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by Katie Erickson

For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
- 1 Corinthians 2:11-16

In the previous section, Paul compared the wisdom of God with the wisdom of this age, concluding that there is in fact no comparison between the two. God’s wisdom is infinitely greater than that of any person of any era! Paul continues that idea of contrasts here by comparing the Spirit of God with the spirit of the world.

Just as we cannot fully understand God’s wisdom, we cannot understand any of God’s wisdom without God’s Spirit. In verse 11, Paul states that no person can truly know another person’s thoughts. In that same manner, no one knows God’s thoughts except for God Himself. God’s Spirit referred to here is, of course, the Holy Spirit. This is not referring to some kind of spiritual force but rather the person of the Holy Spirit, who is fully God along with the Father and the Son.

While it appears that this verse gives us an analogy comparing the Holy Spirit to God like a human spirit is to that person, that is not the case here. The grammar of the Greek text does not support that analogy, nor does our theology of the Trinity. The spirit of a person is that person, whereas the Holy Spirit is a separate person of God, while still also being fully a part of God.

We as believers have received the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have not received some other spirit that comes from this world, but the true Spirit from God. Why do we need the Holy Spirit in our lives? “So that we may understand what God has freely given us” (verse 12). The Spirit reveals God’s Word to us and helps us understand who God is and how we should live out our Christian faith.

The point of having God’s Spirit in our lives is given in verse 13: we speak words taught by the Spirit. The only way to convey the truths of God’s Word is through words that the Holy Spirit gives us. While we cannot fully understand spiritual realities with our finite human minds, the best attempt we can make is through language given to us by the Spirit. This is again showing the contrast between God’s wisdom and human wisdom, the Spirit of God and the spirit of this world.

Verses 14-15 emphasize this contrast even more. If we don’t have God’s Spirit, then we can’t understand the things of God. Those who are unbelievers consider God’s ways and Word to be foolishness like Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. The only way to understand God’s wisdom is through God’s Spirit, so someone who doesn’t have God’s Spirit just doesn’t understand. But for those of us who do have God’s Holy Spirit living in us – believers in Jesus Christ – we are able to understand these things, at least at a human level. We are able to discern the things of the Spirit.

Those of us who are believers with God’s Holy Spirit are not subject to merely human judgments, meaning that we follow a different authority and a different wisdom than the wisdom and authority of this world. This is confirmed by the quote that Paul gives in verse 16 from Isaiah 40:13. As with most of the quotations Paul gives in this letter, it is not word-for-word, but he provides the same idea as that verse here.

While we cannot fully know the wisdom of God, we do have some knowledge of it. We don’t know the mind of the Lord in a way where we are in authority over Him or could instruct Him; that much is made clear by this quote that Paul gives. But then he follows that up with stating that we have the mind of Christ. What is Paul saying here?

Recall that the city of Corinth, where the recipients of this letter were located, was a very pagan city. There were lots of Greek philosophers there who relied on their own minds to discern the truths of this world. While Paul acknowledges that he does not fully know the mind of God, he is emphasizing that anything that he teaches will be like foolishness even to the smartest philosophers of the day because Paul has the mind of Christ and they do not. Paul does not know everything that Jesus knows, of course, but through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, he has access to whatever the Spirit wants to reveal to him.

The same is true for us today! While we can never know everything that God knows, and in fact we can ever only know a really tiny fraction of that knowledge, we have access to whatever the Holy Spirit desires to reveal to us. We don’t need to reason out how this world works through the limited capacity of our human brains when we have the whole mind of Christ that we can access through the Holy Spirit!

That also means that anyone who does not have the Holy Spirit will see our message and our teaching as foolishness. They can’t understand the things of God when they don’t have His Spirit to help them understand. This is the epitome of Paul’s argument contrasting the wisdom of God with the foolishness of this world. They are completely at odds with each other, and the only way for one to understand the other is through the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Are you living your life through the understanding of your human spirit in this world, or through the knowledge that you gain through God’s Holy Spirit? Choose wisely!

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