Mystery Revealed.
I. The redemption of Jesus Christ is a great mystery of the Divine thought and heart. The Apostle uses a singular term to designate those to whom the revelation is made. "We speak wisdom," he says, "among them that are perfect," among those who have qualifications for receiving the wisdom. Spiritual religion is utterly incomprehensible to many intelligent people. They can understand theology as a science of God; they can understand religion as a theory, but they have no conception of its spiritual character; they have no conception of it as a spiritual sentiment, as a passionate affection, as a fellowship with God, a yearning and joy of the man's whole consciousness. This is what St. Paul means when he says "The natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit"; they are discerned only by a spiritual faculty. This, then, is what is meant when it is said that the gospel of Christ is wisdom unto the perfect that is, to the spiritual, to the susceptible, to the spiritual man with spiritual faculties.
II. The mission of Christ and the purpose of Christian teaching are to reveal this mystery to men to men of spiritual faculty, to men whom the Spirit of God touches and teaches. Our poor human thoughts cannot compass infinite things. All religion runs up into the mysterious, and must do so. Apart from Christianity, the mystery of the Divine Being is just as inscrutable as the revelation of Jesus Christ. Instead of adding to the mystery of God, Jesus Christ gives us our highest understanding of God. We understand more of God through Jesus Christ than we can on any other theory. And yet even so, how much remains that is impenetrable! Who can fathom the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the atonement, the mystery of the quickening of spiritual life in men, the mystery even of moral feeling, moral principle, the working of moral life, the mystery of conscience, which is the consciousness of God? In the love of Christ, in the love of God, there are heights and depths that pass knowledge.
H. Allon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 97.
Reference: 1 Corinthians 2:6; 1 Corinthians 2:7. W. C. Magee, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 257.
The Gospel and the Intellect.
I. The natural man in Paul's eyes is like an undeveloped organism. A man as he grows, in the true sense of growing, as he attains his full stature or perfection, becomes spiritual. The natural man is stunted; growth has been in some abnormal way arrested. The natural man only exists to become the spiritual man, just as a chrysalis only exists to become a butterfly. Who are the natural men nowadays? (1) Those who tell us that matter can explain spirit the people whom we call Materialists. They cannot apprehend the wisdom of the gospel. (2) Those who speak as of the understanding could answer all the questions and meet all the needs of the human spirit.
II. The wisdom which Paul speaks among the perfect is nothing less than the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the spirit of the Christian man. Just as consciousness alone can be aware of our own inward life, so God's consciousness alone can understand the depths of God; and only by being made partakers of God's consciousness can we search those depths. But we, as believers in Christ, are partakers of that consciousness. A Spirit of God given to a man through faith in the incarnate Son of God takes all the things of the revealing Christ His person, His word, His work and slowly unveils them to the amazed and enraptured heart. He who is the Saviour is also the key to creation.
III. Paul found in the good news of the gospel a wisdom far surpassing the wisdom of this world. Many Christians do not exercise the reason, and have no special desire for its satisfaction. But those who dare not in honesty suppress or violate that master-faculty are permitted to have the thirst quenched, the reason satisfied. In Christ, the manifestation of God, they find certain things which are revealed, they find a clue to God, a clue to life, a clue to the world. The mystery is an open mystery, though losing none of its charm.
R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 317.
References: 1 Corinthians 2:9. G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons,2nd series, p. 23; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 249; Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith,p. 143.