1 Corinthians 2:13-16 - The mind of Christ

2:13

Paul here is again contrasting the foundation of our ideas, our worldview. Are we basing our worldview on human wisdom (ie words taught by human wisdom), or on spiritual wisdom (ie words taught by the Spirit)? Is our fundamental basis the world’s view, or God’s view? They lead to radically different conclusions. We should not expect the world and the gospel to lead to the same outcome. We need to realise the mess that mankind is in. The gospel does not offer a nice little adjustment, but a radical overhaul to life.

2:14

We need to be clear here that when Paul says the man of the world cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned we are not talking magic, or some strange mystical knowledge requiring us to go into some sort of trance state. The key difference is about whether a man is submitted to God or not. If he puts himself first, if he looks at things from a worldly perspective then he will never understand the truth. We should not be surprised when the world takes a completely different viewpoint to that of the Bible, and when it considers traditional Christian understanding to be complete nonsense. We need to trust and believe in the Lord in order to understand the truth.

2:15,16

Having the Spirit does not mean we stop using our brains, quite the opposite. We look at all things from the basic understanding that God is God. But we are “not subject merely human judgments”. Human judgements, once made from an ungodly standpoint, are worthless. They can never truly understand things, and the fact that they some to a different conclusions than us is of no surprise, nor is it of any consequence. In the LGBT debates all this talk of “listening to the LGBT community” is utter nonsense. We should care for all people and be concerned for all people, but if we expect, as some churches seem to do, to learn anything useful in doctrinal/theological terms by listening to the LGBT community, then we are utter fools, and some churches are acting like utter fools.

Paul concludes this section by quoting Isaiah 40:13. Does God need us to instruct Him? Of course not! We need to appreciate that the Christian religion is based on revelation. This most definitely does not mean we kiss our brains goodbye, rather it should make us more humble. We have knowledge because God has opened our minds by the Spirit. And when we do come to Him in faith and repentance, when we are born again, we do have the mind of Christ. Again, this does not mean we know everything, not at all, but it does mean that we see things from a very different perspective to that of the world, and we must not seek to become like the world.