There are certain passages that are popularly used – out of context. One such passage is that found in 1 Corinthians 2:9, where Paul writes: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” This passage does not refer to heaven.
First, ear has heard what God has prepared for man in heaven. You might even say eye has seen what God has prepared for man in heaven. Revelation 4, 5, 7, 14, 19, 21-22 gives us a host of various images that describe what God has prepared for man in heaven. The eye of John has seen it, in vision, and our ears have heard it. I hope you keep those images in your heart each day.
No, 1 Corinthians 2:9 is about something else. The context of 1 Corinthians 2 (and chapter 1) is the wisdom of God revealed through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross if you look back, beginning around 1:17. In the immediate context, Paul refers to the “testimony of God,” i. e., the Gospel (2:1).
Paul preached among the Corinthians “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” (2:3) and his preaching itself was “not in persuasive words of wisdom” (2:4). Rather, it was the Holy Spirit operating miraculously through Paul’s preaching and miraculous gifts that gave a foundation to the message he was preaching. This was done so that their (and our) faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God (2:5).
Paul writes that neither he, nor Apollos, nor Cephas did not preach a wisdom “of this age,” that is an earthly-mindset wisdom, but “God’s wisdom in a mystery” (2:7). This wisdom had been hidden throughout the ages but God has revealed this mystery “to our glory.”
This wisdom, the “testimony of God” Paul had preached (2:1), was withheld from the “rulers of this age” (2:8). Why? If they had understood the wisdom of God – sending Jesus to the cross for our salvation – they would not have “crucified the Lord of glory.” That’s why God kept this wise plan of salvation hidden throughout the ages. If Satan had known the cross of Christ was in God’s plan all along, he would have done everything he could to keep Christ off the cross, not put Him on it.
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“Just as it is written,” Paul writes, and then quotes the above passage, which comes from the Greek translation of Isaiah 64:4 & 65:17. We’ll come back to the Isaiah passage in just a moment. But in this passage, observe in verse 10 that Paul writes: “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit.” Paul goes on to describe the process of inspiration and revelation – God, through the Holy Spirit, revealed these things (“eye has not seen nor ear heard”) to Paul who then wrote down these spiritual things in spiritual words (2:12-13).
The context shows us that what “eye has not seen nor ear heard, and which has not entered the heart of man” is the Gospel age with all of its spiritual blessings available now through Jesus Christ. We have those spiritual blessings. They are no longer a mystery! This passage is the exact same context as what we hear from the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 1:10-12.
Roy Ciampa and Brian Rosner, commenting on this quotation (of Isaiah 64:4) in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, agree: “Thus Paul, in citing this Scripture, shows that the wisdom that he and other apostles and prophets preach is nothing less than the fullness of God’s plan of salvation. What Isaiah promised as part of a dramatic divine intervention (see 64:1), Paul takes to be fulfilled in the message and proclamation of the cross” (pg. 701; emph. added).
Since Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, applies those two passages from Isaiah to the Christian (Gospel) age, then let us interpret those contexts from Isaiah as predicting the coming of Jesus Christ and His church.
–Paul Holland
