Year Two, October 9

To Set the Mind on the Spirit Is Life and Peace1

1 Corinthians 2

1And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (This is the one thing we really need to know. All of our reading and studies will not help if we are uneducated about Christ and his atoning blood. If Paul the preacher decided to know nothing except this, we may be certain that it is more important than anything else.) 3And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (If the reason people believe is because the preacher is such a great speaker, then their faith would be good for nothing. If one human being can convert you, then another can unconvert you. God’s power is necessary; not even a pastor can give us faith.)

6Yet 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. 7But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

The gospel is easy to understand, but it is wisdom itself. The world’s greatest thinkers could not have dreamed up a better way to reach peace with God.

9But, 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”—

10these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. (The Holy Spirit has revealed what human reason and imagination could not have come up with. But only those who have the Spirit dwelling in them have the inner eye and ear to understand it.) 11For 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.

12Now 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. (Our religion is a spiritual one. It takes place through our new nature that comes to us from the Spirit of God. It does not take place in us because we participate in ceremonies that we see with our eyes, or because we are persuaded to accept it by the thoughtful speeches of others, but because we are taught it by the Holy Spirit himself.) 13And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (Spiritual people receive their faith in Jesus by the work of the Holy Spirit. In the same way, they work to spread the gospel using only spiritual methods. They reject the pride of higher education and the display of brilliant speaking abilities, and depend on the Spirit and truth.2)

14The 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. 15The spiritual person judges (or examines) all things, but is himself to be judged (or examined) by no one. 16“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (All of mankind may be correctly divided into two groups, natural and spiritual; and they are as different as the dead and the living. The natural person has no spirit and therefore they cannot understand spiritual things. In the new birth a spirit is planted in us and that is how we acquire spiritual abilities. We live in a spiritual atmosphere and are able to experience spiritual joys. Have we received this higher life? Do we have the mind of Christ? Lord, work it in us, for Jesus’ sake!)

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¹ Romans 8:6

² Editor’s note: Spurgeon definitely did not belittle a sound education or improving one’s ability to speak in public. His establishment of his Pastors’ College and his many comments of its importance clearly prove this. But he also understood that salvation comes completely from the sovereign God of the universe through the work of the Holy Spirit.