1 Corinthians 2 v 10 - 16

The only way to begin to understand the mystery of God is to accept His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in Him as our Lord and Saviour. People often complain to me that God keeps His way hidden and we so often find ourselves wandering around not just in a fog, but in a real London pea-souper! One of the strangest drives Fi and I have been on was when we were taking our two children when they were little to see my Dad in London and due to some very still weather there was one of these pea-soupers. When we got to Reading on the motorway, there were these bits floating in the air and we were driving at 20 mph as we could hardly see anything apart from lights of the cars around us. Here Paul lays down that the only person who can tell us about God is the Spirit of God. There are things that only our spirit knows about us-experiences, feelings, our way of looking at the world. Just so, there are deep and intimate things in God which only the Holy Spirit knows and He is the only One who can lead us into a really intimate relationship with Him. But, even then, it is not everybody who can understand these things. Paul speaks about interpreting spiritual things for spiritual people, so he distinguishes between two groups of people: Firstly, there are those who have the Spirit and are sensitive to Him, their lives being guided by Him. They are protected from the invasion of material wants and desires. Secondly, there are those who only have physical life, the one shared with every living thing. They live only to satisfy their physical needs and nothing else: they cannot understand the things of God and think those who do foolish. They have stifled the needs of their souls, so that when the Spirit speaks to them they cannot hear. Everyone has 'psuche', but not every person has 'pneuma'.