theodore of Mopsuestia takes it: διὰ τῶν τοῦ πνεύματος ἀποδείξεων τὴν τοῦ πνεύματος διδασκαλίαν πιστούμεθα.

[408] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[409] So, too, Theodoret: ἔχομεν γὰρ τῆς παλαιᾶς διαθήκης τὴν μαρτυρίαν, καὶ διʼ ἐκείνης τὴς καινὴν βεβαιοῦμεν· πνευματικὴ γὰρ κἀκείνη … καὶ διὰ τῶν τύπων δείκνυμεν τὴν ἀλήθειαν. Several of the older interpreters follow the Greeks in substance, including Calovius, who, on the ground of this passage, declares himself against the explanation of Scripture from profane writers!

[411] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[413] Hence, in Dan_5:16 (in the history of the mysterious writing on the wall, which had to be judged of with respect to its meaning): δύνασαι κρίματα συγκρῖναι, thou canst pronounce, utterances of judgment. Comp. the phrase, recurring more than once in that same story of Belshazzar, in Daniel 5 : τὴν σύγκρισιν γνωρίζειν, or: ἀναγγέλλειν: to make known or declare the judgment (as to what that marvellous writing might signify).

[416] Hofmann expounds as if Paul had written in ver. 12 f.: τὰ ἤδη νῦν ὑπὸ τ. Θ. χαρισθέντα ἡμῖν, σημεῖα ὄντα τῶν μελλόντων, ἃ καὶ συγκρίνομεν … πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ λαλοῦντες. Comp. on the latter expression, Maximus Tyrius, xxii. 4 : συνετὰ συνετοῖς λέγων.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 2:13 . ἃ καὶ λαλοῦμεν the vb [395] of 1Co 2:6-7 (see note): there opposed to μυστήριον , here to εἰδῶμεν ( cf. Joh 3:11 ) “which things indeed we speak out”; knowing these great things of God, we tell them ( cf. Joh 18:20 ; also 2Co 4:2 ff., Luk 12:2 f., Act 26:16 ). P. has no esoteric doctrines, to be whispered to a select circle; if the τέλειοι and πνευματικοὶ alone comprehend his Gospel, that is not due to reserve on his part. “The καὶ λαλοῦμεν makes it clear that P. does not mean (in 1Co 2:6 and 1Co 3:1 f.) to distinguish two sorts of Gospel; his preaching has always the entire truth for its content, but expressed suitably to the growth of his hearers” (Hn [396] ).

[395] verb

[396] C. F. G. Heinrici’s Erklärung der Korintherbriefe (1880), or 1 Korinther in Meyer’s krit.-exegetisches Kommentar (1896).

The mode of utterance agrees with the character of the revealing Spirit: οὐκ ἐν διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις , ἀλλʼ ἐν διδακτοῖς κ . τ . λ . “(which things we speak out), not in human-wisdom-taught words, but in (words) Spirit-taught”

Ver ba rem sequuntur (Wetstein). The opposed gens, depend on διδακτοῖς , denoting agent with vbl [397] adj [398] a construction somewhat rare, but cl [399] (so in Joh 6:45 , Isa 54:13 ; diff [400] in 1Ma 4:7 , διδακτοὶ πολέμου ); they are anarthrous, signifying opposite kinds of wisdom. διδακτὸς in earlier Gr [401] meant what can or ought to be taught ; later, what is taught ( cf. γνωστός , Rom 1:19 ). Paul affirms that his words in matters of revelation, as well as thoughts, were taught him by the Spirit; he claims, in some sense, verbal inspiration. In an honest mind thought and language are one, and whatever determines the former must mould the latter. Cor [402] critics complained both of the imperfection of Paul’s dialect (2Co 10:10 : see 1Co 2:1 above) and of the poverty of his ideas; here is his rejoinder. We arrive thus at the explanation of the obscure clause, πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συνκρίνοντες , combining spiritual things with spiritual , wedding kindred speech to thought (for the ptp [403] qualifies λαλοῦμεν ): so Er [404] , Cv [405] , Bz [406] , D.W [407] , Mr [408] , Hn [409] , Lt [410] , El [411] , Bt [412] ; “with spiritual phrase matching spiritual truth” (Ev [413] ).

[397] verbal.

[398] adjective.

[399] classical.

[400] difference, different, differently.

[401] Greek, or Grotius’ Annotationes in N.T.

[402] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[403] participle

[404] Erasmus’ In N.T. Annotationes .

[405] Calvin’s In Nov. Testamentum Commentarii .

[406] Beza’s Nov. Testamentum: Interpretatio et Annotationes (Cantab., 1642).

[407].W. De Wette’s Handbuch z. N. T.

[408] Meyer’s Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).

[409] C. F. G. Heinrici’s Erklärung der Korintherbriefe (1880), or 1 Korinther in Meyer’s krit.-exegetisches Kommentar (1896).

[410] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).

[411] C. J. Ellicott’s St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians .

[412] J. A. Beet’s St. Paul’s Epp. to the Corinthians (1882).

[413] T. S. Evans in Speaker’s Commentary .

1Co 2:13 asserts the correspondence of Apostolic utterance and thought ; in 1Co 2:14 P. passes to the correspondence of men and things . Other meanings are found for συνκρίνω , and πνευματικοῖς may be masc. as well as neut.; thus the following variant renderings are deduced: (1) comparing sp. things with sp. (Vg [414] , E.V [415] , Ed [416] ) forming them into a correlated system; (2) interpreting , or proving, sp. things by sp. sc. O.T. types by N.T. fulfilments (Cm [417] and Ff [418] ); (3) adapting , or appropriating, sp. things to sp. men (Est., Olshausen, Gd [419] ), with some strain upon the vb [420] ; (4) interpreting sp. things to sp. men (Bg [421] , Rückert, Hf [422] , Stanley, Al [423] , Sm [424] ). The last explanation is plausible, in view of the sequel; but it misses the real point of 1Co 2:13 , and is not clearly supported by the usage of συνκρίνω , which “means properly to combine , as διακρίνω to separate” (Lt [425] ).

[414] Latin Vulgate Translation.

[415] English Version.

[416] T. C. Edwards’ Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians . 2

[417] John Chrysostom’s Homiliœ († 407).

[418] Fathers.

[419] F. Godet’s Commentaire sur la prem. Ép. aux Corinthiens (Eng. Trans.).

[420] verb

[421] Bengel’s Gnomon Novi Testamenti.

[422] J. C. K. von Hofmann’s Die heilige Schrift N.T. untersucht , ii. 2 (2te Auflage, 1874).

[423] Alford’s Greek Testament .

[424] P. Schmiedel, in Handcommentar zum N.T. (1893).

[425] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_2:13

Which things also we speak, not in the words which mans wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Which things; the things revealed by the Spirit. We also speak. We do not only know, we also communicate the things which God has revealed. How is this done? What language did the apostle use in communicating what he had received by divine revelation? He answers, according to his usual method, first, negatively; and then, positively. It was not done in the words which mans wisdom teacheth. This includes two things. The words used by the apostle were neither such as the skill of the rhetorician would suggest, nor such as his own mind, uninfluenced by the Spirit of God, suggested. The affirmative statement is, that the words used were taught by the Holy Ghost. This is verbal inspiration, or the doctrine that the writers of the Scriptures were controlled by the Spirit of God in the choice of the words which they employed in communicating divine truth. This has been stigmatized as the mechanical theory of inspiration, degrading the sacred penmen into there machines. It is objected to this doctrine that it leaves the diversity of style which marks the different portions of the Bible, unaccounted for. But, if God can control the thoughts of a man without making him a machine, why cannot he control his language? And why may he not render each writer, whether poetical or prosaic, whether polished or rude, whether aphoristic or logical, infallible in the use of his characteristic style? If the language of the Bible be not inspired, then we have the truth communicated through the discoloring and distorting medium of human imperfection. Pauls direct assertion is that the words which he used, were taught by the Holy Ghost.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual; or rather, joining spiritual things to spiritual words, or, explaining the things of the Spirit in the words of the Spirit. For the use of συγκρίνειν in the sense of interpreting or explaining, see Gen_40:8; Gen_41:15, Gen_41:16. Dan_5:12 in the lxx. This interpretation is demanded by the connection. The apostle had said that the truths which he taught were revealed by the Spirit; and that the words which he used were taught by the Spirit, which he sums up by saying, he explained spiritual things in spiritual words. This view of the passage is perfectly consistent with the signification of the words. The original word (συγκρίνω) means not only mentally to combine and hence to compare, but also to join together; and also to explain. It is used in the Septuagint to express the act of interpreting dreams or enigmas. The clause in question may, therefore, be translated either, combining spiritual things with spiritual words; or, explaining the one by the other. Besides, the word spiritual (πνευματικοῖς) which has no substantive connected with it, most naturally agrees with words (λόγοις) understood, which immediately precedes.

The other interpretation, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, whether it means comparing the Old Testament with the New, as some say; or, as others understand it, comparing one portion of the Spirits teaching with another, is inconsistent with the context. Much less can be said in favor of a third interpretation of this clause adopted by many, who understand the apostle to say, he explains spiritual things to spiritual persons. This anticipates what follows.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now he returneth to his purpose, and concludeth the argument which he began verse 6, and it is thus: the words must be applied to the matter, and the matter must be set forth with words which are meet and convenient for it: now this wisdom is spiritual and not of man, and therefore it must be delivered by a spiritual kind of teaching, and not by enticing words of man’s eloquence, that the simple, and yet wonderful majesty of the holy Ghost may therein appear.

Applying the words unto the matter, to wit, that as we teach spiritual things, so [must] our kind of teaching be spiritual.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

also--We not only know by the Holy Ghost, but we also speak the "things freely given to us of God" (Co1 2:12).

which the Holy Ghost teacheth--The old manuscripts read "the Spirit" simply, without "Holy."

comparing spiritual things with spiritual--expounding the Spirit-inspired Old Testament Scripture, by comparison with the Gospel which Jesus by the same Spirit revealed [GROTIUS]; and conversely illustrating the Gospel mysteries by comparing them with the Old Testament types [CHRYSOSTOM]. So the Greek word is translated, "comparing" (Co2 10:12). WAHL (Key of the New Testament) translates, "explaining (as the Greek is translated, Gen 40:8, the Septuagint) to spiritual (that is, Spirit-taught) men, spiritual things (the things which we ourselves are taught by the Spirit)." Spirit-taught men alone can comprehend spiritual truths. This accords with Co1 2:6, Co1 2:9-10, Co1 2:14-15; Co1 3:1. ALFORD translates, "Putting together (combining) spirituals with spirituals"; that is, attaching spiritual words to spiritual things, which we should not do, if we were to use words of worldly wisdom to expound spiritual things (so Co1 2:1, Co1 2:4; Pe1 4:11). Perhaps the generality of the neuters is designed to comprehend these several notions by implication. Comparing, or combining, spirituals with spirituals; implying both that spiritual things are only suited to spiritual persons (so "things" comprehended persons, Co1 1:27), and also that spiritual truths can only be combined with spiritual (not worldly-wise) words; and lastly, spirituals of the Old and New Testaments can only be understood by mutual comparison or combination, not by combination with worldly "wisdom," or natural perceptions (Co1 1:21-22; Co1 2:1, Co1 2:4-9; compare Psa 119:18).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 13. Which things also we speak] We dare no more use the language of the Jews and the Gentiles in speaking of those glorious things, than we can indulge their spirit. The Greek orators affected a high and florid language, full of tropes and figures, which dazzled more than it enlightened. The rabbins affected obscurity, and were studious to find out cabalistical meanings, which had no tendency to make the people wise unto salvation. The apostles could not follow any of these; they spoke the things of God in the words of God; every thing was plain and intelligible; every word well placed, clear, and nervous. He who has a spiritual mind will easily comprehend an apostle's preaching.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual.] This is commonly understood to mean, comparing the spiritual things under the Old Testament with the spiritual things under the New: but this does not appear to be the apostle's meaning. The word συγκρινοντες, which we translate comparing, rather signifies conferring, discussing, or explaining; and the word πνευματικοις should be rendered to spiritual men, and not be referred to spiritual things. The passage therefore should be thus translated: Explaining spiritual things to spiritual persons. And this sense the following verse absolutely requires.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. Which things also we speak, not in the learned words, etc. He speaks of himself, for he is still employed in commending his ministry. Now it is a high commendation that he pronounces upon his preaching, when he says of it that it contains a secret revelation of the most important matters — the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the sum of our salvation, and the inestimable treasures of Christ, that the Corinthians may know how highly it ought to be prized. In the meantime he returns to the concession that he had made before — that his preaching had not been adorned with any glitter of words, and had no luster of elegance, but was contented with the simple doctrine of the Holy Spirit. By the learned words of human wisdom he means those that savor of human learning, and are polished according to the rules of the rhetoricians, or blown up with philosophical loftiness, with a view to excite the admiration of the hearers. The words taught by the Spirit, on the other hand, are such as are adapted to a pure and simple style, corresponding to the dignity of the Spirit, rather than to an empty ostentation. For in order that eloquence may not be wanting, we must always take care that the wisdom of God be not polluted with any borrowed and profane luster. Paul’s manner of teaching was of such a kind, that the power of the Spirit shone forth in it single and unattired, without any foreign aid.

Spiritual things with spiritual Συγκρινεσθαι is used here, I have no doubt, in the sense of adapt This is sometimes the meaning of the word, (as Budaeus shows by a quotation from Aristotle) and hence συγκριμα is used to mean what is knit together or glued together, and certainly it suits much better with Paul’s context than compare or liken, as others have rendered it. He says then that he adapts spiritual things to spiritual, in accommodating the words to the subject; that is, he tempers that heavenly wisdom of the Spirit with a simple style of speech, and of such a nature as carries in its front the native energy of the Spirit. In the meantime he reproves others, who, by an affected elegance of expression and show of refinement, endeavor to obtain the applause of men, as persons who are either devoid of solid truth, or, by unbecoming ornaments, corrupt the spiritual doctrine of God.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(13) Not in the words.—Not only the gospel truths themselves, but the very form and manner in which those truths are taught is the result of spiritual insight.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual.—Better, explaining spiritual things in spiritual language; really only another more pointed form of stating what he has just said. The word translated here “comparing” in our Authorised version is used in the sense of expounding or teaching in the LXX. (Gen_40:8; Gen_40:16; Dan_5:12), especially of dreams, where the dream is, so to speak, “compared” with the interpretation. So here, the spiritual things are “compared” with the spiritual language in which they are stated. Another meaning—explaining spiritual things to spiritual men—has been suggested, but that adopted would seem to be the more simple and natural. This second interpretation, would make these words the introduction to the remark which follows about “the spiritual man,” but it involves a use of the word in which it is not found elsewhere in the New Testament.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. comparing spiritual things with spiritual] These words have been interpreted in several ways. (1) Wiclif renders them “maken a liknesse of (i.e. explaining) spyritual things to goostli men.” (2) The Vulgate and English versions render the Greek word by compare. (3) Some interpret, explaining spiritual things in spiritual ways; (Luther so renders it). (4) Another explanation is, explaining spiritual things by spiritual, i.e. interpreting the Revelation of God by the inward promptings of the spirit. The first would seem preferable and most agreeable to the context, for St Paul is speaking of the doctrine he delivered, which he says is unintelligible to the natural man, but capable of being brought home to the understanding of him who possesses spiritual qualifications.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But the natural man,.... Not a babe in Christ, one that is newly born again, for though such have but little knowledge of spiritual things, yet they have a taste, and do relish and desire, and receive the sincere milk of the word, and grow thereby; but an unregenerate man, that has no knowledge at all of such things; not an unregenerate man only, who is openly and notoriously profane, abandoned to sensual lusts and pleasures; though such a man being sensual, and not having the Spirit, must be a natural man; but rather the wise philosopher, the Scribe, the disputer of this world; the rationalist, the man of the highest attainments in nature, in whom reason is wrought up to its highest pitch; the man of the greatest natural parts and abilities, yet without the Spirit and grace of God, mentioned Co1 1:20 and who all along, both in that chapter and in this, quite down to this passage, is had in view: indeed, every man in a state of nature, who is as he was born, whatever may be the inward furniture of his mind, or his outward conduct of life, is but a natural man, and such an one

receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: not the things relating to the deity, personality, and perfections of the Holy Spirit, though these the natural man knows not, nor receives; nor the things done by him, particularly the operations of his grace on the souls of men in regeneration, concerning which he says, as Nicodemus did, "how can these things be?" but the truths of the Gospel before spoken of; so called, because they are contained in the Scriptures edited by the Spirit of God, are the deep things of God, which he searches into and reveals; and because they are made known by him, who is given and received for that end and purpose, that the saints might know them; and because they are delivered by the preachers of the Gospel, in words which he teacheth; now these the natural man receives not in the love of them, so as to approve of and like them, truly to believe them, cordially embrace them, and heartily be subject to them, profess and obey them, but on the contrary abhors and rejects them:

for they are foolishness unto him; they are looked upon by him as absurd, and contrary to reason; they do not agree with his taste, he disrelishes and rejects them as things insipid and distasteful; he regards them as the effects of a crazy brain, and the reveries of a distempered head, and are with him the subject of banter and ridicule:

neither can he know them: as a natural man, and whilst he is such, nor by the help and mere light of nature only; his understanding, which is shut unto them, must be opened by a divine power, and a superior spiritual light must be thrown into it; at most he can only know the literal and grammatical sense of them, or only in the theory, notionally and speculatively, not experimentally, spiritually, and savingly:

because they are spiritually discerned; in a spiritual manner, by a spiritual light, and under the influence, and by the assistance of the Spirit of God. There must be a natural visive discerning faculty, suited to the object; as there must be a natural visive faculty to see and discern natural things, so there must be a spiritual one, to see, discern, judge, and approve of spiritual things; and which only a spiritual, and not a natural man has.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Ver. 13. But which the Holy Ghost teacheth] So that not the matter only, but words also of Holy Scripture are dictated by the Spirit, and are therefore to be had in higher estimation, 2Pe 1:21.

Comparing] Or co-apting (συγκρινοντες), fitting spiritual words to spiritual matters, that all may savour of the Spirit.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Which things we speak - Which great, and glorious, and certain truths, we, the apostles, preach and explain.

Not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth - Not such as human philosophy or eloquence would dictate. They do not have their origin in the devices of human wisdom, and they are not expressed in such words of dazzling and attractive rhetoric as would be employed by those who pride themselves on the wisdom of this world.

But which the Holy Ghost teacheth - That is, in the words which the Holy Spirit imparts to us. Locke understands this as referring to the fact that the apostles used “the language and expressions” which the Holy Spirit had taught in the revelations of the Scriptures. But this is evidently giving a narrow view of the subject. The apostle is speaking of the whole course of instruction by which the deep things of God were made known to the Christian church; and all this was not made known in the very words which were already contained in the Old Testament. He evidently refers to the fact that the apostles were themselves under the direction of the Holy Spirit, in the words and doctrines which they imparted; and this passage is a full proof that they laid claim to divine inspiration. It is further observable that he says, that this was done in such “words” as the Holy Spirit taught, referring not to the doctrines or subjects merely, but to the manner of expressing them. It is evident here that he lays claim to an inspiration in regard to the words which he used, or to the manner of his stating the doctrines of revelation. Words are the signs of thoughts; and if God designed that his truth should be accurately expressed in human language, there must have been a supervision over the words used, that such should be employed, and such only, as should accurately express the sense which he intended to convey.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual - πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες pneumatikois pneumatika sugkrinontes. This expression has been very variously interpreted; and is very difficult of explanation. LeClerc renders it “speaking spiritual things to spiritual men.” Most of the fathers rendered it: “comparing the things which were written by the Spirit of the Old Testament with what is now revealed to us by the same Spirit, and confirming our doctrine by them.” Calvin renders the word “comparing” by “fitting,” or adapting (“aptare”), and says that it means “that he adapted spiritual things to spiritual people, while he accommodated words to the thing; that is he tempered that celestial wisdom of the Spirit with simple language, and which conveyed by itself the native energy of the Spirit.” Thus, says he, he reproved the vanity of those who attempted to secure human applause by a turgid and subtle mode of argument.

Grotius accords with the fathers, and renders it, “explaining those things which the prophets spake by the Spirit of God, by those things which Christ has made known to us by his Spirit.” Macknight renders it: “explaining spiritual things in words taught by the Spirit.” So Doddridge - The word rendered “comparing” συγκρίνοντες sugkrinontes, means properly “to collect, join, mingle, unite together”; then “to separate or distinguish parts of things and unite them into one”; then “to judge of the qualities of objects by carefully separating or distinguishing”; then “to compare for the purpose of judging,” etc. Since it means to compare one thing with another for the purpose of explaining its nature, it comes to signify to “interpret,” to “explain;” and in this sense it is often used by the Septuagint as a translation of the Hebrew word פתר phathar, “to open, unfold, explain.” (See Gen 40:8, Gen 40:16, Gen 40:22; Gen 41:12, Gen 41:15); also of פרשׁ paarash, “to explain”; and of the Chaldee peshar, Dan 5:13, Dan 5:17. See also Dan 2:4-7, Dan 2:9,Dan 2:16, Dan 2:24, Dan 2:26, Dan 2:30, Dan 2:36, Dan 2:45; Dan 4:3-4, Dan 4:6,Dan 4:16-17; Dan 5:7-8, Dan 5:13, Dan 5:16, Dan 5:18, Dan 5:20; Dan 7:16, in all which places the noun σύγκρισις sugkrisis, is used in the same sense. In this sense the word is, doubtless, used here, and is to be interpreted in the sense of “explaining, unfolding.” There is no reason, either in the word used here, or in the argument of the apostle, why the sense of comparing should be retained.

Spiritual things - πνευματικὰ pneumatika. Things, doctrines, subjects that pertain to the teaching of the Spirit. It does not mean things “spiritual” in opposition to “fleshly;” or “intellectual” in opposition to things pertaining to “matter;” but spiritual as the things referred to were such as were performed, and revealed by the Holy Spirit - his doctrines on the subject of religion under the new dispensation, and his influence on the heart.

With spiritual - πνευματικοῖς pneumatikois. This is an adjective; and may be either masculine or neuter. It is evident, that some noun is understood. That may be either:

ανθρωποις anthrōpois, “men” - and then it will mean “to spiritual men” - that is, to people who are enlightened or taught by the Spirit and thus many commentators understand it; or, It may be λόγοις logois, “words” - and then it may mean, either that the “spiritual things” were explained by “words” and illustrations drawn from the writings of the Old Testament, inspired by the Spirit - as most of the fathers, and many moderns understand it; or that the “things spiritual” were explained by-words which the Holy Spirit then communicated, and which were adapted to the subject - simple, pure, elevated; not gross, not turgid, not distinguished for rhetoric, and not such as the Greeks sought, but such as became the Spirit of God communicating great, sublime, yet simple truths to people.

It will then mean “explaining doctrines that pertain to the Spirit’s teaching and influence in words that are taught; by the same Spirit, and that are suited to convey in the most intelligible manner those doctrines to men.” Here the idea of the Holy Spirit’s present agency is kept up throughout; the idea that he communicates the doctrine, and the mode of stating it to man - The supposition that λόγοις logois, words, is the word understood here, is favored by the fact that it occurs in the previous part of this verse. And if this be the sense, it means that the words which were used by the apostles were pure, simple, unostentatious, and undistinguished by display - such as became doctrines taught by the Holy Spirit, when communicated in words suggested by the same Spirit.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Which mysteries and divine truths, we apostles (even when we speak to the more perfect sort of men) deliver not in the learned words of human wisdom, not in the fine languages, studied periods and sentences arranged by the art of rhetoric, but in the doctrine of the Spirit, that is, as the Spirit of God within us teacheth us for the good of those that hear us. --- Comparing spiritual things with spiritual, that is, treating spiritual things with persons that are more spiritual and more perfect, adapting our discourses to the capacity of those we speak to. Others will have the sense to be: we compare spiritual things with spiritual things, that is, we treat of such matters after a spiritual manner, with proofs and examples out of the revealed Scriptures, &c. (Witham) --- St. Paul seems in this place to answer an objection that might be brought against him. If, as you say, you are gifted with a knowledge of mysteries, who do you not reveal those mysteries to us? To this he seems to answer, because to spiritual persons, we impart spiritual knowledge. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Reason and all practice directeth men to speak and write of subjects in a style and phrase fitted to the matter about which they write or discourse. Our subjects, saith the apostle, were sublime, spiritual subjects; therefore I did not discourse them like an orator, with an excellency of speech or of wisdom, ,{ as 1Co 2:1} or with the enticing or persuasive words of man’s wisdom, ( as he had said, 1Co 2:4), nor with words which man’s wisdom teacheth, ( which is his phrase here), but with words which the Holy Ghost hath taught us, either in holy writ, or by its impressions upon our minds, where they are first formed.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual; fitting spiritual things to spiritual persons who are able to understand them, or fitting spiritual language to spiritual matter, speaking the oracles of God as the oracles of God, 1Pe 4:11; not declaiming like an orator, nor arguing philosophically like an Athenian philosopher, but using a familiar, plain, spiritual style, giving you the naked truths of God without any paint or gaudery of phrase.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual—For as we reason about, and understand, and realize, secular things by comparison—comparing things secular with secular—so we comprehend and reason of spiritual things by comparing spiritual with spiritual. So that there is a blessed logic in spiritual things.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The meaning of this clause is very uncertain. It has been rendered, "Blending spiritual things with spiritual" (Kling, Wordsworth), i.e. not adulterating them with carnal admixtures (2Co_2:17; 1Pe_2:22) "Interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men". (Bengel, Reichert, Stanley, margin of Revised Version; see Gen_40:8; Dan_5:12) "Explaining spiritual things in spiritual words." This meaning the Greek will not bear, but Calvin and Beza get the same meaning by rendering it, "Adapting spiritual things to spiritual words." It is doubtful whether the Greek verb (sunkrinontes) can be rendered "comparing," which comes from the Vulgate, comparantes. Wickliffe has the version, "Maken a liknesse of spyritual things to goostli men, for a besteli man persuyved not through thingis." The commonest sense of the word in the LXX is "interpreting", (Gen_40:8, etc.) and the best rendering is, "Explaining spirituals to spiritual men." If it be supposed that the verb sugkrinw acquired the sense of "comparing" in Hellenistic Greek, (2Co_10:12 RAPC Wis 7:29 15:18) then the rendering of our Authorized Version may stand.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Which also we speak - As well as know. In words taught by the Holy Spirit - Such are all the words of scripture. How high a regard ought we, then, to retain for them! Explaining spiritual things by spiritual words; or, adapting spiritual words to spiritual things - Being taught of the Spirit to express the things of the Spirit.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The Word and spiritual discernment:

v. 13. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

v. 14. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

v. 15. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

v. 16. For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

The apostle now refers more particularly to his office, including the other apostles in a category with himself. They know the great things of God, and therefore they tell them, proclaim them. And this speaking is done not in words taught by human wisdom, not according to the rules of worldly oratory and logic, but in words taught by the Spirit. Paul thus plainly states that not only his thoughts, but his very words were taught him by the Spirit; he affirms for himself and his fellow-apostles verbal inspiration. In the correct words of Holy Writ we find the clear and correct meaning of God. And the words agree exactly with’ the divine content, for Paul says that they place spiritual things side by side with spiritual things, matching the spiritual truth with spiritual phrase. In the teaching of the apostle there is a perfect harmony of subject-matter with the expression in words, with the form of speech as presented to his readers. The language of Scripture correctly represents the thoughts of God as He wanted to make them known to us for our salvation. The Bible thus sets before us the mind and doctrine of God in a clear way, and there is no need of adding human wisdom in any of its parts.

By way of contrast, Paul refers to the un-spiritual: But natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; the unregenerate person, even at his best, rejects the gifts and benefits which the Holy Ghost wants to bestow upon him; his is not merely a neutral, an apathetic feeling, but one of outspoken hostility: he wants nothing to do with them. For folly they are to him, and he cannot perceive them, for a person’s estimate of them must proceed from the spiritual side. Where, therefore, there is not a spark of spirituality, where the Spirit of God has not been able to work regeneration, there every human being’s judgment will insist upon the utter senselessness of the Gospel-message. "The Gospel appears on trial before the natural men; like the Athenian philosophers, they give it a first hearing, but they have no organon (rule of guidance) to test it by. The inquiry is stultified, at the very beginning, by the incompetence of the jury. The unspiritual are out of court as religious critics; they are deaf men judging music. " "The natural man receiveth not (or, as the Greek word properly signifies, grasps not, comprehends not, accepts not) the things of the Spirit, that is, he is not capable of spiritual things; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them. Much less will he truly believe the Gospel, or assent thereto and regard it as truth."

It is different with the believer: But the spiritual person makes an estimate, a test, of everything. Because the believer is imbued with, and governed by, the Spirit, therefore his judgment, as governed by the Spirit, will extend to everything. He can form a correct estimate and judgment of his thoughts, words, and deeds, as to their sinfulness or agreement with the Word and will of God; he may form a correct opinion as to the various conditions and circumstances in life, as to whether certain things belong to the category of things indifferent or whether they must be labeled sinful; he can govern his conscience in such a way as to guard against erring in either direction, lax-ness or severity. And in performing this function of his spiritual life, the spiritual man himself is under no person’s judgment. He can well bear the criticism of the world, because such criticism does not strike him in truth. With the Word of God and a good conscience on his side, the Christian can afford to look the whole world in the face, since he is above both criticism and contempt. So firmly may he stand on the basis which alone is true that he may calmly say with Paul: For who has found out the mind of the Lord, Isa 40:13; who has investigated and examined what the Lord thinks, with the intention of giving Him instructions? No man has ever penetrated that inscrutable wisdom which is evidenced in God’s plan of salvation. Every one that attempts to pass judgment upon spiritual persons presumes to be a counselor of the Lord; every one that endeavors to correct the words of the Spirit’s teaching presumes to be a teacher of God. To all carnal-minded critics, therefore, we Christians can throw down the challenge: As for us, we have the mind of Christ. Christ lives in us, and His mind rules our mind, enabling us to make the proper estimate of all conditions and circumstances, but that we also look upon the cross of Calvary and upon the whole Gospel not with natural, but with spiritual eyes, that we find the fullness of all wisdom in the mystery of Christ the Crucified. "We have the mind of Christ. That is to be understood, as said above, that we may know and find out that which serves for our salvation. This mind and understanding is faith, that the spiritual man is saved without all works, through the Word only; thereafter he can also judge all things, what is right or wrong; thus he also knows all thoughts and plots of the devil and against what they are directed, namely, that he wants to suppress and extirpate faith and the Word of God and all that is necessary for salvation: all this he knows. So the understanding consists chiefly in this, that I know the will of God, what pleases Him; that I may say whether a thing is right or not."

Summary.The apostle shows in what spirit he came to Corinth, proves that the Gospel is the wisdom of the mystery of God, and explains how the Spirit reveals this mystery by verbal inspiration in the Gospel, thus enabling the believers to form correct judgments of all human states and affairs.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words . [Here again we have a clear claim to inspiration, and not only so, but verbal inspiration. Paul did not reason after the manner of worldly philosophers, but imparted his truth under the guidance of the Spirit, who taught him the words to use, so that he taught spiritual truths with spiritual words, a fitting combination. The leaders of our current Reformation did well in conforming to this rule, by seeking to express Bible thoughts in Bible language. To Paul the terms and phrases of theology would have been as distasteful as those of philosophy, because equally man-made and unspiritual.]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. Which things we also speak. The grand truths, “the hidden wisdom,” “the mystery of God,” revealed to them through the Spirit, they spoke to others. These things they spoke, not in the words of man's wisdom, not in the garb of philosophy, but in the words given by the Holy Spirit. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual. This difficult clause has received many explanations. Canon Cook explains it: “Matching spiritual things with spiritual words.” Conybeare and Howson say: “Explaining spiritual things to spiritual men.” This last view, which Canon Cook says does no violence to the Greek, harmonizes best with verses 6 and 14. I think that verse 14, the next verse, shows that this is the true meaning.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

13. [ἁγίου] after πνεύματος. Om. אABCD, Vetus Lat., Vulg. and Peshito. It has the look of a marginal gloss or an unauthorized addition, perhaps from habit.

13. ἅ, i.e. the things freely given us by God, of which we speak as men taught by God, not as men trusting in the conclusions of unassisted reason. ὁρᾷς ποῦ ἡμᾶς ἀνήγαγεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀξίας τοῦ διδασκάλου; τοσοῦτον γὰρ ἡμεῖς ἐκείνων σοφώτεροι ὅσον τὸ μέσον Πλάτωνός τε καὶ Πνεύματος ἁγίου. οἱ μὲν γὰρ τοὺς ἔξωθεν ῥήτορας ἔχουσι διδασκάλους, ἡμεῖς δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον. Chrysostom.

πνεύματος [ἁγίου]. The genitive of the instrument, as also ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας above. Without the article πνεῦμα ἁγίον leads us to think of the essence of the Holy Ghost. With the article we are directed towards His agency or office. See Joh 14:26. So θεός refers to the Divine essence, ὁ θεός to His relations to man. See Professor Westcott’s note on 1Jn 4:12.

πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συνκρίνοντες. These words are capable of four interpretations: (1) explaining spiritual things to spiritual men (so Wiclif), (2) explaining spiritual things by spiritual, (3) explaining spiritual things in spiritual ways (so Luther), and (4) comparing spiritual things with spiritual (so Vulg. and A.V.). The verb συνκρίνω signifies (1) to combine, as in Arist. Metaph. I. 4, (2) to compare; so μηδενὸς τολμήσαντος αὐτῷ συγκριθῆναι διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς ἀρετῆς Diod. Sic. IV. 14, (3) to interpret, as dreams; Gen 40:8. (LXX.). Either of these will give a good sense, for the Apostle is speaking both of the reception (οὐ δέχεται, 1Co 2:14) and of the communication of spiritual truth (λαλοῦμεν). Origen (Hom. St Matthew 18) seems to favour interpretation (1) or (2): ἡ γὰρ ἐπιμελὴς τήρησις μέγιστα ἂν ὑποβάλλοι νοήματα τοῖς ἐπισταμένοις πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνειν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο λαλοῦσιν οὐκ ἐν διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις, ἀλλ’ ἐν διδακτοῖς πνεύματος ἁγίου.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13.] καί, also; τὰ χαρισθ. ἡμῖν, we not only know by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, but also speak them, not in words (arguments, rhetorical forms, &c.) taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit. The genitives are governed by διδακτοῖς in each case: see ref., and cf. Pind. Olymp. ix. 153: τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν. πολλοὶ δὲ διδακταῖς ἀνθρώπων ἀρεταῖς κλέος ὥρουσαν ἑλέσθαι· ἄνευ δὲ θεοῦ κ.τ.λ.

πνευμ … πν. συγκρ.] interpreting spiritual things to the spiritual. So Theophyl. altern., πνευματικοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰ πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες καὶ διαλύοντες· οὗτοι γὰρ μόνοι δύνανται χωρεῖν ταῦτα. And very nearly so as regards συγκρίνοντες Chrysostom and Grotius; only they take πνευματικοῖς not masc. but neuter, ‘by spiritual things:’ ὅταν πνευματικὸν καὶ ἄπορον ᾖ, ἀπὸ τῶν πνευμακῶν τὰς μαρτυρίας ἄγομεν. οἷον λέγω, ὅτι ἀνέστη ὁ χριστός, ὅτι ἀπὸ παρθένου ἐγεννήθη. παράγω μαρτυρίας κ. τύπους κ. ἀποδείξεις, τοῦ Ἰωνᾶ, κ.τ.λ. Chrys. Hom. vii. p. 55. ‘Exponentes ea quæ Prophetæ Spiritu Dei acti dixere, per ea quæ Christus suo Spiritu nobis aperuit.’ Grot. Meyer denies that συγκρίνω ever means to interpret: but evidently the LXX do so use it in Gen 40:8, ἐνύπνιον εἴδομεν, καὶ ὁ συγκρίνων οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτό. See also ib. vv. 16, 22, and Dan 5:12, Theodotion (where the LXX have συγκρίματα ἀπέδειξε). Erasmus, Beza, Calvin, De Wette, and Meyer render it, ‘fitting, or attaching, spiritual words to spiritual things.’ And so I gave and defended it in my earlier editions. It seems to me now more natural to take πνευματικοῖς as masculine, and as leading to the introduction of the two men, the ψυχικός, and the πνευματικός, immediately after.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. ὃ καὶ λαλοῦμεν. This is the dominant verb of the whole passage (vv. 6, 7: see notes on ἥν, v. 8, ἅ and ὅσα, v. 9). The καί emphasizes the justification, furnished by the preceding verses, for the claim made; ‘Which are the very things that we do utter.’ The present passage is the personal application of the foregoing, as vv. 1-5 are of 1:18-31.

διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας. ‘Taught by man’s wisdom.’ We have similar genitives in Joh 6:45, διδακτοὶ Θεοῦ, and in Mat 25:34, εὐλογημένοι τοῦ πατρός. In class. Grk. the construction is found only in poets; κείνης διδακτά (Soph. Elect. 343), διδακταῖς ἀνθρώπων ἀρεταῖς (Pind. Ol. 9:152). Cf. 1:17.

διδακτοῖς πνεύματος. See on v. 4, where, as here and 1Th 1:5, πνεῦμα has no article. The Apostle is not claiming verbal inspiration; but verba rem sequuntur (Wetstein). Cf. Luk 21:15; Jer 1:9. Sapientia est scaturigo sermonum (Beng.). Bentley, Kuenen, etc. conjecture ἐν ἀδιδάκτοις πνεύματος.

πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συνκρίνοντες. Two questions arise here, on the answer to which the interpretation of the words depends,—the gender of πνευματικοῖς, and the meaning of συνκρίνειν. The latter is used by St Paul only here and 2Co 10:12, where it means ‘to compare.’ This is a late use, frequent from Aristotle onwards, but out of place here, although adopted in both AV. and RV. text. Its classical meaning is ‘to join fitly,’ ‘compound,’ ‘combine’ (RV. marg.). In the LXX it has the meaning ‘to interpret,’ but only in the case of dreams (Gen 40:8, Gen 40:16, Gen 40:22, 41:12, Gen 40:15; Jdg 7:15; Dan 5:12, Dan 5:7:15, Dan 5:16). We have, therefore, the following possibilities to consider:—

(1). Taking πνευματικοῖς as neuter;—either,

(α) Combining spiritual things (the words) with spiritual things (the subject matter); or,

(β) Interpreting (explaining) spiritual things by spiritual things.

This (β) may be understood in a variety of ways—

Interpreting O.T. types by N.T. doctrines.

Interpreting spiritual truths by spiritual language.

Interpreting spiritual truths by spiritual faculties.

Of these three, the first is very improbable; the third is substantially the explanation adopted by Luther; und richten geistliche Sachen geistlich.

(2). Taking πνευματικοῖς as masculine;—either,

(γ) Suiting (matching) spiritual matter to spiritual hearers; or,

(δ) Interpreting spiritual truths to spiritual hearers.

In favour of taking πνευματικοῖς as neuter may be urged the superior epigrammatic point of keeping the same gender for both terms, and the naturalness of πνευματικοῖς being brought into close relation with the συν- in συνκρίνοντες. These considerations are of weight, and the resultant sense is good and relevant, whether we adopt (α) or the third form of (β). As Theodore of Mopsuestia puts it, διὰ τῶν τοῦ πνεύματος ἀποδείξεων τὴν τοῦ πνεύματος διδακαλίαν πιστούμεθα.

On the other hand, in favour of taking πνευματικοῖς as masculine, there is its markedly emphatic position, as if to prepare the way for the contrast with ψυχικός which immediately follows, and which now becomes the Apostle’s main thought. This consideration perhaps turns the scale in favour of taking πνευματικοῖς as ‘spiritual persons.’ Of the two explanations under this head, one would unhesitatingly prefer (δ), were not the use of συνκρίνειν in the sense of ‘interpret’ confined elsewhere to the case of dreams. This objection is not fatal, but it is enough to leave us in doubt whether St Paul had this meaning in his mind. The other alternative (γ) has the advantage of being a little less remote from the Apostle’s only other use of the word. In either case, taking πν, as masculine, we have the Apostle coming back “full circle” to the thought of v. 6, ἐν τοῖς τελείοις, which now receives its necessary justification.

Before concluding the discussion of the true wisdom, the Apostle glances at those who are, and those who are not, fitted to receive it.

After πνεύματος, D 3 E L P, Aeth. AV. add ἁγίου. א A B C D* F G 17, Vulg. RV. omit.

2:14-3:4. THE SPIRITUAL AND THE ANIMAL CHARACTERS

Only the spiritual man can receive the true wisdom. You Corinthians cannot receive it, for your dissensions show that you are not spiritual.

14 Now the man whose interests are purely material has no mind to receive what the Spirit of God has to impart to him: it is all foolishness to him, and he is incapable of understanding it, because it requires a spiritual eye to see its true value. 15 But the spiritual man sees the true value of everything, yet his own true value is seen by no one who is not spiritual like himself. 16 For what human being ever knew the thoughts of the Lord God, so as to be able to instruct and guide Him? But those of us who are spiritual do share the thoughts of Christ.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth. Lit., not in the taught words of human wisdom. Compare Plato : "Through love all the intercourse and speech of God with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar" (" Symposium, " 203).

Which the Spirit teacheth [εν διδακτοις πνευματος] . Lit., in the taught (words) of the Spirit. Taught; not mechanically uttered, but communicated by a living Spirit.

Comparing spiritual things with spiritual [πνευματικοις πνευματικα συγκρινοντες] . Notice the paronomasia. See on Rom 1:29, 31. The dispute on this verse arises over the meanings of sugkrinontev, A. V., comparing, and pneumatikoiv spiritual. As to the latter, whether the reference is to spiritual men, things, or words; as to the former, whether the meaning is adapting, interpreting, proving, or comparing. The principal interpretations are : adapting spiritual words to spiritual things; adapting spiritual things to spiritual men; interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men; interpreting spiritual things by spiritual words. Sugkrinontev occurs only here and 2Co 10:12, where the meaning is clearly compare. In classical Greek the original meaning is to compound, and later, to compare, as in Aristotle and Plutarch, and to interpret, used of dreams, and mainly in Septuagint. See Gen 40:8. The most satisfactory interpretation is combining spiritual things with spiritual words. After speaking of spiritual things (vers. 11, 12, 13), Paul now speaks of the forms in which they are conveyed - spiritual forms or words answering to spiritual matters, and says, we combine spiritual things with spiritual forms of expression. This would not be the case if we uttered the revelations of the Spirit in the speech of human wisdom. 81

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vv. 13. “Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth, appropriating spiritual things to spiritual men.”

Here is the resuming of the λαλοῦμεν, we speak, of 1Co 2:6; it has been prepared for by 1Co 2:10-12: “This hidden wisdom God has revealed to us by His Spirit, and we speak it with words formed in us by this same Spirit. He gives us the form, after having given us the matter.” Καί, also, prominently brings out precisely this relation between the two operations of the Spirit, revelation and inspiration. As Paul has contrasted wisdom with wisdom (1Co 2:6-9), revelation with revelation (1Co 2:10-12), he now contrasts Divine inspiration with earthly inspiration. By revelation God communicates Himself to man; inspiration bears on the relation of man to man. — The genitives, σοφίας and πνεύματος, wisdom and Spirit, may, according to Greek usage, depend, not on the subst. λόγοις, words, but on the verbal notion expressed by the adjective διδακτοῖς (Joh 6:45): “Words taught, not by wisdom, but by the Spirit,” and this connection is also that which agrees best with the context. To teach things which the Spirit has revealed, terms are not made use of which man’s own understanding and ability have discovered. The same Divine breath which lifted the veil to reveal, takes possession also of the mouth of its interpreter when it is to speak. Inspiration is, as it were, the language of revelation. Such is the secret of the peculiar and unique style of the Scriptures.

Meyer justly remarks that the term διδακτός, taught, while it positively includes the idea of inspiration, nevertheless excludes all mechanical representation of the fact, and implies in the person inspired a living assimilation of the truth expressed.

Very various meanings have been given to the last clause of this verse, according to the different senses in which the word συγκρίνειν may be taken, and according to the two genders, masculine or neuter, which may be ascribed to the adj. πνευματικοῖς, spiritual. The rarely used verb συγκρίνειν strictly denotes the act of bringing two things together to compare them and fix their relative value. This is certainly its meaning in the only other passage in the New Testament where it occurs, 2Co 10:12. But in the LXX. this verb frequently takes the meaning of interpreting, especially in speaking of dreams (Gen 40:8; Gen 40:16; Gen 40:22; Dan 5:15-17), because the interpretation of a dream consists in comparing the image with the idea discovered in it. Several commentators have proceeded on this second meaning;

Chrysostom: explaining Christian doctrines by comparing them with the types of the Old Testament (πνευματικοῖς, neuter); Grotius, on the contrary: explaining the prophecies of the Old Testament by comparing them with the doctrines of Christ; Bengel, Rückert, Hofmann: explaining the things of the Spirit to spiritual men (πνευματικοῖς, masculine). This third explanation would in the context be the only admissible one. But this meaning of interpreting given to συγκρίνειν is at once foreign to the New Testament and to classical Greek.

Erasmus, Calvin, de Wette, Meyer, Osiander seek to come nearer to the real sense of the verb by explaining thus: joining, adapting spiritual words to spiritual things (πνευματικοῖς, neuter). It is on this view the justification of the procedure which the apostle has just described in the first part of the verse. To a spiritual body (the wisdom revealed by the Spirit) no other is suitable than a spiritual dress (a language taught by the Spirit). The meaning is excellent; but the last clause would really add nothing to the contents of the previous proposition, and neither in this way is the meaning of the verb συγκρίνειν exactly reproduced. Should not these words form the transition to the development of the third word of the theme (6a), among the perfect, which will form the subject of the following verses? We must, if it is so, take πνενματικοῖς as a masculine and see in it the equivalent of τέλειοι, the perfect; comp. 1Co 2:15 and 1Co 3:1. The word συγκρίνειν has exactly in that case the meaning given it by Passow in his dictionary, a meaning which differs only by a slight shade from the first which we have indicated: mit Auswahl verbinden, to adapt two things to one another with discernment; which leads us to this explanation: “adapting, applying, appropriating with discernment spiritual teachings to spiritual men.” This is precisely the idea which is developed in 1Co 2:14-16, and which will be applied in the final passage 1Co 3:1-4.

This passage has a peculiar importance. It shows that what in Paul’s view was the object of the revelation of which he speaks at this point, was not the historical facts from which salvation flows, nor the simple meaning in which they are presented by the preaching used in evangelization; but that it was the Divine plan which is realized through them, their relation to the history of humanity and of the universe, all that we find expounded in the passages quoted above (Eph. and Col., Romans 9-11, 1 Corinthians 15). There we find unveiled the plan of God in all its dimensions (its length, breadth, depth, height); all that system of Divine thoughts eternally conceived with a view to our glory, of which 1Co 2:7 spoke; the cross, as the centre from which there rays forth in all the directions of time and space the splendour of Divine love. This Christian speculation we have not to make or to seek. It is given: God is its author; His Spirit, the revealer; St. Paul and each of the apostles, in his measure, the inspired interpreter. But this wisdom, revealed to those who are to be its organs, is to be spoken by them only to those who are fit to receive it (1Co 2:14-16).

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.