The mind of Christ is not worldly knowledge but divine wisdom revealed by the Holy Spirit through Scripture. The spiritual man discerns all things, while the unspiritual cannot grasp divine truths. Receiving the mind of Christ requires a receptive spirit, diligent study, and the Holy Spirit's illumination, fostering humility and worship. This divine wisdom, decreed before the ages and centered in Christ, pertains to God's eternal plan for our glorification and is accessible to those who love Him.
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Now another short hymn before we turn to the word of God. The number means five hundred and forty-two. Five hundred and forty-two. Come Holy Ghost. I think particularly of those two. Come Holy Ghost, for most by thee the Prophet wrote and spoke. Unblock the truth. Thyself the key. Unseal the sacred book. Oh, and we
are Thank you. And God
will make His kingdom, and His kingdom shall be done. And God shall make His kingdom shall be made. I'll insert these two verses. First we get to the fourth verse of the Corinthians, chapter two and verse six. We shall read down to the fourth verse of chapter three. I read you as before from the revised standard version. One Corinthians, chapter two and verse six. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age, or for the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.
But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God has decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they have, they will not crucify the Lord of glory. But as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear had, nor the heart of man conceived while God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit of such is everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts, except the spirit of the man which he did here?
So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. The unspiritual man does not receive against the Spirit of God for their folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually deserved.
The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind to trust. But I, brethren, could not regret you as spiritual men, but as calm, as men of the Fletch, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Even yet you were not ready. For you are still in the Fletch. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not in the Fletch in behaving by ordinary men?
For when one says, I belong to Paul, it's another, I belong to Apollos, I'm not merely men. May God bless us in the reading and meditation of his work. Corinth was a church in its spiritual apparatus. In other words, the growth of the believers in this church in Corinth was erratic, was uneven. those of you who are acquainted with the problems of adolescence will know exactly what this is like. On the one hand there may be exceedingly rapid physical growth but slow emotional growth. And so it was here at Corinth. In the matter of spiritual gifts, they made simply phenomenal progress.
You come behind, Paul said, in chapter one, you're not lacking in any spiritual gifts. but when it came to a matter of spiritual maturity, then unfortunately they lagged behind. When it came to a matter of moral judgment or a ditch of character, their development was slow indeed. Paul indeed rejoiced and gave thanks to God for the grace of God that was manifested, and for the fact that they had in every way been enriched by our Lord Jesus Christ, as he says, with all speech and with all knowledge. but because their abilities were not matched by qualities of character, but they produced in this church a whole crock of problems.
And it is with these problems that Paul is concerned, as he writes this letter to them. Now, it is significant that he writes to them and says, you are enriched by heaven with all features and all multitudes. These were the two gifts that appeals particularly to the Corinthian belief. All speech, all knowledge. We were considering together on Friday evening the tremendous appeal that oratory held for the Christians at Corinth. All speech. Evidence and sorrow, they were concerned, was one of the finest of the arts. It was highly developed in Corinth. And it was, as we were seeing, one of the reasons why Paul himself played down the the exercise of eloquence, of oligarchy, of secretivity, the gospel to men.
He says, I didn't use this particular gift in your midst. They were gifted with all speech and all knowledge. Here again, this was a gift that would appeal to the Christians at Corinth. Notice, G-N-O-S-I-S, was a word that was bandied around in Corinth. They gave a disproportionate emphasis to knowledge. Now, we live in a society in our own day that is not entirely dissimilar to that which existed in Corinth, where pride of place is given for the acquisition of knowledge, where education is one of the foremost considerations of government.
We live in a day when premium is placed upon psychology, where the attaining of degrees and the acquiring of academic qualifications is thought to be of the first importance. And so our situation is somewhat akin to this. Now we look up to this question of knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge. But the devil, the evil one, tries to push the Christian into one or other of two extremes. One extreme is this, that he will have a whole view of knowledge inasmuch as we tend to regard it or have it as an end in itself. This is a great folly, when knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge is regarded as an end in itself.
This arises when an intellectual grasp of biblical truth is regarded as man, irrespective, independent of its effect upon daily life, independent of its moral and spiritual bearing. A great snare exists. is an academic study of theology divorced from its practical value, divorced from its practical challenge. The end of Bible study must always be a personal relationship. Now it is, it differs completely from all other areas of study.
You just have anything, you're studying any other subject, no matter what it is. It can't be written. Science, one of the arts, doesn't matter. You have your textbook in front of you. And your relationship with that textbook is I it. With that subject is I it. But when we come to the scripture and we study the book, the relationship changes. It's not I it. It's he, me. He, me. My Lord and my friend. And the aim of all Bible study is the establishment of a personal relationship with God. And so to think that we are a papyri knowledge, that we are studying the mind, writing our notes, and imagining that this knowledge can stand alone and be independent of ourselves and our conduct and our relationship with God is great folly.
It leads to agonist. And Paul says, knowledge turns us up. And so the devil tries to push us into that But if we do not feel inclined to go into that extreme, then he changes his tactic, he pushes us to the other extreme. And the other extreme is one perhaps that is even more familiar to most of us. It is this, that we regard knowledge and the use of the mind as an obstacle to spiritual progress. The first danger is that we isolate the mind, that we isolate the intellect. And we think that we can use it on its own, independent of its reaction upon ourselves.
The other danger, however, is this, that we think that we may by part intellect, that God in some mysterious way can communicate his truth from his word, by his spirit, direct to our heart, independent of our minds. But somehow there's a windrow around the mind. Well, there just isn't. Even as you're listening to me this afternoon, I trust that your mind is not working. Maybe they'll be working over time. I think they're working because the truth will not be communicated to you other than through your mind, through your intelligence. There's an old ring road around the mind.
And I did say some of you are saying, I'm not sure whether I agree with you. Well, what do you do? You're using your mind. And so God would have us. But the devil said, oh no. you must be careful about the mind. There was a time, and I remember it, when if a preacher came to us, having received a theological training, having certain academic qualifications, he was viewed with great suspicion. The reason that he was viewed with great suspicion was, not because he made demands upon our mental powers as he preached, but because it was regarded as somehow on a lower level from that which was called as though there were a wedge to be driven between the two, that we distinguished between that which makes a demand upon our minds and that which wants our minds.
Of course the two things God had in hand. God has made us complete persons. He hasn't deformed mental, I suppose, and said, here's your body. When you use your body, you don't use your mind. You don't use your emotions. No, we find that our mind and our body and emotions are all tangled up together. you can't isolate the mind from the body or from the emotions. And so when God addresses his truth to us, he addresses his truth to our hearts, through our minds, to affect our bodies, that our whole being may be subject to him. And so we must be aware of this extreme to which the devil would push us when he says, the use of knowledge is an obstacle to spiritual progress.
Do you not remember the words of the Lord when he said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind. You must love God with your intelligence, he said to us. Peter writes and tells us, gird up the loins of your mind. Of course, that's an archaic metaphor. We don't gird up our loins now at all. What we do is to roll up our sleeves. And if we were to put this into a modern expression, a modern metaphor, it would be, roll up the sleeves of your mind. Roll up your mental sleeves and get busy. in understanding be made. Paul writes again to his young friend Timothy as he says, Think over what I say and the Lord will give the understanding in all things.
Get your mind to work on this. Bring the fear upon the sacred edge every scrap of grey matter that you possess. Think over what I say but always remember it's the Lord will give the understanding in all things. I have been greatly encouraged by a verse that is found in Yersen II Corinthians. That means this. For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. We have no need to fear for the truth. The truth is inviolable. The truth will stand as an oath of the faith. We must not fear investigation of the truth.
Inserting not the truth, for we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. That then amounts for the general background of Corinth and the dangers into which the evil one will push us in connection with this use of the intellect of the mind. Without doubt, the Corinthians, having read chapter one with which we were concerned on an earlier evening, might contend about the Apostle Paul, oh, Paul, he's an anti-intellectual. Haven't he said, they may say, God has made foolish the wisdom of this world? did he not quote Isaiah's scripture I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart oh Paul's against the use of the mind in this chapter he corrects that he says that's a misapprehension I don't mean that we do impart a wisdom he says there is a wisdom that we want to communicate but it's the wisdom of God as he describes it in verse six we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God Now this wisdom of God, he entitles in the final verse of our chapter the mind of Christ.
A similar expression is found, as you well know, in Philippians chapter two and verse five. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. But the expression is used in two different ways in these two passages. In Philippians chapter two it is used of the disposition of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let this council disposition be found in you which were found in Christ. Now here it is not the disposition of Christ which is in view. When Paul says we have the mind of Christ, he is using it as he is using this expression, the wisdom of God. He calls it that to indicate that all the councils of God find their focus in Jesus Christ.
He is the personification of eternal truth. in body in heaven so God's wisdom centered in his son is entitled the mind of Christ now I've put down three headings on the backboard as a sort of analysis of this chapter to the ground that we intend to cover the mind of Christ who may receive it now in the chapter that we have before us Paul speaks of three chapters He speaks of those who may receive this mind of Christ, of this truth, and of those who are incapable of receiving it.
Let's consider first of all those who are incapable of receiving it. Verse fourteen. For thee, says the authorized person, natural man, and his mind the unspiritual man, does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are fallen to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually deserved. Now, we need care here. Who and what is the natural man? Glimply, one might reply, oh, the natural man is a man's mind, a man's intellect, and it cannot grasp spiritual truth.
Now, that, I do not believe, is what Paul is saying here. He would not say that there is anything wrong in the natural mind. That mind with which God has endowed that great gift of God, it takes through the mind that spiritual truth is communicated, as we shall see later. I do not believe, then, that the natural man, that expression used here, is equivalent to the intelligence. rather to what this version says, it is the unspiritual man, or, as I prefer it, given in the Amplified Intestments, in this particular portion, the non-spiritual man.
In other words, the individual, the man who have not been quickened by the Spirit of God, the man who does not possess spiritual life. Such a one, and we will readily see this, is incapable of spiritual desire. He just has not the capacity to understand, to deserve the things of God. They are folly to heaven. Such a man, a non-spiritual, bare man, not possessing the spirit of God, just a natural man at all. This man has not the wherewithal to understand the things of God. He might have much knowledge. He may boast in his knowledge. He might despise the simpler childhood.
might have done on him as one possessing very inferior intellectual power. But in point of fact, that man, who might boast in his knowledge, does not possess the ability to understand spiritual truth. He is tragically ignorant of the things of God. He has a distressing inability to perceive these things that come to us. You remember the wonderful story of Button, who walked along the streets of Bedford, heard women sitting in the sound of their doors talking about the things of God. Does he listen to these simple women talking about the things of God?
God suddenly smoothing out. He said to himself, I have a far greater intelligence than those women. But these things are utterly foreign to me. I can't understand. He did not have the equipment. For he had not the Spirit. He had not been born of God. or refers in passing to the categories by which the natural man, that is the non-spiritual man, by which they just matter. Verse twelve, they have the spirit of the world. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God. They've got the spirit of the world. They've got the impulse that operates in the world. They've got that which makes the world check.
They can argue, they can philosophize. of human wisdom. We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom. But if they would stretch their nose to the thing, that they could understand by the natural man, unalumit by the Spirit of God, these things are holy to them. How ridiculous it is to us when someone says, I can't possibly believe that, because it doesn't appeal to my mind. I apply to that scripture, says somebody, the scientific method. and uh well you can't prove that there's a god there is a you can't prove that there's a heaven you can't prove that there's a hell and therefore I am not prepared to receive it what is such a person doing there like a man who's going to fish for minnows with a large mesh net and when he fishes for these minnows and comes back with none in his large mesh net he deduces that there are no such things as minnows he's gone to work with worldly capitalism and he says there's no God, there's no heaven, there's no hell.
But in point of fact, he hadn't got the thing that is necessary to persevere and to understand and appreciate these things. I suppose we smiled with a certain amount of cynical tolerance when the Russian astronaut came back from his journey into space and said, I went up into space and there's no God there. I can assure you that there's no God at all. We went up and investigated, and there's nothing to report. And we see her utterly stupid this year. A man unassumed by the Spirit of God, he can't understand these things. Now Paul gives an obfuscation. The rulers of this age. Those who, in their own field, are outstanding.
The rulers of this age. What have they done? They haven't done that. We as part wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age, or are the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. For none of the rulers of this age understood this, but if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. They were the foremost brains of the day, the outstanding leaders of the day. But what did they do? They took the Lord of Glory, one of the nemesis of Cyprianism, the Savior, the Lord of Glory, and they crucified him. They put him to death. They saw, but they did not perceive.
They heard, but they did not understand. Nor did it enter into their hearts, for they were natural men. They were unspiritual men. They were non-spiritual, the better term of the Three Hundred Years. Non-spiritual. category number two is described as the spiritual man. Verse fifteen. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no man. Now this we see immediately as a text, that if we are going to understand divine things, if we are going to receive the mind of Christ, we must be quickened when you like by the Spirit.
For as verse thirteen says, spiritual truth can only be communicated can be imparted to those who possess the Spirit. But once the spiritual man is one who possesses the light of the Spirit and therefore has the basic equipment for understanding the mind of God, I believe you that Paul might be using the expression here in a rather narrower sense. For in chapter three in verse one he says, that I, brethren, could not possess you, the spiritual men. They were brethren, They were Christians, they were converted, they had a Holy Spirit, they were brethren, but they were not spiritual.
They were not living in the power and enjoyment of this spiritual life. And so this is essential, not only that we should have the Holy Spirit, but that that Spirit should have free sway and free cause in our hearts and in our minds. This I believe is what Paul had in mind when he says to the commencement of our section, yet among the mature we do impart wisdom. Who are these mature? Who are these who have grown up? They are those who have received the Spirit of God and who allow that Spirit of God to communicate the truth to. And therefore they possess the mind of Christ, the wisdom of God.
Category number three of the carnal. So again, chapter three in verse one, I could not address you with spiritual men, but as carnal, as men of the flesh." Unfortunately, the word carnal has very often freshly and immoral connotations. It's not that sort of thing that Paul has in mind whatsoever here. What he is saying is these, is this, you are born of God. You are brethren, but unfortunately you are still living as though you were not. And your own thinking is governed by the thinking and the principles that govern the thinking are meant in the works. By their categories, by their assumptions, you go to work when you come to the Word of God.
That they were carnal, could be seen, in two ways. First of all, by the fact that they were striving, that there was jealousy, that there was a promotion of this party spirit in the church. And secondly, by their diet. They were carnal, they were even bathed in Christ, so thy faithful with no. For you are not ready to swallow his fruit, and still you are not capable of receiving it. Now, we want the mind of Christ, not only is it imposition, but to understand the truth as it is in Jesus. The wisdom of God, as it is personified in Jesus Christ, this is what we want. Now, what are the conditions?
We must not be natural, then. We must not be mere men, non-spiritual. And I feel assured that we have all been loved and none of us were in that category. We must be spiritual. That is, our whole mind and life must be alive toward God. If we are calm, men of flesh, given over to governing and judging things by the assumptions and categories of worldly men, then this truth will elude us.
But secondly, how may we receive this mind of Christ, this truth? Well, as a free throw secret that is communicated to us in this chapter, it is by the Spirit, through the Scriptures, as we study it. These are not interdependent, one or the other, they are interdependent. You cannot have one and two without three. Note the saying, we've got the Spirit, we've got the Scripture, and doing nothing about it. You must have one, two, and three. It's no good having two and three without one. It's no good saying, we've got the Scripture, we've got to work away with it without dependence on the Spirit, They're a little bit like a manor pantry of produce.
If you were to go into a work, you would see three things that went together in the production of the finished office. What is a source of power? It might be electricity. It might be nuclear energy. But there is a source of power. There is a machine. And there is an operator of that machine. So here, the source of power is the spirit of God himself. The machine As it were, it's the Holy Scripture. And the operator is you. And me. We who study and go to work upon it. Now let's take a look at these three. First of all, the Spirit.
Paul may explain to us in verse ten that it is one of the essential functions of the Holy Spirit to impart to us the knowledge of God. In fact, he says, this is his role in the life. The second part of verse ten. For the Spirit searches everything even the depths of God. Now here is a great statement. The Spirit of God searches the depths of God. To illustrate what he means, he goes on in verse eleven to say, For one person knows a man's thoughts, except the Spirit of a man which is in him, so also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now let's think for a moment about this.
God has given to us, as men of We might cut over the end of the day and say to ourselves, but utterly foolish you were to say that. Why did you act as you did? And we, as you were, are independent of ourselves and we argue with ourselves. Now what is that that doesn't it? It's the spirit of a man himself or that can discuss with a man and can think about what the man is doing and saying about his motives, about his thoughts. no one else has a ghost of an idea as to what is going on with him.
Only that man he knows but another one. Unless he chooses to communicate by weapons what he is thinking to others. Now God says, Paul says, we are made in the image of God. We in this just reflect what goes on in God. God has a power to know. That power to know is the Spirit of God. And this spirit of God, he says, penetrates deep down into the heart and mind of God. For he searches everything, even the depths of God. This is the function of the Holy Spirit in the deity. So knowledge.
There's no limit. There's no restriction to his knowledge, says Paul. He has answers to all things. He penetrates to the very depths of God. And the unsanitary reaches of the infinite. are explored by him, the Spirit of God. Now, because he understands these things to which we cannot penetrate, this realm that we cannot adventure into ourselves, because he knows, he is the only one qualified to communicate the truth to us. He knows, and he can, if he chooses, acquaint us with this, which is the mind of Christ, We may only understand this if he communicates it to us.
These things are revealed to us through the Spirit. What does not yield to the Spirit of this world? What does not yield a human wisdom? What is otherwise invisible? What no eye has seen? What is otherwise inaudible? What no ear has heard? What is otherwise inconceivable? What no hearted man has conceived, God has revealed to us through the Spirit. It is a great pity that one heaven believes that many quotations by brethren have implied that a full stop comes at the end of verse nine. It is not a full stop but a comma. What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us.
We are not ignorant of these things. We otherwise wouldn't be, we couldn't understand them by our unagent intellect, but God has revealed them to us through the Spirit. How do we receive this truth? First of all, it's through the agency of the Holy Spirit. But further, it is through the Scriptures. Verse thirteen. And we impart this, this mind and trust, this wisdom of God. We impart this in words. Note that, in words. Not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. to those who possess the Spirit. We impart this in words. This, in all probability, was a legitimate claim that the Apostle Paul was making for his preaching.
He said, I'm communicating truth to you, and I'm communicating it to you in words. But these words are not words that I have made up. They do not spring merely from myself. These words, he says, are words that the Holy Spirit inducts within me. will of God, she'll be able to say this, which truth we impart to you in words, not from human wisdom, but words which have been given by the Spirit of God himself. But, without doubt, here is a claim for the inspiration of Scripture, which truth we impart to you in words taught by the Holy Spirit.
Would you understand the Divine's? Would you have the mind of Christ, Paul is faithful? then it is communicated to you in this book. It is communicated to you in words, and these words represent spiritual truths. If therefore we would gain the mind of Christ, it will only be as the Spirit of God illumines the word, operate through the words so that we understand his knowledge. Now we generally appreciate it, and we come to this book, pray, opens out my eyes that are my behold, wondrous things are to thy Lord. We see the promise of Jesus when he says that the spirit of truth will govern you into all truth.
But we need also to recognize that there is no revelation of divine truth apart from Holy Scripture. May I repeat that because I believe that is fundamental and needs to be restated in our own day. There is no revelation of divine truth. Holy Scripture. He takes the things of Christ and reveals them unto us. He illumines our minds to understand the Scriptures, even as Jesus did for the two who walked the road to a mess. But there is no fresh revelation to be made. This is our faith once for all delivered to the saints.
There is no revelation that is made that is equivalent in authority there, but it's part of the divine revelation of that is enthroned in the Holy Scripture. We have a mind of Christ it is through the scripture. But first, it is as we study. The Christian is not absorbed from personal mental effort. Now there's a whole range of expressions in this chapter which implies the use of the mind, a diligent mental exercise. Look again at verse twelve. At the end of the verse, the Spirit has been given us, that which might word of attaining full knowledge verse thirteen we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught the word taught is a word of education it is the impartation of instruction and again in verse fifteen the spiritual man judges all things judges all things the same word as in verse fourteen deserved I have not done this word it is divisive of the dictionary the
word judges. He says, to judge is to distinguish, to assist, to separate out so to investigate, to examine, to scrutinize, to question. Now, can you have a better verbal picture of a student at work than that? Every one of us will be bribing students, brethren and sisters alike, finding time regularly to pour over the Holy Scriptures Say to God, God, I thank you for thy word. I thank thee for thy spirit, apart from whom one cannot know the mind of Christ. Thy come, depending on thy spirit, and I am going to study the word of that.
We distinguish, we sift, we separate out souls to investigate, we examine, we scrutinize, we question. Here is one who is making a careful examination of the text of Holy Scripture. There are two questions that we need to ask ourselves always as we come to this book. What exactly does it say and what does it mean? Not what do I want it to say. Not what do I want it to mean. Not what others say it means. But what does it say? We must get at the text. We must understand what it says. For God has given it to us in words. And these words are governed by the laws of grammar.
And we must understand it properly. In words, we must understand what it means. Ninety times out of our hundred, it is the straightforward plain meaning of Holy Scripture that is the one that God must have us understand and accept. Not an answer for one, not such allegorical interpretation, but a straightforward plain meaning of the word of God. We must study. One of our methods may be indicated to us by the authorized version of the end of verse thirty, comparing spiritual things with spiritual ones. Happy is that person who, having read extensively in Holy Scripture, can weigh one scripture against the other and compare spiritual things with spiritual ones.
Finally, briefly, what do we receive? What is the mind of Christ? What is the nature of this truth that we are examining this wisdom of God? In the section we are told that it has a three-fold relationship, a three-fold better. First of all, it relates to the past. Verse seven, we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages. Before the ages. It's a secret. Now that doesn't mean that it's a mystery, as the word had it. At a moment. that is difficult to solve. Rather, is it something God has disclosed that we could not otherwise have known?
That's the meaning of the word secret, or the meaning of the word mystery. Something that may not be known other than as God reveals it to us. It's a secret wisdom. It's a hidden wisdom. And God hid away this wisdom in his counsels from all eternity. But now he has disclosed them. And these counsels the sin of infraction. but they concerned what God decreed before the ages. What a wonderful truth this is, that God had a secret plan of raising for men. It was locked away in his heart from all the ages. It was to be brought in and through Christ. It was an eternal plan. The work that Jesus carried through in time was no afterthought.
His death was no mere miscarriage of justice. His sacrifice was not that he was caught on the horns of a deliver, that he found himself in a vortex of human scheming from which he could not escape. He trod apart, decreed of God for him from all eternity, but was he not the rank swayed from before the foundation of the world. This is the hidden wisdom, this is the secret, that the one who came was the Lord of glory, the Lord of glory. I love the way that Paul takes these two expressions in starkly contrast to one to the other and he lies them down side by side.
Crucified the Lord of glory. Crucified, we're faced with the indignity of the cross. Lord of glory that we are confronted with a majesty of the nation. Now to bow to acknowledge him, is to enter into the eternal occurrences, decreed before the ages. It is to possess spiritual insight. It is to have the mind of Christ. We penetrate it to the past, and we know that this was a plan for ordained of God, for our glorification. And now that our attention is diverted to the future, God's purpose is that we should share his glory and bear his righteousness.
what no eye has seen, something that is utterly invisible, what no ear has heard, something that is inaudible, that's never fallen upon the ears of a human kind, something that is beyond the conception of a human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him. This, too, is ours in Christ, and we should enter into the enjoyment of it here and now, as the secret is divulged to us, the mind of Christ. But it relates to the present, verse twelve. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
How glorious these are, how adequate they are for our need. Tragically, so many of us as Christians live on a spiritual shoestring. We go around as though we were porters. Whereas we have all things in Christ. What will he not bestow? Who freely gave his mighty gift unbought, unmerited, unheeded and unsought? What will he not bestow? We are given all things in Christ. All the treasures of divine grace and glory are ours in him. In Christ! No wonder exultingly fall the face, but we have a mind of Christ! Now from time to time Tristan says, Paul is a bit big-headed.
They always have a duty of making the suggestion, but they say, is there not a such a bad idea here, that a man should say, we have the mind of Christ? I submit to you that to possess such knowledge is always an exceedingly humbling thing, to venture into the mind of Christ concerning the past, those secrets of the ages past, to have gazed into the future and seen what God has prepared for those who love him. To appreciate the things that are art in Jesus Christ here and now is to bow us in worship before him. It's an exceedingly humbling thing to possess this knowledge. And as though Paul might detect that some might say that, he says, for who have known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?
He quotes, who have known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? anyone that has ever imparted any knowledge to God. Has anyone ever been the author of any information that he has communicated to God? All we are are recipients. We but receive this knowledge. We don't create knowledge in any realm. We don't discover it. And this is especially true when it comes to spiritual knowledge is revealed to us. This then is the greatest knowledge, this is the highest wisdom, which is conveyed to us by the Spirit through the Scriptures, the counsels of God that find their focus to fulfil it in Jesus Christ.
To enter into this and to prevent the mind of Christ will never result in a sense of superiority one over another. Rather, will it bother us to worship him, to adore him, and humbly to acknowledge that we ever possess of the mind of Christ. May God grant to us increasingly to be in possession of this mind, of Christ, this wisdom of God, for his name is Jacob. Amen. Now let us sing the hymn in praise of the word of God, number five hundred and five. Father of mercies, in thy word, for endless glory shines.
Forever be thy name adored, for he is the lips of your mind. Five old minds. The world is in my heart.
All is to let you lie. We will let you come and walk, Make yourself with his heart. Thank you.
Thank you. Oh And still it will be the way I see, and still it
will be. And still it will be done. And he died in love the way of the Lord. May be your Lord and your dear. May the Lord be your Lord my Savior. The title of tomorrow's talk from this series will be Servants of Christ, and the passage which we shall consider together will be that from verse five of chapter three down to verse seven of chapter four, Servants of Christ.
Now let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt grant with thy help day by day, to read thy word with care, with accuracy, to think about what we read, and his dependence upon thy Spirit and his gracious ministry, to come to the mind of Christ. And then we pray that these councils of divine and divine wisdom may result in our very characters being shared.