Bible Reading for June 2 – I Corinthians 2:1-16

In today’s world, any point of view on any given subject is instantly available on your computer or smartphone. But with so many of these voices disagreeing with each other, how can we possibly know what to believe? Is there any way to get God’s perspective on things, to be sure about what He thinks and wants?

In verse 13, Paul makes a striking claim – that what he thinks isn’t just his opinion, and that what he is writing to the Corinthians isn’t just his own composition. No, he insists that the Holy Spirit actually taught him what to preach and what to write. And since only the Holy Spirit of God can possibly know the thoughts of God (v. 11), the only way any of us can know what God is thinking is to search the writings of Paul, along with the other apostles and the prophets. That’s because we can be sure that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the One Who told them what to write.

But how can we be sure that we are accurately understanding what the Bible says? Well, if the Holy Spirit helped the prophets and the apostles write it, we also need the Holy Spirit to help us understand it. That’s why we should always pray for God to shine His light on us whenever we open the Bible – we should never presume that we already know what it says, and we certainly shouldn’t try to understand the Scriptures from a worldly, self-centered perspective.

No, if the apostles had access to the mind of Christ as they wrote the Scriptures, and if we need the mind of Christ to help us understand them, we should not be surprised that the Bible continues to turn worldly wisdom on its head, rejecting what the rulers and wise men of this age think is valuable (v. 6) and prizing only Jesus Christ and Him crucified (v. 2). To those who are filled with the Spirit of Christ, to those who think in the same way that Jesus does, the way of the cross just makes the most sense.

I Corinthians 2:1-16 (ESV)

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling,
4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
6 Yet 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.
7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.
8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 But, 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”–
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
11 For 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.
12 Now 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.
13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
14 The 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.
15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged 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.