The wisdom that saves us - Notes on 1. Cor 2:6-16

Verse 6-8:

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;

Yet we do speak wisdom

We have talked so much about wisdom over the last few sessions, that by now you'd almost think that being a good Christian is a matter of being as unwise as possible. Not by any means. What Paul has been saying is that what the world calls wisdom isn't very wise at all. Today, Paul will drop that human definition of wisdom, and show us what wisdom really is.

When Paul is talking about wisdom, he is talking about something quite different than the carefully crafted speeches of the orators and wise men that were so highly esteemed in that culture. The ancient Greeks took great pride in the development of great philosophy and advanced culture in their age. No different really from our modern times. This is not a wisdom of the current age though. It's not a modern development, but a wisdom that is older than time itself. And the rulers, the great sages and wise men of this age, those who are looked to for guidance and leadership, are more often than not completely ignorant that such a wisdom even exists.

Predestined, for our glory

We attain this wisdom not by study, but by Gods election. He has predestined for us to have it, and the purpose for us having it is for our glory.

I don't know if that term “for our glory” is shocking to you. It was too me. Because most of the time when we see the word “glory” in the Bible it is an attribute of God. We are commanded to do all we do for His glory (1Cor 6:20: “For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”;1Cor 10:32: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.“). Glory is something that only rightfully belongs to God, and he is very particular about sharing it.

Yet by grace, he shares it with us. When we seek to glorify him, he glorifies us. Not in this present age, but in the age to come. Here is the promise from 1Cor 15:42-43:

So also is the resurrection of the dead It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;

 

The Lord of glory

We will be raised in glory, by means of freely receiving this wisdom as a gift from God. He however is described as the Lord of Glory. The rightful owner of it, the source of it, the master of it. When we are raised in glory, that glory doesn't flow from us. It flows from Christ in us.

Here is the contrast between those whom God have predestined for eternal glory by eternal wisdom, and those who have attained for themselves temporal glory by temporal wisdom. The rulers of this age in all of their temporal wisdom, not only missed the wisdom that could have brought them to true glory. But they hated the Lord of this glory so much that they crucified him.

Verse 9-10

but just as it is written,

"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."

For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

Here is the contents of this wisdom. The depths of God. Those things that godly men of all ages have longed to look into. Verse 9 is actually a quote from one such man, the prophet Isaiah, expressing this longing. We'll read the lengthier quote from Isaiah. We'll read Chapter 64 in it's entirety to gain context for what Paul is saying by that quote. That may seem long, but I would actually have wished to continue on to chapter 65 as well. We see in those two chapters a plead for Gods intervention, to redeem and save the sinful people of Israel, ending in chapter 65 with God's answer. A promise of a new heaven and a new Earth.

Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, That the mountains might quake at Your presence--As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil--To make Your name known to Your adversaries, That the nations may tremble at Your presence! When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence.

For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, Who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, We continued in them a long time; And shall we be saved? 
 

For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, Who arouses himself to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us And have delivered us into the power of our iniquities. 
 

But now, O LORD, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD, Nor remember iniquity forever;

Behold, look now, all of us are Your people. Your holy cities have become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, Where our fathers praised You, Has been burned by fire; And all our precious things have become a ruin. Will You restrain Yourself at these things, O LORD? Will You keep silent and afflict us beyond measure?

Does it strike anyone else that Isaiah's longing is exactly what was fulfilled in the Coming of Christ? What no eye has seen and no ear has heard. A God who Acts on behalf of those who wait for him. Furthermore, we see the description of Israel's sin, and recognize our own sin in it. Even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags to God. And while we were in this condition, he tore the heavens apart, that thick veil of God's silence in judgment of our sins. And he sent his son down to this earth to take our place and atone for our sins.

Love and righteousness in harmony

And no greater picture of the depths of God could ever have been given to us. In the Gospel we see Gods nature more than in anything else. God's judgment on those who hate him is a great and glorious expression of his righteousness, but the knowledge of it doesn't penetrate very deep into his divine nature. You can see it and know God a little, but you have only scratched the surface. Likewise, God's great rewards to those who love him and obey his commands is a great and glorious expression of his love and grace. But it's not deep knowledge. If that's all you know you know God a little. But he has not yet revealed the depths of his nature with you.

The depths of God is where his righteousness meets his love, without either of them being compromised or diminished in any way. The depths of God is where the impossible happens. That God, as Paul puts it in Romans 3:26, can be just andthe justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. You see, letting a guilty man go unpunished might be loving, but it wouldn't be righteous. Giving us what we deserve would be righteous, but he loved us so much that he wouldn't. So he took all the suffering that we deserve on himself in stead, and in so doing remained both completely just and completely loving.

The depths of God is love and righteousness in harmony. The Gospel is where we see it. And it is the wisdom by which he will glorify us. The Gospel is the wisdom that brings us to salvation. And having not only understood it, but taken part of it, we know the depths of God.

Yet the question remains of exactly how we have cometo take part of it. How have we received this knowledge? In verse 10 Paul says that it God has revealed it to us by the Spirit. Then he goes on to explain to us how that exchange works.

 

Verse 11:

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

 

What the spirit knows

A very common conversation I'll have with my wife goes something like this. One of us will ask “What are you thinking about”, to which the other will invariably reply “nothing”. I sometimes wonder what will happen first. That we'll finally learn give up on trying to have that conversation, or that we'll grow in unity to a point where one of us will finally be able to answer the question?

There are some thoughts that can be put into words, and then there are some thoughts that are rooted so deep in your being that when you try to share them they come out the wrong way no matter how you say it. You have to be you to understand what you mean. That's what Paul means when he asks the question “Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?”

If you, being a human, sometimes experience this inability to communicate with another human who has a very similar nature to you, then imagine being God. By definition he is something completely different from anything we have ever known. So how can such a being communicate his thoughts to us? Nobody knows our thoughts except our own spirit. All the more, no one knows God's thoughts except for His own Spirit.

 

Verse 12-13:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words

 

What we can know

Nobody can know God except for the Spirit of God. However, the way God saves us is by bringing us into a union with Christ. And this union is a spiritual union. That means that the Spirit, who is from God, is now also in us. That means that in the same way that you in your natural state have knowledge about yourself that you can't communicate to others, you now have knowledge about God that you find yourself unable to explain to anyone who doesn't have the same Spirit. Paul goes so far as to say in verse 16 “we have the mind of Christ”.

Note however, that we don't know everything there is to know about God, but only the things God has freely given to us. God has chosen to reveal some things, and to keep other things a secret. He says in Deut 29:29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.“

 

What we can share

He says in verse 13 that not only do we know certain things, but we speak of them. That is, we who have the Spirit can share in this knowledge with each other, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

However, when we talk about what we know by the Spirit, a word of caution would be in place. Because human nature is so susceptible to pride. Many have fallen into the temptation of making themselves seem more spiritual than the rest, by making up new doctrines about God that are not supported anywhere in the Bible. They will claim that their own spiritual connection with God is the source of this knowledge, and if you disagree they will say you just aren't spiritual enough to see it. Even if you show them Bible verses that contradict their claims, straightforward, black on white, they will say that they have a “spiritual” understanding of the verse, and say you are wrong to read it literally, and think it means what it actually says.

You are almost certain to meet such people. Notice who they are, and don't listen to them. Pray for them, correct them when you can, and keep an eye on who they talk to, because they will go around spreading their venom to anyone who will listen, and they will do much damage. Especially to newer and immature believers, who might fall for their lies.

 

Verse 14-16:

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.

 

The natural man

The experience of those who are united with Christ stands in stark contrast to the experience of the natural man. Explaining to them the deep thoughts of God, would be like if a random stranger on the street asked me what I was thinking of, and in stead of having the common sense to say “nothing” I would start to pour out my inmost thoughts to someone who didn't even know my name. My thoughts would be foolishness to them. Gods thoughts, being so entirely different from anything human, would be even more foolish to them, until they come to know Him by His Spirit.

 

Appraised by no one

The word Appraised means discerned, evaluated or judged. The Spiritual man has received wisdom from God to know and discern between truth and falsehood. And at the same time he knows who he is in Christ, and doesn't need anyone else to affirm ore evaluate that connection. He is appraised by no one. He stands before God, and even if many might have differing opinions about his performance or spirituality or godliness, he is only worried about the opinion of one. The one who called him. And while he is humble toward rebuke from those who are spiritual, he does not take too much note of unfounded criticism.

 

The mind of Christ

The chapter ends with a Bold statement, and I've mentioned it briefly already. He quotes Isaiah again, this time chapter 40, verse 13, and asks the question “Who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him”. It was unthinkable to the old testament believers to know God in the same intimate way that we know ourselves. And we may have heard it so many times that we're starting to take it for granted, but I want to finish with Paul's shocking claim: But we have the mind of Christ!

Notes on 1. Corinthians 2:1-5: The weak apostle

We will start out with a little repetition from a few weeks back, since I went a little bit ahead of myself speaking about how Paul did not win the Corinthians over with cleverness of speech. He repeats it here as a launching pad to another topic, and that's how we will treat it here too. Briefly, and not in as much detail as we did a few weeks ago.

Verse 1-2:

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

I determined to know nothing

Paul is saying that his focus was sharp. He had determined to know only one thing when he was in Corinth. Christ and him Crucified. That was his message.

Does that mean that every Sunday in the Corinthian church Paul Ascended the pulpit and repeated the same sermon, reiterating Christ's sufferings on the Cross? Not by any means. You see, to someone who knows the true meaning of the Bible, every verse is about Christ and him Crucified. And whatever text you are teaching from, you're either preaching Christ and him Crucified or you're doing it wrong.

But Paul kept his focus on the cross. Not on elaborate arguments, philosophical speculations or other distractions. He had decided to discard that knowledge to give room for his vastly more important knowledge of Christ crucified.

Verse 3-5

I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

Weakness, fear, trembling

Some people picture Paul and the other apostles as some kind of half-angels walking around with a halo over their head, unaffected by anything happening around them. That's not the picture the Bible paints for us though. This is a real man, serving a real God in the midst of real suffering.

If we read in Acts, the chapters preceding Paul's arrival in Corinth, We see him and Silas beaten and imprisoned in Philippi in chapter 16. After their miraculous rescue they traveled to Thessalonica, where their opponents started an uproar against them. They escaped at night and went to Berea, and then Athens, where Paul's message was disregarded and scoffed at, and then finally after all of that, he arrived in Corinth.

We read in Acts 18 that shortly after his arrival, he and his followers were expelled from the synagogue, and in stead started meeting in the home of a brother who lived next to the synagogue. (v7) After this, the persecution apparently escalated to a point where God had to speak to Paul in a vision at night to keep him from leaving. (v9)

With that in mind, it should be no surprise to us that He was weak, fearful and trembling. Yes, Paul had learned to be content in whatever circumstances he was in (Phil 4:11-12), but that doesn't mean he was sailing through his trials with no effort. It rather meant that he had learned to appreciate how God used all of those trials to make him more like Christ.

There are two things I want to point out though, in regards to Paul's weakness, fear and trembling.

He still came

First, we can note that the verse starts with the words “I was with you”. In the midst of weakness, fear and trembling, Paul did not go home. He didn't give up his career in apostolic ministry to try to make it big in the tent-making business instead. And if he had, the Church in Corinth would have never existed, and we wouldn't have had this letter to learn from.

Paul continued serving God in spite of resistance, persecution and trials. Why? We know the answer from our first session in chapter one. He was called as an apostle by the will of God. He was a servant for better or for worse. He had not chosen to be an apostle, and he could not chose not to be one. It was who God had made him.

So even when he felt weak and fearful, giving up was not an option. He did not give in to it, he did not let it passify him, and he did not change any part of his message to please more people. He kept going in spite of his fears.

He had power

The other noteworthy detail is that in the very next verse after Paul said was with them in weakness it says his preaching was with demonstration of power. With little power on his own, Gods power became all the more evident. Paul was weak in himself, so that there would be room for God demonstrating his strength through the working of miracles.

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles. (2Cor 12:12)

It pleased God, by any means to keep Paul humble and weak, so that God's power could be shown. We see this most clearly in 2. Cor 12:7-10

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me--to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

When I am weak I am strong. God's power is perfected through weakness. This is how God has chosen to work in this world. This is how God gets the glory, in stead of his servants being made into idols. In fact Paul was not strong in spite of being weak. He was strong because he was weak.

What faith rests on

Going back to our text in 1. Corinthians 2, Paul offers one more reason why he came in weakness, fear and trembling, and without persuasive words of wisdom: “so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” He goes on to explain that there's certainly no shortage of wisdom in the message he has preached, and that for the mature there are unimaginable depths to delve into. We'll talk more about that next time though. For now we will limit ourselves to considering what faith should rest on.

This text is clear about one thing. It should not rest on persuasive words. You may be familiar with the term apologetics, which means to use logic and reason to argue that the Bible is true. There is a time for apologetics, to build up and strengthen each other in the faith, or to deal with reasonable objections someone raises when you witness to them. But the Bible does not allow us to talk people into becoming Christians. Faith should not rest on intellectual consent to an argument.

Why not? Because we humans are a great deal dumber than we tend to give ourselves credit for. And our mind is easily influenced and deceived. Something as valuable as faith needs a more substantial foundation. One that doesn't move no matter what. It needs to be built on the power of God.

What is the power of God?

If we are going to build our faith on something, we need to know what it is. So it would be good for us to ask the question, what is the power of God.

The most natural reading of the text – which is confirmed in 2. Cor. 12, which we read a little while ago – seems to be that the power Paul came with to the Corinthians was the power to perform supernatural signs and wonders.

Now the next question to naturally follow would be if our preaching today should be accompanied with the same type of signs and wonders. Or if the power of God is expressed in other ways in our time.

We have three options to chose from.

1. Preaching today ought to be accompanied with the same amount of miracles, signs and wonders. If this is the case, I would say today's church is in a dreadful condition, since I'm not aware of any preacher anywhere in the world today whose preaching is accompanied with signs and wonders of the magnitude and regularity of the apostles. It seems conspicuous that most claims to this kind of power today comes from blatant false teachers and heretics. And even more so that the types of miracles are very different from those that are mentioned in the Bible. In stead of sick being healed and demons being cast out, many are finding “angel feathers” and growing gold teeth in their mouths.
   
2. In response to this many have instead said that God stopped all miracles after the Bible was completed. That the miracles performed in the Bible was to make it obvious who were true apostles and who were not. At this time the Bible was still being written as God was working through his chosen apostles in the early church. Many false prophets also claimed to be speaking on God's behalf. As we have read already in 1Cor 12:12, Paul points to miracles as evidence that he is an apostle, and that his teachings are authoritative. That he was certified by God to lay the foundational teachings that the Church would be built on (Eph 2:20). With that foundation now being complete, and the apostolic teachings gathered in the Bible, no one has authority to add anything to this foundation. Therefore miracles would not serve any purpose today.
3. The third alternative is the one I would hold to. And it is something in between the other two. There is much truth in alternative 2. No one has the authority to add to the Bible anymore, and miracles served to authenticate those who had that authority back in those days. Therefore we should expect less of them. If someone makes a claim about doctrine we should not ask them to prove it by showing us a miracle. We should ask them to prove it by pointing it out in the Bible.
   
   However, authentication of true apostles was not the only purpose that miracles served in the Bible. They were also acts of compassion from a kind and loving God to relieve suffering. Not to authenticate ministry. Jesus would be the best example of this as He is often quoted asking those He healed not to let anybody know about it. When Jesus met the widow in Nain, whose son was raised from the dead, it says “When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her”. (Luke 7:13). Likewise before He fed the 4000 He said “I feel compassion for the people because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat.” For this reason, as long as there is suffering in the world, there will be a place for miracles. And it is not wrong to pray for healing or for God to supernaturally meet any legitimate need we might have. However we should not expect miracles to be as regular and frequent as in the ministry of the apostles, simply because no one today serves in that capacity.
   

Improving the Gospel

There is one aspect of the Gospel that God has continuously brought to my mind over the last couple of days, and I would love to share it with whoever would care to read this. I'd like to bring your attention to the simplicity of it. In 1. Corinthians, Paul really stresses the fact that you can be dumb as a doorknob, and still be able to receive it. In some cases that can even be an advantage:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. (1Cor 1:26-29)

This is why it makes me wonder what is going on when people say we need to tweak the Gospel, so that people will be able to understand it.

The Gospel, in it's simplest form, is that God punished his own son for the sins that we had committed. Christ took our guilt on himself, and we are free.

If you are able to take something as simple as that and complicate it to a point where people in general are unable to understand it, you are either the most ungifted preacher alive, or you have already "tweaked" it to a point where it's no longer the Gospel.

The Bible speaks in many places of those who do not understand the Gospel, but it's never because of any lack of mental capacity. The hindrance is always pride. They don't want to understand. For those who are willing to humble themselves it couldn't be more simple. Christ died for your sins.

The proud will mock it, the humble will ask "how do I get in?" The answer is as simple as it could be:

- Just believe it!

Humans being humans, always eager to add works to salvation, the next question is as as predictable as sin itself:

- How do I do that?

- Well, you do already, don't you.

- I guess I do, don't I. How did that happen?

- God did it.

- It can't be this simple. Don't I have to do something?

- Look at what you have to show for yourself this far! A lifetime of selfish decisions, self-worship and rebellion against God. Wouldn't it be better if you would refrain from doing anything more and let God do the doing from now on?

It's not hard to understand. But it takes humility to accept it. Salvation is from beginning to end a work of God.

If those you are trying to reach lack the mental capacity to understand it, then you are preaching a faulty gospel. Preach the Biblical one, and there will be no need for tweaking.

If however you are trying to reach those who are too proud to see the Gospel, tweaking it would make sense, but be aware that you are working against God. He has taken great pleasure in hiding it from the proud. (Luke 10:21) Are you absolutely sure you want to mess with that?

So you think you're smart, huh? - Notes on 1. Corinthians 1:18-31

Verse 18-19:

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE."

This is where we left off last time. God's rejection of the wisdom of men. This wisdom is not what Paul preached in Corinth, and it is not the means God has ordained for salvation. Today we will learn why not. And if not wisdom, then what is the means that he has ordained for salvation?

Verse 20-21:

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Wisdom of the world

I think it would be helpful before we move any further to define what exactly we mean when we talk about the wisdom of the world.

When God created us in his image, one of the attributes he chose to let us inherit from him was the ability to reason. None of the animals have been given this gift, it is only for us. When there's a dispute about some fact, we are able to hear different arguments, consider any evidence presented to us, and from that draw a logical conclusion. This mechanism is built into our souls by our Creator, and it is not meant to be bypassed. It is unnatural for us to go anywhere else than the evidence takes us.

Many mistakingly think that Christian faith stands in opposition to this gift of reason. That faith is believing what you know isn't true, and the more evidence there is against what you believe in, the stronger your faith is. Many Christians even advocate such an idea of faith when, faced with hard questions, they offer answers like “I guess this is just on the level of faith”, or “It's just what I chose to believe”.

When they say that, they are saying “I'm under some compulsion that forces me to ignore the evidence and make an irrational conclusion”. While they might imagine it's a very spiritual answer it's obviously not a very satisfying one. An atheist, rejecting such a testimony would actually be right in doing so, because he is only using his God-given gift of reason to conclude that they themselves don't even believe what they believe. The Bible does not afford us cop-out answers like that. To the Contrary, 1Peter 3:15 says

“but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;”

So if we are called to use the gift of reason in defense of our faith, we cannot possibly at the same time be asked to ignore reason to acquire this faith. Not to mention that this gift of reason is so central to everything we do that it is very hard to ignore. If you don't believe me, try surviving for one day without using logic and reasoning. It is in every way a completely unreasonable request. No matter how persuasive and winsome we may be, we should not expect to be taken seriously if we go around asking people to believe in God in a way that is contrary to the gift of reason that God has given them.

So if logic and reason is not the wisdom of the world, then what is?

Atheists seem to take great pride in the delusion of their own superior ability to reason, independently from what they see as the bondage of religious doctrine. They imagine themselves to be completely objective, since they do not work from a predefined set of unchangeable truths established by divine authority.

Of course they are delusional on several levels. Firstly by inconsistency, because the very laws of logic and reason are borrowed from the set of divinely authoritative truth that they take such pride in claiming to avoid. Secondly by presumption, because in establishing their freedom from divine truth, they must by necessity enslave themselves to the lie that there is no divine truth. They throw out a true presupposition, replace it with a false presupposition, and then pretend that there is no presupposition at all.

How do I know this?

Romans 1:18 to 25 teaches us that an objective mind, never having heard the Gospel, following the evidence to it's natural conclusion would not only know that there is a God, but would even know some of his attributes. And that anyone who comes to a different conclusion is in fact “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness”

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

And here, my friends, you see a picture of the wisdom of man. You start with our God-given gift of reason, exchange the truth of God for a lie, worship whatever you think most worthy of your devotion, and live life with no other moral compass than your own personal preference. God is out of the picture and you are at the center. There's no higher law than your own.

Here we have the sinner that we want to reach. Now let's look at our two options. We can either try wisdom, or we can try supernatural power.

I'd like to see you reason with the sinner, starting at their presupposition that there is no divine truth, and build on that until you end up at the conclusion that the Bible is divine truth. It is a logical impossibility. The only way I could imagine it being done is if you at some point got so entangled in the argument that you both forgot what was the original presupposition.

So that alone would explain why God has rejected that way of salvation, but more important in todays text is the pride aspect.

Verse 22-29

For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.

God's pleasure in crushing human pride

We will not repeat to much of what we have gone through earlier on the subject of God's calling and it's effect on us, but what we will consider is the fact that God takes such pleasure in crushing human pride. Verse 21 said He is “well-pleased” to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached.

Foolishness here does not mean that it's illogical, or irrational. It just means that it's simple, and easily understood, even by common people. Those that the Greek debaters and philosophers would look down upon and call fools. I believe that when Paul is choosing to use the word foolishness, he is making a sarcastic reference to this prideful attitude in the Greek elite. In other places the Bible says the same thing using other words than foolishness.

For example in Matthew 11:25-26, after Jesus has preached, and His hearers have pridefully rejected Him and walked away, rather than being discouraged He is filled with praise to His Father, when He says:

“I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.”

There it is again. “This was well-pleasing in Your sight”. Are you shocked that this is in the Bible? We just witnessed Jesus himself praising the Father because it literally pleased Him to hide the truth of the Gospel from certain people, effectively sealing their eternal destiny in Hell.

Are you shocked or outraged by that? That might be because you take the sin of pride much more lightly than God does.

If I asked you to write down for me on a note the five worst sins you could imagine, I could predict with some certainty what your notes would say. Murder, various sexual perversions, abuses, and so on. And I dare propose that the sin of pride would not make it to your list at all.

Yet all of those other sins are only mentioned briefly a handful of times in the Bible. But the sin of pride is treated in length, from every possible angle, again and again and again. It is so often repeated that we would tend to not take note of it anymore when we see it, like in this passage.

Pride is not merely a sin among other sins. It is the sin of sins. It is evil in its most basic and undiluted form. Every other sin on your note flows from it.

Pride was the sin that got Lucifer kicked out of Heaven:

How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;' (Is 14:12-14)

Likewise it was with pride Adam and Eve were tempted, and fell, casting the curse of sin over all of mankind:

The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Gen 3:4-5)

And would you not have to agree that it is pride—yourself usurping God's role as law-giver, and deciding for yourself—that has been at the foundation every single time you yourself have fallen into some sin?

This then, is why God has taken pleasure in hiding the truth of the Gospel from the proud. A proud heart would do nothing else with the Gospel than twist it into an instrument of their own self-worship. So even if it had been logically possible to grasp the gospel by worldly wisdom, those who got it would take great pride in having conquered such a magnificent concept by the power of their own intellect.

God will not cooperate on such terms. He is the creator of everything, the infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, self-existing supreme being, totally fulfilled and satisfied in himself. He alone is worthy of worship, and he is not an idolater. God does not bow down to anything lesser than himself. Least of all weak and insignificant men pridefully reaching for his crown.

So he made sure that no one would have any occasion to boast before him. He chose a simple way for simple people to be saved. Faith is the most basic intellectual mechanism there is. Even a child is able to practice it, and will do so gladly with everything they are told. You hear, and you believe. It's that simple.

And still, in our natural state we are all so proud that it takes a miracle of God to enable us to do it.

Verse 30-31

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD."

By his doing:

This seems to be another thing we keep coming back to. Salvation by His doing, and not ours. Even such a simple thing as faith is out of our reach, and we can only receive it as a gift from God. This ensures that everyone who comes to him comes on their knees. Humble, offering noting on his own.

What do we say then when we are asked why, all of a sudden, we're so different? “I cleaned up my life”? “I pulled myself together and became a better person”? “I found Jesus, and he helped me take responsibility for my life”? All of those are out of the question. Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

All we can do is point to Christ and say “He did it”.

Jake's Fortune book review

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Ray Comfort is one of the most influential preachers today when it comes to personal evangelism. His message of law before grace is loved and hated all over the world. I count myself among those who love it. When I first heard him preach on Hell's best kept secret, and true and false conversion about a decade ago, it drastically changed my understanding of God, my understanding of man, and my view on evangelism.

In addition to his preaching ministry, his open air preaching, his training academy, and his TV-Show, he finds time to write more books than most people will ever hope to read. Jake's fortune is his first fictional work though. And if I tried describing it I wouldn't do it justice. Let me just say that Ray is Ray, and while it's a book about gunfights, betrayal, gold, love and much more the gospel is brilliantly woven into every story and subplot.

My wife and I have both been reading it this last week, and from the very first page we have hardly been able to put it down. It is most absolutely among my favorite books ever.

And if you are not familiar with Ray Comfort, then please, please, please click on the links above and listen to those two  sermons. You'll never regret it.

Invalid argument: The "potential person"

Someone told me that a fetus is not a person because it can't think, feel and be self-aware. It's merely a potential person until it possesses those qualities. Therefore it is not immoral to end it's life.

By that logic, if the same person tripped over his ego and knocked himself temporarily unconscious, he too would be unable to think, feel and be self-aware. Now he could potentially wake up again and regain his personhood, but until he does he's only a potential person, and therefore it is not immoral to kill him.

Paul's contextualization fail - Notes on 1. Corinthians 1:17-18

Verse 17

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

Cleverness of speech

Paul makes the transition from the previous topic of divisions to the power of the Gospel. Last time we spoke about Not picking apart the picture of God painted by all those who preach his name in truth. This time we will take a closer look at what appeal this picture has to us. What is the power that draws us to it?

The power of Paul's message was not in his cleverness of speech. That's certainly not because of any lack of intellectual ability on his part. When we read through Paul's writings that is abundantly clear. There's no doubt that the man is brilliant and quite able to preach the Gospel with cleverness of speech. So why didn't he? And out of all places he might decide not to speak cleverly, why did it have to be in Corinth?

You see, Corinthians—and Greeks in general—were people who had an appreciation for clever speech. Carefully crafted arguments and high-minded philosophy was highly esteemed in their culture. The elite members of society would devote most of their time to political and philosophical discourse. This is the culture that brought us such names as Plato and Aristotle, still famous today for their handling of what the Greeks called the “Logos” – The word.

We see a snapshot of this Greek culture in Acts 17, as Paul runs into some of these Greek philosophers in Athens, on his way to Corinth.

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, "What would this idle babbler wish to say?" Others, "He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,"--because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean." (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) (Acts 17:16-21)

So why, out of all places, did Paul not preach with cleverness of speech here in Corinth? The city where cleverness of speech was alpha and omega?

What is the one thing everybody knows about evangelism? We need to put the message in a cultural context if we want the culture to listen. We need to make it appealing to them. If the culture you're trying to reach listens to a certain type of music, you need to make that kind of music with Christian lyrics. If the culture likes dance, you need to have Christian dance performances in church. If the culture likes to watch TV, you make Christian TV programs or start a Christian TV channel, and so on. So following this logic, if the culture likes cleverness of speech, than you need to preach the Gospel with cleverness of speech. If that current paradigm for gospel preaching is correct, than we're witnessing a monumental failure on Paul's part. How could he get something this simple wrong?

He gives us the reason: So that the cross of Christ would not be made void. You see, true faith is not something that you can be persuaded into. It is a gift given from God.

That's not to say that it's impossible to persuade someone to become a Christian by natural means. I'm sure Paul would have been able to convince many of the truthfulness of the Gospel if he had used cleverness of speech. Likewise, in our cultural context, multitudes make a profession of faith after Christian concerts, after watching Christian TV programs, and so on. So the problem isn't that it lacks the power to persuade. Rather the problem is that it indeed has this power.

You see if anyone is persuaded to come to Christ by any other power than God's calling, he will still go to hell when he dies. If he came because the preaching made sense to him or because he liked the music, and not because he has been born again by the power of God, then he may be religious, but he's still spiritually dead.
We can not afford to let the power of how we preach replace the power of what we preach.

If Paul had done that, he would be in danger of voiding the Gospel of it's power—the Gospel would have no life-changing effect on them—and producing many false converts, who would add dead weight to the church and eventually fall away. Potentially becoming very deadly weapons in Satan's hands as the persecution of the church was increasing.

Verse 18

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Are perishing … are being saved

Notice how Paul here uses the present tense of perishing and being saved. He did not say us who have been saved, or will be saved, although the Bible speaks of salvation both as a past and a future event in other places. Here he choses to speak about it as something present and ongoing. He sees two types of people: Those who are in the process of being saved and those who are in the process of perishing.

It's like a man who has fallen into a deep hole, and is in the process of being pulled out. He could say that he was saved when someone threw him a rope and started pulling him up. He could say that he is being saved, because after all he is still in the hole. And he could say that he will be saved once he reach the top of the hole and has solid ground under his feet again.

We need to be careful that we never think of our salvation as a past event that we're done with. It is a past event, but it's also an ongoing present event, and a future event. And we can never say that we got saved at a time in the past if we're not today holding on to the rope that is pulling us up.

This is all much clearer from Gods perspective. After all he sees our past, present and future all at the same time. He will never be confused by someone who seem for a time to be heading in the right direction, yet end up perishing, or someone who seems for a time to be on a highway to hell and ends up being saved.

To us humans, experiencing the world one moment at a time, can not speak definitively about who is perishing and who is being saved. We can only speak about what direction someone appear to be traveling in at those moments when we have observed them. Over time we can make qualified assumptions about which category they belong in, based on experience and our limited knowledge of God's plan. But only God has the full picture.

The power

Notice how this verse does not say the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but wisdom to us. It says wisdom later on, in verse 24, so it wouldn't by any means be wrong to say wisdom. But before this message will be wisdom, it is power. The word of the Cross is the Power of God. And this power opens our minds to the wisdom of God.

It might not be a completely impossible task to use natural wisdom to persuade someone of the truthfulness of the gospel, but it can never lead anyone to it's power. It is not the method that God has prescribed. To the contrary he says in the next verse:

For it is written, "I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE." 

God has rejected the wisdom of the world as a means to salvation. He's given us a message that the world will generally find foolish. Yet combined with God's calling it becomes a power that bypasses our natural intellect and reveals a different kind of wisdom. We'll look more into that next time, which is why you need to come back.