SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT

1 Cor. 2:14

Morning Meditation 7/28/16

Verse 14 says, “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.”

The words “receiveth not” (dechomai) means “to take with the hand.” And with the negative it means “Can’t take with the hand.” The idea is that the natural man just can’t get a hold on Spiritual truths. It is impossible. This is what God the Holy Spirit says. Now for a person to try to get a hold on Spiritual truths, the way the natural man would do it, is to ignore this truth and attempt to do it when one knows that God says it is impossible. The words “they are foolishness unto him” reveals the attempted reasonings of the natural man. When we are presented with something that makes absolutely no sense to us, we consider it foolish. This is what Paul is saying. The natural man does not have the capacity to receive anything from God. Sin in the Garden of Eden left the natural man spiritually dead. Spiritual death cannot receive anything from God because God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The new birth restores man’s capacity to fellowship with and know God. The way this “knowing” takes place is not the “natural way”, it is the way of faith.

The words “neither can he know them” is showing impossibility. Then he gives the reason, “because they are spiritually discerned.” You will notice that the word “spiritually” is not capitalized. This means that the translators believed that it was talking about the man’s spirit and not the Holy Spirit. Man does have a spirit before he is saved but it is dead in its relationship to God. Therefore, there would be no capacity to know God because there is no relationship with God. Man in his natural state is cut off from the life of God (Eph. 4:18). Life does not fellowship with death. Fellowship with God begins with the new birth when the sinner accepts God’s remedy for his sins, i.e., the gospel which is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, believed with the heart (Rom. 10:10) as the only means of forgiveness and reconciliation. When we are saved, we are regenerated. We were generated when we were created in the person of Adam. We then died spiritually in the death of Adam. Salvation is the restoration of that life called regeneration (Titus 3:5). The words “neither can he know them” mean that until regeneration takes place the natural man is completely in the dark concerning the things of God and can’t get a hold on Spiritual truth.

Again the words “because they are spiritually discerned” give the reason why the natural man can’t get hold on Spirit given truth. Verse 15 says, “But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” The word “judgeth” in this verse translates the same word that is translated “discerned” in verse 14. In verse 15 he is talking about the spiritual man. A spiritual man is one who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and has Him indwelling him. In other words, to discern Spiritual truth and to fellowship with God, one has be regenerated so that his spirit is now regenerated and inhabited by the Holy Spirit. Once this happens, he has spiritual discernment.

Tozer said, “One task of the illuminated Christian teacher is to internalize worship and raise the religious concepts of the church people above the figures and allegories that enabled them to grasp those concepts in the first place. The figure is the box in which the shining jewel is carried; but it is surprisingly easy to mistake the box for the jewel and look for nothing more.”

David pictures the LORD as shepherd in the twenty-third Psalm. Then Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14). But if we were to visualize Jesus as a Shepherd with a sheep under his arm, I think we would have a very limited understanding of Him. Now before you reject what I am saying, I want to quote what Paul says about this: 2 Cor. 5:16 “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” The word “henceforth” means “from here on..” We do not know Jesus after the flesh. This is where idols come in. Man does not want to worship a God he cannot see. So he ignores what the Bible says and creates an image of God or Christ that allows his fleshly eyes to see. He says, “This is not idolatry, it is just an aid in worshiping the God that I cannot see. The only problem with that is that it is still idolatry! It is still forbidden of God. God is not like anything that you have ever seen. And any thing that you would make as an aid to worship will be a distorted image of God.

Tozer says, “I think it may be said with a fair degree of accuracy that all the great devotional theologians of the centuries taught the futility of trying to visualize the Godhead. Molinos warned against every effort of the intellect to image God forth. ‘She ought to go forward with her love,’ he says of the Christian’s soul, ‘leaving all her understanding behind. Let her love God as He is and not as her understanding says He is, and pictures Him.’”

Tozer continues: “The teaching of the New Testament is that God and spiritual things can be known finally only by a direct work of God within the soul. However theological knowledge may be aided by figures and analogies, the pure understanding of God must be by personal spiritual awareness. The Holy Spirit in indispensable.”

God is not the Bible though the Bible is what He says. I am not taking anything away from the Scriptures when I say this. I believe it is verbally inspired and inerrant in every aspect. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). But if we never get beyond the Words of the Book, we do not worship God. This is the very mistake that the Pharisees made. The Lord must meet with us in our study and meditation of His Word. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Does my worship and yours bring us into contact with the Living God? I must ascend above all the figures and symbols into the presence of God. He is not worshiped by men’s hands but with men’s hearts. We have been given the capacity to worship God in spirit and in truth if we have been saved: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9).

Faith is something that is never easy because it is not natural. It is something that Satan will fight. He rationalized with Eve and succeeded in the fall of the entire human race. Faith does not rationalize: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). When we talk to God, where do we believe He is? When we worship, where do we believe God is? If we believe He is where we are, it will change our worship and prayer life. This is the struggle of faith. We must rise above all the physical images and believe in the God we cannot see and fellowship with Him on the basis of faith. Is our God alive? Are we “discerning” Him? If not, we need to make the corrections necessary to treat God like He is God and believe His Word and worship Him the way He says we ought.

May the Lord bless each of you.

In Christ

Bro. White