By Scott Bush, D.Min.
Executive Director, Ministry Training Institute, Samford University
WISDOM FROM GOD
1 Corinthians 1:20–25; 2:9–16
A little gardening proverb helps explain the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge tells you that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom tells you that it doesn’t belong in a fruit salad. Knowledge involves facts, but wisdom goes further to meaningful insights and applications. Even in a day with unprecedented access to information, when we live our lives without wisdom, our observations will be shallow and our conclusions self-serving. We need true wisdom.
Worldly wisdom amounts to foolishness. (1:20–25)
Paul contrasts the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of God. Jews expecting a Messiah who would work mighty miracles to deliver and exalt his people would be scandalized by a humiliated king. In fact, the Greek word for “stumbling block” in verse 23 is “skandalon.” Greeks (Gentiles), who prided themselves on their culture and civility, would reject a dying Savior.
Our world has the same reaction. Those who justify themselves — who are wise in their own eyes — will refuse to see their sin and their need for atonement. Those seeking comfort and applause will never follow one who lays down his life and would be even less likely to lay down their own.
But Paul declares the wisdom of this world to be foolishness. To live for this life alone is to foolishly forfeit eternity. To live for oneself alone is to miss the real joy and peace that Jesus gives today. The world sees the cross as a loss but, for those who are in Christ, it is infinite gain.
The Holy Spirit reveals the mind of God. (2:9–11)
The wisdom of God is made known to us by the Holy Spirit, who lives in every believer (Rom. 5:5, 8:9). Paul tells the Corinthians that the Spirit reveals the “depths of God” — His very thoughts — for the guidance and benefit of His people.
The primary way that the Spirit makes the thoughts of God known is through the illumination of Scripture. According to theologian Robert Reymond, illumination is “the Holy Spirit’s enabling of Christians generally to understand, to recall to mind and to apply or grasp the Scriptures they have studied.”
Consider what an immense privilege it is that the Spirit of God lives within us to make His Word plain and help us to live by it. How vital it is, then, that we are diligent in our study and meditation upon the Scriptures.
We must depend on the Holy Spirit to distinguish God’s will from human thinking. (12–16)
In verse 12, Paul once again makes a contrast, this time between who we were before we were saved and who we now are in Christ. Few would know more about this transition than Paul, who was knocked to the ground on the road to Damascus only to rise as an entirely new man. His new perspective on God, the world, himself and virtually everything else was a gift. He here reminds his readers that their perspective on life has changed. They are spiritual and can see things spiritually.
Others may regard our devotion to Jesus, our hope of eternal life, our commitment to holy living and even our love for our neighbors as foolish. When they do we must be patient, maintaining a gracious witness, but we should not be surprised. We have been transformed by the cross. Worldly wisdom is folly to us now because we’ve been given the mind of Christ.
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