Reading the Bible (9)

 

Bible Study – Part Two

God’s Word – God’s Wisdom

 

            As we continue our exploration of how to study the Bible, the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians has a number of points to help us:

1CO 2:1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

 

    1CO 2:6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:

 

  "No eye has seen,

    no ear has heard,

  no mind has conceived

    what God has prepared for those who love him" --

 

        1CO 2:10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

    The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. 14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:

 

  1CO 2:16 "For who has known the mind of the Lord

    that he may instruct him?"

 

But we have the mind of Christ.

            Corinth was (and is) a city in Greece. In Paul’s time it was an important city, a center of economic and religious power. Being a Greek city meant that the word “wisdom” had two primary meanings to its people, one was religious and the other was philosophical.

            When we think of the wisdom of the Greeks we normally think of philosophical wisdom. Greek philosophers included Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, to name just some of the better known Greeks. However, in addition to philosophical wisdom many Greeks participated in what we know as “mystery religions” that taught the wisdom of special mysteries to those who were initiated into them. 

            In 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 31 Paul makes it clear that the preaching of the Cross of Christ does not consist in using words of wisdom (1:17), that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world (1:20), and that the Greeks are always seeking after wisdom (1:22), and that therefore Christ crucified is to the Greeks foolishness (1:23). Then in 1:30 we are told that Christ is to be our wisdom.

            Paul continues his contrast between Christ and the Cross versus the wisdom of men in Chapter Two. In verse one he tells us that he didn’t use eloquence or superior wisdom when he taught the Corinthians, in verse four he writes that his preaching was not  with wise and persuasive words, and then in verse five Paul tells us that his goal was that the faith of the Corinthians might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

            Up until verse five of Chapter Two of 1 Corinthians we might think that Paul had something against learning and wisdom. It wasn’t, however, that Paul was against learning and wisdom, it was the kind of learning and wisdom that Paul was against when it comes to knowing God, for in verse six Paul focuses our attention on another kind of wisdom:

            We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.

 

So we are not to “check our minds at the door” when we approach the Bible, because God has given us minds to use, but our minds alone cannot understand the Bible because, once again, it is God’s Book.

In 2:11 Paul points out that man knows about man and that God knows about God and in verse 12 we’re told that those who trust in Christ have been given God’s Spirit in order that we may understand what God has freely given us. Verse 13 teaches us that God’s Spirit teaches us spiritual truths in spiritual words. Another way to translate the thought in verse 13 is, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

Then in verse 14 Paul writes that the man without the Spirit (or the natural man/woman) cannot understand and accept the things that come from God, because the things that come from God are things that are spiritually discerned (understood).

While the chapter concludes with the statement that we have the mind of Christ, it is important to note that Paul’s argument carries over into Chapter Three in which he points out that he can’t talk to the Corinthians as spiritual people because they are still acting like babies – but that is beyond our focus in this study.

So what is Paul saying in 1 Corinthians Chapter Two that relates to how to study the Bible and why is it important?

He isn’t saying that we shouldn’t think, he isn’t saying that we shouldn’t use wisdom, he isn’t saying that God doesn’t want us to understand spiritual things.

He is saying that our thinking should be under the influence of the Spirit of God, he is saying that our wisdom must be the wisdom that comes from God, and he is saying that God wants us to know the things that He has freely given to us.

He is also saying that God uses spiritual words and concepts and images, and by extension when we try to pull the things of God down into the natural or human realm that we won’t understand them, that we’ll view them the wrong way, and that they will become foolish to us. We won’t understand why God says the things He does if we look at them according to human understanding.

This is another reason why lay-of-the-land reading is so important. The more we read the Bible the more our thoughts and thought patterns are formed according to Scripture, and the more our thoughts can become like God’s thoughts. The more we read the Bible the better able we are, in partnership with the Holy Spirit, to put the pieces together, to compare spiritual things with spiritual things – and not to compare spiritual things with natural things in our human understanding.

God says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” Isaiah 55:9.

To be continued...