As a Man Knows His Own Mind
1 Corinthians 2:10—11
As a Man Knows His Own Mind
The Spirit of Yahuah is His own self, as your spirit is yours
A man and his spirit are one man; Yahuah and His Spirit are one Yahuah.
--- The Standing Stone ---
Behind “LORD” in your Bible lies a hidden name --- in the Hebrew it is Yahuah Psalm 83:18**; Yahuah is the Father** Isaiah 63:16**; Yahuah is the only God, beside Him there is no other** Isaiah 45:5**; therefore Yahuah the Father is the only true God, leaving no room for a second or third person** 1 Corinthians 8:6**.**
Among the verses gathered to argue that the Holy Spirit is a third divine person, few are leaned on harder than these two. The reasoning sounds tidy. The Spirit searches the deep things of Yahuah; the Spirit knows the things of Yahuah. Searching and knowing are things someone does. Therefore, it is said, the Spirit must be a person standing apart from the Father --- a third member of a Godhead.
But to read the verse that way, a man has to walk straight past what the whole chapter is about. Paul is not dividing the Almighty into parts. He is describing the new birth --- how a man dead in the flesh is born of the Spirit, made a new creature, and given Yahuah’s own mind to know the things freely handed to him. Miss that, and two verses get torn loose and pressed into a doctrine the chapter never raises.
And Paul does not leave us to guess what kind of knowing he means. He hands us a comparison --- and that comparison, read plainly, takes the doctrine apart.
1 --- What the Verse Is Made to Say
1 Corinthians 2:10—11
But [Yahuah] hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of [Yahuah]. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of [Yahuah] knoweth no man, but the Spirit of [Yahuah].
One note before going on. Where this study prints [Yahuah], the word in the verse is simply God --- a title, not a name. The study supplies the name behind the title, because Scripture says plainly who the one true God is: Yahuah, and Yahuah is the Father Isaiah 63:16. The verse is not being altered; the brackets only mark who is meant. And that is the very thing in dispute --- the God whose deep things are searched is the Father Himself, not a second or third party inside Him.
The reading rests on one quiet assumption: that to search and to know, the Spirit must be a separate someone --- a knower set beside Yahuah, looking into Him from the outside. Pull that assumption out and the argument has nothing left to stand on. So everything turns on a single question. When Paul speaks of the Spirit knowing the things of Yahuah, is he describing two parties, or one? Paul answers that himself, in the very same breath.
2 --- Paul’s Own Comparison
Look again at how he frames it. To explain how the Spirit knows the things of Yahuah, Paul reaches for the most ordinary thing in the room: a man and his own spirit. And he uses one word for both sides of the comparison.
πνεῦμα
pneuma (G4151)
spirit, breath, the inmost self
The spirit of a man and the Spirit of Yahuah are the same word --- pneuma. Paul sets them side by side on purpose. Now ask his question of the first half of the sentence. Who knows the things of a man? Paul says it is the spirit of man which is in him. Your own spirit. Not a second man living inside you. Not a separate person consulting you from across the room. Your spirit is you --- your own inward self, the part of you that knows your own thoughts because it is not other than you.
No one reads that line and concludes that every human being is two persons. A man and his spirit are one man. Then Paul says even so --- in the very same way --- the things of Yahuah are known by the Spirit of Yahuah. If the comparison holds, and it is Paul’s comparison and not ours, then the Spirit of Yahuah is to Yahuah what your spirit is to you: not a second person beside Him, but His own inward self, His own knowledge of His own depths.
The doctrine needs this to prove a distinct person. It proves the opposite. The only way to make the Spirit a separate person here is to make every man’s spirit a separate person too --- and so turn every human being on earth into two people. The comparison that was supposed to carry the doctrine is the very thing that sinks it.
And two verses on, Paul seals it with a phrase that should settle the matter. He tells the believers, Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of [Yahuah] 1 Corinthians 2:12. There it is again --- the spirit of the world, set right beside the Spirit of Yahuah, the same construction, the same grammar.
If the words Spirit of Yahuah must mean a separate divine person, then the words spirit of the world must mean a separate person too --- and the world becomes a living being with a mind of its own. No one believes that. Everyone understands the spirit of the world to mean its disposition, its mindset, the way of thinking that drives it. The words Spirit of Yahuah work the very same way: His own mind, His own disposition, His own self --- now given to us. One construction cannot mean a third deity in one breath and a figure of speech in the next.
And there are three spirits standing in these few verses, not one --- and the pattern is the same in all three. The spirit of a man is the inward being of the man. The spirit of the world is the prevailing presence and influence of the world. The Spirit of Yahuah is the presence and working of Yahuah Himself. Each is the inner life of the one it belongs to. To reach in, pull out the third alone, and turn it into a separate person --- while leaving the first two as plain presence --- is not reading Paul. It is overruling him.
3 --- The Point the Reader Walks Past
Step back and read the chapter as one piece, and the searching falls into place. Paul has been drawing a line between two kinds of men. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of [Yahuah]… neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned 1 Corinthians 2:14. That is the born-again line running through the whole chapter: the flesh cannot grasp the things of Yahuah; only the man born of the Spirit can.
And how does that man come to know them? Not by a third deity informing him from outside. Paul says Yahuah gave us His own Spirit that we might know the things that are freely given to us 1 Corinthians 2:12. The Father pours His own mind into the believer. The one joined to Him is made a new creature 2 Corinthians 5:17, born of the Spirit John 3:6, and the Almighty Himself takes up residence in him.
For that is what the believer becomes --- a dwelling place. Know ye not that ye are the temple of [Yahuah], and that the Spirit of [Yahuah] dwelleth in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16 So when Paul says the Spirit searcheth all things, he is not picturing a second mind prying into the Father’s secrets. He is picturing the indwelling Yahuah searching the heart of the man He now lives in --- the very thing David asked for: Search me, O [Yahuah], and know my heart Psalm 139:23. He that searcheth the hearts knoweth the mind of the Spirit Romans 8:27. The searching turns inward, into us, dividing flesh from Spirit as we walk out our deliverance.
None of this is new with Paul. Like nearly all his teaching, the chapter stands on the prophets. He proves the natural eye cannot see these things by quoting Isaiah --- Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard… the things which [Yahuah] hath prepared for them that love him 1 Corinthians 2:9 --- and he closes by reaching for Isaiah again: Who hath known the mind of [Yahuah]? 1 Corinthians 2:16 The answer is not a second person who has always known it. The answer is the born-again son, given that mind through the Messiah. The knowledge comes down to us; it is not a rival knower standing beside the Father.
Conclusion
The Verdict
The whole quarrel dissolves the moment the chapter is read as Paul wrote it. He was not unveiling a committee inside the Almighty. He was teaching the deepest comfort a man can hear --- that the one true Yahuah, by His own Spirit, comes to live inside those who are His, searching them, teaching them, making them new.
To lift two verses out of that and build a second and third person from them is to miss the chapter entirely.
A man and his spirit are one man; the world and its spirit are one world; Yahuah and His Spirit are one Yahuah.