I Corinthians 2: Part 2

In the middle of chapter 2 Paul abruptly veered into one of the most profound statements on preaching contained in Scripture, and it is hither I have been hastening, for this is the point I really want to get at. After asserting that he determined to know nothing "save Christ and Him crucified" (2:2), Paul refuted the idea that his simple preaching lacked wisdom. Paul insisted that his preaching imparted wisdom, but only the mature understood it (v. 6). This wisdom is neither the wisdom of the world nor of the rulers of this world, but rather, this wisdom is a secret wisdom that is hidden in the counsels of God, a wisdom that God sovereignly decreed before the creation of the world, the wisdom that is the Logos, the everlasting Word of God. The wisdom of the Greeks was the transient wisdom of a dying age. But the wisdom of the Cross is the eternal wisdom that predates the world. Indeed, this wisdom not only predates the world, this is the wisdom that called the world into being. The world flowed out of this wisdom. One could say that this wisdom is not in the world, but the world is in this wisdom, for all things are held together by the eternal purpose and plan of God (v.7).

This mysterious and hidden wisdom could not be understood by the rulers of this age, for if they could have seen the purpose of God, they would not have fulfilled it (v.8). The wise of the world have not seen it with their eye, heard it with their ear, nor even imagined it in their heart. However—and this is where the drums should roll and the trumpets blare—God has revealed His secret wisdom to us! Furthermore, God has revealed it to us by His Spirit, thus the wisdom of God cannot be known by the mind of man. To try and present God's wisdom with human wisdom is futile. This is why Greek rhetoric could not do the job in the first century, and this is why post-modern, gobbledygook preaching will not get the job done today. You may grow a crowd, but you cannot build a church apart from the enlightenment of the Spirit. True converts come into the church through the wisdom of the Cross, and the wisdom of the Cross can only be seen by the revelation of the Spirit. When we have succeeded in making the gospel acceptable to the unregenerate man, we have just succeeded in damning him to hell. That sort of saccharine, sophistical preaching only inoculates unbelievers against the truth. The Spirit must reveal the wisdom of God or it will remain forever folly to those who are perishing (1:18).

Now, back to my text. God has revealed His secret wisdom to us by His Spirit. But notice what Paul said next. This is something I have often overlooked: "For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (v.10). Or as the ESV renders it: "For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God." He then says, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God" (v.11). Or, again, the ESV: "For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." Quite literally Paul was saying that the Spirit of God within us searches out the secret counsels of God and reveals them to us. Not only is this a powerful statement about the oneness of God, for the communion of the Holy Spirit with God is explained as how a man might commune with His own spirit (and yet he is still just one man), this is also an amazing statement about the intercession of the Spirit of Christ for us and how God has placed His Spirit within us to interpret the mind and will of God to us.

The Spirit of God within us "translates" God's Word in a way we can understand. This is called revelation. The Spirit of God does not alter the content of God's Word, but the Spirit within us—which is the Spirit of the Mediator, the man, Christ Jesus—opens our understanding so we may grasp by degrees the secret wisdom of God. This is why human wisdom cannot explain God to skeptics: God must "explain" Himself! If we do not have the Spirit within us interpreting the voice of God to us, we cannot understand the Word. This is why it is so foolish to think that we can convert unbelievers to faith by the force of our "relevant" preaching. If God does not open their heart by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, our feeble words are in vain.

Of course, I do not mean to say that God imparts revelation in a subjective and personal way apart from preaching. Not at all. Preaching is the vehicle of God's revelation. For Paul went on the say, "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual." (v.13). And again, ESV: "And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual."In other words, Paul said that he learned the truth of God's wisdom as the Spirit of God revealed it to him, and then he declared that truth in words that were taught to him by the Spirit of Christ. Then he concluded that this wisdom can only be conveyed to those who are themselves "spiritual."

In this one verse Paul showed a three-fold process of prophetic impartation—or to put it plainly, how preaching must work on three levels if it is to work at all. First of all, the Spirit must reveal the wisdom of God to the man of God, the preacher. These are the "which things also we speak." Then, the Spirit must give the preacher words "which the Holy Ghost teacheth" so that the man of God may say it right. He cannot speak with words taught to him by human wisdom. He must speak as the Spirit leads him to speak. This is what we call "the anointing." The anointing first rests upon the man of God in his study during the preparation of the Word and then in the pulpit during the presentation of the Word. The preacher is anointed by the Spirit "to find out acceptable words" (Ecclesiastes 12:10) and to present them in a spiritually persuasive manner. And this manner will not be in conformance to the silly methods of the worldly-wise.

But there is one final level to effective preaching, and this level must not be overlooked: we compare "spiritual things with spiritual." Or, we interpret spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And right here is where most pastors could just sit right down and cry. Every pastor has faced the frustration of trying to communicate spiritual wisdom to carnal people. It simply cannot be done. They will just sit and stare blankly, as my dad might say, like a mule looking at a new gate. It is not necessarily that they do not want to hear the Word, but they cannot hear the Word unless the Spirit within them interprets it for them.

This is why the congregation needs preparation for the hearing of the Word just as the preacher needs preparation for the preaching of the Word. And it is our job as preachers to promote this sort of preparation. How do we do this? We do so first of all by explaining to the church their desperate need to be filled with the Spirit. The Spirit of Christ within them interprets to them what God is saying through the preaching. If we do not teach them this, our people will fall into the Corinthian trap of thinking that the natural man is able to grasp the spiritual things of God, and they will come to church as carnal as ducks. I am just as smart as the next man, they will say, and miss the point altogether that the smartest man in the room cannot understand the hidden wisdom of God if God does not reveal it to him. Preaching is pointless unless God makes the point.

Second, we prepare people to hear the Word by promoting prayer before service. When the people are taught to seek the Lord that He might reveal His Word to them, an amazing thing happens: God answers prayer! He gives bread to the hungry. If we shall ask, we shall receive. We cannot overemphasize the importance of preparation for preaching in prayer. Third, if we are one of those rare preachers that actually preaches from the Bible, we should push our people very firmly to read the Bible! The vocabulary of the Spirit is Scripture, which is why so many people rarely hear God speak. If we would encourage Bible reading, especially public reading of Scripture—and I mean lengthy selections that actually get people familiar with their Bible—then we would encounter more than blank, eyes-glazed-over-are-you-done-yet? sort of response to preaching.

The bottom line is this: preaching cannot be effective unless it is Spirit empowered from the moment the Holy Ghost gives a word to the preacher, to the moment he steps to the pulpit to deliver that word, until the moment the congregation sitting in the pews feels the gentle urging of the Spirit to "consider what [he says] and the Lord give thee understanding in all things" (II Timothy 2:7). It is all of the Spirit. If our preaching is dull, we do not need to look to the world around us to see how to liven it up with better, more relevant methods. If we desire to build a ministry that lasts, a church that endures the storm, then we must call on God to "[send] forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6)! Preachers today are facing a crisis of confidence, the ultimate test of our faith. Do we believe the gospel works? Do we trust in the Spirit of God to open the hearts of those whom He has called and chosen? Must we turn to the methods of the world in order to have effective preaching? Must we outsource the building of the church to the experts of the world? I think not. Jesus is still the only builder of the church, and we must be his wise master builders. But that leads us into chapter 3.

I Corinthians 2: Part 1

The church at Corinth had a problem with preaching. I do not mean to say that they did not like preaching. No, indeed. They liked preaching a lot. In fact it was one their favorite forms of entertainment. And this, of course, was the problem. Preaching had become a show. It had become an amusement, a diversion to be appraised and applauded as just another form of sophisticated Greek rhetoric. The Greeks of Paul's day prized skilled oratory above all other forms of public entertainment. The most celebrated personalities of their day were the sophists and rhetoricians. Accomplished public speakers were the rock stars and movie stars of that day. This attitude bled over into the church at Corinth, and preaching was being corrupted into just another form of public speaking.

Paul highlighted this problem in I Corinthians 1-4 while addressing the more obvious problem of division within the church. The church at Corinth was divided into several factions, and these factions were formed around the names of certain prominent preachers. Some said they were of Paul, some of Apollos, some of Cephas, and others said they were of Christ. These new disciples organized themselves around certain preachers as if they were founders of different schools of philosophy. The Greeks had been reared on the various schools of thought within Greek academic culture, and it seemed very natural to do the same within the church. Of course, the true motive of such posturing was self-promotion and aggrandizement, but pride always wears better under a cloak of piety.

Paul rebuked this division sharply, but then he dug deeper than just surface fissures in the congregation. Paul perceived that there was something more at work there than just a natural human tendency to form parties and organize factions. The division at Corinth arose from a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of preaching and how the gospel is effectively communicated. Corinth was divided around preachers because Corinth misunderstood preaching. This is how Paul's opening rebuke on division quickly became an extended discourse on the message and methods of preaching.

Just after Paul reminded the Corinthians that they were one in Christ because of their one baptism in His name, he launched into his sermon on the preaching of the Cross. He said, "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect" (1:17). It becomes evident from this point on that Paul was exposing their pretensions to wisdom that so powerfully dominated the way they viewed preaching and preachers. He asserted that their view of preaching—that the gospel can be effectively presented in "the wisdom of words"—missed the point and the power of the Cross. Men could not be truly converted through the force of Greek rhetoric. They cannot be brought to genuine faith in Christ by human performance.

To think so is to think that men are saved by how we preach rather than what we preach, more by method than by message. And most importantly, to think so is to think that men are saved by the power of man, by the effect of human persuasion. This is intolerable to God, for He insists "that no flesh should glory in his presence" (1:29). God has deliberately determined that His saving gospel cannot be presented in any way that allows preening flesh to take credit for its success. The wisdom of man negates the power of the Cross. Paul said it makes the Cross "of none effect" (1:17). This means human-powered preaching cannot communicate the gospel. The preaching of the gospel only works when it is empowered by the Spirit of God. For the Corinthians this meant that the gospel could not be presented in the popular forms of Greek oratory. Wonder what it means for us today? Could it have any bearing on our current post-modern craze for "relevant" preaching?

Paul insisted that the world in its wisdom would not acknowledge God, so God determined to confound their wisdom with the folly of the Cross and the foolishness of Cross-preaching. To the Jews, it is a scandal: no true Messiah would suffer a cursed hanging upon the Cross. To the Gentiles, it is pure folly: no true sage would establish his philosophy on the basis of death and defeat. The world despises everything the Cross represents. This is by divine design. God planned it this way. Thus, to attempt to borrow the world's wisdom to preach such apparent folly is senseless. We cannot persuade the world to accept the premise of the Cross if we present it in a culture-relevant way. Even foolish pagans are smart enough to know when we try to put the message of the Cross over on them under the guise of sophisticated arguments. They recognize very quickly that the preaching of the Cross offends their intellectual sensibilities, and they walk away in utter contempt. Paul made it clear that there is no way to "pretty up" the Cross. Its power lies in its stark, brutal reality. God has saved the world through the means of a hideous murder.

Think about this. The universal symbol of Christianity is the Cross. People wear it around their neck. Churches hang it on the wall. Drivers plaster it to the bumper of their car. And yet, the Cross is a symbol of execution. We see it so often it has lost its power to shock and offend. But what would we do if we beheld a man walking quietly down the street with a miniature, silver electric chair hanging from a chain around his neck? Or a hangman's noose? A guillotine? And yet, this is exactly what the symbol of the Cross is meant to convey. It is not meant to convey an exciting new philosophy of life. It conveys the sentence of death upon sin, the judgment of God upon the wicked, and the hope of eternal life for those who are baptized into the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And it is only when the Cross is understood in this way that it has the power to save. A culturally neutral, ambiguously relevant Cross is pure nonsense. The only way the Cross makes sense is when the Cross is boldly proclaimed in all its harsh reality as the sign of God's terrifying hatred for sin and His astounding love toward sinners. To present the gospel in a way that entertains pagans only ensures their damnation, for the only thing that saves—the gospel of the Cross—is "made of none effect" when presented in the words of man's wisdom. This must have been very sobering for the Corinthians. I wonder how this should make us feel?

In chapter 2, Paul reminded the Corinthians of his method of preaching when he first came to Corinth. He determined that he would stay intently focused on the message of Christ and His Cross. He overcame the temptation to present the gospel in a manner palatable to intellectuals and deliberately avoided "enticing words of man's wisdom." Of course, this does not mean that Paul used coarse language or that his speech was uneducated. It means simply that he refused to use the rhetorical methods of the Greeks to persuade unbelievers that the gospel was true. Paul understood that the only true persuasion of the gospel was the persuasion of the Spirit converting the heart of the hearer. If the Spirit did not persuade men, all of Paul's fancy tricks of oratory would never do it.

The Corinthians considered Paul too simple. Paul responded that his preaching was too difficult. They thought his message was beneath them; Paul said it went over their heads. Paul's simple preaching imparted the most profound form of wisdom ever revealed, the mysterious and hidden wisdom that God ordained to our glory before the world began (2:6,7). Yet, the sophisticated and urbane Corinthians failed to recognize Paul's preaching as the highest form of wisdom because their sophistication was of the wrong sort—the worldly sort. They were carnal and walked as men (3:1-3). Because Paul did not use words of wisdom to present the gospel, the Corinthians concluded that Paul's preaching was shallow and simplistic. They could not have been more wrong. They thought his preaching was beneath them because they were unusually wise. In reality, Paul's preaching was beyond them because they were unusually carnal.

They were too fleshly, too spiritually immature, to recognize true wisdom when they heard it. Paul underscored this fact throughout the rest of his discourse, especially in chapter 4, where his subtle irony broke down into outright sarcasm. The Corinthians were so wise that they had become fools.