The Cross and Divine Wisdom, Part 2 | Christ, His Cross, His Church

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul writes this: “And I, when I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

“Yet 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. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory. 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.’

“These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. But the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 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. And 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, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

“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. The spiritual person judges all things, and he is himself to be judged by no one. For who, who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him. But we have the mind of Christ.”

So when Paul comes to Corinth, he recognizes the potential for confusion. He is a preacher, and all the people there are going to think he’s an orator. He’s a Sophist. He looks like them. He’s out in public, he’s preaching, he’s declaiming on something. So Paul intended to make sure the Gospel ministry of the, the ministry of the Gospel, the Gospel ministry, the ministry of the cross, it looks nothing like that Sophist model.He was intentional about distancing himself, so they saw that in contra-distinction from himself.

Rejecting lofty rhetoric and fine-sounding oratory, Paul refused to cater to a Corinthian appetite for performance. “I didn’t come to you proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.” Does our society, does it crave performance? Do we not give Academy Awards and all those self-congratulating actors and everybody who’s on strike right now? It’s kind of like a praise-the-Lord-moment, right? “Huh, the whole thing’s melting down. Maybe it’ll go away.” Not so fast, bud.

Rejecting the perception that Sophists wanted to give, that is, they could declaim on any subject, they impressed audiences by speaking on any topic, and Paul decided, “That’s not what I’m going to do. I’m not even going to use it as an introduction. I’m not even going to use it to, to get to know you at all. I’m not doing friendship evangelism here. I’m not trying to flatter you in making you think I’m interested in whatever thing you’re bringing up. I don’t care.

“Here’s what I care about: your soul, and you need to hear this, the message of the cross. So I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified because that’s what you need to know. If you walk away from this little gathering, and you get hit by a bus,” or I guess in his day it’d be a chariot or whatever, “there’s no hope for you standing before a holy God. You, draped in your own sin and not draped in the righteousness of Christ? I’m not going to have that on my conscience.”

Rejecting the Sophists’ concern for appearance, they wanted approval with their impressive performance, Paul cared about nothing of the sort but about fearing and pleasing God, and that’s why he says, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.” He didn’t come because he was scared of them. He came to them humble and contrite and trembling at God’s Word because of the weight of what he is doing.

And every true preacher feels this weight, stepping into a pulpit to deliver the oracles of God, preach about the cross, rejecting the manner and speaking, the manner of speaking and a message that seemed plausible to men, a message that would impress unbelievers, that would win him a hearing. Paul wanted to remove any, and any tendency to focus on the human messenger. He wanted to become invisible to the audience so that he was nothing more than a conduit of divine revelation.

Rejecting the Sophists’ interest in attracting people to themselves, Paul wanted to get himself out of the way. He wanted, he, he wanted to make a connection not between him and them. He didn’t care about that at all. He wanted to make a connection between the Spirit of God and these people. That’s the connection he wants to broker. That’s the bridge that he wants to build, to make sure that he is invisible in the process. He’s a nothing but an empty conduit, a pipe, so that the Spirit is on one end, coming through directly into those people’s hearts. That’s all he cares about.

He wants to be nothing more than a conduit for divine power by the Spirit through the message of the cross, rejecting the Sophists’ profit, profit-driven motives and winning people’s trust, flattering them, making them feel good about themselves. Paul wanted the Corinthians’ faith to rest not in the wisdom or eloquence of men, in whom there is no salvation, but in the sight, saving and sanctifying power of God, where there is the only salvation to be found.

To make this inescapably plain and bring it up to our time, let me illustrate it this way. If Paul came into one of the cities of 21st-century America, and he’s talking to a media-saturated people like us, people who are always online, always following the latest trends, always seeing things in the media. He would be very intentional to make sure he sounds nothing like a telecaster, nothing like a like a media-influencer, nothing like a like a pundit, nothing, nothing like a commentator on a sports program. Nothing like, and I’m going to use names here, Jordan Peterson. He don’t want to sound like that. He don’t want to sound like Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro or James Lindsay or Bill Maher, just to name a few.

He does not want to sound like any of those people that, that are regarded by the American public. He’s not interested in taking up the debates of the age, whether President Biden should stay or go, on what side of the Christian Nationalism debate we should be on, or whatever. He doesn’t care about any of that stuff. It’s a distraction. It fractures people, people’s attention. It divides them up and puts them into their little camps, where they elevate men and get into issues rather than the simplicity of their eternal soul. I shouldn’t say “eternal soul.” Their immortal soul: That’s going to live on forever somewhere. If they have their sin, they’re going to live on forever in hell underneath God’s wrath and judgment and punishment. They will dread for all of eternity.

You think similar controversies weren’t swirling around Corinth when Paul visited? You think politics and issues of the day were not subjects of conversation? He could easily get into those things. Of course they were. Paul refused to take up popular topics, not because he was ignorant or uninformed about them, so much evidence and no time to go through it, that Paul he, he, he had the pulse of the culture. He understood everything perfectly, but if for no other reason than this, he ignored it. He sought to distinguish himself from all that noise. He wanted to cut through all that clamored for Corinthian attention so he could deliver just one message, one message, the message of the cross.

Why is that? It’s because the wisdom of men has no power whatsoever to save. It’s because all this stuff that people are attracted to and clamor for and, and live for, all of it is empty, futile, coming to nothing. It just keeps their minds dulled while they are on that great conveyor belt going to judgment. It’s like watching people at an airport on that, that moving escalator with their headphones on, their head down, looking at their phone, until all of a sudden they hit that bump, right? Boom. And we laugh about it. But that’s what’s going to happen to so many people. We’re dulling their brains with all the stuff that does not matter. It’s only the power of God unleashed through the wisdom of God as it is preached and proclaimed clearly and simply in the cross of Jesus Christ that has the only power to save men from their sins.

And what power did Paul point to? Against all odds, two synagogue leaders had been saved: synagogue leaders, Jews; Sosthenes, 1 Corinthians 1:1; Crispus, 1 Corinthians 1:14. Against all odds, a church is planted in the pagan city, the pagan soil of Corinth in verse 2. Against all odds, but wholly due to divide, divine power. The Corinthians were in Christ, who became to them wisdom from God,” verse 30, “and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

No human power could accomplish that. As Jesus said, Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church.” Not, “I’m pretty certain about it.” Not, “I got a good feeling about this.” Not, “I’m, you know, I’m a glass-half-full kind of a guy.” “I will build my church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He says the same thing two ways. And he just did it once again in Corinth, building this church. That’s power.

The word of the cross not only has nothing to gain from human wisdom, but human wisdom is a barrier. It is a detriment to receiving the word of the cross. If you want to follow the same paradigm in your ministry, listen, unleash God’s power in the world. Preach the cross. Make sure you sound nothing like the world around you. Nothing like it.

Second, second point: Unveil God’s wisdom in the Cross. Unveil God’s wisdom in the cross. And again, I’ll add this caveat that of course we are not the unveilers of God’s wisdom. It’s the Spirit of God who does that. But how does he do that? It’s through the means of the message that we preach. Paul had just, it seems, criticized wisdom. He’s not decrying all wisdom; he’s just decrying human wisdom. He’s just decrying that which men and women regard as wise, as plausible, as, as intelligent, as sophisticated. That’s what he’s talking about.

So lest the Corinthians get the wrong idea and misunderstand him, he says there in verse 6, 1 Corinthians 2, “Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom.” “Those who are saved, they get it. Those who are saved and maturing, those who are not distracted by this world, like you Corinthians are doing, but those who are the mature, we do impart wisdom to them, and they recognize it.”

Now let me just get a simple definition of wisdom here. What is wisdom? Biblical wisdom, you say this, is true knowledge, and we know that there’s a “knowledge” falsely so-called, right? Evolution is an example of that. It’s knowledge falsely so-called. It’s regarded as knowledge, it’s regarded as true, but it is false knowledge. So I’m talking about true wisdom. Biblical wisdom is true knowledge, true knowledge that is applied righteously.

Where do we get a definition of righteous? Right here in Scripture. What’s the standard of righteousness? God and his character, right? The law of God, God’s character displayed in the law of God. So it’s biblical wisdom, true knowledge applied righteously, applied according to the Word of God, according to the law of God, to accomplish God’s purposes, to accomplish God’s good purposes. Biblical wisdom: true knowledge applied righteously to accomplish God’s purposes. And that is the wisdom that Paul imparted. That is what we unveil, the Spirit unveils through our preaching, through our testimony about the cross.

That sentence, incidentally, in its Greek ordering, says, “Yet wisdom we are speaking among the mature.” That’s the ordering in the Greek text. The, the sentence gives you really a three-part outline for what follows. “Yet wisdom we are speaking among the mature.” So by unveiling the nature of wisdom in verses 6-9, he’s showing divine wisdom is superior to human wisdom. By explaining what “we are speaking” in verses 10-13, he’s explaining the nature of his ministry. And then by identifying “the mature” from verses 14 through chapter 3 verse four, he, he’s identifying his target. He’s identifying the true recipients of his ministry.

So we’ll start in verses 6-9. I’m not going to hit all these points, but just verses 6-9 as Paul unveils the true nature of wisdom. This is the essence of his preaching. First, you can say this, these are little sub-points if you want to put them in your notes that way, sub-points. First, true wisdom is eternal. True wisdom is eternal, verse 6. “Among the mature we impart wisdom, though it’s not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.” Even the best and the brightest, even the strongest and the wealthiest among men, they bring nothing to the table with regard to wisdom.

Why is that? It’s because the wisdom of this age and of the rulers of this age, verse 6, “they are doomed to pass away.” They will come to nothing. They are not eternal. They are finite. Human wisdom, verse, Isaiah 46-48, says, says this: It’s temporary. “All flesh is grass. All its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it.” Surely, the people are grass. And we think about us. We grow up, and I’m sensing this more and more the older I get, I’m, I’m; the flower is fallen, let’s just put it that way.

But we see the grass growing, and then it grows taller and taller, and then it flowers, and then it fades. The winter comes and that grass is gone and dead. Human beings are like that. We’re all like a field, and you see that grass coming and going and flowing. We don’t perceive it because we’re living through it. “Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but,” what, “the word of our God will stand forever.” Stand forever. That is the nature of true wisdom, which is divine wisdom. True wisdom is eternal. True wisdom remains forever. If it’s true knowledge and it’s righteously applied, and it accomplishes God’s good purposes, that’s wisdom. It’s knowledge that is effectual. It’s knowledge that remains because it’s implemented; it’s put into practice. That’s what wisdom is, and it’s eternal. Its fruit remains forever. God does that.

By contrast, the wisdom of the Pew Research Center, the wisdom of the Gallup pollsters, the wisdom of the marketers of this age, all that stuff is by nature instant, temporary, fading. It’s, it’s actually irrelevant as soon as it’s published. And the marketers, they really don’t care about that. Why? Because they’re a flash in the pan in an industry that’s all about making immediate impressions, getting instant feedback, instant results. They’re just like the Sophists, getting people’s attention, gaining an audience, ultimately making merchandise of people. It’s about the moment. Our concern is with the nature of true wisdom, which is eternal and lasting, and therefore it is always relevant.

Second, true wisdom is not just eternal, but it’s also, also decretal, decretal, meaning it’s by decree, verse 7. “But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.” Secret and hidden wisdom. There’s another translation that puts it this way: “God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom.” “God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom.” The word mysterion in the New Testament is translated as “mystery.” It’s not referring to something that’s mysterious. It’s not talking about something esoteric. Rather, it’s something, a mystery is something, biblically speaking, that was once hidden, but now it’s revealed in Christ. It’s now made manifest in him, through him, in his ministry, through the explanation of the Apostles. That’s a mystery.

Peter writes about this mystery of Old Testament prophetic truth. It was once hidden, but it’s now revealed in the incarnation, now fully made known in the cross of Christ. He says this in 1 Peter 1:10: “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you,” what did they just prophecy? A mystery, something that isn’t known or understood until it actually comes to pass. They made careful search and inquiry, these prophets did. They prophesied things that they didn’t fully get. They were seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.

How do we understand the, the suffering and the glory? Many of the Jews, including the Apostles, at the time when they were walking with Jesus on the earth, they focused on all the glory, ignored the suffering. They were theologians of glory, had to be taught to be theologians of the cross, just like us. These are the truths the Spirit of God made known to the Apostles and New Testament prophets; and it was by the gift, the special gift, an apostolic gift of immediate special revelation.

It’s what Jesus said to the Twelve back in Luke 10. I’ll just, I’ll just turn there, but you can write it down, Luke 10:21-24. Jesus said this: “In this same hour, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you Father, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the understanding, and you revealed them to little children. Oh, yes, Father, for this was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

“And then turning the disciples, he said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. And I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see. They didn’t see it. They wanted to hear what you’re hearing. They didn’t hear it. But you do.” How blessed are you? Blessed are you, and praise to the Father who is pleased to make that distinction.

How did they know? How did the disciples know, these mere men? Peter, who’s, who’s speaking satanically as we talked about last night, how do they know what these many prophets, these many kings, desired to see in here but couldn’t? God decreed it. God chose it. Proorizo is the verb predestined, marked out before the ages for our glory. The revelation of true wisdom, mysteries solved, secrets revealed all by God’s sovereign choice. God decreed, God predestined, God decided before the ages those to whom the truth would be revealed, those to whom He would make known the Father, and the Father would make known the Son. The wisdom in the message of the cross pre-existed creation itself. It’s prior to Genesis 1:1, when God decreed the creation of the heavens and the earth. God’s wisdom was consummated in Christ. His wisdom endures eternally.

The divine counsel of God, his eternal decree, as I said, began to be revealed in divine creation. But the fullness of his decree, the completion of it, that awaited the revelation of divine redemption. That awaited the revelation of the Incarnation, the Son of God taking on human flesh in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Until that time, the fullness of divine wisdom was secret and hidden, as Paul says here, secret and hidden from the best, from the brightest. “None,” verse 8, “none of the rulers of this age understood this. For if they had,” if they got it, if they saw it, they would not have done the unthinkable, “they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of Glory.” It would have been utterly preposterous to them, a major misstep.

The best and the brightest of humanity, the greatest rulers of humanity, they had, they all had the capacity to rule. They have the wealth and the know-how to gather around them the best of human intellect and human counsel. These men have the, have the wealth and the power and the qualities to lead and inspire and motivate the mightiest among men. And yet, with all of that power and wisdom around them, yet without access to divine wisdom, they blew it. They crucified the Lord of Glory. Bad move.

It’s not just that they failed to see the significance of Jesus. It’s not just that they failed to recognize Jesus as the Christ. They were acting completely contrary to God, going completely against his wisdom, doing what is absolutely foolish and destructive and deadly and damning. And they conspired together to commit the most heinous crime in human history, which is crucifying the Lord of Glory.

The wisdom of this age: It can’t see past its own nose. It can’t see past its own time. It can’t understand the scope of history, let alone the, the present, let alone the future. God sees it all in an actualized instant, always a present reality. That’s what his omniscience is, it’s to know everything, all the time. No potential in God. It’s actual in God.

Today’s wisdom, man’s wisdom, cannot be the basis of anything because it has no history, it has no antiquity, it has no foundation set in divine decree. And we see the wisdom, we preach the wisdom that stymied kings and that bewildered the very greatest of men. Isaiah 52:15, says, “Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand.” They only understand that by divine grace. God subverted all human wisdom in the cross, even using human wisdom to oppose Christ, crucify him, and to bring about the salvation of his elect. That’s wisdom. That’s a wisdom no one could foresee.