But the natural man
Not a babe in Christ, one that is newly born again, for though
such have but little knowledge of spiritual things, yet they have
a taste, and do relish and desire, and receive the sincere milk
of the word, and grow thereby; but an unregenerate man, that has
no knowledge at all of such things; not an unregenerate man only,
who is openly and notoriously profane, abandoned to sensual lusts
and pleasures; though such a man being sensual, and not having
the Spirit, must be a natural man; but rather the wise
philosopher, the Scribe, the disputer of this world; the
rationalist, the man of the highest attainments in nature, in
whom reason is wrought up to its highest pitch; the man of the
greatest natural parts and abilities, yet without the Spirit and
grace of God, mentioned ( 1
Corinthians 1:20 ) and who all along, both in that chapter
and in this, quite down to this passage, is had in view: indeed,
every man in a state of nature, who is as he was born, whatever
may be the inward furniture of his mind, or his outward conduct
of life, is but a natural man, and such an one
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:
not the things relating to the deity, personality, and
perfections of the Holy Spirit, though these the natural man
knows not, nor receives; nor the things done by him, particularly
the operations of his grace on the souls of men in regeneration,
concerning which he says, as Nicodemus did, "how can these things
be?" but the truths of the Gospel before spoken of; so called,
because they are contained in the Scriptures edited by the Spirit
of God, are the deep things of God, which he searches into and
reveals; and because they are made known by him, who is given and
received for that end and purpose, that the saints might know
them; and because they are delivered by the preachers of the
Gospel, in words which he teacheth; now these the natural man
receives not in the love of them, so as to approve of and like
them, truly to believe them, cordially embrace them, and heartily
be subject to them, profess and obey them, but on the contrary
abhors and rejects them:
for they are foolishness unto him;
they are looked upon by him as absurd, and contrary to reason;
they do not agree with his taste, he disrelishes and rejects them
as things insipid and distasteful; he regards them as the effects
of a crazy brain, and the reveries of a distempered head, and are
with him the subject of banter and ridicule:
neither can he know them:
as a natural man, and whilst he is such, nor by the help and mere
light of nature only; his understanding, which is shut unto them,
must be opened by a divine power, and a superior spiritual light
must be thrown into it; at most he can only know the literal and
grammatical sense of them, or only in the theory, notionally and
speculatively, not experimentally, spiritually, and savingly:
because they are spiritually discerned;
in a spiritual manner, by a spiritual light, and under the
influence, and by the assistance of the Spirit of God. There must
be a natural visive discerning faculty, suited to the object; as
there must be a natural visive faculty to see and discern natural
things, so there must be a spiritual one, to see, discern, judge,
and approve of spiritual things; and which only a spiritual, and
not a natural man has.