1 Corinthians 2:10-16 - Homiletics

The gospel school.

"But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit," etc. Because man naturally craves for knowledge and deeply needs it, schools abound everywhere throughout the civilized world, especially here in England—schools of science, schools of philosophy, schools of art, etc.. But there is one school that transcends all—the gospel school. Three facts are suggested concerning this school.

I. That here the student is INSTRUCTED IN THE SUBLIMEST REALITIES . "Deep things of God." Things, not words, not theories. "Deep things;" deep because undiscoverable by human reason; deep because they come from the fathomless ocean of Divine love. What are these deep things? The primary elements of the gospel, and the necessary condition of soul restoration. These "deep things" we are here told are:

1. The free gifts of Heaven. "Freely given to us of God."

2. Freely given to be communicated. "Which things also we speak," etc. He who gets these things into his mind and heart, not only can communicate, but is bound to tell them to others, and that in plain natural language, free from the affectations of rhetoric, the language which the "Holy Ghost teacheth," language which is suggested by "comparing spiritual things with spiritual." Men think in words; thoughts come dressed in their own language; the intellectual thoughts have their own language, and spiritual thoughts have a language all their own.

II. That here the student is TAUGHT BY THE GREATEST TEACHER . Who is the Teacher? The Divine Spirit himself, here called the "Spirit of God" and the" Holy Ghost."

1. This Teacher has infinite knowledge. "The Spirit searcheth all things." The word "searcheth" must not be taken, I presume, in the sense of investigation, but rather in the sense of complete knowledge. In the last clause of the next verse it is said, "The things of God knoweth no matt, but the Spirit of God." He knoweth those things of God; he knows them in their essence, number, issues, hearings, relations, etc.

2. This Teacher is no other than God himself. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." The implication is that this Spirit is as truly God as man's mind is man. No one knows the things in man's mind but man himself; no one knows the "deep things of God" but God himself. "Who teacheth like God?" He knows thoroughly the nature of the student, and how best to indoctrinate that nature with his own "deep things."

III. That here the student MUST DEVELOP HIS HIGHER NATURE . "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." Man has a threefold nature, designated by St. Paul as soma, psyche, and pneuma— body, soul, and spirit. The first is the animal, the second is the mental, and the third the moral or spiritual. This is the conscience, with its intuitions and sympathies, and this is the chief part of man, nay, the man himself, the core of his being, that which Paul calls" the inner man," the man of the man. Now, this part of the man alone can receive the "things of the Spirit of God." Set these things before the "natural man," his mere body; they are no more to him than Euclid to a brute. Set them before the mere psychical or intellectual man, and what are they? Puzzles over which he will speculate; nay, they are "foolishness unto him." Mere intellect cannot understand love, cannot appreciate right. It concerns itself with the truth or falsehood of propositions, and the advantages and disadvantages of conduct—nothing more. Moral love only can interpret and feel the things of moral love, the "deep things of God." Hence this moral pneuma, this spiritual nature, this conscience must be roused from its dormancy, and become the ascendant nature before the "things of the Spirit" can be "discerned," and then the man shall judge all things, all spiritual things, whilst he himself will not be judged rightly by any "natural man." "For who hath known the mind of the Lord?" Who, thus uninstructed, can "know the mind of the Lord"?