1 Cor 2 – Studies

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each chapter is divided into a number of studies and each study or passage has a simple four-Part, verse-by-verse approach, to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: 1 Cor 2:1-5

1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

A. Find Out:

1. How had Paul NOT come? v.1
2. What had he resolved? v.2
3. How had he come? v.3
4. How had his message NOT come? v.4a
5. How had it come? v.4b
6. Why? v.5

B. Think:

1. How would you summarise the way Paul had come to Corinth ?
2. What was the obvious benefit of that?
3. How do you think we so often differ from that?

C. Comment:

Paul has just explained how the message itself is a message of foolishness to the world. He now explains how the messenger and the delivery of the message were also not in accord with the way the world would do it. Remember, he is still seeking to lay down a foundation to contrast the attitudes of strength in the church there that had caused division. If they heed this, then there is no room for such attitudes.

First, he rejects the way that the world would come. He had not come with clever words, great wisdom, or persuasiveness. These are the ways we perhaps would prefer, but that was not Paul’s way.

Next he reminds them how he had come. First, he reminds them of his message: Jesus Christ and him crucified. As he has already said that is a message that is considered folly by those who feel strong and wise. Second, he declares how he had felt: weak! This great apostle (as we often think of him) came feeling very weak and with fear, yes fear! He had not come with great confidence, but instead with trembling. But he had come! So, now they could look back and realise that their belief was not based on Paul’s great character, but simply on the power of the word that came with the anointing of the Spirit. What a contrast this seems to how we so often go about it!

D. Application:

1. The message is folly to the strong, but salvation to the weak.
2. The messenger if often weak, but God blesses that.

Passage: 1 Cor 2:6-10

6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:

‘What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived’ –
    the things God has prepared for those who love him –

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

A. Find Out:

1. Who will or will not receive Paul’s wisdom? v.6
2. What more does Paul tell us about this wisdom? v.7a
3. When did God decide it? v.7b
4. How did world rulers show they didn’t understand it? v.8
5. What had been previously prophesied? v.9
6. Yet how was it revealed to us? v.10

B. Think:

1. How much are we told about God’s wisdom here?
2. How was this “wisdom” put into practice?
3. How was it conveyed to us?

C. Comment:

Paul continues to write about God’s wisdom and he tells us a number of things about it. First of all this wisdom is contrary to the wisdom of the world. We have seen previously that it was all about sending Jesus to die on the Cross, which is folly to the strong person. The ‘mature’ in this passage are those who are mature spiritually, and that only comes through weakness and willingness to acknowledge personal failure and need. But the rulers of the world of the Middle East had not understood what was happening and that was why they crucified Christ.

Second, this wisdom is described as ‘secret’. Elsewhere (e.g. Col 2:2) Paul refers to it as a ‘mystery’, something which was not comprehended by man until then. Within this, note also that it was something God planned long before the foundation of the world (see also Jn 17:24 , Eph 1:4, 1 Pet 1:20 , Rev 13:8, 2 Tim 1:9, Tit 1:2).

The third thing to note is that this hidden wisdom was only finally received by man when the Holy Spirit came and He imparted understanding to the apostles (e.g. Jn 14:26, 15:26, 16:13). Today we understand because the Holy Spirit imparts that to us in the same way.

D. Application:

1. God’s wisdom, planned from before He made the world, is folly to the strong but salvation to the weak and needy.
2. That wisdom was conveyed to us by the Spirit when we came to Him.

Passage: 1 Cor 2:11-16

11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,

‘Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?’

But we have the mind of Christ.

A. Find Out:

1. What does the Holy Spirit know? v.11
2. What have we received and why? v.12
3. What did Paul say they taught? v.13
4. Why doesn’t the non-Christian receive the Spirit’s words? v.14
5. What does he say about the ‘spiritual man’? v.15
6. What question had been posed & how is it now answered? v.16

B. Think:

1. How does this passage flow on from the previous one?
2. What is the significance of this passage?
3. How does that apply to us today?

C. Comment:

Paul has just said (v.10) that the mystery hidden for ages past, that was fulfilled in Christ on the Cross, has been revealed to us by means of the Holy Spirit. Now he explains that.

First, he explains about the BRINGER of the message, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit alone knows the mind of God, because He is the third person of the trinity.

Second, he explains about the RECEIVER of the message, us. We have received the Holy Spirit when we came to God in repentance and received His salvation. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches us and gives us understanding of all that has happened, and so when Paul preached about the Cross he was able to say that it was the Spirit who gave him the words of truth about the Cross. Many preachers would identify with this that, as they preach, the Spirit gives them understanding, even in the act of preaching. So it was for Paul.

Obviously, says Paul, the unbeliever can’t understand these things because they haven’t received the Spirit and don’t have the help in understanding. The man with the Spirit weighs up all things and comes to an understanding as the Spirit enables, but the non-Christian is still “in the dark” and can’t see the sense of it all.

D. Application:

1. Christians have the mind of Christ, the Spirit within.
2. We understand only because He helps us to see it all. Hallelujah!