What the Bible Says About the Holy Spirit – 19
This past Sunday we started a conversation about wisdom based upon 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 (ESV). We were not able to finish our thoughts on this chapter, so I have put a few notes below. Please respond with a comment by clicking on the word “comment” at the bottom of this page.
1) And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2) For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3) And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4) an my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration fo the Spirit and of power, 5) that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
In these first five verses, we find at least two topics of discussion:
A. The source of salvation is in God’s power, not in human wisdom. Refer to 1 Corinthians 1:21. It doesn’t matter how much we know, even about God and the Bible - salvation is in the transforming work of God alone.
“Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in His wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb – preaching, of all things! – to bring those who trust Him into the way of salvation.” – 1 Corinthians 1:21, MSG
B. There is a difference between the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God.
6) Yest among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7) But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.
Mystery = something that was not previously revealed (see Romans 16:25-26). For whose glory?? Wow!
8 ) None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9) But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him ” - 10) these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything even the depths of God.
That is the Holy Spirit that lives in us!
11) 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. 12) Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13) And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths who are spiritual.
How is this the same or different than the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 1:17-19?
14) The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Many of us can probably remember the time in our lives before Christ that spiritual truths sounded absurd. Perhaps many of us even asked something similar to, “How can an intelligent person like ’so-and-so’ base their life on an unproven and scientifically immeasurable matter of faith?” Even today in our belief, we still can’t comprehend and wrap our minds around everything dealing with God. But what seemed absurd before can be settled with, “I may not understand it, but I believe it because the Bible says it’s so.” That is an effect of a transformation accomplished, not by human wisdom, but only through the power of God!
