A Spiritual Person

There is a question most of us have never stopped to ask: How did you come to believe? Not what made you intellectually consider Christianity, but what actually happened the moment the gospel went from being information in your mind to being life in your soul? The apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, gives us the most honest and humbling answer possible. It was not your brilliance. It was not the persuasiveness of a preacher. It was God — specifically, God the Holy Spirit — who made the truth of Jesus Christ come alive in you.

This Sunday at Union Avenue Baptist Church, we continue our study of 1 Corinthians with one of the most extraordinary passages in all of Paul's letters. In chapter 2, verses 10 through 16, Paul pulls back the curtain on the inner life of the believer and reveals what makes the Christian different from every other person on earth. The answer, simply and profoundly, is the Holy Spirit of God.

Paul begins by establishing something we often take for granted: the gospel is not a mystery we solved. It is a treasure God revealed. The Spirit of God — fully divine, fully God — searches the very depths of the mind of the Father. He knows everything there is to know about God, and in an act of breathtaking grace, He takes that knowledge and makes it personal to human hearts. D.A. Carson puts it plainly: there must be not only the public, objective act of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, but also a private work of God in the heart of the individual. That private work is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. If the gospel is real to you today, it is because God sent His Spirit to make it so.

But the Spirit's work does not stop at salvation. Paul goes on in verse 12 to tell us that God gave us His Spirit so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. This is a staggering statement. It means God is not playing hide-and-seek with His children. He is not withholding the riches of His grace and daring us to find them. He has placed His own Spirit within every believer specifically to ensure that we know, walk in, and live out the fullness of everything Christ has secured for us. Forgiveness. Peace. Adoption. An eternal inheritance. Access to the Father at any moment. These are not distant possibilities — they are your present, living reality in Christ.

The Spirit was not given to hint at what God offers. He was given to make absolutely certain you know it.

There is, however, a language barrier at work in the world around us. Paul describes it in verse 13. The spirit of this age — what he calls the spirit of the world — is constantly teaching its own vocabulary: the language of wealth, power, pleasure, and self. It is fluent and persuasive and everywhere. But the Spirit of God speaks an entirely different language, and His words are found in the pages of Holy Scripture. The Bible is not merely a wise book about God. It is God's own Word, breathed out by the Spirit, carrying the power to change hearts, heal wounds, and redirect eternities. When we open it, read it, share it, and preach it, we are passing on spiritual words to spiritual people — and the Spirit Himself uses those words in ways we may never fully see this side of heaven.

This is part of what makes the Christian life so mysterious to those on the outside looking in. Paul acknowledges in verse 15 that the spiritual person can evaluate everything, yet cannot be fully understood by those without the Spirit. The world looks at a believer and sees someone who chooses forgiveness over revenge, generosity over accumulation, faithfulness over convenience — and it doesn't compute. That is because the believer is operating from a reference point the world cannot access. Leon Morris puts it well: the Spirit within the believer becomes the basis for judgment not just on spiritual matters, but on every area of life — the sacred and the so-called secular alike.

And then Paul lands his closing argument with four words that should stop every believer in their tracks: we have the mind of Christ. Not a fragment of it. Not a faint impression. By the indwelling Holy Spirit, the perspective, values, priorities, and wisdom of Jesus Himself are made available to you. This does not mean there is no room to grow — Paul will address spiritual immaturity directly in the very next chapter. But it does mean the foundation has been laid. You are not navigating this life with only human understanding. You have been given something supernatural.

What does this mean for your Monday morning, your difficult relationship, your hardest decision, your deepest fear? It means you do not face any of it alone or without resources. The Spirit who knows the depths of God is the same Spirit who dwells in you. The mind of Christ is not a theological concept reserved for seminaries — it is a daily, practical reality for every person who has surrendered their life to Jesus. The question is simply whether we are walking in it.

We would love for you to join us this Sunday at Union Avenue Baptist Church as we open this passage together and explore what it truly means to live as a spiritual person — informed, instructed, and led by the Holy Spirit of God. Whether you are a lifelong believer looking to go deeper, or someone who is still asking questions about faith, there is a seat for you at the table. Come and discover what God has freely given — and what it looks like to walk in it.