“For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 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.”
– 1 Corinthians 2:10–12
That is amazing. I don’t know if you caught everything that I just read, but these couple of verses together are breathtaking. Let’s think about what the Bible’s teaching here. So the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. No one knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person. Who knows God’s thoughts? The spirit of God does, right?
The Spirit Who is from 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.”
The spirit of God knows, the thoughts of God knows everything about God. The spirit of God is one person of the Trinity. That’s the whole picture we see in the Bible, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and the whole picture here is the spirit of God just knows the fullness of God, but then you get to verse 12 and we read. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but we’ve received the spirit who is from God.
So we have the spirit of God in us who knows the fullness of God. We have his spirit inside of us that we might understand the things freely given us by God. That’s okay. We have the fullness of God’s spirit in us that we might know the fullness of God and God has made this freely available to us like you and I can know God in his fullness more and more every day.
1 Corinthians 2:10–12 Emphasizes that God is Eternal
I emphasized more and more because the reality is he is infinite and eternal in his attributes, which means we’re not going to get to a point like tomorrow or 10 years from now or 10 trillion years from now for that matter where we say, “Okay, now I know all that there is to know about God,” because there will always be more to know, always more love to see in God, always more power to see in God, always more greatness, goodness to see in God, but the reality is knowledge of him is freely given to us by him.
He has given us this spirit. You and I have this spirit of God that we might know God. I think about Jeremiah 9:23-24 let not the wise man boast of his wisdom and not the rich man boast his riches, let not the mighty man boast of his might. Let him who boasts boast in this that he understands and knows me. You want to live for something today, you’re going to live for something tomorrow. You want to live for that what you can boast in, this is it that you know God and how can you know God? Because of his grace. Because he’s given us his spirit so that the spirit of God who knows all the thoughts of God has been freely given to us so that we can know the thoughts of God, the wonder of God, the depth of God.
1 Corinthians 2:10–12 Encourages the Pursuit of Knowing God
God, we pray that you would deliver us from lesser aims today. We want to know you. We want to know you more. Yes, we want to know you more. To understand you more. To live more according to your word because your word is life. We want to see more of your glory. Show us more of your glory, more of your greatness, more of your goodness, more of your beauty, more of your majesty. We want to see and know you more and we trusted as we do we will love you more and we will glorify you more. God, thank you for freely giving of yourself to us by your spirit.
So spirit of God, open our eyes in your word more and more to who you are and open our eyes to see more and more of who you are. Open our hearts to love more and more and more of who you are and God open our lives to glorify you in greater ways. Oh, we praise you for your spirit in us for freely giving of yourself to us that we might know and love and enjoy and worship and walk with you. We praise you for this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
