Mind of Christ

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. I Corinthians 2:1-5

“And so it was with me (Paul), brethren.” He refers here to his previous statement that God chose the “lowly things” to communicate His gospel, and any boasting can only be in the Lord (chapter 1:26-31). This is not false modesty on Paul’s part. As we’ve noted before, Paul was not low-born, nor stupid, nor illiterate. Quite the contrary; he was a high ranking, intellectual member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, also highly educated by the top scholars and philosophers of the day, and well trained in the Law of Moses. His comparison here, though, is to the relatively simple presentation of the gospel message: Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He is the Messiah, He has paid the penalty for all our sins. “Jesus Christ (His perfect person) and Him crucified (His perfect work).” Operation KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Paul’s “weakness” was his extreme compassion for the perishing Gentiles to whom he spoke, with “fear and trembling,” having just come from some not so successful experiences in other areas.

With a message this simple and straight-forward, the Holy Spirit has to open the human understanding, which has been trained by religion to complicate and over-think and legalize and misdirect the meaning of Jesus’ work. Because He taught about love and compassion and grace, they try to make it a “do-good” religion. That’s works. When we tell them about the blood atonement, they are offended and call us blood-thirsty barbarians. That's self-righteousness. "God's power," the Holy Spirit makes the truth clear to those who listen and are willing to believe. Human wisdom cannot do that.

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.  None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”—the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. I Corinthians 2:6-9

“wisdom of the mature” Spirit-filled believers to spirit-filled believers who have grown up in grace. The vocabulary is peculiar to those in the Church who have made Bible doctrine their priority in life, therefore are led by the Holy Spirit to perceive the truths of God’s Word. “before time began” God had planned the Church. That was a mystery to the Old Testament believers, though they were instrumental in the development of God’s people, through whom His Messiah was to come. “the rulers of this age” were the ones responsible for Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. They had no concept of Who He was, or What He came to do. Because of their willing ignorance, they crucified Him. That very effort to destroy Him was the means of His act of propitiation for us; our doorway to eternal life. Seemingly simple plan. God’s Plan. Amazingly complicated means to execute that plan. God’s Work.

I Corinthians 2:10-16 The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.  For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.  

God the Holy Spirit is God. God the Father is God. God the Son is God. One in essence. Three personalities. All three persons of the Godhead are involved in our salvation and our spiritual growth to maturity. The world does not understand our relationship with God, nor His communication with us, because:  

The person without the Spirit (KJV: the natural man) does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (We receive that Spirit at the moment of personal faith in Jesus Christ. No personal faith in Christ = no Spirit =no comprehension of spiritual things.)  The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,“Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”But we have the mind of Christ.

“mind of Christ”--  canon of scripture.