Walking through Corinth No eye has seen

1 Corinthians 2

Walking through Corinth

Introduction: Into the Text

Open your Bibles this morning to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Paul is writing back to a church he planted — a church in a city obsessed with words. Corinth loved oratory.

Corinth loved philosophers who could turn a phrase, split an argument, and draw a crowd with clever speech.

Into that environment, Paul had come, and now he writes to remind them exactly how he came, and exactly what he brought. We're going to walk through this chapter in three movements this morning.

First, we'll look at Paul's approach in verses 1 through 5 — how he refused to lean on human eloquence.

Second, we'll look at the wisdom he says was hidden in a mystery, in verses 6 through 9 — wisdom the rulers of this age never understood.

And third, we'll come to verses 10 through 16, where Paul tells us how that hidden wisdom gets from the mind of God into the heart of a believer — through the Spirit who searches even the deep things of God. And I want to tell you right now where we're headed.

Everything in this chapter is building toward one staggering sentence in verse 16: "But we have the mind of Christ."

That's the anchor. That's where Paul has been taking us the whole time.

So let's walk through Corinth together and see how Paul gets there.

Movement One: Paul's Approach (vv. 1-5)

Look at verse 1: "And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God."

Paul is reminding them of his very first visit.

He's saying, "You remember how I showed up. I didn't come like the traveling sophists you're used to."

That word "wisdom" there is the Greek word *sophia*.

In Corinth, *sophia* wasn't just a private virtue — it was a public commodity.

It was the currency of status.

Rhetoricians would come through town, and crowds would pay to hear them debate, to hear them dazzle with intricate arguments and polished delivery.

Paul says, "I didn't come to you trafficking in that kind of *sophia*."

Verse 2: "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

That word "determined" carries the sense of a settled decision, a resolve made in advance.

Paul isn't saying he stumbled into simplicity because he lacked the skill to do otherwise.

He made a decision.

He was capable of eloquence — we see plenty of rhetorical skill elsewhere in his letters.

But he decided, deliberately, to strip his message down to one thing: Christ, and Him crucified. Notice what that means.

Corinth wanted wisdom that dazzled.

Paul gave them a crucified Messiah — which, as he already said back in chapter 1, was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews.

He didn't smooth that over.

He didn't dress up the cross in the language of Wisdom to make it more palatable to Corinthian ears.

He preached it plainly.

Then verse 3: "I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling."

This is remarkable coming from Paul.

This is the man who debated in synagogues, who stood before philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, who would later stand before governors and kings without flinching.

Yet here he describes himself with weakness, fear, trembling.

He's not describing a lack of conviction — he's describing the posture of a man who knows the message doesn't rest on his own performance.

Verse 4: "And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power."

Here's the contrast laid bare. "Persuasive words" — that's the tool of the Corinthian rhetorician, the carefully built argument designed to move an audience through skill alone. Paul says that's not what carried his message.

What carried it was "demonstration of the Spirit and of power" — demonstration, an evidencing, a proof that came from beyond human ability.

And then he tells us why in

verse 5: "that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."

This is the whole point of his approach.

If Paul had won the Corinthians over with clever argumentation, their faith would rest on Paul's cleverness.

The moment a sharper philosopher came to town, their faith could be argued right back out of them.

But if their faith rested on a demonstration of the Spirit's power, that foundation couldn't be talked away by the next eloquent voice in the marketplace.

So this first movement gives us Paul standing in Corinth, deliberately setting aside *sophia* Wisdom as the world defines it, preaching a crucified Christ in weakness and trembling, so that the Corinthians' faith would be planted in something no rhetorician could ever uproot — the power of God Himself.

Movement Two: Hidden Wisdom Revealed (vv. 6-9)

Now watch how Paul turns a corner in verse 6.

He's just spent five verses distancing himself from human Wisdom*.

But now he says, "However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing."

The Tony Evans Bible Commentary A. Divisions in the Church (1:10–4:21)

To be sure, Paul wasn’t rejecting wisdom or suggesting that God despises it. After all, the Lord doesn’t celebrate ignorance! Instead, the issue has to do with one’s source of wisdom. Do we pursue divine wisdom, or do we pursue the wisdom of this age, which will come to nothing? Believers whose life perspectives have been nurtured by the Spirit of God are mature; on the other hand, the rulers of this age do not use divine truth as the reference point for their lives.

Paul isn't against wisdom itself. He's against a certain kind of wisdom — "the wisdom of this age."

There's another wisdom he wants to talk about now, one that belongs to a different category altogether.

He calls it wisdom for "those who are mature" — the word there is *teleios*, meaning complete, full-grown, brought to its intended end.

Not a wisdom for spiritual infants, but for those who have grown into readiness to receive it.

And who fails to grasp this wisdom?

Verse 8 makes this explicit and devastating: "which none of the rulers of this age knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

Think about the irony packed into that sentence.

The very people who held the highest positions of worldly wisdom and worldly power — the religious authorities, the Roman governor, the political and intellectual leaders of that hour — looked directly at the Lord of glory, and their wisdom was so bankrupt, so blind, that they nailed Him to a cross.

Their wisdom couldn't recognize God standing in front of them.

In fact, it was their wisdom, their systems, their calculations of power and self-preservation, that crucified Him.

That's what Paul means when he says this wisdom is "hidden in a mystery." Look at verse 7:

"But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory."

The Greek word for mystery here is *mysterion*. In our ears, "mystery" suggests something unsolvable, something murky and vague.

But in Paul's usage, a *mysterion* is not something inherently unknowable — it's something that was concealed until God chose to unveil it.

It's a truth kept behind a curtain, not because it's incomprehensible, but because it hadn't yet been revealed.

And this hidden wisdom, Paul says, God ordained "before the ages" — before time itself began — for our glory.

This wasn't a backup plan cobbled together after the crucifixion caught God off guard. It was the eternal design, hidden until the appointed hour.

And then Paul reaches for the Scriptures to describe this hidden wisdom, and gives us verse 9, the great anchor verse of this chapter:

"But as it is written: 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.'"

This draws on language echoing Isaiah, and Paul uses it to say: this wisdom exceeds the reach of human perception altogether.

Not merely difficult to figure out — categorically beyond the tools we have for figuring anything out.

Eye cannot see it.

Ear cannot hear it.

The human heart — the seat of thought and intention — cannot conceive it on its own.

It had to be prepared by God and given, not discovered.

So here is the shape of this second movement: there is a wisdom, God's own *sophia*, established before time began, centered on the crucified Lord of glory, so far beyond the reach of the rulers of this age that their brightest minds crucified the very source of it without recognizing Him.

And this wisdom remains utterly inaccessible to unaided human faculties — until God chooses to prepare it and give it to those who love Him.

The Tony Evans Bible Commentary A. Divisions in the Church (1:10–4:21)

Though God has revealed to us his inspired, written Word, believers need illumination to give us understanding. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, within the mind of a Christian that causes him to supernaturally learn, understand, and apply the things of God. It is the voice of God through the Word by means of the Holy Spirit becoming personalized to you. Illumination does not involve new revelation; rather, it involves God giving a believer understanding of the meaning and application of Scripture in the midst of his own experiences.

Which raises the obvious question Paul now answers in the next movement: if eye can't see it, ear can't hear it, and the heart can't conceive it — how does anybody ever come to know it at all?

Movement Three: The Spirit Who Reveals (vv. 10-16)

Verse 10 answers that question immediately:

"But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God."

There's the hinge of the whole chapter. What eye, ear, and heart could never reach on their own, the Spirit reveals.

The verb there for "searches" — *eraunao* — describes a thorough, penetrating investigation, the way you'd search a house room by room, leaving nothing unexamined.

The Spirit searches "the deep things of God" — *bathe*, the depths, the profound recesses of God's own being and purposes.

Nothing in God is off-limits to God's own Spirit.

Paul illustrates this in verse 11 with a simple human analogy:

"For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God."

Just as your own inner thoughts are truly known only by your own spirit — no one can crack open your skull and read your mind apart from what you disclose — so the depths of God are truly known only by God's own Spirit.

We are dependent on the Spirit of god to make a Spiritual connection with Him.

This is why the wisdom of God is inaccessible to unaided human investigation.

It's not a matter of not trying hard enough.

It's categorically outside the reach of creaturely faculties.

Only Spirit can know Spirit.

Then verse 12 turns from what the Spirit does within God to what the Spirit does for us:

"Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God."

Notice the verb: not achieved, not deduced, not philosophized into existence — received.

The things freely given to us — the language there, *charizomai*, is tied to grace, gift, favor.

The Tony Evans Bible Commentary A. Divisions in the Church (1:10–4:21)

Worldly thinking doesn’t have access to the things of God.

This wisdom comes to believers the same way salvation comes to believers: as an unearned gift, mediated by the Spirit.

Verse 13 tells us how that gift gets communicated:

"which things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual."

That last phrase is worth pausing on — "comparing spiritual things with spiritual."

The Greek can be understood as combining or interpreting spiritual truths with spiritual language, matching spiritual realities to spiritual words, so that spiritual truth is communicated on its own terms rather than being forced into categories borrowed from human philosophy.

Paul isn't inventing new vocabulary out of Wisdom’s toolbox.

He's letting Spirit-given truth be explained by Spirit-given means.

This brings us to the sharp contrast in verse 14, and here's where the Greek really opens the passage wide:

"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."

That word "natural" is *psychikos*, from *psyche* — soul.

This isn't describing someone who's especially wicked or especially unintelligent. It describes a person operating purely on the level of soul-life — mind, emotion, natural perception — without the indwelling, illuminating Spirit of God.

To the *psychikos* person, the things of God's Spirit aren't just difficult; Paul says they are *moria* — foolishness, nonsense, the same word behind our English "moron."

And notice the double impossibility: he does not receive them, and he cannot know them.

Not "chooses not to" in some casual sense, but structurally unable to,

because — Paul says — these things are "spiritually discerned."

The verb there, *anakrino*, means to examine, to sift, to evaluate through investigation.

Spiritual truth requires spiritual apparatus to be examined and understood.

Without the Spirit, a person is simply missing the equipment.

Then verse 15 gives us the contrasting figure: "But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one."

Here's *pneumatikos* — the spiritual person, one indwelt and enabled by the Spirit of God.

This person "judges" — again that word *anakrino*, examines and discerns — all things.

Not because he's smarter, not because he's mastered some system of Wisdom, but because he now has the very apparatus needed: the Spirit who searches the deep things of God now dwells in him.

And notably, he himself is examined by no one else — meaning the *psychikos* person, lacking the Spirit, has no basis from which to critically evaluate what the Spirit-filled person perceives.

A blind man cannot judge a painting.

The *psychikos* cannot sit in judgment over the *pneumatikos*, because he lacks the very faculty required.

And this brings Paul, in verse 16, to his triumphant close for this section, quoting Isaiah:

"For 'who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ."

Isaiah's question was rhetorical, expecting the obvious answer: no one.

No one stands in a position to know the Lord's mind well enough to counsel Him,

to teach Him,

to improve upon His thoughts.

Who could possibly claim that kind of intimacy with the mind of the Most High?

And yet Paul answers Isaiah's ancient question with an astonishing declaration: "But we have the mind of Christ."

The word there is *nous* — mind, the faculty of understanding, perception, and judgment.

Paul is not saying believers have achieved omniscience.

He's saying that through the indwelling Spirit — the same Spirit who searches the deep things of God — believers have been given access to Christ's own perspective,

Christ's own way of perceiving and evaluating reality.

What was locked away, hidden in mystery before the ages, unreachable by eye or ear or the natural heart, unknowable to the rulers of this age with all their wisdom — that very mind, the mind of the Lord Himself, has been given to those in whom the Spirit dwells.

Conclusion: The Mind of Christ

Trace the arc we've walked through this morning. Paul comes to Corinth and refuses the currency of Wisdom that the city prized,

choosing instead to preach a crucified Christ in weakness and trembling, so that faith would rest on the power of God rather than the persuasion ‘

of men.

Then he unveils a deeper wisdom — a wisdom hidden in mystery before the ages,

so far beyond human reach that even the rulers of this age, for all their learning and authority, crucified the Lord of glory without recognizing Him, because eye had not seen it, ear had not heard it, and it had never entered into the heart of man.

And then he answers the question that hidden wisdom leaves hanging in the air: how does anyone ever come to know it?

Only through the Spirit — the Spirit who searches the deep things of God, who is received as gift rather than achieved as accomplishment, who alone equips a person to discern what the *psychikos* person, however brilliant, simply cannot perceive.

And it all lands here, in verse 16.

Isaiah once asked, who has known the mind of the Lord?

The question hung there for centuries, unanswered, because the honest answer was: no one.

No creature stands close enough to the mind of God to instruct Him or even to fully comprehend Him.

But Paul, writing to a congregation in a city obsessed with wisdom, from every angle Corinth understood the word, declares the unthinkable:

"But we have the mind of Christ."

This means to embrace His thoughts.

Embrace what He wants to do in your life.

Push away anything that would pull you to the side, and put on the Mind of Christ.

This is only something we can obtain through a Saving Knowledge.

Not the mind of Corinth's philosophers.

Not the mind of the rulers of this age, whose wisdom crucified the Lord of glory and is passing away.

The mind of Christ — given, not earned;

revealed, not deduced;

received through the Spirit,

who alone searches the depths of God and alone can make those depths known to the soul of a believer.

That is where Paul leaves us this morning.

Not with a system to master, but with a Person who has made Himself known — and a Spirit who has made that knowledge ours. We have the mind of Christ.