"For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts 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 understand the things freely given us by God."
People frequently try to judge other people's motives. Some times they might get it right, but they can never be truly certain because they cannot see inside that person's mind and discern what they are thinking. Psychologists try really hard to do this. And some people behave in a way that psychologists have a pretty good guess as to what the person is thinking. But sometimes things are more complex than they psychologist realizes, and he gets it wrong.
If it is true that one person cannot know another person's thoughts and motivations, how much more is it true that we cannot know God's thoughts. Compared to God, our minds are very simple and formulaic. God is infiate, and His ways are completely beyond our comprehension. How could a person ever expect to understand things of God? Can he understand God through the Bible? Well yes, the Bible is necessary, but the Bible is not enough to understand the things of God. We need God's Spirit to enlighten us. This is the only way that we can comprehend spiritual things. The Spirit gives us understanding.
Those who do have not received God's Spirit, i.e. those who have not trusted Christ as their savior, do not understand spiritual things. They understand the things of the world because they have the spirit of the world. But they do not understand God or His ways. It's true that not even Christians can understand God fully, but we can understand what He reveals about Himself. Unbelievers cannot even do that.
Contrawise, Christians do not understand the world, because they don't have the spirit of the world. When I was at Bob Jones University, I remember thinking, of many of my classmates, that they were out of touch with the world. I went to public school and had had much contact with unbelievers. But many of my classmates had grown up in church and in Christian schools and had little to no understanding of the world. But these verses seem to indicate that I was no expert myself, and that is o.k. I cannot understand the world, and I do not have to. I understand something far better.
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