True Spiritual Wisdom (1 Cor. 2:6-16)

 

Human wisdom does not explain the way of salvation – 1:18; whom God calls to Himself – 1:27; nor whom God uses to make known the gospel – 2:4-5. When Timothy McVeigh was executed on 11 June 2001 as the Oklahoma City bomber who took 168 lives, he quoted W. E. Henley’s words: ‘I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.’ Psalm 36:9.

  1. The Spirit knows God fully.
    • 2:10-11. In the complete and absolute sense, only the Son and the Spirit can know God – Matt.11:27. Only an infinite being (God) can fully know God – Isa.40:13-14. Pascal: ‘God alone can speak truth about God.’
    • Charles Wesley in his hymn to the Holy Spirit:

      God through Himself we then shall know,
      If Thou within us shine
      And sound with all Thy saints below
      The depths of love divine.

  2. The Spirit reveals God to His people.
    • 2:6-7, 12-13; Col.1:26; John 15:26; 16:14; 1 Cor.12:3. Without the Spirit, we will view Jesus Christ as a man or as an angel but not as Lord.
  3. The world cannot know God.
    • 2:6-9. Verse 9 may be alluding to Dan.2:19-23; Isa.64:4; Chrysostom says it is from some unknown source). It is not referring so much to the wonders of heaven, but the wonders of revelation.
    • 2:14-16. Voltaire: ‘Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.’ A deaf man cannot listen to Handel’s Messiah.
    • identical twins might hear the same gospel. One receives it as God’s truth, the other is nearly asleep. Note Luke 24:45.