Greetings to all of you, dear brothers and sisters.
Yesterday was a very significant day for us. Four souls from our church made a covenant with God, promising to serve Him with a clear conscience all their lives. Praise God for that.
Whenever souls repent and give testimony before baptism, the question is always asked: how did it happen? And the answer is always the same: the starting point of repentance is God. It was He who made it so that the circumstances of your life led you to hear the Gospel: either through family, or through friends, or even through people unknown to you who were in the right place at the right moment.
But it is also surprising that many have heard the word about Christ many times. Perhaps many times someone wanted to attract you to the church in various ways. Perhaps you have heard about the church and believers since childhood, and for you, all this seemed like nonsense or only for “grandmas and grandpas.”
But suddenly, one day something changed in you when you heard the Gospel. Suddenly the words seemed understandable, not foolish, and even very convincing. The same Gospel, the same Bible suddenly became clearer to you, and it was as if something inside you agreed with what was being said to you.
Before, your whole being resisted, did not understand, and considered it foolishness, but now inside you, it’s as if someone is telling you that all this is true, and Christ died specifically for you so that you might receive justification for your sins.
Before, you thought you were a very good person, and if there is a heaven, you would definitely get there. But now suddenly you see yourself differently; now inside you understand that you are not as good as you thought. Suddenly, when God’s light shone into your soul, you saw all the “cockroaches” of your soul. You now have something to repent of; it now seems to you that if God does not have mercy on you, then heaven does not shine for you.
And now your soul is already running to the Savior, from whom you used to run away. What happened? The Bible calls this being born again. The Holy Spirit touched you and regenerated you from death to life.
Was the reason that the preacher spoke cleverly and very convincingly? No, you had heard the Gospel before, and you had tried to read the same Bible before, which you didn’t understand at all. No, there is something else here. It is the power of God that gave you a new birth and opened your eyes to see.
This is what Paul will speak about today.
Demonstration of Spirit and Power
“and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:4-7).
Last time we talked up to verse 5. And basically, starting from the first chapter, Paul said that “the preaching of the cross is folly to those who are perishing…”, as it once was for you. And Paul knows about this; he understands that a crucified Christ and God are a “stumbling block to Jews” and “folly to Gentiles,” but he does not change the Gospel of the Crucified Christ and Savior in any way to please the Jews and Gentiles.
He knows that the Gospel must not change — it’s the person who must change!
In verse 6, we see that Paul is not against wisdom at all. He is against human wisdom being used just to win more people, but he is for God’s wisdom, which God gives to a person by His Spirit.
Look at what he says next.
God Has Revealed This Through His Spirit
“None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:8-10).
What is this wisdom of God? He has already spoken about it several verses earlier: “to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).
That is, Christ, or the word about Christ, is God’s wisdom. No one could have conceived such a plan of salvation by themselves as God conceived. No one could have expected this, that God, in order to save man, would send His Only Begotten to death so that people could find salvation.
And as the Scripture says, which Paul also quotes: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
A person could not even imagine it; such a thought would not even enter the head, that Christ would come and die on the cross for me, and rise on the third day so that I too would have a resurrection with Him when He comes again. This could not have been invented by man, no matter how smart he was.
Paul adds that “God has revealed this to us through the Spirit” because it would be impossible otherwise; we would never have come to such an understanding if God’s Spirit had not opened it to us. This thought is even better seen in the subsequent verses.
We Have Received the Spirit from God
“For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:11-13).
Paul draws parallels with human thoughts. We don’t know what is inside a person. They can seem like one thing on the outside and be completely different inside. There are many actors in life. Even more so, we would never have known God’s plan if He Himself had not decided to reveal it to us, giving us His Word and the Spirit, who opens that Word for us.
Paul here speaks very specifically: God allows us to understand, or as he says, “that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” For example, the forgiveness of sins is given to me, and specifically to me; salvation and eternal life are given to me, and specifically to me. And we know this only through the Holy Spirit, who has revealed it to us.
Someone might say, “Even when I was an unbeliever, I also knew that Jesus is the Son of God and died on the cross, and I also believed that He rose.” That may be so, but you did not believe that this Jesus died personally for you, and through this, you personally and your specific sins are forgiven by God.
You know, the devil knows better than you that Jesus died and rose. If you need faith to believe this, the devil doesn’t — he was there and saw it with his own eyes. That is, simply knowing and believing that Jesus died and rose does not yet save. What saves is the faith that Jesus died specifically for your sins, and by His blood, you have received the forgiveness of sins. This is the faith that saves. The devil knows that Jesus died and rose, but the devil can never say that Jesus died for my sins, because Jesus did not die for his sins, and therefore there is no salvation for the devil.
But we would never have known that God forgave us, specifically us, when His Son was dying on the cross, if He had not first regenerated us, giving us His Spirit. The next verse speaks even more clearly about this.
The Natural and the Spiritual
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:14-16).
Notice: “the natural person” is not a believer who is just an immature Christian. The natural person is an unregenerate person. Because one becomes a Christian only when they accept the Gospel. A Christian cannot consider the word about Christ “folly,” as we have already read. So here it speaks about an unbelieving and unregenerate person.
It’s not just a question of someone not being able to convince someone else to accept the Gospel. Paul says that the natural person is not even able to understand. Not that they just don’t want to, but Paul says that they are “not able to understand” spiritual things. That is, a person needs to be born again to be “able to understand,” otherwise they never will.
In the last verses, the word “judges” is not written in a bad sense, but in the sense of “understanding” or " discerning." A spiritual person understands and can discern spiritual things. But for unbelievers, a Christian is an incomprehensible person; they cannot understand him.
And in the very last verse, Paul quotes Isaiah, basically saying: “to understand the Lord, one must have the mind of the Lord.” And he immediately says that “we have the mind of Christ,” that is, the believer has the mind of the Lord because the Holy Spirit lives in him, and this helps him understand spiritual things, and especially what the Lord has done for him.
If we summarize it all, Paul is saying this: The word about Christ sounds like foolishness to unbelievers. But it’s supposed to be that way. Because “what God did and how He saved us” could not even have entered a person’s head. An unregenerate person not only does not accept the word about Christ because it doesn’t sound convincing, but he is not even able to understand it — or “discern” it, as Paul says — until God opens his eyes. But thank God that God gives us regeneration through His Holy Spirit. And because we have the Holy Spirit, whom God has given us, we have come to know and have accepted what the Lord has given us. That is, our salvation through Christ Crucified, which is the essence of Paul’s preaching.
Today, dear friend, if my words sounded like madness to you, pray to God to open your eyes so that you see Christ dying specifically for you.
But if, my dear friend, my words about Christ crucified sounded convincing to you, and you suddenly saw and understood that Christ is not just a historical figure everyone talks about, but you suddenly understood that Christ is your personal Savior and is calling you to Himself today, then this is your day of new birth. Repent before Him now, and He will forgive you, and cleanse you, and give you salvation!
Amen.