Spiritual Wisdom

Parkdale Grace Fellowship

Sunday AM, February 17, 2008

1 Corinthians 2:6-10a

Spiritual Wisdom

The passage we are studying today highlights the contrast between the awesome sovereignty of our infinitely great God and our own weakness, helplessness and our hopelessness because of sin. If God were to go away, to completely withdraw His activity from the planet, and leave the rest of the work of evangelizing this world up to us Christians and the resources we have available to us, not a single soul would ever embrace the gospel message and find salvation. The message of our passage today is that it is impossible for the wisest of humans, exercising mere human wisdom, to ever see or understand or accept the wisdom of God’s gospel message which is based upon the cross of Jesus Christ. There are things of God that the natural mind can understand, but the wisdom of God, when it comes to the plan of salvation, is incomprehensible and does not compute with our own natural sense of wisdom. Our passage today highlights the truth of Isaiah 55:9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Up to this point in his letter Paul has been emphasizing that the gospel and mere human wisdom clash with each other. Through worldly wisdom the gospel can never be understood and the wise and great ones of the world have almost always despised and rejected both the gospel message and the messenger of the gospel. But the gospel message is not foolish, it is incredible wisdom, but wisdom of a different kind, spiritual wisdom, it is the wisdom of God, but the wisdom of God can never be grasped by the natural mind.

In the Garden of Eden when mankind first sinned something inside of us died. That something was our spirit. Our spirit did not cease to exist but it lost its ability to relate to God. We lost our ability to comprehend God and many of the things of God. We lost our natural ability to know God’s voice and to communicate with Him. We lost our ability to love God. We lost our desire for the true God and instead we pursued false gods of our own making. When Adam sinned a gulf was created between mankind and God and all of mankind was separated from God and we lost our ability to comprehend the wisdom of God.

Vs. 6

In the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians Paul, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, rejects the wisdom of this world, but he does not reject all wisdom. In contrast, Paul says, “We speak wisdom . . .” although the world does not recognize it. It seems like foolishness to the world (vs. 23). And this is not Paul’s message only, for he uses the plural “we” speak wisdom. He is most likely including Apollos and Peter who are mentioned in chapter one verse 12. They are all preaching the same wisdom of God.

Paul and the apostles proclaimed their gospel widely to all who would listen. However most did not recognize it as a wise message. Who then are the “mature” that did recognize the wisdom of the gospel? And what is maturity? Full maturity is when one reaches the complete potential of development that they were intended to reach. The more developed a person is the more mature they are. In God’s sight, we human beings reach full maturity to the degree that we become conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). So the more we are like Christ the more mature we are. The maturity the Bible is talking about here is Christ-likeness. (Thiselton, p. 54)

Obviously then there are different levels of maturity. At the most basic stage of maturity we begin with the newly born-again believer. Compared to a non-believer, all believers are mature in terms of progressing toward their created purpose in life. It is a sobering thought to realize that there is absolutely no maturity; no progress or development in God’s sight among even the most learned and accomplished unbeliever in the world. In spite of all their accomplishments over a long and full lifetime, until they have been born again there is no progress whatsoever toward becoming what God created them to be. True life only begins the moment we by faith receive Jesus Christ as our savior. Until then we are dead in our sin and there can be no maturing progress at all. We were not put on this world to live a full life, we were put on this world to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ by letting His Spirit express His life through our mortal bodies. And until we yield to Him we have nothing in us of the life God intended for us.

Only those who are mature will recognize the great wisdom of the gospel and of course the greater the maturity the greater the awareness of the tremendous wisdom there is hidden in the message of the cross of Jesus Christ. But until you have by faith become a child of God there is no maturity and no ability to recognize let alone comprehend the wisdom of God. Salvation is where the maturing process begins.

Let me draw your attention to one of God’s greatest ways of cultivating maturity in the life of a believer: Romans 5:3-4 “. . . we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.” The Amplified Bible says that perseverance develops “maturity of character”. Often those who have experienced the greatest trials and hardships in their walk with the Lord are capable of the greatest insights into the wisdom of God. Spiritual maturity and development does not come from reading books, or attending seminars. Spiritual maturity comes from experiencing and learning to trust God’s faithfulness in the trials of life. We cannot exercise our natural human wisdom in the hopes of reaching spiritual maturity.

I studied many years in Bible college and seminary in the belief that through applying my intellect to the study of God’s word I could mature as a Christian. But after many years of striving to grow through applying my intellect I was more frustrated and disillusioned with the gospel than I had ever been before. And my life was characterized by growing spiritual and moral impotence and failure. But at the depth of that crisis of frustration and failure in my life as I gave up all hope of ever being able to achieve anything close to spiritual maturity the Lord broke through in my time of desperation and began to open my eyes to see and to understand the gospel message in a greater capacity than I had ever understood it before. Revelation came not through applying human wisdom but through a divine, merciful sovereign act of God meeting me in my place of desperation and need. It was in the weakness of failure that God revealed His way to me, not in the strength of human wisdom. Was my formal Bible education a waste? Definitely not! I learned many valuable truths which are a tremendous blessing to me to this day. But the education did not produce Christ-likeness or maturity. Those truths I was taught were of little benefit to me until the Lord had convinced me through trials and failures that apart from His sovereign work in my life I could accomplish nothing in my own wisdom and strength.

Again in verse six Paul emphasizes that the wisdom of God that they teach is different from the wisdom of this age, and it is different from the wisdom of the rulers of this age, who are all coming to nothing. Paul uses the expression, “of this age” when referring to the wisdom and the rulers that are contrasted with true wisdom. Of this age refers to the limited duration of both human wisdom and of the rulers. They last only for a season and they are out of date, replaced by the latest ideas.

Who are the rulers of this age? They are the political rulers, they are the social celebrities, the ones who set the trends and determine what is popular and what is not; they are also the educators who shape the minds of our young people and influential religious figures who cultivate their own following of disciples. The rulers of this age can also include demonic powers working behind the scenes to influence this world. But the rulers of this age are always changing. The influential people of today are very different from the influential people of our parents’ generation. And the wisdom of the influential people of our day is very different from the wisdom of the influential people of our parents’ day. But both God and His wisdom never change; they are the same yesterday today and forever.

This is a helpful principle to remember when sifting through all the new trends and new teaching in Christian books and Christian ministries in search of something trustworthy. That which is based upon God’s wisdom will be consistent with the unchangeable word of God. But that which is patterned after the trends of this world will be characterized by being new or novel or will attempt to blend in with popular fads which come and go. Increasingly I enjoy reading the old classic writers whose ministry and writing have been proven by the test of time.

Vs. 7-8

Let’s clarify what exactly Paul is referring to here in these verses when he talks about the wisdom he speaks. Paul made it very clear what it was that he spoke to the Corinthian believers in 1:22-24, “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And again in 1 Corinthians 2:2 “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

There are two aspects of the cross which are included in Paul’s comments about the mystery and the hidden wisdom of God. The one aspect of the cross is for the sinner and it deals with the problem of our sin. The other aspect of the cross is for the believer and it deals with the problem of our self or our flesh. Both aspects of the cross are hidden from the natural mind. Contrary to the world’s wisdom, we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. The wisdom of God is referred to as both a mystery and as hidden. The word mystery does not mean a puzzle that is difficult to solve. It means a secret we are completely unable to discover but which God has now revealed. (Morris, p. 54) These expressions of God’s wisdom being a mystery and hidden teach us that it is impossible for humans to ever find or discover God’s wisdom unless He reveals it to us. Jump ahead to 1 Cor. 2:10a to see the only way of knowing God’s wisdom. “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.”

The wisdom of God remains hidden (a perfect participle indicating a continuing condition) to the natural mind but is only revealed to the spiritual. Notice the last part of verse 7 tells us that the wisdom of the gospel message was ordained by God before the ages, meaning before the creation of the world. Therefore the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden was not an unexpected tragedy that caught God off guard. The plan of salvation, the cross of Jesus Christ and the gospel message were not a plan that God had to come up with after the fall of man. No it was all planned and ordained by a sovereign God before the ages of time began. We often think that after the six days of creation God’s plan for mankind was working out beautifully until Adam and Eve blew it, then God had to come up with a rescue plan, plan B to fix the mess caused by Adam and Eve. But that is not quite right. God has always had only one plan. Before time began, before He ever began creating the world, God planned the gospel which all along was God’s method of choice to bring us into His glory and into fellowship with Him. The original creation was never intended by God to bring us into His glory but all along it was the cross of Jesus Christ which was God’s planned method of bringing mankind to Christ-likeness and glory.

God’s secret wisdom was not learned or discovered by any of the rulers of Jesus’ day who played a part in His crucifixion though many of them were religious scholars who had spent a lifetime studying the Scriptures. Yet they had no idea what the cross was all about. They were oblivious to what God was doing. Even the spiritual rulers of the demonic realm with their advanced knowledge and perception had no idea that they were sealing their own defeat when they moved the hearts of men to crucify Jesus. The wisdom of God unto salvation is hidden to all except those whom God graciously reveals it to. Romans 3:10-11 “As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands [the spiritual wisdom of God]; There is none who seeks after God.”

· Vs. 9

There are two great truths being taught by this verse. First of all, and most closely linked to the context, the Lord is saying through this verse that there is no means of learning or gaining understanding available to mankind by which we can discover and comprehend the salvation plan of God. The glories of God’s wisdom cannot be discovered by observation with the natural eyes or by reading the writings of great men. Even the truths of the Bible are hidden and impossible for the natural man to grasp though he would read them over a hundred times. (vs. 14) You can simplify the translation of the Bible as much as you want but until the Holy Spirit gives revelation they will never see the truth and wisdom of God. You can give your unsaved friend the best books on the market explaining the gospel of God but unless the Holy Spirit gives them understanding they will never see the truth. The message of the cross cannot be discovered or understood by natural hearing, for “. . . no ear has heard . . .” Not by listening to great teachers or stirring sermons or by the earnest appeals of a loving friend. Unless the Holy Spirit opens their ears and gives supernatural understanding they will never grasp the wisdom of the gospel.

“Nor have entered into the heart of man . . .” In Greek culture the heart stood for the whole of the inner life including thought and will as well as the emotions. (Morris, p. 56) Appealing to the emotions of a person with a tearful testimony will not open their eyes to the mysteries of the Gospel. Appealing to the intellect of a man through reason, logic and overwhelming evidence will not enable a person to comprehend the mystery of the cross. There is absolutely no way that anyone can understand the glorious message of the cross except for it to be supernaturally revealed to them by the Holy Spirit of God. Therefore the most important aspect of evangelism is prayer. The most important ingredient for any form of spiritual growth and insight is prayer that depends upon God to reveal the truth that we might comprehend.

This truth applies to the unbeliever who hears the gospel, they will not understand unless the Holy Spirit enables them. And this truth applies equally to us who are children of God; we will never grasp the deeper truths of the cross through the natural senses or through trying to figure it out with our intellect or by sensing it with our emotions. It is something that can only be made known by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. (See verse 10a)

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