The Spiritual Man: A Man with a Different Perspective

We are living in difficult times, and there is no need to exaggerate the problem; you only have to open a newspaper or a news app to see what is happening around us. When the pandemic began about a year ago, most of us assumed it would simply pass. There were pastors and preachers who declared that it would be gone in a few weeks, that we were already out of it. Many believers thought that if we were sincere followers of Christ we would somehow be spared, and Psalm 91 was often quoted to encourage people that the genuine believer would be kept safe. Yet twelve months later, when we look around, it has not turned out the way we expected. The pandemic has not simply gone away. The numbers are rising, and believers have not been exempt. So a sincere follower of Christ is forced to ask: what difference do I really have from the rest of the world? How do I look at what is happening around me? That is the question I have been turning over in my own heart.

I want us to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 15 and 16: 'The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments. For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.' If someone asks me, 'Joe, are you a Christian?' it takes barely two seconds to answer: yes, I am a follower of Christ. If someone asks, 'Are you a believer?' none of us has to labour over it — yes, I believe in Christ, I believe in the gospel. Those first two questions are easy. But today I want to set a third question before us. The question is not 'Are you a Christian?' nor 'Are you a believer?' The question is: are you spiritual? Am I spiritual? When you put that question to a person, the usual reaction is, 'What do you mean?'

That very thing happened in the church at Corinth. This was a church elevated above others in several respects. In the opening of the letter Paul pays them a real compliment — and I do not think Paul flatters people merely to butter them up. He tells them they have been enriched in all knowledge, enriched in God's word (1 Corinthians 1:5). When he takes up the matter of food sacrificed to idols in chapter 8, he begins, 'Now about food sacrificed to idols: we know that we all possess knowledge.' Who were these people? They were Christians who followed Christ; they were believers who trusted the gospel. If there was a Sunday service in the city of Corinth, they came. They did not sleep through the message — they took notes. They were excited about God's word and well taught in it. If the preacher quoted a wrong reference, they would be the first to catch it, because they knew the Scriptures inside out.

It was not only their knowledge that set them apart. In chapter 1 verse 7 Paul says, 'Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the Lord Jesus Christ.' Have you ever seen a church like that — a church lacking no spiritual gift? Chapters 12 and 14 list those gifts. The problem in Corinth was never that they lacked gifts; the problem was the proper use of them. They all spoke in tongues. Prophets were lined up. And yet what stops me is chapter 3 verse 1, where Paul says, 'Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit.' Ask the Corinthians, 'Are you Christians?' — yes. 'Are you believers?' — yes. 'Are you spiritual?' — they would probably say yes, because of the tongues, the prophecies, the rich knowledge of God's word. But the apostle Paul looks at them and says, you are not spiritual. That is shocking. And in this time of pandemic, in these hard days, this is exactly the time to ask the same question of ourselves.

So what makes a person spiritual? From chapter 1 verse 18 through to chapter 3 verse 4 — the great opening block of the letter — Paul keeps drawing contrasts. On one side, this; on the other side, that; you decide which side you belong to. The first contrast is in 1:18: 'The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.' Those who are perishing on the one hand, and those who are being saved on the other. What marks the difference? It is the response to the message of the cross. That response is what determines whether we are perishing or being saved.

The same contrast continues in chapter 2 verse 14: 'A person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God.' The natural, sensual person will not receive the message of the cross, because they are not spiritual. The natural person is set over against the spiritual person, who is able to see and to discern things. And there is a third contrast in chapter 3 verses 3 and 4, where Paul asks, 'Are you not acting like mere humans?' Mere human beings are set over against people who have the mind of Christ. Now most of us listening would quickly place ourselves on the right side of all three. We say, I am in the being-saved category. I am not without the Spirit; I am with the Spirit — that is why I am here, watching even online. I have the mind of Christ. These first three choices are easy; we fall into them without a second thought.

But there is a fourth category, and this is the one I want us to weigh today. The first three contrasts separate the church from the world — perishing and saved, unspiritual and spiritual, mere humans and the mind of Christ. The fourth contrast runs right through the church itself. In chapter 2 verse 6 Paul writes, 'We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature.' Within the very company of those who claim to be saved, there appear two kinds of people. If two kinds existed in the Corinthian church that Paul himself pioneered, a church overflowing with spiritual gifts, we would be deceiving ourselves to imagine our own church is free of them. In every professing Christian community you will find these two categories — and in a situation like a pandemic, they show up.

What are the two categories? Chapter 2 verse 6 speaks of the mature. In contrast, chapter 3 verse 1 says, 'I had to address you as people who are still worldly — mere infants in Christ.' Paul is not condemning the infants or telling them they have no hope and should get lost. That is not his point, and it is not mine. But we do have to examine ourselves. When sickness, suffering, stress, anxiety and uncertainty press in — when the future looks bleak and tomorrow is unknown — which category will we fall into? It is easy to say I am saved, I am spiritual, I have the mind of Christ. The harder question is whether we will stand as mature Christians or remain as infants.

In one of the songs we sang today the words ran, 'I am not going to live by what I see, I am not going to live by what I feel.' Do we really mean it? That is a hard lesson, and it is precisely the lesson mature people live out day by day. They do not see as the world sees. They do not live by what they see or by what they feel. They are mature. And here is what we most need to understand: many believers today are very shallow, and it shows the moment they are confronted with suffering and sickness.

Part of the reason is that we hold a very selective understanding of the Holy Spirit. For most believers, especially in Pentecostal circles, the Holy Spirit is first of all an empowering presence. The verse that leaps to mind is Acts 1:8 — the Spirit given as power to witness. From Monday through Saturday we are sent out as witnesses, empowered for the task. We all agree the Spirit is for witness. A second thing we believe is that he is the life-giving Spirit. We draw that from Acts chapter 2, from the wind — the wind that brings life in the valley of dry bones, the breath Jesus breathed on his disciples. The unregenerate heart is made new so that we can respond to God; the wind of the Spirit gives life. Almost all believers agree to this as well. And some go further and say the Spirit is also refining — and again they point to Acts 2, to the tongues of fire, fire standing for the cleansing, refining work. The Spirit empowers us, the Spirit gives us life, the Spirit refines us. All of that is true.

But do we stop with those three, or do we go down to the work of the Spirit that the Corinthians neglected? They had the first three. When Paul came and preached they believed in the cross and the resurrection, they were filled with the Spirit, they spoke in tongues, they tasted the life-giving and cleansing presence. Yet there is a function of the Holy Spirit that is almost ignored in our churches today. Chapter 2 verse 10 says, 'These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.' The Spirit gives revelation — not merely empowerment, not merely life, not merely cleansing. Do you have an experience of the Spirit like that, where the Spirit reveals to you things others in the world cannot see? Is our vocabulary actually different from the world's, or are we infants merely echoing the very people who are perishing?

People who are perishing hold certain views about the pandemic, about sickness and suffering, about blessing, health and wealth. Mature Christians are meant to have revelation — something the world does not possess. Their vocabulary should be different; they look at things in another way. That is why, if I were to put a title on this message, it would be something like 'The Spiritual Man: A Man with a Different Perspective.' He looks at suffering differently, because he has revelation. And it is not revelation only. In chapter 2 verse 12 Paul stays with the theme: '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.' Revelation, then understanding — and the key verse for today, verse 15: we are people who are to make right judgments, to exercise discernment about our circumstances. The difference we should claim from the world is not merely that we go to worship on Sundays, or that we read the Bible while they do not, or that we were baptised while they were not. Those are real differences, but do not stop there. Come up to maturity, where we have a different perspective because we have revelation, understanding and discernment.

My prayer is that as you hear this word God will give you insight into your own circumstance. The world may look at you and say, this is failure, this is defeat, you are losing — but when you have the Spirit, the Spirit tells you that you are winning the battle, that you are moving forward, that Christ is making you like himself through the very circumstance. A different perspective. This is precisely what was missing in Corinth. They had noise, they had tongues, they had prophecies, but they missed the maturity that comes from revelation, understanding and discernment.

Is it really possible for one church, hearing the same message and sharing the same Spirit, to hold both the mature and the infant? Some say we should not divide the church that way. Yet chapter 3 verse 12 shows how it happens. Paul says that if anyone builds on the foundation — and the foundation, from the previous verse, is Jesus Christ for all believers — there are two kinds of construction. Some build with gold, silver and costly stones. By the way such a believer meditates on Scripture, by the radical steps he takes to follow Jesus, you can see he is meaning business with the spiritual life. For him it is not just two hours on Sunday, not entertainment, not merely feeling good after a song — it is costly. On Monday he controls his tongue, his thinking is different, he lets go of his pleasures, he says no to certain things. He builds with materials that will stand the fire of judgment. That is the mature believer.

But on the other side are those who build on the same foundation with wood, hay and straw — and these are the infants. They have Jesus as their foundation, but their building will not survive the fire. It is only emotional stirring; the spirituality is skin-deep, not heart-deep. They may have been baptised, but their perspective never changed, so when something goes wrong it is sudden panic, exactly like the world. When a prayer is not answered, or something undesirable happens, or by the world's reckoning a tragedy strikes, the way they grieve is no different from the world's. Paul's point is that the way you grieve must be different. You too will pass through sickness, suffering and death — but the way you respond to it is different, because you are mature, because you build with costly materials, because you have revelation, understanding and discernment by the Spirit.

In Corinth some believers had Jesus as their foundation but never built up their Christian life beyond the surface. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul reminds them, 'Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?' They all had the Holy Spirit. It is not the presence of the Spirit that separates the mature from the infant — both of them have the Spirit. The difference is this: the mature yield themselves to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, while infants limit the Spirit to external activity. In Corinth that meant limiting him to the gifts, to tongues, to shaking and shouting. The mature also speak in tongues and desire spiritual gifts, but they do not stop at gifts — they want the fruit: the peace that passes all understanding, the joy the world cannot give. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

People of God, we are saved out of the world so that we can carry a different perspective toward suffering. When we are hurting, when times are hard, when there is fear of being laid off or dread about paying the next instalment, our option is not to panic or sink into anxiety and depression. Those pressures will surround us, but by the power of the Holy Spirit God will give a new perspective. He will carry you through the difficult moments, give you understanding and insight, and supply his portion of strength to move on. That is where we grow. Maturity comes through hard situations — by understanding, by revelation, by the indwelling and the leading of the Spirit — not in the Corinthian way that fixed only on externals and gifts. Paul is speaking of transformation, of understanding worked deep within.

Look again at 1 Corinthians 2:15: 'The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things.' All things includes the cross. When the world called the cross defeat and failure, the person with the Spirit looked at it and called it the power and wisdom of God, the place of his salvation. But it is not only the cross. Even in the present crisis — the pandemic, the suffering, the sickness around us — we are to make right judgments and not simply borrow the world's vocabulary. Some prosperity preachers said at the start that it would vanish overnight, that God would show up and it would be gone. A year on, we are still in it. What should our perspective be? My God is still in control. There is no situation outside his control; he is still on the throne. So when you look at your family, your job, the tensions you face, do not be like the world, full of panic and words of discouragement and regret — 'how I wish I had moved to that country, how I wish I had not enrolled here.' Let it be words of confidence instead: my God is with me through this. We do not have a high priest unable to sympathise with us; we have a loving Father who not only sympathises but helps us through. He does not fold his arms and watch from a distance — he is present in the suffering, right there with you in your family through these hard times. And through our hope, let our neighbours be touched by the confidence we have in Christ. That is Christian witness.

The verse goes on: 'but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments.' Have you meditated on that? The world judges all things by a very different standard, and people without the Spirit are incapable of making right judgments — that is why they do not believe the cross and do not listen to servants of God like Paul. Their measure of success is different. So Paul is saying the mature believer is not bound by mere human judgment; you need not be troubled by what the world says about you. If you are mature and yet still passing through suffering — say you fall sick, and people look at you and say, 'You also tested positive? Strange — you said you were so close to God,' or, 'Everyone else is thriving and you were let go from your job?' — Paul says, do not give those comments a hearing. This is a word especially for those of you crushed by what people think. They look at your family and say, 'How sad, how sad,' and you absorb it. You know there is revelation, understanding and discernment available to you, yet you are bombarded with their verdict: 'What a failure. You are defeated. You have not moved an inch.' Paul says, do not give it a hearing. You are a mature believer; you know Jesus is in control and still on the throne. Look to him and move forward.

This is what Paul practised. In chapter 4 verse 3 he says, 'I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court' — that is the plain-language version of 2:15. Infants are anxious about what others think — the bank balance, the car you drive, whether trouble has touched you. Do not be trapped, unable to move because you are too careful about other people's opinions. 'You're still in India? How sad — you wanted Canada.' Tell your heart: God is in control, and if he wants me in India all my life, I will live here happily. 'No promotion? How sad — pray more.' Tell your heart: I am praying, and if God wants me to stay in this job, I will go with it. 'Still on a two-wheeler? No car?' Tell your heart: I am not bothered by your comment; this is enough, and even if it is taken from me I will still come to church, for my God is still good. Paul says, I do not care what you think of me. Think with me about people's opinion of Paul: a fine young man from Tarsus, from wealth, his parents' great hope, sent at great cost to study under Gamaliel in Jerusalem, close to the high priest, powerful and successful — and he lost it all: his health, his wealth, his influence, until he became like the scum of the earth, a failure in the world's eyes. Paul says, I do not care what you think; I am mature, because I have revelation, discernment and understanding, and I know Jesus is in control. Though my outer body is wasting away, inwardly I am being renewed day by day. In 1 Corinthians 9:3 he says again, 'This is my defence to those who sit in judgment of me.' Maturity does not bend under the pressure of others; it cares only what God says.

There is a second contrast in this passage, and I will close with it. Watch a word Paul uses, first appearing in chapter 1 verse 20: 'Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age?' Of this age. It returns in chapter 2 verse 6 — 'not the wisdom of this age' — and in 2 verse 8, 'None of the rulers of this age understood it.' Alongside maturity and infancy, Paul has another distinction in mind: the old age versus the new age. The philosopher of this age is brilliant by the world's reckoning, with all the answers — but he belongs to this passing age. The thought carries into 2 Corinthians 4:4, where Paul names the god of this world, the present age marked by the rule of Satan. What makes us different is the moment we realise there are two worlds here. When I walk the streets of Indiranagar, when I go through Kammanahalli, two worlds are at war — the old age all around me, with its philosophers and its patterns of thought, and I am walking as a person who belongs to the new age, the kingdom of heaven, with a God who was hung on a cross.

In 1 Corinthians 7:31 Paul is clear, and this is how he makes sense of his pain: 'This world in its present form is passing away.' The health we prize, the wealth we prize — it is all passing. And in 1 Corinthians 10:11 he says, 'These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.' If any of you want to study these two ages, take that verse — you will not exhaust it in a week. The new age has come upon us. Now here is the mistake people often make. It is not that they are ignorant a new world has come, that they belong to the kingdom of heaven set against the kingdom of this world. The mistake is to imagine that the moment we are transferred into the kingdom of heaven we step into a sphere with no sickness, no suffering, no pain. Believers often carry that false notion: 'You don't know who I am — I belong to the new world, Jesus is my king, and in this space there is no trouble, no tears.' That is why, at the start of the pandemic, so many thought, I belong to God, it cannot touch me. They treated the new age as a rush of divine power, a kind of immunity booster — 'I am filled with the Spirit, it is like a vaccine, nothing can happen to me.' We even sing that way sometimes. But just look at Paul, filled with the Spirit: his own testimony is that by the world's judgment he looked like a failure.

Let me tell you plainly: all of us are prone to sickness; disease and death stand at the door. What a depressing message, you might say. But hear me — in this new world you do have protection; do not misunderstand me. We are to pray for healing and for protection. Yet we also have a sovereign God, and we are asked to trust him, not to lean on our own understanding, not to define good on our own terms but to let God define good for us. It is his promise that he will work everything for good. That is the very pattern of the cross: what people perceived as defeat, death and the end was in fact victory, once you have the new understanding. We belong to the new age, the new space — God's world has invaded human history, and we belong to it. Our assurance is not that we will never fall sick. We may go through hard and difficult times. But the assurance is this: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'

Paul made sense of his suffering because he knew the new age does not hand him exemption from all pain; he may go through pain, but he can make sense of its purpose. That is why he writes in 2 Corinthians 4:11, 'For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.' We struggle and are weak at times, but his kingdom is expanded. And in the classic passage of 2 Corinthians 12:7 he says, 'In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh.' In the new world there is still a thorn. Paul does not enjoy it; he prays earnestly for God to remove it. But he makes sense of it because he has discernment: it is allowed so that he will not be proud or lean on himself. People of God, do not imagine that in this new world we will escape sickness, pain and tears. We may pass through the same kinds of trouble the world does — but with a different perspective, knowing God allows everything for the shaping of our character, to grow us up in trusting him, as Paul says, so that he will not become conceited.

In 2 Corinthians 13:4 Paul says we are weak in him, yet by God's power we will live with him; and in 2 Corinthians 12:10, 'When I am weak, then I am strong.' That is the new perspective of the spiritual man. The world says a weak man has lost it and will not go far — 'we are just watching to see what becomes of this family.' And that is exactly when Paul says, while you watch and wait to see what becomes of me, when I am weak, then I am strong. That is the new world we are called to embody and to demonstrate — not in our success, glory and material prosperity, but in the way we endure hardship and cling to the promises of God through hard times. That is the sign to the world that a new order has come: a new way to see blessing, a new way to see pain, a new way to see suffering, a new way to see God.

So, people of God, we have the mind of Christ, as 2:16 says. As we go out to face the week from Monday through Saturday, before we gather again on the Lord's Day, let us remember this truth. There are two kinds of believers, the mature and the infants. The mature build with costly materials — they are serious about their spirituality; it is not skin-deep but heart-deep. They make radical choices; they have revelation, understanding and discernment. Let us not forget that. Yes, we belong to a new world, but let us not be like the Corinthians who imagined a trouble-free life. As Jesus said, in this world you will have trouble — even belonging to the kingdom of heaven you will have trouble — but take heart, he has overcome the world. What you see is temporary; what is unseen is eternal. This mortal will give way to the immortal, the temporary to the permanent. That is our hope. As Romans chapter 8 says, in this hope we were saved — the hope of a redeemed body, a new body. This present body may know sickness; however hard we pray, we may still meet sickness, trouble and pain. But we are promised a glorious body to come, and an age in its fullness where there is no pain and no sickness. The new world has already come; one day we will enjoy it in its fullness. For now we live in the interim, the old age and the new age overlapping. We will have trouble, but God will see us through.

Amen.