Bible Commentaries
1 Corinthians 2

Verses 1-16

II 1-III 4a The Higher Wisdom —The spiritual man, i.e. the true Christian, derives from God not only a higher wisdom but power and eloquence superior to those which the world admires. In proof of this Paul confidently appeals to their own experience of his preaching at Corinth.

1. ’of Christ’: better ’of God’ —i.e. the message about God’s love.

2. Better: ’I decided not to know anything’, etc.

3. He came after sufferings and anxiety in Macedonia, and disappointment at Athens, and may have been actually ill, cf. Acts 18:1-10. Yet St Paul’s letters contain man passages which are marvellously eloquent. (See ch 13.) His preaching surely displayed the same gift, and we can hardly believe that he was unaware of it. The eloquence that he here disclaims must be the more or less artificial Atticising style, which was then popular and usually taught in the schools of rhetoric, the style of Wis, of 2 Mac, and of the Jewish writer Philo. Very likely both the False Apostles and Appllos could preach is this style. (See 2 Corinthians 10:10.) Paul’s eloquence is more natural and direct. If he had any model, it was the popular philosophers, whose language is preserved in Epictetus’s discourses (§ 602c). ’In showing’, etc.: ’With clear evidence of the Spirit and of the Power’, i.e. the power of God. He probably includes miracles, and also the power to read, enlighten, and move the heart.

6. ’We speak’, etc.: our words are seen to be wise by perfect men, men fully under the influence of grace. The Greek word t??e??? (complete) can mean both perfect and full-grown, adult, and Paul likes to keep the double meaning in sight. (See 3:1-3; 14:20.) Here the word means the same as ’spiritual’ further on. ’Princes’ ’Great men’ of all kinds.

7. ’We speak the wisdom of God, the secret wisdom which has been hidden’, etc., i.e. the gospel truth, once only faintly revealed even to prophets, but now open to all who are willing to accept it.

8. ’The Lord of glory’: either ’the glorious Lord’ or ’the master of all renown and eminence’.

9. To be attached to the first half of. ’That eye’, etc. Things which eye, etc. . . .all that God has’, etc. Paul is freely combining two verses of Is (64:4; 65:17) and describing not so much the wonders of Paradise as the wonders of the new truth revealed in Christ.

11-12. An argument from human nature, to show that the Holy Spirit can communicate (to all those in whom he dwells by grace) truths inaccessible to ordinary man. (Note that later theologians usually speak of ’grace’ or ’sanctifying grace’ where Paul would commonly have spoken of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—different aspects of the same thing.)

11. ’For among men, who knows a man’s thoughts? Only the man’s spirit, which is in him, knows them. In the same way nobody except God’s Spirit knows God’s thoughts .

12. ’The spirit of this world the false wisdom condemned in ch 1. ’The things’, etc.: the new truths in all their meaning. 13. ’Not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, joining spiritual things to spiritual’ (Or: interpreting spiritual things in spiritual words’). In either case the last words mean that the words are as spiritual, as devoid of human artifice, as the Divine truths themselves.

II 14-III 1 —The terms change: the spiritual man on one side and the ’natural man’ the ’man of flesh’ on the other.

14. ’Sensual’ : ’Natural’, i.e. worldlyminded. ’Examined’: i.e. only a mind purified by grace can scrutinize, discern, and appreciate it.

15. ’Judgeth . . . judged’: better: ’Examines . . . examined’. Same Greek word as in 14. Not that the spiritual man is subject to no authority, but that he must not bow to the verdict of the worldly-minded, the rulings of public opinion or of false science.

16. The first part is from Isaiah 40:13; Who knows God’s thoughts that he may lay down the law to Him? (as false human wisdom is constantly doing). ’We’, etc.: the spiritually-minded know the thoughts of Christ, which, as he clearly means, are identical with God’s. The Divinity of Christ is taken as acknowledged by all