Two Kinds of People: The Great Spiritual Divide Text: 1 Corinthians 2:14-16
Introduction: The Antithesis
We live in an age that despises sharp distinctions. Our culture is allergic to the antithesis. It wants to blend, to blur, to compromise, and to call the resulting grey mush "tolerance." But the Bible is a book of sharp, clean lines. It draws a line between light and darkness, between the clean and the unclean, between the sheep and the goats, between the saved and the lost. And here in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul draws one of the most fundamental distinctions of all: the absolute, unbridgeable gulf between two kinds of people, the natural man and the spiritual man.
This is not a distinction between the smart and the simple, the educated and the uneducated, or the religious and the irreligious. This is a distinction in the very operating system of the human soul. One man is running on the software of Adam, and the other is running on the software of Christ. One is spiritually dead, and the other is spiritually alive. One is tuned to the frequency of this fallen world, and the other is tuned to the frequency of the Holy Spirit. And because their fundamental receivers are different, they cannot pick up the same signals. What is glorious wisdom to one is nonsensical static to the other.
Paul is writing to a Corinthian church that was infatuated with worldly wisdom, with slick rhetoric, and with impressive personalities. They were trying to baptize the wisdom of the Greeks and make it respectable in the church. But Paul tells them this is like trying to mix oil and water, or more accurately, like trying to mix life and death. The wisdom of God and the wisdom of man are not on a continuum; they are at war. And to understand the gospel, to live the Christian life, you must first understand which side of this great spiritual divide you are on, and what that means for how you process reality.
This passage is a foundational text for what we call presuppositional apologetics. It teaches us that the unregenerate mind is not a neutral, unbiased observer, waiting for sufficient evidence. The unregenerate mind is hostile to God, blind to His truth, and constitutionally incapable of receiving it. You cannot argue a blind man into seeing a sunset. He doesn't need arguments; he needs new eyes. And that is precisely what God gives us in the new birth. He doesn't just give us new information; He gives us a new nature, a new mind, capable of understanding that information.
The Text
But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually examined. But he who is spiritual examines all things, yet he himself is examined by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL DIRECT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.
(1 Corinthians 2:14-16 LSB)
The Natural Man's Incapacity (v. 14)
Paul begins by describing the condition of every person apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.
"But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually examined." (1 Corinthians 2:14)
The "natural man" is the psychikos anthropos, the soul-ish man. This is man as he is born, man in Adam, man living by the dictates of his fallen soul and senses alone. He is not necessarily a debauched profligate; he could be a highly respected philosopher, a brilliant scientist, or a devoutly religious Pharisee. His problem is not a lack of intelligence or morality, but a lack of spiritual life. He is operating without the Spirit of God.
And what is his reaction to the "depths of the Spirit of God," which Paul has just been describing, the secret wisdom of God in the gospel of the crucified Christ? He "does not accept" them. The word means he does not welcome them, he does not receive them. It's not that he weighs the evidence and finds it wanting. He rejects it out of hand. Why? For two reasons that Paul gives.
First, "they are foolishness to him." The cross, the incarnation, the resurrection, the idea of substitutionary atonement, to the natural mind, operating on its own axioms, this is all utter nonsense. It is an offense to his reason and an insult to his pride. The Greeks sought wisdom, and the gospel of a crucified God was the height of absurdity. The Jews demanded signs of power, and a Messiah executed by the Romans was the epitome of weakness. The message of the cross cuts against the grain of every natural human religion and philosophy. It cannot be discovered by human reason because it is an announcement from outside the system. And when it is announced, the natural man's verdict is "foolish."
Second, he "cannot understand them." This is not an intellectual incapacity, but a spiritual one. It's not that he can't grasp the sentences grammatically. It's that he cannot see the divine glory and truth in them. He is like a man who is tone-deaf at a symphony. He can hear the noises, but he cannot grasp the music. Why can't he? "Because they are spiritually examined." The word is anakrino, which means to discern, to judge, to appraise. Spiritual truths require a spiritual faculty to be properly appraised, and the natural man does not have that faculty. He is trying to taste the goodness of God with a dead tongue. He is trying to see the light of the world with blind eyes. The necessary equipment is missing.
The Spiritual Man's Capacity (v. 15)
In stark contrast, Paul describes the man who has been born of the Spirit.
"But he who is spiritual examines all things, yet he himself is examined by no one." (1 Corinthians 2:15 LSB)
The "spiritual man" is the pneumatikos, the one indwelt and enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Because he has the Spirit, he has the capacity to "examine all things." That same word, anakrino, is used again. The spiritual man can appraise reality correctly. This doesn't mean he is omniscient, or that he knows every fact about quantum physics. It means he has the ultimate interpretive framework for understanding the world. He has the key that makes sense of everything else. He can judge between good and evil, truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, because he is standing on the foundation of God's revelation.
He can look at the claims of the atheist, the Muslim, the Buddhist, and the secular humanist and see where they have gone wrong. He can see how they have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. He can see the internal contradictions of their worldviews. He can examine their claims, but they cannot truly examine his. This is what Paul means when he says, "he himself is examined by no one."
This is a staggering claim. It does not mean the Christian is above critique or correction. It means that the natural man has no standing, no platform from which to judge the spiritual man's ultimate commitments. For the unbeliever to judge the Christian's worldview, he must first borrow from the Christian worldview to do it. He has to assume the validity of logic, the uniformity of nature, and the existence of objective morality, all of which only make sense if the Christian God exists. The unbeliever is like a man sitting on a branch, trying with all his might to saw it off. His very act of rebellion depends upon the stability that God provides. He cannot render a final, coherent verdict on the Christian because his own worldview is incoherent. He cannot judge the one who has the mind of Christ, because he is spiritually blind.
The Source of Spiritual Understanding (v. 16)
Paul concludes this section by grounding his audacious claim in the Old Testament and applying it to the church.
"For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL DIRECT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Corinthians 2:16 LSB)
He quotes from Isaiah 40:13. The question in Isaiah is rhetorical. Who can possibly stand outside of God, look into His infinite mind, and offer Him counsel? Who can instruct the Almighty? The answer is, obviously, no one. The mind of God is transcendent, inscrutable, and sovereign. The natural man stands before God as a creature before the Creator, and he is in no position to judge or instruct Him. This is the nail in the coffin of all autonomous human reason.
But then Paul makes one of the most astonishing pivots in all of Scripture. After establishing the utter transcendence of God's mind, he says, "But we have the mind of Christ." The very thing that is impossible for the natural man is given as a gift to the spiritual man. We, the church, have been granted access to the very thinking of God. How?
Because God the Son became a man. Jesus Christ is the mind of God made flesh. And through His Word and by His Spirit, He has revealed His mind to us. We don't have to guess what God is like or what He requires. He has told us. The Scriptures are the repository of the mind of Christ. When we are born again, the Spirit of God takes up residence in us, and He illuminates the Word of God to us, enabling us to understand, to believe, and to think God's thoughts after Him.
To "have the mind of Christ" means that we have the true and authoritative interpretation of reality. We have the worldview that corresponds to the way things actually are. This is not a call to arrogance, but to profound humility and staggering confidence. We are not smart in ourselves; we are simply recipients of a divine revelation. Our confidence is not in our own intellect, but in the Spirit who teaches us and the Word that He has given. We are to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, to think like Him, to love what He loves, to hate what He hates, and to see the world through His eyes. This is the goal of our sanctification. We are being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator, learning to wear the mind of Christ as our own.
Conclusion: The Great Paradigm Shift
The implications of this are immense. First, it tells us that evangelism is not primarily about winning arguments, but about praying for miracles. We present the truth, we reason, we persuade, but we know that unless the Holy Spirit performs a work of regeneration, what Jesus called being "born again", our words will be nothing but foolishness to the hearer. Our task is to plant and water, but it is God who gives the increase. We are heralding a message, not selling a product.
Second, it gives us a profound stability in a chaotic world. We are not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine or philosophical fad. We have an anchor. We have the mind of Christ. We have the true story of the world, from beginning to end. This allows us to stand firm when the world calls us foolish, backward, or hateful. We are not to be surprised by this; we are to expect it. The natural man is simply acting according to his nature. We are not judged by him; he is judged by the Word we possess.
Finally, this is a call to discipleship. Having the mind of Christ is not a static possession; it is a dynamic reality we are to grow in. We are to be saturated in the Scriptures, where His mind is revealed. We are to be filled with the Spirit, who is the one who enables our understanding. We are to gather with the saints, the community that collectively possesses this mind. As we do this, we are transformed. We stop thinking like the world, which is passing away, and we begin to think like Christ, the King of an everlasting kingdom. Our minds are rescued from the foolishness of sin and brought into the glorious wisdom of God.