Sunday Service Sermon 26.26

Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
Who is God the Holy Spirit and what does He do? We are told much
about this important doctrine in the scriptures and in studying them
we will be better equipped for the work God has for us as a church.
Some wisdom isn’t timeless (sometimes it’s rediscovered)
Scripture is timeless wisdom from God
Digging into 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
What was Corinth like?
What was Paul talking about?
Godly wisdom
The Holy Spirit’s role
What was Paul hoping to accomplish?

What do we get to do?

Where does this lead?

Study is required

Taking this home!

Qs:
What are differences in godly and worldly wisdom you’ve encountered?
How do you see godly wisdom at work in your life?

Memorize this-

1 Corinthians 2:12

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 Searcher of the Depths

There is a certain fittingness in the Spirit’s playing the pivotal role in our knowing
God. The classic text to explore here is Paul’s discussion of the Spirit in 1
Corinthians 2:6–13. In his examination of the wisdom of God displayed in the
gospel, Paul argues that it is the Spirit who makes that wisdom known. He draws
an analogy between our self-knowledge and God’s self-knowledge. “Like knows
like” is the ancient epistemic principle of connaturality, and that principle is
assumed by Paul. 4 The spirit (pneuma) in a man and a woman (Paul uses
anthrōpos) knows the person from the inside in a way that the outsider does not.
There is privileged access. Likewise with God and God’s Spirit (pneuma), there is
privileged access. However, that Spirit can make that knowledge available and
has done so through the gospel. The depths (ta bathē) that Paul refers to appear
to be the gospel as the wisdom (sophia) of God that the world does not
recognize. 5 As B. B. Warfield suggested long ago in reference to our passage,
the Spirit “appears as the substrate of the Divine self-consciousness, the
principle of God’s knowledge of Himself.” 6 Put another way, we might say that the
Spirit is the epistemic bond in the triune Godhead, and not only the love bond as
Augustine argued. If Christ is the redemptive mediator, then arguably the Spirit is
the epistemic mediator. 7 Gordon Fee puts it well:
In terms of his relationship to us, the Spirit is first of all the revealer (vv.
10–11), the one who, to use John’s language, “takes the things of Christ and
makes them known to us.” He is therefore the instructor in the ways of God
and Christ (vv. 2–13). 8
There is no knowing God without the continual searcher (erauvaō is in the
present aspect in the text) of the depths of God, namely the Spirit. Therefore it is
no surprise to find the Spirit thematized in other places in Scripture when God’s
making himself known is in view.
4 See Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, Mass.:
Hendrickson, 2005), 99.
5 Ibid., 100. See also Peter Jensen, The Revelation of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 251.
6 B. B. Warfield, Biblical Foundations (London: The Tyndale Press, 1958), 110.
7 On the epistemic importance of the Spirit see Thomas F. Torrance, “The Epistemological Relevance of the Holy Spirit,”
in R. Schippers et al., eds., Ex Auditu Verbi (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1965), 272–296.
8 Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 98, emphasis original.
Cole, G. A. (2007). He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (J. S. Feinberg, Ed.; pp. 260–261). Crossway
Books.

Doctrine of the Holy Spirit| Brad Christian 6/21/26