This is a true statement, is it not? There are things going on inside each of us – thoughts, plans, dreams… that even those who are closest to us don’t fully know or understand. Inside each of us, we have a ‘secret place’ that nobody can ever fully know… Of course, some people show more of this to the outside world than others, but who among us literally speaks their every thought, or tells every single dream or shares everything that their imagination may conjure?
And if we’re being honest, who would want to be around a person that did? I can safely say that if you were aware of every single thought that pops into my head, you would probably be disturbed and disgusted… I know I am sometimes surprised by thoughts that shame and disturb me – I can’t even begin to consider how others would perceive these, should I make them known! I can only guess that this happens to others as well (or maybe I’m just “special”)…
But imagine what it would be like to share every detail with someone who only had good thoughts. Someone who never thought of anything but pure, beautiful, and meaningful things. Someone who could open up your horizons to understand knew and fantastic things that you could have never grasped on your own…. Would that be amazing, or what?
Well, you can experience that for yourself! Let’s take that verse above and expand it to the rest of what Paul is teaching in the first letter to the church in Corinth:
For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. (1 Cor 2:11-12)
We have received the Spirit who is from God. Here, the ‘we’ Paul speaks of is all who are true believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only those will be given the gift of having the very Spirit of Him come and dwell in us, and open us up to a whole new world of understanding.
These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor 2:13-14)
So this explains perfectly why those who do not have a relationship with the risen Christ so often struggle to understand those who do. We are given insight into the ‘secret place’ of our King! Things that cannot be understood by ‘mere mortals’ has been presented and explained to those that accept the free Gift of God. What a humbling and wonderful gift we are given!