I Corinthians 2:10-16

Now, in I Corinthians 2:10-16, Paul writes about the Spirit of God teaching spiritual things, which he says are the things of God, something the natural man, the carnal man, cannot receive or understand. They are beyond comprehension for just the normal human mind still clogged with sin. The Spirit that God gives us helps us to make moral and spiritual godly judgments because it enables us to have the mind of Christ. That is where Paul ends up there at the end of that chapter, I Corinthians 2:16.

There is something we need to understand, this is something that the Protestants get totally wrong. They do not understand this process. They think that if they confess their sins and they come up saying, "Jesus saved me. I've been saved. God's given me His Spirit," they are lying to themselves. But they go from there and do nothing. I may be being a little absolute in that statement, but generally, the teaching that they have been given is that they do not have to do anything. Because God Christ has done it all for them. And so a good majority of Protestants do not change at all. They get saved when they are 12 or whatever when they do their altar call, and then they do nothing. They rely on that one emotional time when they said they accepted Jesus Christ into their heart and do nothing.

So yeah, we have been given the Holy Spirit of God. Christ resides in us. Right? But that does us very little good if we do not exercise it, if we do not use it. We remain immature babies in the faith if we are not using God's Spirit to grow, to become teachers, as he says there in Hebrews. To be someone others younger in the faith look to as an example of living the way of God. The mind of Christ is not grown in us unless we use it, unless we practice the logos that has been given to us, unless we are working on keeping ourselves unspotted from the world and helping those others who have need.

We cannot be like the Protestants and count on our altar call, if you will, count on accepting Jesus Christ into our hearts. Because that is just the beginning. God wants us to do more. We cannot be passive as Christians. God wants us to be out in it, if you will. Not only practicing it for ourselves, but setting a good example to those who are in the church and to the people of the world as a witness. If we hide it, we are going to end up like the Hebrews, babies, unskilled in the word of righteousness, because we have not tried to do it. Or if we did, we stopped because maybe it was too hard. Maybe we got scared. Maybe we were standing out like a sore thumb. But those are just excuses. Those are just justifications for spiritual laziness. We must exercise the Spirit of God within us and grow. God wants to see maturity.

I Corinthians 2:9-13

Because of the action God took upon the sin of Adam and Eve—Adam and Eve being cut off from the Holy Spirit—all of the cultures of mankind have been built on reasoning that is apart from God's Holy Spirit. You might say that man has been doomed to produce those kinds of cultures that are based on his own reasoning, because access to the Holy Spirit was cut off, and therefore there was a dimension missing in mankind's reasoning processes.

Therefore, the separation can only get wider, unless God acts to heal the breach. Unless God bridges the gap, mankind is unable to do it because (as we just read in I Corinthians 2) spiritual things are not physically discerned; eyes, ears, nose, mouth—they do not discern spiritual things. So mankind is trapped—he is doomed in that regard. Even though mankind was created with a spiritual capacity, it is so limited that it cannot find the true things of God, and therefore man is very easily overpowered by Satan.

I Corinthians 2:9-14

Words are the verbal communication of thoughts, and since God designed His truth to be accurately expressed in human language, He inspired the words used in Scripture which are contained in both the Old and New Testaments. He was meticulous and detailed in His inspiration of the words so they would accurately express the laws and principles He intended to communicate. Paul knew that the human spirit could only understand the things of the natural world. But once God gives the Spirit of understanding, spiritual things become very clear. So although the world can read the Bible and get some good qualities out of it, even if they, on the surface, keep the Ten Commandments (or most of them), they are going to be blessed for it, but they cannot understand the depth of it without God's Spirit.

I Corinthians 2:10-12

If it is seen and if it is understood, then life begins to make sense. We begin to be able to see ourselves - this single, unique individual, us, I, me - as a part of the whole, the awesome plan and purpose that God is working out! Then, being able to see God gives direction to our life. So your eye has seen and your ear has heard, and it has entered into your heart the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

Those three verses prove that we are predisposed by God's calling to see Him. Not only to know His truth, but to know who His servants are, as well. So we can know. We may not know perfectly; but what we know is a great source of comfort, security, hope, and direction.

I Corinthians 2:9-12

Here is what begins to happen: God begins to call you and He begins to show you things. Maybe, at first, you start to notice that this world is not running right and this is not the right way to live. You are not happy. "Something is wrong with my marriage, something is wrong with my life," and you start to think and look, and all of a sudden God begins to get your attention. Very slowly He brings us to the point where we begin to see things. We are being guided by God the Father, by His Spirit. We are called and we are baptized, and from that time on God's Spirit takes over.