Now it gets down to a slam dunk on these truths;
Wuest - The word “natural” is the translation of a Greek word which Paul uses to describe to the Corinthian Greeks t
he unregenerate man at his best, the man whom Greek philosophy commended, the man actuated by the higher thoughts and aims of the natural life. The word used here is not the Greek word which speaks of the sensual man. It is the word coined by Aristotle to distinguish the pleasures of the soul, such as ambition and the desire for knowledge, from those of the body.
The natural man here spoken of is the educated man at the height of his intellectual powers, but devoid of the Spirit of God. The word translated “receiveth” does not imply an active appropriation, but a certain attitude of passive acceptance when favorable, and of rejection if unfavorable. This man, whose powers of apprehension are limited to the exercise of his reason, does not admit these spiritual things into his heart. The reason for this rejection is that they are foolishness to him. (Ibid)
Friberg summary of psuchikos = of life in the natural world and what pertains to it; (1) as governed by sensual appetites and lived apart from the Spirit of God natural, unspiritual, worldly (
1Cor 2.14;
Jude 1:19); (2) as being a characteristic of the earthly body physical, natural (
1Cor 15.44); neuter as a substantive - what is physical (
1Cor 15.46).
Jude 1:19 calls the teachers of error worldly (lit. ‘psychic’) people, who do not have the Spirit. (Analytical Lexicon)
Barclay - Even then it is not every man who can understand these things. Paul speaks about interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. He distinguishes two kinds of men. (a) There are those who are
pneumatikos. Pneumais the word for Spirit; and the man who is pneumatikos is the man who is sensitive to the Spirit and whose life is guided by the Spirit. (b) There is the man who is psuchikos. Psuche in Greek is often translated soul; but that is not its real meaning. It is the principle of physical life. Everything which is alive has psuche; a dog, a cat, any animal has psuche, but it has not got pneuma. Psuche is that physical life which a man shares with every living thing; but pneuma is that which makes a man different from the rest of creation and kin to God. So in
1Cor 2:14Paul speaks of the man who is psuchikos. He is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things. (His interests and aims do not go beyond physical life). (
1 Corinthians - William Barclay's Daily Study Bible)
As Dr DeHaan says "Regeneration… is a supernatural act of God whereby a spiritual creation takes place, and we behold things which are utterly unknown and must remain completely unknown even to the most cultured, sophisticated, educated of those of Adam’s race who have never experienced the new birth. And now we come to see the striking contrast in our Scripture. The natural man, the unregenerated man, sees none of these glories of this Book and of salvation and of God’s plan of redemption. He lives in an entirely different world, the world of sense and of sight, touch and sound. The tangible world is the habitat of the natural man in his unregenerate state, and he is, therefore, totally ignorant of the spiritual realm which transcends all of these things." (1 Corinthians Commentary)
Notice, no nonsense about the milk of the word here, nope.