Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church
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Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16
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.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16
The Natural and Spiritual Mind
Paul makes two statements about the naturally minded person in these two verses. First he says that they do not accept the things of the Spirit because they think they are inapplicable, childish and pure foolishness. Secondly he says that they do not understand them due to their spiritual source. The teachings of Jesus that come to mind are when he told a crowd full of people that if they didn’t eat his body and drink his blood they would not enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ intentional guising of his teachings in parables to baffle those who thought that they could discern what he meant by human reasoning also comes to mind. Notice that Paul doesn’t say that the natural minded person doesn’t hear or see spiritual things, plenty of people heard and saw Jesus teach and perform daily miracles–it is that they don’t accept them as viable. They are on a completely different wavelength from the thoughts and intents of the Spirit. The natural minded person seeks only to be unambiguously certain in their factual accuracy; to be right. They equate being right with being righteous; to be able to answer any question with their own heuristic of human wisdom be it rationalism or empiricism or whatever they believe.
Paul then says something very interesting. He says that as a result of the natural and spiritual mind divide in the body of Christ, the spiritual person; the person channelling the Holy Spirit of God on a daily basis for their words and their actions like Jesus did, judges all things. They see all things as they should be and the things that are not, they speak the words of God to correct. However, the natural minded ones should not be judge them, because they don’t understand their judgements. Paul is about to define the natural mind even further in chapter 3, but at the end of this thought, he says that the natural minded believer who isn’t channelling the Holy Spirit has no reference for the things of God and therefore cannot judge those who do.
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