Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 2-3

Today’s reading: 1 Samuel 16; 1 Corinthians 2-3

I have been sitting here for a little while now trying to figure out what to write about out of today’s reading. Some days I have a hard time because there’s just not too much to write about, but this definitely isn’t one of those days. There is a lot going on in all three of today’s chapters that would be good fodder for a quick post, but for some reason I just didn’t want to write about any of those obvious topics. Instead, as I was praying about it, asking God what He wanted me to write about, and reading through the passages again, what struck me was the difference between a vast, even exhaustive, knowledge of the Word, and a mature Christian understanding of it.

I very much like to learn for the sake of learning. I don’t have much of a mind for remembering specific facts and figures, so I’m absolutely terrible at trivia, but I love to understand how things work and why, it just fascinates me. And for most things, the more time you spend learning about it, the more you understand it. And while that’s true in one sense for the Bible, there is also a very important sense in which it is not. As Paul puts it:

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 judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

What this tells us is that there is a lot a person can learn about God without having real, spiritual understanding. You can know the history, social context, literary structures, and theology of the Bible, along with a thousand other things, but none of that equates to the kind of spiritual maturity and understanding that Paul is talking about here in our chapters today. Certainly a real understanding of those things can facilitate growth and depth in the Christian life, but they are not a substitute for it.

I feel like I have seen this illustrated pretty clearly in different commentaries and biblical journal articles I have read. There are a decent number of non-Christian scholars in the field doing amazing work on the Bible as ancient literature, or who are experts in Greek or Hebrew and can give incredible insight into the language and intent of the original authors, but as you read their work it is clear there is also something missing. There will be pieces that seem to puzzle them that are obvious to even the brand new Christian, or there will be Christian teachings they try to articulate but they are missing what seem to be the obvious key points. On the flip-side of this, you can talk to some older Christians who don’t know a bit of Greek or Hebrew and couldn’t tell you the difference between apocalyptic and poetic genres, and yet their insight into the Word and their depth of knowledge and experience of God is absolutely unparalleled.

So as much value as there is to learning the Word, we can’t lose sight of the fact that no amount of knowledge will ever be a substitute for the real spiritual maturity and understanding that can only come by the life and power of the Holy Spirit. If we want to continue to grow and mature, we certainly need to invest ourselves on the Word, but it can’t be merely an intellectual pursuit or it will never have the transforming effect that life in God’s Word can and should have. If we want to grow, we need to take what we are learning and allow the Spirit to draw us deeper into it and reveal more of our good and loving Father to us through it.