That We Might Know the Things Freely Given Is Why the Spirit Is Given

He has never had the papers and he has organized his whole life around that fact.

Nobody has ever asked him for them. That is worth saying. No one has demanded a qualification or checked one. The requirement is internal and it is absolute, and it operates as a rule about what he is permitted to conclude.

He can read. He can think. He has run a business and raised children and made decisions that cost him money and sleep, and he is not a man anybody would describe as unable.

And in one room, on one subject, he becomes a spectator, because he has decided that understanding here is a credential and that he does not hold it.

There is a chapter that says what the Spirit was given for, and the purpose named is not a credential.

The purpose clause

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. (1 Corinthians 2:12)

That we might know.

That is a purpose clause. It states why the Spirit was received.

And read what the knowing is about: the things that are freely given to us of God. Freely given. Which means the material to be known is a gift and the capacity to know it is a gift, and neither half of that arrangement is a wage.

So a man who has decided that understanding is a credential is holding the opposite of what that verse says. Not slightly off. Reversed.

We have received. Past tense, and we, which in that letter is a congregation of considerable variety and some very poor behavior.

You have the Spirit received for the purpose of knowing and you were never going to earn what was given. 1 Corinthians 2:12 states the purpose as that we might know, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one received for that stated reason.

Who he was writing to

And the description of the readers, one chapter earlier, which is the reason this cannot be about credentials.

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. (1 Corinthians 1:26)

Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.

That is the demographic. He says it to their faces, in writing, as an observation about the composition of the room.

So the purpose clause in chapter 2 is addressed to a congregation Paul has just described as short on the very things a man in this position thinks he needs.

And a verse later Paul says why it was arranged that way:

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. (1 Corinthians 1:27)

You are in the demographic that letter was written to and you were never outside the room it addresses. 1 Corinthians 1:26 says not many wise and not many noble about the readers, and it is His Spirit who makes a purpose clause written to that room land on somebody like it.

How he says he came to them

And the way Paul describes his own arrival, which settles what he was not relying on.

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. (1 Corinthians 2:1-4)

In weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

That is an apostle describing himself, and he is not doing it for effect. He gives the reason two verses later: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Which means the whole arrangement was set up so that nobody's understanding would rest on anybody's qualifications, including his own.

And that is the point that reaches a man who has no papers. The arrangement was designed, deliberately, so that the papers would not be the load-bearing thing for anybody, and a man without them is not on the outside of the design. He is closer to what the design assumed.

You have a faith that was never meant to rest on anybody's credentials and you were never going to need them. 1 Corinthians 2:5 says the faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, and it is the Holy Spirit named in verse 4 as the demonstration rather than a man's equipment.

What the hard verse is about

And the verse in that chapter that gets misused, because a man will meet it.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The natural man.

That phrase is about a man without the Spirit, not about a man without training. The whole distinction in the chapter is between having received the Spirit and not having received Him, which is the distinction verse 12 opens with.

It is not a verse about clever people and simple people. Read it that way and it contradicts verse 12 and chapter 1 in the same letter.

Spiritually discerned means discerned by the Spirit, which is precisely the equipment verse 12 says was received for the purpose of knowing.

So the verse that looks like a barrier is the same verse that names what a man has been given.

You have the equipment that verse says the knowing requires and you were never the natural man it describes. 1 Corinthians 2:14 makes the distinction about the Spirit rather than about training, and it is that same Spirit who is the one doing the discerning.