Christianity’s Exclusive Revelation of the Gospel

By Robb Brunansky

Published January 19, 2026

Throughout Scripture, we are reminded of the great treasure we have in the Word of God, yet our lives often betray a heart that does not prize His wisdom as much as it ought. We far too easily look to the world’s wisdom, and we can prize our own intellectual abilities and opinions more than the truth revealed in the Bible.

These issues were the very problems Paul addressed in the Corinthian church in his first letter to them. To help the Corinthians shape their thinking by the mind of Christ, rather than fallen men, Paul showed them that the mind of Christ is eternal, hidden, and glorious (vv 6-9) and that it is only divinely revealed by the Spirit (vv 10-11).

Lastly, Paul tells us that this revelation of God’s wisdom must be received, which leads to the reception of the mind of Christ (vv 12-16). Believers have received the mind of Christ (v. 12). God’s purpose for giving us the mind of Christ by the Spirit is so we might know the things God has freely given us. In these verses, Paul explains three reasons why we need the mind of Christ as believers.

The first reason why the reception of Christ’s mind is necessary to understand the things of God is because Scripture is inspired by His Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:13 stands as one of the strongest verses in the New Testament for the verbal, plenary inspiration of God’s Word. This means that every word throughout Scripture has been inspired by God’s Spirit, and nothing in the Bible originated in the minds of fallen men.

There are two levels to this divine operation. On one level, we have divine truths from the Spirit. These are the thoughts in the mind of God from all eternity. These truths exist eternally, and they are beyond all human language because of the unfathomable depth of God’s mind.

On another level, these truths and divine thoughts must be explained to us for our understanding.  The Spirit takes these divine truths that exist in God’s mind and weds them to the correct words so that we might know these truths.   This is how the divine thoughts were expressed, interpreted, and explained: in divine words given by the Spirit of God to the apostles and prophets who penned the Bible.

Here, we are beginning to see the miracle of the Bible! Who could take the mind of the eternal God of all glory and wisdom and put the Lord’s thoughts in a form that can be explained to God’s finite and sinful creatures? That’s what the Spirit of God gave us through the writings of the apostles and prophets in the New Testament.

The second reason we need to receive the mind of Christ is because the unbeliever is insensible to the Spirit.

When Paul mentions “the natural man,” he means the man whose mind is not influenced by the Spirit but is conformed to the world. He has been born naturally, but not supernaturally. The natural man cannot use his mind, will, and heart in a spiritual way.

We further identify the natural man by what Paul writes in verse 14. Paul states that the natural man finds the things of the Spirit to be foolishness. Anyone who rejects the gospel of Christ is a natural person who is currently perishing before God’s just wrath toward sin.

The irony here is many people who consider themselves as spiritual end up being nothing other than natural. When individuals reject God’s Word for some form of experiential spirituality unhitched from Scripture, they prove themselves to be unspiritual. The natural man is the person who cannot see God’s wisdom in the message of the cross, and so those who think themselves to be spiritual but reject Christ are not acting spiritual at all.

We see two things that are true of the natural person in this verse. First, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit because these are foolishness to them. Second, the natural man cannot understand the things about the Spirit. There is perhaps no better illustration than the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. These men were fastidious students of God’s Word, and yet when Jesus arrived, they could not identify Him as the very person prophesied! They were natural men without the Spirit, having no capacity to understand what the Scriptures really meant.

Now, the good news is what Paul pens in verses 15-16, namely, that the believer is illumined by the Spirit. Christians need the Spirit to understand the things of God and the mind of Christ, which is the third reason why we must receive the mind of Christ.

Paul first says the spiritual person examines all things. Every believer can understand what the Spirit has said to us in the Bible. Paul is not saying that human teachers, who are called and gifted by the Spirit, are unnecessary for us to grow in our understanding of Scripture. Rather, God has given His church everything it needs to understand the truth of His Word because of the Spirit’s presence in its members.

Then Paul adds that those who are spiritual are appraised by no one. He is not saying that those who have the Holy Spirit are above accountability, discipline, or criticism. Rather, he means that those who are filled with the Spirit will be misunderstood by the world just like Jesus was. We have insight into those of the world – their condition, need of Christ, alienation from God, and foolishness in believing in idols; but they have no insight into us because they cannot understand the things of the Spirit. Once we have the Spirit, we become incomprehensible to the world.

The Corinthians were so impressed by the worldly wisdom of the philosophers, scholars, nobility, and sages even though they had the incomparable, glorious, beautiful, eternal, hidden, and majestic mind of Christ. Why would they trade the mind of Christ for the world’s wisdom? These Christians had access to what no one has ever known, to what no human creature has ever reached, and to what no angel can penetrate: the mind of God as revealed by the Spirit. Nothing compares with what has been revealed to us by the Spirit in the gospel.

Christians have something worth more than all the money ever in existence. We have something more valuable than all the wisdom, advice, opinions, philosophies, and psychologies of all the scholars, philosophers, sages, theologians, psychologists, and doctors throughout human history. We have the mind of Christ – who is equated with Yahweh in this passage – the God of Israel, who created the world and sustains all in it.

No wonder Paul has said such things about the word of the cross in the opening of his letter. He has asserted that it is the power of God, that it makes foolish the wisdom of the world, that it saves those who believe, that it is the power and wisdom of God, that it is wiser and stronger than men, that it shames the strong and the wise, that it is sufficient to save, and that it just needs to be preached – even in weakness, fear, and trembling.

We must realize what we have in the message of God’s Word. Scripture is the revelation of the mind of Christ. No one compares with Jesus Christ. That means no book compares with this book. And the most amazing thing of all is that as Christians we can understand the mind of Christ because the Spirit of Christ dwells within us.