These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For "who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
We can ask "Why do people do not actually acknowledge God as He is?" And Paul answers this in Romans 8. It is folly to the natural human (Romans 1:21, 23) - only God can open such blind eyes. By his or her very nature, every person is a fallen creature - a sinner, alienated from God. Humans try - pride prevents them.
As Bruce Milne writes: " "There is … no road from man’s intellectual and moral perception to a genuine knowledge of God." He goes on to say: "The only way to [the] knowledge of God is for God … to place himself within the range of our perception, and renew our fallen understanding. Hence, if we are to know God, and have any adequate basis for our Christian understanding and experience, revelation is indispensable." It is a miracle that a person is drawn to God; it is spiritually discerned only.
Bruce Milne, Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1982), 20.
1 How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
in a believer's ear!
It soothes our sorrows, heals our wounds,
and drives away our fear.
2 It makes the wounded spirit whole
and calms the troubled breast;
'tis manna to the hungry soul,
and to the weary, rest.
3 O Jesus, shepherd, guardian, friend,
my Prophet, Priest, and King;
my Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
accept the praise I bring.
4 How weak the effort of my heart,
how cold my warmest thought;
but when I see you as you are,
I'll praise you as I ought.
5 Till then I would your love proclaim
with every fleeting breath,
and may the music of your name
refresh my soul in death.
