1 Corinthians 2

Chapter 2. The Teaching of the ChurchChrist… the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24)It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1:30)We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature. (1 Corinthians 2:6)The city of Corinth was a center of Greek culture and philosophy. It is to this the apostle alludes when he speaks of the Greeks as seeking after wisdom. The word for wisdom is sophia, which is the base of our word philosophy. They were very proud of their sophia. The apostle comes to them with a new doctrine. He has a sophia too, but it is not like theirs. It is contrary to all human ideas and conceptions, but it is as high above the wisdom of man as the heavens are high above the earth. He unfolds it in the first and second chapters of this epistle.

Section I: It Is a Paradox and a Contradiction

Section I—It Is a Paradox and a ContradictionIt is contrary to all human ideas and notions. Just as the wisdom of men is foolishness with God so the wisdom of God is foolishness with men. They cannot understand it nor appreciate it that God has no interest in their finely spun webs of philosophical speculation. How little God cares for things that man most highly esteems appears from the apostle’s statement that God has not called the wise men after the flesh, the mighty and noble, but He has gone out of His way to choose “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). It is not merely that the wise and the mighty have not chosen Him, but He has not chosen them. He has passed them by intentionally, and has taken the instruments that man despises and acted contrary to all human probabilities and modes of judging.

Section II: It Is Personal

Section II—It Is PersonalIt is not a mere connection of philosophical principles and abstract ideas, but it is the revelation of a Person. Christ is the wisdom of God. It is not a chart of the way He gives us, but it is a guide to lead us all the way. It is not a volume of ethics, but it is a true and living Friend. It is not even a new experience in our own hearts, but a real living and indwelling Christ, who comes to be to us all that we cannot be and do for us all that we are unable to do. “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). It is not that we are made wise, but Christ is made our wisdom. It is not that we are made righteous, but Christ is made our righteousness. It is not that we possess a self-contained sanctity, but Christ is made unto us sanctification. It is not that we are enabled to deliver ourselves from our circumstances and disabilities, but Christ is made unto us redemption. Suppose that I were carrying on a business under financial difficulties and with insufficient capital. I go to a friend who is wealthy and ask him to help me by advancing $1,000. My friend listens to me and gives me his check for the amount. But after a year I return to him, and am compelled to tell him that I am still as much embarrassed as before, and that I am under the painful necessity of asking him to help me again, and I struggle on as before. At last I am compelled once more to seek help, and ashamed and embarrassed I promise him that I will never ask for help again if he will once more relieve me. He looks me frankly in the face and says, “I will not help you, for my help is useless. You will again fail as you have already done.” Then he gives me a kind, encouraging look and adds, “but I will tell you what I will do: I will come into your business, and I will put my brains, my experience, my credit and my boundless capital into it, and I will carry it on myself for you. And all that you will have to do will be to give me the control and then share the profits.” I would be a very foolish man if I declined this generous offer. And so I hand my business over to my friend, and take him and all he has instead of his help. That is what Christ does for us. It is not His blessing He gives us, but Himself. The gospel is the revelation of Jesus. The good news that God has sent us is that God Himself has come in the person of His dear Son to be our All in All.

Section III: It Is Practical

Section III—It Is PracticalIt teaches us not idle theories, but real needs, and makes complete provision for all the most important conditions of our life. The philosophy of Plato, the loftiest of the Grecian thinkers, had in it three great elements: namely, the true, the beautiful and the good. But of what use are these things to the human heart in the struggle with sin, sorrow and the grave? What good will it do the guilty, dying man to paint for him the vision of the true, the beautiful and the good when he is sinking in despair? He wants somebody that can comfort, forgive and save him. What use is it to that poor passion-driven soul struggling against the demon within, to hold out to him your finespun theories of sentiment and poetry? He wants the power that can overcome the power of sin and lead him into righteousness and peace. What use is it to a life involved in sorrow, failure and adverse circumstances to sing your golden dreams and talk in the air about the true, the beautiful and the good? He wants some mind to help, some way of escape, some power that is stronger than himself and stronger than death. Here is where the supremacy of the divine sophia comes in. A Chinese man has told us the testimony of his conversion and his acceptance of Christianity. “I was in a deep pit,” he said, “sinking in the mire and helpless to deliver myself. Looking up I saw a shadow at the top, and soon a venerable face looked over the brink and said, ‘My son, I am Confucius, the father of your country. If you had obeyed my teachings you would never have been here.’ And then he passed on with a significant movement of his finger and a cheerless farewell, adding, ‘If ever you get out of this, remember to obey my teachings.’ But, alas, that did not save me and I sank deeper in the mire. “Then Buddha came along, and looking over the edge of the pit he cried, ‘My son, just count it all as nothing. Enter into rest. Fold your arms and retire within yourself and you will find nirvana, the peace to which we all are tending.’ I cried, ‘Father Buddha, if you will only help me to get out I will be glad to do so. I could follow your instructions easily if I were where you are, but how can I rest in this awful place?’ Buddha passed on and left me in my despair. “Then another face appeared. It was the face of a man beaming with kindness and bearing marks of sorrow. He did not linger a moment, but leaped down by my side, threw His arms around me, lifted me out of the mire and brought me to the solid ground above. And even then did not bid me farewell, but took off my filthy garments, put new robes upon me and bade me follow Him, saying, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ That is why I became a Christian. It was because Jesus Christ did not come to me with theories and speculations, but practical help in time of need.” And so this divine sophia is a complete supply for all our needs. “Christ… who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). The Greek construction allows us to translate the first “and” after wisdom by the word “even” or “that is.” It is like a bracket containing a number of particulars under a general head. Wisdom is a generic term including all the others, and under it the three great elements of this wisdom are righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Just as the Platonic philosophy had three things in it—the true, the beautiful and the good—so the Christ sophia has in it three things—namely, justification, sanctification and complete deliverance. Righteousness

1. It brings us righteousness. This has reference to our relations with God and our standing under His law. We are guilty and condemned, and we need to be right with Him. Now, Christ has provided for this by taking the place of the guilty, bearing the penalty of his or her sin, obeying for his or her broken law and giving to us the benefit of His standing and making us “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). In Him we are counted as if we had already died for our sins, and His righteousness and merits are imputed to us that we stand before our Judge not only forgiven, but accepted, justified and blameless even as He. There is something in His atonement which not only satisfies God, but satisfies our conscience, and the guilty soul knows that it is right with heaven, and looking in the face of inexorable justice it can say, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Sanctification
2. The next need of our life is sanctification—that is, to be right in our own hearts and lives, to be delivered from the inherent power of sin and enabled to overcome temptation and walk in harmony with the will of God. This, Christ also becomes to us. He who died for us lives in us. He who bestowed upon us the gift of righteousness, as against our past transgressions, bestows as freely the gift of rightness for our personal life. He is made unto us sanctification, filling us with His Holy Spirit, living in us with His own pure and perfect life. He imparts to us what He had already imputed to us. His purity, His peace, His love, His patience, His long-suffering, His gentleness, His courage, His strength, His very faith, are inbreathed through our being and continually supplied as we abide in Him. Therefore we can say, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Redemption
3. But we need also redemption. This word means deliverance, and especially deliverance through a ransom. It covers all the other needs of life: deliverance from disease, deliverance from Satan’s power, deliverance from circumstances, deliverance from this present evil world, deliverance at last from death itself to the full realization of the glorious resurrection. This also comes to us in Christ. This also is included in our redemption rights, and this also is realized as we more and more fully enter into His life and receive Him into ours. By and by it will be fully consummated when death’s last shackle shall be severed, and we shall rise to the glory into which He has already entered as our prototype and forerunner. Is not this a practical message to bring to suffering, dying men? Is not this better than the dreams of philosophy and the visions of poetry? Is not this a practical and present help for wrecked humanity, and does it not seem passing strange that men will still dream on and waste their strength in the wretched sophistries which have been long ago exploded, and which have no more power to remedy the wrongs of humanity than a butterfly has strength to lift a mountain to the skies?

Section IV: It Is Progressive

Section IV—It Is ProgressiveThis divine sophia, this glorious message which God has given to His Church, is too vast to be received in a moment, but it leads on into the depths and heights of God and all the possibilities of Christian growth and maturity. And so in the second chapter of First Corinthians the apostle leads us into the deeper development of the Christian doctrine and experience. He says there are fundamental truths which are intended for beginners, but there are deeper teachings for the maturer minds. Just as the ancient philosophy had its simpler and profounder teachings, the one for the public and the other for the initiated, so Christianity has the simple gospel for the world, and to them we are to know nothing but “Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). But “we do… speak a message of wisdom among the mature” (1 Corinthians 2:6). There are deeper truths for those who are able to understand and receive them, but, as he expresses it later, we must adapt these to the capabilities of our hearers. The secular mind cannot understand them at all. The babes in Christ can only be fed with milk, and it is to the mature disciple alone that we can give the deeper truths of God’s complete revelation, presenting “spiritual truths to spiritual men” (1 Corinthians 2:13, margin). There are three classes of minds spoken of in this passage. The Natural Man First, there is the natural man, which literally might be rendered the “psychical man,” or “soul man.” This is the man of merely intellectual development, but he has no spiritual life. This man cannot perceive or receive the things of the Spirit of God; indeed, they are foolishness unto him. He has not the capacity to apprehend them. He would need a divine mind in order to grasp them. This is the reason why men of genius and the highest culture are often unable to apprehend the more spiritual truths of Christianity and are strangers to many of its deeper experiences. Babes in Christ Next, there is an infant or child stage of Christian experience—babes in Christ—with much of the worldly mind in them. These, he tells us, cannot grasp the deeper things of God, but they must be fed with a spoon and nourished on the milk of the Word: the simplest principles of the gospel, Christ the Savior, the doctrine of forgiveness of sins, the primary truths of Christianity. The Spiritual Mind But, thirdly, there is the spiritual mind. This is a mind to think His thoughts and see with His eyes. He calls it in another part of the passage “the Spirit who is from God” (1 Corinthians 2:12). “We have… received… the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us…. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12, 1 Corinthians 2:10). To the heart that has received the Holy Spirit, divine truth is made clear and vivid by new spiritual apprehensions. We have not only a divine revelation, but we have a divine illumination. We have not only heavenly light, but we have heavenly sight with which to behold it. We have not only the written Word, but we have the living Word to re-echo it in the secret chambers of our being and to make it to us spirit and life. Now, the apostle is calling upon these Corinthians to press forward into all the depths and heights of this divine progression, and to be no longer babes but men in Christ Jesus. It is the same lesson that he afterwards gave to the Hebrew Christians, “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity” (1 Corinthians 6:1). A babe is a very beautiful thing in its time and place, but a very ridiculous thing when dressed in an old man’s clothes, and rendered preposterous and absurd by an old man’s years. It is one thing to be a babe. It is another thing to be a dwarf. The Church is full of dwarfed Christians today, and the result is childish infirmities, childish follies, the disposition to fight or the disposition to play, and the lack of suitable earnestness and power. Now, the wise teacher or preacher will adjust himself to the conditions of his hearers. To one class he will know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, to another he will give the unsearchable riches of Christ, feeding milk to babes, and presenting spiritual things to spiritual minds.

Section V: Conclusion

Section V—ConclusionFinally, the doctrine of Christ’s Church is not only a supernatural revelation, but it requires a supernatural vision to behold it. We cannot even understand it rightly without the Holy Spirit, therefore the world cannot accept the gospel without the touch of His illuminating grace. Our wisdom and our genius, and even our most earnest struggling, cannot bring us into the thoughts and things of God. We need to take the open Bible to the open windows of heaven. We need not the gift of inspiration to write another Bible, but the gift of illumination to understand the Bible that the Holy Spirit has already given. Often have these great words, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9), been referred to some future experience in the heavenly life. On the contrary, they describe an experience into which we should enter now, for he adds, “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10). These are the things we ought to need now, and unto which we may enter here by the teaching and the leading of our Divine Interpreter—the Holy Spirit. He is waiting to lead us into all the fullness of the thoughts of God and the mind of Christ. One secret is an open ear, the other is an obedient life. He will speak to the soul that loves to listen. He will speak again to the life that hastens to obey. Let us hearken. Let us obey and let us launch out into the deep, and explore the boundless continents of truth, the countless worlds of light, the vast and glorious expanses of heavenly vision which are waiting to open before the souls that dwell on high, for their “eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar” (Isaiah 33:17).