Fallen man’s hostility toward God is not without explanation. The philosophical root is the blindness of fallen man who sees the things of God as foolishness. This idea goes beyond just a simple rejection of God’s mandates. Rather, men in their natural condition do not perceive the value of the things of God; that is, in many ways the fallen man does not acknowledge God’s word as having jurisdiction over him nor does he acknowledge the good that God’s word promotes either generally or spiritually. In fact, fallen man sees God as without anything meritorious in his day to day life and therefore rejects the things of God as worthless or at best non applicable. The Apostle Paul gives insight to this spiritual truth about fallen man. He says in 1 Corinthians 2: 14, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” What the apostle is teaching here is that fallen man does not accept the things of God because they are folly (μωρία) to him. The content of what may be known about God to the natural man does not present anything of value to him given fallen man’s value set and perception of reality. In other words, fallen man would be just as likely to disregard the things of God as he would be to discard normal house hold trash; it simply is not worth keeping and is seen as undesirable for the warp and woof of normal everyday life. Paul goes on to further state that this rejection of the things of God by fallen man is the result of not being able to understand the quality and value of God and His word. In the second half of the verse Paul says, “and he (the natural man) is not able to understand them.” The term used here for “understand” is the Greek phrase οὐ δύναται γνῶναι; literally rendered “no power or strength to know by experience.” The word γνῶναι translated understand is the word most often used in the New Testament to indicate the form of knowledge that comes from personal experience or interaction. Here Paul has placed the word in the aorist active infinitival form which as seen earlier semantically indicates an acquired ability. In essence, the natural, fallen man does not have the ability to experience the things of God in such a way as to grasp the value of their intended benefit. The reason for this bereftness is that what is necessary for the acquisition of this spiritual understanding is spiritual discernment. At the beginning of this discussion concerning the nature of fallen man, it was asserted that the natural man is utterly dead spiritually. Again, this does not mean that the natural man is devoid of reason or logic. It does not mean that he cannot or does not do good moral things. It simply means that he is unable to accomplish or comprehend anything of a spiritual nature; to wit the discussion at hand. The natural man does not rightly appraise the things of God due to the fact that he sees no inherent value in them. Thusly the natural man gives no credence to God or His word. Additionally, the natural man will not change his estimation by anything other than a divine movement of God upon his heart and mind changing his value set from a worldly to an eternal one. The implications of this statement should be clear to the regenerated mind that still espouses the notion that God only suggests salvation to man and allows fallen man to make a supposed “conscience choice.” According to Paul here, there is no possibility for this type of choosing apart from God’s divine intervention initially. Given this divine initiation, it is simply just a matter of tracing back through the manifest effects to discover the root cause. None-the-less, the simple and unabated proof is that the fallen, natural man is simply not able to accomplish such a task and as a consequence, sees all such transactions as not worth his time.
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