1 Corinthians 2:14-16: What It Means to Be Spiritual
Short answer: In 1 Corinthians 2:14-16, the spiritual person is not someone who has cultivated a religious feeling or mastered spiritual techniques. Paul writes that the natural man does not receive the things of God's Spirit, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person, by contrast, has received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, and so he or she can know and welcome what God freely gives. To be spiritual, then, is to be indwelt and taught by the Holy Spirit, made alive through new birth, and increasingly shaped by him. It is not a status you achieve by intensity, but a gift you receive by grace through faith.
What Paul Means by the Natural Man
The phrase Paul uses is precise. He does not say the natural man is stupid, immoral, or unusually wicked. He says the natural man does not receive the things of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can't know them, because they are spiritually discerned. The problem is not a lack of information. It is a lack of capacity. Something must be given to a person before the things of God can be welcomed and known. The natural man may be brilliant, kind, and sincere, yet still unable to receive what only the Spirit can make known.
This is a hard word for our culture, which assumes that every spiritual claim should be immediately accessible to anyone. Paul says otherwise. He is not describing a class of people who are worse than others; he is describing every person apart from the work of the Spirit. The point is not to shame anyone but to show that salvation is not a self-improvement project. If the things of God were merely difficult, education could solve the problem. Because they are spiritually discerned, only the Spirit can unlock them.
It helps to notice that Paul has been talking about the wisdom of God hidden in mystery (1 Corinthians 2:7). He says in the surrounding verses that God reveals it through the Spirit, and that no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. The natural man cannot climb up to that wisdom. It must come down to him. This is why Christian teaching is never merely the transfer of data. It is the Spirit taking what belongs to Christ and making it known, so that the listener moves from seeing words to seeing the Lord.
So the natural man is not the villain of the passage; he is the mirror. Every Christian was once there, and every Christian still has habits of mind that resist the Spirit. Paul is not setting up two permanent races of people but describing two ways of relating to God. One is untouched by the Spirit. The other has been reached by him. The difference is grace, and it leaves no room for boasting, since even the faith to receive is a gift.
The Spiritual Person Discerns, Because He Has the Spirit
Paul goes on to say that the spiritual person discerns all things, and is judged by no one. This does not mean the spiritual person knows everything or is beyond correction. It means he has been given an inner teacher. The Spirit who searches even the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10) is the same Spirit who teaches those who belong to Christ. Discernment here is not a mystical sixth sense. It is the Spirit-enabled ability to recognise God's truth, to weigh what is spoken, and to hold fast to what is good.
That is why the spiritual life is inseparable from the Word. The Spirit does not bypass Scripture; he opens it. Paul quotes the prophet in the next line, saying that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him. Then he adds that God revealed them to us through the Spirit. The revelation is given; the Spirit makes it known. The spiritual person is one who has stopped treating God's Word as idle chatter and has begun to hear it as the voice of the living God.
Discernment also has a moral dimension. It is possible to have correct words and a dull heart. Paul will later tell the Corinthians they are fleshly, not spiritual, because of jealousy and strife (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). So being spiritual is not measured by how much we know but by how deeply the Spirit governs what we know. A gifted teacher can be fleshly. A quiet believer who trembles at God's Word can be deeply spiritual. The test is not volume but submission.
This should make us cautious about ranking one another. Paul asks in verse 16, who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? Then he answers, but we have the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ is given to the church, not earned by the elite. If you belong to Jesus, the Spirit is yours, and he is able to teach you. You do not need to manufacture spiritual insight. You need to humble yourself and listen, trusting the Spirit to do what he has promised.
Born of Water and Spirit: Where Spiritual Life Begins
Paul's talk of the natural and the spiritual assumes something has happened to the spiritual person. Jesus told Nicodemus what that something is: unless one is born of water and spirit, he can't enter into God's Kingdom (John 3:5). The new birth is not a metaphor for self-improvement. It is the decisive work of God that makes a person alive to him. Before regeneration, the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit. After regeneration, the same truths that once seemed like foolishness become food and drink.
Jesus says the wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8). The point is that new birth is God's sovereign and mysterious work, not a technique we perform on ourselves. You cannot schedule the wind or manufacture your own conversion. But you can call on the Lord, and you can trust that he hears. The spiritual life begins not with a decision but with a resurrection.
This has pastoral comfort in it. Some believers worry that they are not spiritual enough because they do not feel what others appear to feel. But the new birth is not measured by the intensity of feeling; it is measured by a changed relationship to God. Do you now want Christ? Do the things of God, once dull, now carry weight with you? That is evidence of the Spirit's work. Feelings rise and fall. The Spirit's seal does not. He is the down payment of our inheritance, and he will finish what he began.
It also has a warning in it. It is possible to be religious and still be unregenerate. Nicodemus was a teacher of Israel and did not understand these things. Church attendance, Bible knowledge, and moral effort are not the same as new birth. The question the passage presses on every reader is not whether you are interested in spirituality, but whether the Spirit has made you alive. If you are uncertain, the right response is not to despair but to come to Christ, who receives sinners and gives his Spirit generously to those who ask.
Mind Set on the Spirit: The Shape of a Spiritual Life
Romans 8 describes the same reality with different words. Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5). Paul is not dividing people into those who have feelings and those who do not. He is talking about direction. The mind set on the flesh curves inward, toward self, comfort, and control. The mind set on the Spirit turns outward, toward the things of God. What you set your mind on is a window into what rules you.
Paul goes further and says that to be fleshly minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. He says the fleshly mind is hostile to God, because it does not submit to God's law, and it cannot. This is a strong statement. The unregenerate mind is not neutral, waiting to be persuaded. It is resistant. Only the Spirit can change that. When he does, he does not merely add new information; he reorients the affections, so that obedience stops looking like a cage and starts looking like a home.
Practically, the spiritual life grows through ordinary means. Paul tells the Galatians to walk by the Spirit, and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). Notice the order: walk first, and the flesh loses its grip. It is not a matter of reaching a level where temptation disappears. It is a matter of direction. A person walking north may still feel the pull of the road south, but he keeps walking. Prayer, Scripture, worship, fellowship, and obedience are the paths where the Spirit meets us and changes us from the inside out.
This also means the spiritual life is not passive. We are not waiting for a feeling before we obey. We are told to walk. We are told to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. We are told to sow to the Spirit and not grow weary. But even these commands are embedded in grace. The Spirit produces his fruit in us; we do not produce it for him. The Christian life is a partnership where the stronger partner carries the weaker, and the weaker partner learns to walk.
Fruit, Not Just Gifts: How the Spiritual Person Is Known
When the Corinthians thought about spirituality, they thought about gifts: tongues, prophecy, knowledge, and power. Paul had to correct them. In Galatians 5 he lists the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:23). Notice that these are character qualities, not performance abilities. They are what the Spirit grows in a person over time, often through difficulty, disappointment, and the slow obedience of ordinary days.
This is important because gifts can be counterfeited and celebrity can hide immaturity. It is possible to speak with eloquence and still be unloving. It is possible to have insight and still be proud. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 that the Corinthians were walking as mere men because of jealousy and strife. Their problem was not a lack of gifts; it was a lack of fruit. The spiritual person is not the one with the loudest gifting but the one whose life increasingly looks like Jesus in the quiet places where no one is watching.
Fruit also has a diagnostic value for us. If we are honest, the list in Galatians 5 searches us. Where is the patience? Where is the gentleness? Where is the self-control? We do not use the list to condemn ourselves; we use it to see where the Spirit is at work and where he is still pruning. Growth is rarely dramatic. It often looks like a shorter fuse, a quicker apology, a kinder tone, a deeper willingness to serve without being noticed. These small changes are the Spirit's fingerprints.
Paul also says the works of the flesh are obvious, and he warns that those who practice such things will not inherit God's kingdom. This is not a threat to the believer who struggles but a warning to the person who has made peace with sin. The spiritual life is not sinless, but it is not stagnant either. The Spirit who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. Your part is to keep in step with him, confessing sin, trusting grace, and bearing the fruit he grows.
A Living Sacrifice: Spiritual Service as Ordinary Obedience
Romans 12 follows the great mercies of God described in Romans 1-11 with a call to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. The word Paul uses for spiritual worship is the same root family as the word for reasonable or rational. He is saying that offering your ordinary body, with its hands and feet and time and attention, is the reasonable response to mercy. Spirituality is not reserved for high moments; it is lived in the kitchen, the commute, and the cubicle.
Paul then says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The renewal is the Spirit's work through the Word, but it is not automatic. It happens as we set our minds on things above, as we test everything by Scripture, and as we refuse the patterns of thinking that surround us. The world is constantly discipling us toward self-worship, anxiety, and appetite. The Spirit is constantly discipling us toward Christ. The battle is fought in the mind, long before it appears in behaviour.
This is why the spiritual person will often look unremarkable from the outside. He is not performing. She is not curating a reputation. They are simply trying to be faithful where God has placed them, trusting that the Spirit is at work even when no one applauds. Paul's vision of spirituality is not a mountaintop experience that removes us from daily life. It is a life poured out, in the same shape as Christ's, for the good of others and the glory of God.
And it is possible, by God's grace, to live this way without becoming weird or insufferable. The spiritual person is not the one who talks about the Spirit constantly; it is the one in whom the Spirit's fruit is increasingly evident. If you want to know whether you are spiritual in the biblical sense, do not ask how you feel on a good day. Ask whether you are becoming more like Jesus in the ordinary ones. That question will keep you close to the cross, where mercy meets us and the Spirit is given.
Biblical Fidelity Check
This passage does establish a real distinction. It says that the natural man cannot receive the things of God's Spirit, and that the spiritual person has been given the Spirit and the mind of Christ. It establishes that spiritual understanding is a gift, not an achievement, and that the new birth is necessary to enter the kingdom. It also establishes that the spiritual person is accountable to God, not to human rankings. Paul does not set up an elite class of super-Christians. He describes two conditions before God and calls the church to live out what the Spirit has given.
What the passage does not establish is that the spiritual person is a different species from ordinary believers, or that spiritual maturity is measured by extraordinary experiences. It does not say that emotion is the evidence of the Spirit's presence, nor that education, gifting, or reputation prove anything. A common misreading treats the spiritual person as someone who has reached a higher plane beyond ordinary Christians, often defined by intense feelings or unusual phenomena. That reading is wrong because Paul immediately calls the Corinthians fleshly and warns them against pride. The Spirit's mark is Christlike fruit, not spiritual swagger.
Other passages that speak to 1 Corinthians 2:14-16
This text sits inside a larger argument in 1 Corinthians, and the themes of God's wisdom, unity, and the Spirit's work run through the letter. To see how the passage connects, read What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, which shows why a church divided over impressive leaders had missed the wisdom of the cross. Then What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application grounds the whole discussion in God's faithful call into fellowship with his Son. For the broad sweep of the letter, see 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord, and for later application of spiritual maturity and self-control, read 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean to be spiritual according to 1 Corinthians 2:14-16?
Paul uses the word spiritual to describe someone who has received the Spirit of God and therefore welcomes what God reveals. The natural man finds those things foolish and cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned. So being spiritual is not about personality, intensity, or talent. It is about the Spirit's work in a person. The spiritual person has the mind of Christ, not because he is clever, but because the Spirit has opened his eyes to see and love what God has given in the gospel.
Is the spiritual person sinless or beyond correction?
No. Paul says the spiritual person discerns all things and is judged by no one, but he immediately turns to the Corinthians' jealousy and strife and calls them fleshly, not spiritual. The spiritual person still sins and still needs correction. What marks him is that he welcomes the Spirit's conviction and grows in Christlike fruit. Discernment is not immunity from being wrong; it is a teachable heart that keeps returning to Scripture and to Christ. The Spirit continues his work until the day of completion.
How can I become more spiritual in the biblical sense?
Begin where the Bible begins: with new birth and faith in Christ. Then walk by the Spirit through ordinary means. Read and obey Scripture, pray honestly, stay in a local church, and serve others without needing credit. Set your mind on the things of the Spirit rather than the flesh. Expect growth to look like character more than excitement. And when you fail, confess it and return to the cross, where mercy is fresh every morning. The Spirit gives life, and he is faithful to finish what he starts.
