The Gift of the Spirit, the Obstacle of the Flesh | 1 Cor. 2:6-3:4

As preached by Timothy O'Day.

"You and I are prone to self-exaltation, but we need to keep our eyes set on the cross."

1) True wisdom comes from God (2:6-9).

2) True wisdom is discerned by the gift of the Holy Spirit (2:10-16).

3) True wisdom is obscured by spiritual immaturity (3:1-4).

The Gift of the Spirit and the Hurdle of the Flesh

1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4

#4 in a series through 1 Corinthians

February 16, 2025

In Proverbs 9, the reader is presented with two options: the way of lady wisdom or woman folly. Every single person will choose one of the two. The imagery of the chapter has two women who are calling out to people passing by. Lady wisdom offers true life; woman folly offers present pleasure that will ultimately lead to death. 

No one readily chooses folly. You only choose folly if you think it is wisdom. The personification of wisdom and folly in Proverbs 9 illustrates for us that we pursue what we think will bring us joy and life. And, as we pursue either wisdom or folly, we are really pursuing a way of worship.

Wisdom and folly are about more than just behavior. In fact, they are about the posture of the heart that leads to behavior. Wisdom is worship of the one true God; folly is the embrace of idolatry. 

How do you tell the difference between wisdom and folly if folly poses to be wisdom? Proverbs 9:10 gives us the answer, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy one is insight.” 

Put differently, what has your gaze? If you see the Lord, you are both captured by his beauty and awed by his power and thrown into rapt attention. You become preoccupied with him.  It’s a type of love and terror that keeps you focused on him. Like being on a trail and then noticing a cougar is tracking you. Once that happens, you can’t just go back to your walk and think about something else. The cougar has your full attention. Or like when I first met my wife Haley. I wanted to get to know her, so when I saw her at an event I kept track of where she was so that she would not leave before I was able to talk to her. 

Becoming aware of the beauty and power of God leads us to fear him in the sense that he preoccupies how we think. This is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is the skill of living in a way that coheres and makes sense of who God is; folly is embracing idolatry that ignores who God is. 

The Situation in Corinth

The Corinthians are not living in the fear of the Lord. Their eyes are set on status as defined by the world. Lady folly has called out and they are taking steps in her direction, joining the world in calling the wisdom of God folly and embracing folly as if it were true wisdom. Paul began to address this in 1:9-17, calling out the Corinthians for embracing division in the church in order to gain personal advancement. 1:18-2:4 revealed the reason they were doing this was that they had set aside the wisdom of God as revealed in the cross of Christ and instead viewed true power and greatness as getting people to serve them instead of—as the cross reveals—seeing true power and greatness measured by how much they are able to give, not how much they are able to get from others. 

Paul continues this theme in 2:6-3:4, coming back full circle to the issue of members of the Corinthian church seeking to pad their prestige and status by identifying with a particular church leader. While he comes back to that idea in 3:3-4, he finishes his discussion of wisdom that he begins in 1:18. The reason they are acting as they are is because they have lost sight of true wisdom. Instead of being preoccupied with the Lord, they are preoccupied with achieving status in accord with what the world calls wisdom—but it is really folly. 

What Paul lays out in 2:6-3:4 is a reminder about true wisdom, true worship, that serves to open our eyes to see worldly wisdom for what it really is: folly. 

But don’t just view this as a history lesson on what the Corinthians needed to hear. You and I need to hear this, too, for this world loves to blind us to the beauty and power of God and lady folly continually calls to us. Let’s focus on what these verses have for us in light of our shared weakness and vulnerability. 

First, true wisdom comes from God (6-9).

Picking up on what he said in 2:5, Paul wants to make clear that he and the apostles do impart wisdom, just not wisdom as this age defines it. This is what he is saying in verse 6,

“Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.” 

Those who are mature (more on what that means in a moment) hear what Paul is saying in the gospel and they respond by saying, “That is the wisdom of God!” But this wisdom that Paul and the apostles impart is different from what this age and the rulers of this age define as wisdom—and that is a good thing, for this age and the rulers of this age will pass away and fall into God’s judgment. 

The word “age” that Paul uses here is just another way of saying “this world and its fallen system of values.” This present age is defined by the lie of Satan in the garden that questions God’s goodness. It is an age where the system is set up to oppose God and godliness. When Jesus went to the cross and then raised from the dead, a new age dawned. Presently, we live in an overlap of the ages—what some have called the “already-and-not-yet.” 

The wisdom that Paul imparts is “secret” and “hidden” as he says in verse 7. It is “secret” and “hidden” in two sense. First, it didn’t originate with man; it comes from God, saying that it is a wisdom “God decreed before the ages for our glory” (7). Second, it is a wisdom that man could not discern by his own human faculties. He needed to be told of it by God. That is to say, God decreed the cross before the ages began as the means of making a people for his own possession—which is the glory of the church. Our glory is that one day, when Jesus returns, he will call us as his own and we will be glorified. Those who are dead will be resurrected to glory and those who remain will be changed in a twinkling of an eye. The glory of the church is that we are counted as belonging to God and will be glorified in the new heavens and earth. The cross accomplishes this. No amount of human effort or thinking could make us right with God, but this is exactly what man tries to do. We are all legalists at heart. In human wisdom, we try to figure out ways to justify ourselves or to downplay our sin. We do not even imagine the idea that God would take the punishment we deserve on himself. 

This is why, as it says in verse 8, none of the rulers and authorities of this present age understand the cross. The cross is God’s plan to bless us and to glorify Himself. The rulers of this age, walking in worldly wisdom, missed who Jesus is and continue to miss who he is. A system set up to disregard God, justify or deny sin, does not recognize a Messiah. 

Beware the Call and Model of Worldly Wisdom

Here’s what this means for you: you need to beware of the call of folly that poses as wisdom. But don’t just beware of the content of worldly wisdom that misses the gospel; beware of the model of earthly wisdom that ignores the pattern of the cross. 

Worldly wisdom says you have worth because you 1) know certain things and 2) can do certain things. And this worth translates as a means of receiving praise from men. This praise and recognition from people comes to be seen as the point of life and the source of joy in life. That is the problem the Corinthians are experiencing. They are in Christ and using Christian language, but they are following a worldly paradigm, which is why they are proclaiming, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos” (3:4)

The worldly system can be transferred over and practiced by Christians in the church. We live and think like Christians only have worth when they 1) know certain things and 2) can do certain things. And this worth translates over as a means of receiving praise from men inside the church, and this praise and recognition becomes the point of life and the source of joy. This is why men who are disqualified from ministry cannot imagine not getting back into leadership; it is why some Christians in the church feel inferior to others because they don’t have gifts that stand out like other people that worldly wisdom reveres. 

The cross of Christ turns this all upside down. God’s wisdom, revealed in the cross, says that worth is tied to 1) being known by God and 2) having God do certain things for you: create you in his image and redeem you with the blood and body of Christ. 

And this worth translates as a means of praising God, and this praise —this enjoyment of God—is the point of life and source of joy. 

Godly wisdom is a system that is God-centered—you are preoccupied with God as you see him in the cross of Christ. In Godly wisdom, I am defined by God and my relationship with him. In worldly wisdom, I am defined by man and my relationship to them. 

This is why those stuck in earthly wisdom cannot understand the cross and the wisdom of God revealed in it. They aren’t concerned with what God thinks of them; they are primarily concerned with what man thinks of them, so the cross looks completely ineffective and pointless. 

And God foretold that those defined by the world would miss the point of the cross and disregard the wisdom of God. Verse 9 is a paraphrase of Isaiah 64:4. The point Paul draws from it is that inherent human capabilities cannot foresee, predict, or explain God’s plan of the cross. Only those who love God can. But how is one to come and love God? That’s what we see next in verses 10-16. 

Second, true wisdom is discerned by the gift of the Holy Spirit (10-16).

There are two major ideas contained in verses 10-16. First, Paul is able to proclaim the cross of Christ, which is the true wisdom of God, because the Spirit teaches him how to do it. Second, people are able to accept the gospel, which is the true wisdom of God, because the Spirit claims them. Let’s walk through both of these ideas.

The Spirit Makes God’s Wisdom Known (10-13)

In verses 10-13, Paul claims that he speaks and teaches not from himself, but with the knowledge and authority of God. That’s a huge claim that should demand we pay attention to what he says. Here is how he makes the claim. In verse 10, he writes God has revealed wisdom through the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, being omnipresent, searches all and thus knows all—including the depths of God. The depths. The expression “depths of God” refers to the deep things that God has ordained and prepared to be revealed, as he says in 2:7,9. In other words, the depths of God are the plan of redemption through the cross of Christ. Then, in verse 11, Paul makes an analogy. He asks a rhetorical question, saying that the only one who can truly know the mind of a person perfectly is that person’s spirit. This is just another way of saying, no one knows a person's thoughts better than that person. I remember as a kid playing a game with a friend in which we would try to guess what the other person was thinking. The catch was that you had to think of an object that was in the room. If you guessed right, then you got a point. Eventuall,y I was losing the game by a number of points and I hadn’t scored a single point yet. Then I realized that there was no way I could tell if my friend was cheating. Only he knew his mind (It didn’t dawn on me until many years later that I should have had him write the object down, but I was only 8 or so). No one knows you like you know yourself. So it is with God. The Father, Son, and Spirit are one. The Spirit makes known the mind of God, just as Jesus said in John 16:14-15, saying of the Spirit,

“He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” 

Paul says something similar in verse 12, saying “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” 

That is to say, the declaration of the cross is now going forth, but you need the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of this age of fallen humanity, in order to comprehend how the cross is the wisdom of God. 

In light of the fact that God has given his Spirit, verse 13 says two things are now possible: first, the apostles teach God’s Word (and write it as well), interpreting—that is, explaining—the truth that they received from the Holy Spirit to those who are claimed by God’s Holy Spirit. 

Paul is claiming, then, that as an apostle, he speaks (and writes) authoritatively. He says he is taught by the Spirit of God. This is something that is unique to him and the other apostles. While the office of apostles does not continue, their writings do continue as the Spirit gives authority to explain the cross of Christ. 

The Spirit Claims His Own Through The Proclamation of the Gospel (14-16)

But this explanation is not for everybody; it is for those who are “spiritual.” What does that mean? 

Simply put, being spiritual means that you have the Spirit of God and are marked by the Spirit of God. 

After saying that he interprets spiritual truths to those who are spiritual, Paul says in verse 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.” The spiritual person is contrasted with the natural person. The natural man is what we all are until the Holy Spirit intervenes in our hearts. Until the Spirit moves on a sinner's heart, the gospel will not click and will be counted as ineffective and unnecessary, or simply impossible.

Just consider what Festus said to Paul in Acts 26:24 after Paul explained the gospel to him, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.”

Festus said this because he examined the gospel through a view of reality (what he called wisdom) that is false. Is it any surprise that he deemed it as insanity? Paul himself called it insanity until the Spirit moved on him in his encounter with the risen Christ. 

It is only when the Holy Spirit moves on us that scales fall from our eyes and we see the cross differently than we had before. That moves us from looking on the cross and shrugging to looking at the cross and saying, “The wisdom and power of God!” 

Do Not Fear Judgment

Likewise, since the Spirit searches and knows all, if you have the Holy Spirit you can judge—meaning discern—what is true. As you have the Spirit of God, you can walk in the Spirit and make judgments about what is truly wisdom, this is what Paul means in the first part of verse 15. Two realities follow from this:

First, if you have the Holy Spirit, do not fear being judged as ignorant by the natural person. While you are able to discern what is true through the Holy Spirit, the natural person cannot. Therefore, the spiritual person is not judged in the true sense of the world. If you are walking in the Spirit, you have the mind and thinking of Christ. If someone says to you, “You’re wrong” because you are imitating Christ, then this person is really saying that Christ is wrong. This is what Paul means in verse 16 when he paraphrases Isaiah 40:13. If, by the power of the Spirit, you are walking in the way of Christ, who is the natural man to say that you are wrong? To say as much is to claim that Christ is wrong. 

But, second, another reality follows from this. If you are indwelled by the Spirit of God and walking in step with the Spirit, you will have the mind of Christ, as it says in verse 16. As I said a couple of weeks ago, this means that you will see the world and your present circumstances as Christ does; you will have desires to serve and count others as more significant than yourself. As you meditate on the cross, you see that this is how Christ lived. He did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). 

So don’t get distracted by the world’s opinion of you. If they reject you as a fool, it is because they rejected Christ as well. 

But, if you do not walk in step with the Spirit in order to gain the world’s approval, you’re obscuring the wisdom of God, which is our last point. 

Third, true wisdom is obscured by spiritual immaturity (3:1-4).

3:1-4 turns toward clear rebuke. The Corinthians are not living like they are indwelled by the Spirit and endowed with the mind of Christ. They are marked by the flesh, as he says in verse 3, meaning that Paul sees them living in accord with earthly wisdom, not the wisdom that comes from God as it is revealed in the cross and applied by the Spirit.

Pay attention to the fact that Paul does not call them natural persons and unbelievers. While he does not address them as spiritual, he does not deny that they have the Holy Spirit. How do we know this? He calls them “brothers” at the beginning of verse 1 and then “infants in Christ” at the end of verse 1. To be a brother means that you are part of the family of God; to be an infant in Christ means that you are in Christ. Furthermore, Paul will write later on in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 that everyone in Christ has the Spirit of God.

So why can he not address them as spiritual? He means that he cannot address them as spiritually mature. Those who are spiritually mature bear the mark of the Spirit in their lives. They are marked by the mind of Christ. But the Corinthians are marked, as it says in verse 3, by jealousy and strife. They are bearing the fruits of the flesh, not the fruit of the Spirit. Paul exhorts the church in Galatia to “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). This exhortation shows us that one can have the Spirit of God but resist him. That’s exactly what the Corinthians are doing. Instead of walking in the Spirit and being marked by his ways, they are marked by the ways of the world. 

Speak of Fruit to Get to the Root

This is what makes the posturing for position in the Corinthian church so ridiculous. Each is claiming a teacher in the church in order to advance their own status over others as “more mature.” Later on, we will see that many are claiming to be “more spiritual” than others in order to be seen as more honorable and respectable than others. 

They want to be seen as wise, spiritual, and mature, but their very conduct reveals the fact that they drink from the fountain of worldly wisdom, are fleshly in their course, and immature in Christlikeness. 

They could not even see the fact that they were immature because their spiritual immaturity blinded them to the wisdom of God in the cross. 

Never Leave the Cross

This is why Paul doesn’t ever stop preaching the cross. Earthly wisdom sets a pecking order of greatness and glory centered around individuals. When we live by earthly wisdom in the church, we try to maneuver around each other, gossip about each other, and celebrate another’s slip into disgrace—all because it means I look better than him. But, as Paul will go on to say in the next section, you cannot pit God’s people against each other. He and Apollos are co-workers, not competitors. They serve Christ and the church together through their different gifts. They are not jealous of each other but zealous for Christ to be honored. 

The cross centers on Christ and so, as we remember the cross, we will have our gaze set on Christ. In the church, we are servants of the Lord, not servants of self. And the only way you can live like a servant of Christ instead of self is to keep your gaze on Jesus Christ and his cross. This is what the Spirit comes to do. 

Have you ever noticed that you move toward what you gaze upon? We have moments when we walk backwards or sideways, but we mostly walk forward. We have times when we look left and right, but my face always returns forward. Whoever I direct my gaze, my body will follow. 

Where are you going? What are you gazing upon? The cross of Christ? Or the promises of pleasure in this world? What you gaze upon, you will delight in; what you delight in, you will worship; what you worship will direct your behavior.