Wednesday, May 16, 2018

1 Corinthians 2:13-16

Holy Spirit, please, give me spiritual wisdom, not the foolishness of the wisdom of the age we live in, but Godly wisdom that can only come from above. 

Christ within…our only hope to give You glory!

Without God’s help through the Spirit, people lack the ability to understand His plans or work.The Spirit (pneuma) is the one who truly explains and reveals the ways of God to people—believers are just messengers and instruments of the Spirit’s message.Those who belong to the Spirit do not need to subject themselves to human condemnation or approval; they recognize that God is their only judge.

God’s wisdom is incomprehensible—yet He has enabled believers to understand the wisdom of His salvation through the crucified Messiah, Jesus. Faithlife Bible.

Paul emphasized that the intellectuals of this world could not teach the knowledge he was giving to the Corinthian believers. The Spirit did not simply dictate words to Paul and the other apostles; He taught them. The apostles related with their own vocabulary and style what they had learned from the Spirit. Receive here means “to welcome.” This verb does not pertain to discovering the meaning of a passage, but applying the meaning to life. NKJ Bible.

1 Corinthians 2:13–16 (NKJV)
13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Matthew 16:23 (NKJV)
23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

John 15:15 (NKJV)
15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

One of the main problems facing the first-century Corinthian church was division. When Paul wrote to Corinth, the church was divided into at least four factions, each of them aligned with one of four prominent Christian leaders. One group identified itself with the apostle Paul. The members of this faction may have been attracted by Paul’s emphasis on his ministry to the Gentiles. A second group identified itself with Apollos, one of Paul’s fellow missionaries. He may have attracted a following because of his eloquent speaking abilities. A third group identified itself with Cephas, another name for the apostle Peter. This group may have been mostly of Jewish background. A fourth group identified itself specifically with Christ. While on the surface it might seem that this group was the “godly” contingent of the Corinthian church, this may not have been the case. Paul does not commend any of the groups, not even the “I am of Christ” faction, suggesting that all of their professed allegiances were causing division and dissension in that church.


As believers today, we must guard ourselves against identifying too closely with human leaders or placing too much emphasis on them. Our loyalty and identification belong only to Jesus Christ and His message. NKJ Bible.

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