The Natural Man

“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 spiritually discerned.” I Corinthians 2:14

When you hear a sound, you use your sense of hearing to determine exactly what it is that you are hearing. In your mind, you are comparing the sound with millions of stored examples of sounds, sorting through categories and subcategories until an example seems to be a reasonable match. All of this takes place in a very short amount of time, but it is happening nonetheless. If the source of the sound is beyond your field of vision, you must rely solely on your sense of hearing to make a final determination. If you were to lose your hearing, you would no longer be able to engage in this process. A person who cannot hear cannot differentiate between sounds because the sense of hearing is required in order to participate in the process. Before we are saved, we are without spiritual discernment. A lost person cannot understand the things of God because he does not have the Spirit of God living inside him to help him. To an unsaved person, much of what Christians choose to do seems silly. Why would you say words out loud to someone that you cannot see? If your prayers aren’t answered immediately every time, how do you know that what you claim are answered prayers aren’t just coincidences? It may be frustrating to talk with someone who asks these kinds of questions, but be patient. What they need is Jesus Christ.