“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #20
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritual discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).
According the apostle, there are two kinds of men in the world—the natural man and the spiritual man. The natural man is described here as “not receiving” and “not knowing” certain things, the things of the Spirit of God, and the reason he cannot receive or know them is because they are just so much foolishness to him. These things are spiritually discerned, and a natural man has no capacity for spiritual discernment.
This division is important to keep in mind whenever we are talking about the external aspects of the covenant. There are other divisions which we can make in the world as well—baptized and unbaptized, tall and short, rich and poor, and so on. But the most fundamental of all divisions is this division mentioned here, that between the natural and the spiritual man, the unconverted and converted, the unregenerate and regenerate. The Spirit blows where He wills, and we cannot capture Him to make Him do our bidding. We cannot do it with unbiblical antitheses, like race or tribe, and we cannot do it with biblical categories, like baptized and unbaptized.
The presence of this category is made obvious by what we might call Spirit-logic. The Spirit communicates His ways, which results in some receiving them with gladness, and others blinking with no comprehension. When a man is converted, his Bible, as if by magic, turns into English.