Paul wants to show why only the Spirit can make God known, so he starts with something everyone has experienced. No one can see into your mind unless you choose to tell them. Gill says "the things of a man" are "the thoughts of a man's heart, the conceptions of his mind," and "his designs, purposes, and intentions." Barnes draws out Paul's point: in the same way, no one can reach God's plans on his own, and "unless he chooses to make them known by his Spirit, they must forever remain inscrutable to human view." The question gets the reader to agree with the small case so that the large case follows.

The expected answer is: no one but the person's own spirit. Paul then applies it in the same verse: "even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11). He goes on to say what God has done about that: "we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God" (1 Corinthians 2:12). These things the apostles speak "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth" (1 Corinthians 2:13).

Corinth was a Greek city, and Paul says "the Greeks seek after wisdom" (1 Corinthians 1:22). Yet Paul came "not with excellency of speech or of wisdom," and his preaching was "not with enticing words of man's wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1, 4). Here he explains why the gospel did not depend on human cleverness. Barnes takes "the spirit of man" to mean the human soul or mind, the inner self that knows its own thoughts. The verse comes right after Paul's quotation, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard" (1 Corinthians 2:9): the things God has prepared could never be discovered, only revealed.

This question shows something about God that is both humbling and kind. God cannot be figured out from the outside. His thoughts are His own, and only His Spirit knows them. Gill sees in this comparison evidence that the Spirit is fully God, since He knows God from within. Barnes likewise sees here the Spirit's close union with God.

But God has not kept Himself hidden. The point of the question is not that God is unknowable, but that He makes Himself known by His Spirit, "that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God" (1 Corinthians 2:12). Matthew Henry writes, "In the Holy Scriptures, the mind of Christ, and the mind of God in Christ, are fully made known to us." Knowing God begins with God choosing to speak.