1 Corinthians 2:13

“Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth, appropriating spiritual things to spiritual men.”

Here is the resuming of the λαλοῦμεν, we speak, of 1 Corinthians 2:6; it has been prepared for by 1 Corinthians 2:10-12: “This hidden wisdom God has revealed to us by His Spirit, and we speak it with words formed in us by this same Spirit. He gives us the form, after having given us the matter.” Καί, also, prominently brings out precisely this relation between the two operations of the Spirit, revelation and inspiration. As Paul has contrasted wisdom with wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:6-9), revelation with revelation (1 Corinthians 2:10-12), he now contrasts Divine inspiration with earthly inspiration. By revelation God communicates Himself to man; inspiration bears on the relation of man to man. The genitives, σοφίας and πνεύματος, wisdom and Spirit, may, according to Greek usage, depend, not on the subst. λόγοις, words, but on the verbal notion expressed by the adjective διδακτοῖς (John 6:45): “Words taught, not by wisdom, but by the Spirit,” and this connection is also that which agrees best with the context. To teach things which the Spirit has revealed, terms are not made use of which man's own understanding and ability have discovered. The same Divine breath which lifted the veil to reveal, takes possession also of the mouth of its interpreter when it is to speak. Inspiration is, as it were, the language of revelation. Such is the secret of the peculiar and unique style of the Scriptures.

Meyer justly remarks that the term διδακτός, taught, while it positively includes the idea of inspiration, nevertheless excludes all mechanical representation of the fact, and implies in the person inspired a living assimilation of the truth expressed.

Very various meanings have been given to the last clause of this verse, according to the different senses in which the word συγκρίνειν may be taken, and according to the two genders, masculine or neuter, which may be ascribed to the adj. πνευματικοῖς, spiritual. The rarely used verb συγκρίνειν strictly denotes the act of bringing two things together to compare them and fix their relative value. This is certainly its meaning in the only other passage in the New Testament where it occurs, 2 Corinthians 10:12. But in the LXX. this verb frequently takes the meaning of interpreting, especially in speaking of dreams (Genesis 40:8; Genesis 40:16; Genesis 40:22; Dan 5:15-17), because the interpretation of a dream consists in comparing the image with the idea discovered in it. Several commentators have proceeded on this second meaning;

Chrysostom: explaining Christian doctrines by comparing them with the types of the Old Testament (πνευματικοῖς, neuter); Grotius, on the contrary: explaining the prophecies of the Old Testament by comparing them with the doctrines of Christ; Bengel, Rückert, Hofmann: explaining the things of the Spirit to spiritual men (πνευματικοῖς, masculine). This third explanation would in the context be the only admissible one. But this meaning of interpreting given to συγκρίνειν is at once foreign to the New Testament and to classical Greek.

Erasmus, Calvin, de Wette, Meyer, Osiander seek to come nearer to the real sense of the verb by explaining thus: joining, adapting spiritual words to spiritual things (πνευματικοῖς, neuter). It is on this view the justification of the procedure which the apostle has just described in the first part of the verse. To a spiritual body (the wisdom revealed by the Spirit) no other is suitable than a spiritual dress (a language taught by the Spirit). The meaning is excellent; but the last clause would really add nothing to the contents of the previous proposition, and neither in this way is the meaning of the verb συγκρίνειν exactly reproduced. Should not these words form the transition to the development of the third word of the theme (6a), among the perfect, which will form the subject of the following verses? We must, if it is so, take πνενματικοῖς as a masculine and see in it the equivalent of τέλειοι, the perfect; comp. 1 Corinthians 2:15 and 1 Corinthians 3:1. The word συγκρίνειν has exactly in that case the meaning given it by Passow in his dictionary, a meaning which differs only by a slight shade from the first which we have indicated: mit Auswahl verbinden, to adapt two things to one another with discernment; which leads us to this explanation: “adapting, applying, appropriating with discernment spiritual teachings to spiritual men.” This is precisely the idea which is developed in 1 Corinthians 2:14-16, and which will be applied in the final passage 1 Corinthians 3:1-4.

This passage has a peculiar importance. It shows that what in Paul's view was the object of the revelation of which he speaks at this point, was not the historical facts from which salvation flows, nor the simple meaning in which they are presented by the preaching used in evangelization; but that it was the Divine plan which is realized through them, their relation to the history of humanity and of the universe, all that we find expounded in the passages quoted above (Eph. and Col., Romans 9-11, 1 Corinthians 15). There we find unveiled the plan of God in all its dimensions (its length, breadth, depth, height); all that system of Divine thoughts eternally conceived with a view to our glory, of which 1 Corinthians 2:7 spoke; the cross, as the centre from which there rays forth in all the directions of time and space the splendour of Divine love. This Christian speculation we have not to make or to seek. It is given: God is its author; His Spirit, the revealer; St. Paul and each of the apostles, in his measure, the inspired interpreter. But this wisdom, revealed to those who are to be its organs, is to be spoken by them only to those who are fit to receive it (1 Corinthians 2:14-16).