I Corinthians 2:11  For 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.
12  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13  Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14  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.
15  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16  For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

In verse 11 we are reminded that the spirit of man knows what man is capable of. In our world today, we live in a time when the spirit of man has been manipulated so that even though man should know what man is capable of, many people walk around in a fog. They act as though they have no way of understanding what man’s actions will be.
I catch parts of Jordan Peterson’s adventures from time to time. I do not agree with his philosophy of life. He is a lost man who has chosen to defy the true God, even though he reads parts of the Bible. He shows us that a person can be so hardened that even though he is exposed to the Bible in a significant way, yet he is still in darkness. I keep praying that he will get saved. I do not know what it will take, but God’s will certainly would be for him to be saved.
His field of interest is psychology. In a way, psychology is a study of exactly what God is saying here. It is the study of the nature of man. The major problem with psychology is that it is done in a spiritual vacuum. It is done without God as the “Teacher”. It seeks to eliminate the true God and replace Him with fictitious forms of God. Even men like James Dobson have chosen to replace the true God with forms of a God that suits the secular way of studying man’s nature. James Dobson has discovered, in a sense, that his way of doing things does not work, but he has not yet discovered that the solution is to turn to the true God and follow Him. He had his “practice” stolen out from under him. He has tried to reinvent himself and I have not followed much of anything he does of late because he is so far off and yet trying to present himself as a trusted Christian source of thought. He is far more dangerous than Jordan Peterson. James Dobson would be much more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing than Jordan Peterson is.
The Bible tells us that an undisciplined child will be a disaster as a child and will lead to greater problems as an adult. We see that in our society. Sometimes a child can turn out to be quite a rebel even if they were taught properly in their youth. However, it is worse when parents wash their hands of their responsibility and then act as if they do not know what went wrong. There is an article out now that speaks of parents who are not parenting their children, and their children are quite picky eaters. It is interesting that society would note this since society has told parents for a long time to keep their hands off their children. Society wants parents to back away and allow the child the freedom of expression.
The Bible tells us this will not work for the good of the child or the parents. God stated that humanity has some understanding of the nature of man because of the spirit of man that is within him. In a greater and more important way, the Holy Spirit knows what God is like, because He is the third Person of the Godhead. Thus the child of God, who has the Holy Spirit indwelling him, will have an understanding of Who God is. We can know the nature of God if we are saved. God has revealed Himself to us in His Word. The Holy Spirit will never lead us contrary to what is written in God’s Word. The Charismatics need to learn this.
In verse 12 we are reminded that the saved person has not received the spirit of the world. The saved person had the spirit of the world from birth. However, when the person is saved, He receives the Holy Spirit, through Whom we can know the things that are freely given to us of God. There are many people who claim to know God. They talk a big talk, but they prove they are clued out when it comes to actually knowing God.
I think of a man who attended our church for a while. He insisted that he has always believed in God. He never came right out to say it, but he implied that he really did not need to be saved. He attended for a time, but came up with different criticisms of our church and of myself. Eventually he quit coming. He had been influenced by a cult before he started to attend our church, and he went back to that cult again. He did not have the Holy Spirit indwelling him and therefore he could not know God. He assumes that God is in all religions and in fact he assumes that God is more in the cult he was following than in a true church. His stubbornness is keeping him from hearing God’s convicting work designed to bring him to true, Biblical salvation.
In verse 13 we are reminded that Paul was not speaking on the limited humanistic level. He was not speaking according to man’s wisdom. He was speaking through the direction of the Holy Spirit. The saved person compares spiritual things with spiritual. The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible. I listened to a short snippet from a Calvinist recently. He was talking about eschatology and stated that he was an amillennialist. An amillennialist does not believe in a literal millennium. True Calvinism has bad theology in many things. The true Calvinist does not have the Holy Spirit indwelling him and thus he is incapable of comparing spiritual things with spiritual. He compares spiritual things with humanistic reasoning. He will never come to the knowledge of the truth that way.
Verse 14 tells us why the natural man (the unsaved man) does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. The natural man knows he needs something, but he refuses the fact that he needs true, Biblical salvation. He rejects it and avoids those who would seek to help him to see this need. Occasionally one of those people is broken by the work of the Holy Spirit in their heart and they get saved. God tells us that the natural man judges the truth as foolishness. He has no interest in the truth. He sees no value in it. He also lacks the ability to know the truth, because he does not have the indwelling Holy Spirit Who is the One Who helps us to discern truth.
In verse 15 we are further reminded that the spiritual man judges all things. Everything he hears or sees, is screened through the authoritative Word of God. There is a false teacher by the name of Joseph Prince who counsels his followers that if they are sick, they should take communion in their own home, by themselves. He teaches that a true Christian should not be sick because Christ died that we might be healed. Thus, his reasoning is that since Jesus Christ died that we should not be sick, the sick “saint” should take the bread and the wine and partake for his own personal healing. This is false teaching, but there are many people who follow that philosophy. They are deceived and they love their deception.
The saved person will never get drawn into the heresies of men like Joseph Prince, because he judges all things by the Word of God. The Word of God tells us that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was for our spiritual healing, not our physical healing. God is still able to heal and He still does heal at times. The Lord’s Supper is not something that an individual is supposed to partake of by himself. The Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper before He went to the cross. He led the disciples in the teaching regarding it and He led them in the practice of it. In I Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul was directed by God to teach the church in Corinth the significance of the Lord’s Supper. He taught this in the local church setting. He was chosen by God to teach this doctrine. He also taught that a local church needs to have a pastor. A pastor does not go online and get a certificate and now he is a pastor. He needs to be trained by other godly men so that he then can go and teach others to be godly men.
This is just one example of many that the saved person will judge and discern according to God’s Word. The saved person does not submit to the judgment of lost people. He is not judged by man. He is judged by God, through His Word.
In verse 16 Paul asked an important question. Who has known the mind of the Lord? We certainly cannot read God’s mind. We know what God/Jesus Christ thinks because we have God’s inspired and preserved Word. We can and should know the mind of the Lord if we are saved and walking obediently with him. The church in Corinth had some major deficiencies in this matter because of their carnality. They needed to repent and get this straightened out.
Paul closed this chapter with the declaration that the saved person has the mind of Christ. We have that mind through the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit Who will guide the true saint into the truth which is God’s Word. He gives us the discernment to know what is truth and what is not. That is both comforting and encouraging. Our confidence is not in ourselves. It is in knowing the true God and following Him faithfully.
Pastor Bartel