---

Various meanings have been attached to this expression.

I. ADAPTING SPIRITUAL WORDS TO SPIRITUAL THINGS, and not language incongruous, as we should be doing if we spoke the things of God in words taught by human wisdom. But the apostle has already said this in effect, and according to this view there is a play on the word "spiritual" which is not in his manner; for "spiritual words" can only mean words taught by the Spirit (Ephesians 5:19), but "spiritual things" must mean things that reveal God.

II. ADAPTING SPIRITUAL THINGS TO SPIRITUAL MEN. But this is the direct opposite of what Paul declares, that spiritual men understand spiritual things, so that no adaptation of them to their capacity is needed.

III. INTERPRETING SPIRITUAL THINGS TO SPIRITUAL MEN. But it is only in reference to dreams and visions that the word συγκρίνω means "to interpret," and that with few exceptions in the LXX. In no passage are the things of God represented as dreams to be interpreted, or allegories of which the apostles have the key.

IV. INTERPRETING SPIRITUAL THINGS BY SPIRITUAL WORDS is open to the same objection.

V. PROVING THE TRUTH OF SPIRITUAL THINGS (whether Old Testament types or the teaching of the Spirit) BY THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE SPIRIT. But the word does not elsewhere signify "to prove."

VI. COMPARING SPIRITUAL THINGS WITH SPIRITUAL is satisfactory. Christianity is a Divine wisdom. But this means from the side of teacher and of learner that revealed truths are combined so as to form a consistent and well-proportioned system of truth in their correlation. The higher Christian training resembles Plato's criterion of dialectical power, the faculty to see the relation of the sciences to one another and to true being.

(Principal Edwards.)

---

---

KJV: Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

WEB: Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.