The Tenth Leper

“However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’”
-1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)*

I’ll start out bluntly: this verse doesn’t say what most people think it says. Not even close. Most see this verse and take it to mean that heaven is so amazingly awesome, indescribable, unimaginable, and ultimately beyond all comprehension. In dealing with heaven three of those adjectives are correct and one utterly wrong. It’s a great verse, but it doesn’t really make much sense without the context, especially the very next verse:

“but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”
-1 Corinthians 2:10

Here’s where the problem comes in with the common interpretation of verse 9. Verse 9 (taken alone) says that something is not revealed to us. But verse 10 says that it is. The issue here is not WHAT is revealed to man, but rather HOW what’s revealed to us has been revealed. The whole context of this chapter is spirituality, and how our natural beings can’t discern it or make it out. What Paul is saying is that the spiritual discernment we now have as Christians didn’t come to us by what our eyes have seen, what our ears have heard, or what our mind has conjured up through meditation, speculation, or philosophy. What we know spiritually we know because God gave us his Holy Spirit to illuminate it to us. Paul continues:

“For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
-1 Corinthians 2:11

Here’s what Paul’s saying: the only person (aside from God that is) who can really know your deepest thoughts, feelings, and longings is you, your spirit. No one truly understands your heart except for you. The only way anyone else could comprehend it is if they shared your spirit. And the same is true about God. If we’re to truly know the thoughts and the heart and the depths of God, we MUST have God’s Spirit within us. Hence the Holy Spirit. Continuing:

“We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us…The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
-1 Corinthians 2:12,14

Further support of verse 11: we’ve received the Holy Spirit to understand what God has freely given us, because without it we are unable to. Eyes, ears, and minds cannot discern the thoughts of God. THAT is what 1 Corinthians 2:9 is saying.

I mentioned four adjectives about heaven that are drawn from the verse: awesome, indescribable, unimaginable, and imcomprehensible. The one that doesn’t belong is unimaginable. Imcomprehensible is probably the best one in the list, but that is far from being the same thing as unimaginable. To show this, let’s go to two verses. First is John 17:3- “‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’” The truest and most real taste we have of heaven is Jesus himself. As Christians, as those in whom God has put his Holy Spirit, we KNOW God. This taste of God which we have is a taste of heaven itself so we shouldn’t even dare to venture into the territory of saying that heaven is unimaginable. We know heaven as much as we currently know God. The peace and joy of heaven is far from being alien, unknowable, or unimaginable. I can imagine my most intimate times with God being an always-present experience and that fires me up.

Why though, is incomprehensible a good word? Same letter: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We can imagine heaven because we know God. But as this verse states, what we know of God know in this life is merely a fraction, a taste of all his fullness. Then (in heaven) we shall know him FULLY. That we do not know him fully now doesn’t mean we don’t know him at all. People don’t crave what they do not taste. How can we crave heaven if it’s so beyond us? Heaven is the very place God commands us to set our minds on (Colossians 3:2, Hebrews 12:2).

Now…this is important. Paul does not say that the natural man is not spiritual at all. Man IS spiritual, and he knows it. The vast majority of mankind recognizes that there is a God, and its his spirituality which leads him to said recognition. Paul is talking about DISCERNING spiritual things, making sense out of it. People searching for God without this discernment are like the four blind men touching that elephant. It all feels like one thing to each person, but they’re all wrong. This passage in 1 Corinthians 2 accounts for all the different religions in the world. Our eyes, ears, and minds have all experienced different things and we apply our spirituality to them and come out with Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Mormonism. If…follow me here…if God, the true God, were to reveal himself to man and to give man the ability to understand what God is really like, then it should follow that one faith, one God in this world stands out from all the other faiths in very visible ways. Many things in Christianity make it unique among all the faiths. The Trinity is a great example, but it’s not complete enough. There is a verse in the Old Testament which sums up the difference between Yahweh, the God of Israel, God of Jesus, and all the other gods and faiths very succinctly:

“Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
-Isaiah 64:4

Does that verse sound familiar? It should. It’s what Paul is quoting in 1 Corinthians 2:9. The uniqueness of Christianity is a God who serves man, not vice versa. In Mark 10:45, Jesus states that he came not to be served but TO serve. Why does Paul quote this verse here? 1 Corinthians 2:8 gives us the answer:

“None of the rulers of this age understood [God's secret wisdom], for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

Why did the world crucify Jesus? Because they did not understand what could only be understood by God’s intervention: that God came to serve, not to be served. It’s no coincidence that the ones who crucified him (the Pharisees and Romans) had the hardest time believing that the coming Messiah could be a loser carpenter from ghetto Bethlehem and Nazareth. “They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I came down from heaven”?’” (John 6:42). “‘Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?’” (John 1:46). They could not recognize Jesus as God because a lack of spiritual discernment allows only for a god that must be served with human hands, not a God who serves his creation. “And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36).

Let me tell you what else is not a coincidence. God predestined Jesus to be crucified. It was his irrevocable plan all along (Acts 2:23). The Bible tells us that it was God’s “will” to do so (Isaiah 53:10, God was “pleased” in the New American Standard). Since it was God’s will and pleasure to crush him, and based on 1 Corinthians 2, the conclusion is to be drawn that it pleased God to hide himself from those in power (who had the authority to crucify him) and instead reveal himself to losers. That’s my logical conclusion at least. But does Scripture support that? Yes:

“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
-Matthew 11:25-28

God’s pleasure in crushing Jesus on the cross and his pleasure in hiding spiritual truths from the wise and learned of his day are not two different pleasures, but one. They crucified him because no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him, but is instead revealed by his Spirit, which is his to distribute to whomever he wants. And the means by which he spreads his truth of the one God who has actually revealed himself to mankind is for the people whom he’s revealed himself to to tell others about him, to show them that JESUS is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). And so we preach, knowing our words are of no avail to change someone’s heart because ears alone cannot discern spiritual things. We preach in the hopes that those on whom God will have mercy will be transformed through hearing (evangelism), and hearing through (by the power of) the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). So if God has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills (Romans 9:18), that is, if God gives his Spirit to whomever he wants and withholds it from whomever he wants, then it’s not the mere preaching of the Gospel that changes lives, but rather the power that he willingly chooses to accompany with that preaching. And since we cannot know who he has chosen from before time began (Ephesians 1:4), we preach the Gospel to all creation without reserve, trusting that the word of God will have its intended effect (Isaiah 55:11).

Once again, in 1 Corinthians 2 we see this (what a great chapter!):

“My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
-vv. 4-5

Trust in God, not man. God has revealed himself to us, because without his intervention we are blind and following false religions. And he has revealed this to us by his Spirit. That’s what 1 Corinthians 2:9 is all about, Charlie Brown.

(whew…)

*I chose the NIV for this verse because it’s the translation most people know this verse in and also happens to be a very misleading way of saying what it’s really saying. For the sake of continuity, I use the NIV throughout this entire entry.