God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ..Romans 1:18
Know Thyself
Do you really know yourself?
Have you made a habit of self-reflection?
Romans 1:18 describes each of us.
We are born sinners, we are born with an old sin nature that turns us in on ourselves.
We are selfish and self-righteous, depraved and evil.
But we cannot by working harder or studying the bible more overcome our sinful nature.
It is only through an intimate relationship with Christ and through the Person of the Holy Spirit can we redirect our heart and soul toward holiness.
We will never be perfect this side of heaven but we can through Christ become more Christlike.
John Piper helps us to understand ourselves in little better.
Video from Desiring God
Understanding Yourself - John Piper
"Light + Truth Episode: 160 Speaker: John Piper Series: Our Gospel Need Scripture: Romans 1:18 Playlist: • Light + Truth " from video introduction
How the Spirit Helps Us Understand
The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
The manual of operation for the Christian wartime mentality is the Bible. It was inspired and authorized by the Commander, and contains all the truth needed to win people over from the enemy camp, deprogram their old thought patterns, train them in strategies of righteousness, and equip them with armor and weapons to defeat Satan and liberate his captives (2 Timothy 3:16–17; Ephesians 6:10–19).
God's Manual and Our Inability to Understand It
The manual is one of a kind. The Communists had their Manifesto. The Maoists had their Little Red Books. The Muslims have their Koran. But only the Bible contains the writings taught not by human wisdom but by the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:13). Only the Bible reveals "what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9). The Christian manual of operation is unique because it reveals "the things of the Spirit of God"—things from God that man can't find out on his own, things that are often very foreign to our way of thinking. And therein lies a great problem.
I want to talk about that problem today and how God works by his Holy Spirit to overcome it. The problem is described in 1 Corinthians 2:14. "The unspiritual man does not receive (i.e., welcome) the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." The NASB gives a more literal rendering when it says, "A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God." The problem is: what good is a manual of operation that can't be understood by ordinary people? If the Bible reveals the "things of God" and the natural man is not able to understand them because they are spiritually appraised, then how will this book ever be able to win anyone over to God's side?
Let's begin by making sure we understand the situation described in verse 14. We need to understand first what Paul means by "natural man" and by "the things of the Spirit of God."
What Is a "Natural Man"?
The word for "natural man" is used one other time in the New Testament to refer to people, namely, in Jude 19, which says, "It is these who set up divisions, worldly people (i.e., natural people), devoid of the Spirit." Natural people are defined here as people who do not have God's Spirit. They are simply ordinary people whose hearts and minds are not touched with the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. The opposite of "natural man" is "spiritual man"—a person whose mind and heart are renewed by the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:12 confirms this. "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God." In verse 14 the "natural man" cannot understand the "things of the Spirit of God" because they are "spiritually discerned." In verse 12 Paul is able to understand them because he has received the Spirit. Therefore, a "natural person" is a person who has not received the Spirit. That's why he can't understand "the things of the Spirit of God."
What Are "the Things of the Spirit"?
But now what are these "things of the Spirit of God" which people can't grasp without the Spirit? The context makes this pretty clear. Notice the word "folly" or "foolishness" in verse 14. Whatever "the things of the Spirit of God" are, they are folly to the natural man. Chapter 1, verse 18 shows us what this is: "The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." The same thing in verses 23–24: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." In other words, what the natural man can't understand is the heart of the Christian message—the word of the cross. But the word of the cross is not just a simple statement that Christ died on the cross for our sins. The word of the cross is a radical indictment of human pride. It describes a way of salvation which according to 1 Corinthians 1:29 has this purpose: "that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (cf. 3:21).
The word of the cross is a message about my crucifixion, not just Christ's. Paul said in Galatians 6:14, "Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Therefore, when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that "the things of the Spirit of God" are folly to the natural man, he means that the gospel of Christ crucified and all its devastating implications for natural human pride are simply foolishness to the natural man. A view of reality which aims to take away every ground of boasting from in man and put it all in Christ crucified is foolishness to humans in their natural state apart from the Holy Spirit. So the natural man is a person without the Holy Spirit, and "the things of the Spirit of God" refers to the word of the cross and its devastating implications for human pride..." from the article: How the Spirit Helps Us Understand