However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age,  who are coming to nothing.  (7) But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, (8) which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  (9) But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

Nor have entered into the heart of man

The things which God has prepared for those who love Him”.

(10) But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.  For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

The Apostle Paul wrote the first letter to the Corinthians.  He wrote to a church there that had been divided into factions and in addressing this disunity he revisits his constant foundational  doctrine of the wisdom of God and the blessings of salvation prepared by the Father – and determined by the Father – carried out by the Son, Christ Jesus, and applied by the Spirit to all believers.  The only way the Corinthians could have known of the revelation of the mystery of God is by the Spirit.  To cite Matthew Henry who wrote regarding Paul’s teaching:  Paul laid down the doctrine as the Spirit delivered it:  and left the Spirit, by his eternal operation in signs and miracles, and His internal influences on the hearts of men, to demonstrate the truth of it and secure its reception.

The judgment of God is different from that of the world.  It is a different kind of wisdom from that of the world.  This wisdom was not known by the great men of that world – here Paul is referring to the Roman Governor, the rulers of the Jewish world with authority and power.  They did not know Christ and they crucified Him by the sentence of the one and the clamor of the other.  People act as they do because they are blind to the truth or heedless of it.  They lack a wisdom that can not be discovered by only man’s reason and is available to man only through God’s revelation.  Remember that Christ in His agony asked the Father to forgive them for they knew not what they do.

Paul wrote what he taught and what he taught was revealed by God in the Spirit.  He is saying that truth does not come to us through our five senses but only by divine revelation. When Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah here:  “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him” Paul is speaking of the sovereignity of God and God’s plan which is foolishness to unbelievers.  Paul is imparting the redemptive plan of God through Christ and through Christ crucified – matters which are not objects of sense and cannot be discovered by reason.  Paul furthers says that the Spirit knows all things and knows God.  Who can know God but God? – or much as a man’s mind is known to himself and cannot be known by another man unless communicated, man cannot know the purpose of God until the Spirit (God) reveals it.

These verses teach divine illumination done by infallible inspiration – infallible because it is from God.  God does not reveal Himself if we ask Him but only when He wants to – One can hear the word of God but only God can speak to our hearts.  When we say yes,  Paul is saying the believer has received the Spirit of God, not the spirit of the world, that we may know the eternal things that have freely been given us by God, through the redemptive work of Christ Jesus.