1 Corinthians 2:6-8 However, we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world… I. THE REVELATION OF THIS MYSTERY IS MADE — "THEM THAT ARE PERFECT," i.e., those who have qualifications for receiving the wisdom. 1. Of course, we are told at once that this is the ignorant conceit of religious people. But why ignorant conceit? You do not speak of the ignorant conceit of the physician, or of the engineer, or of the chemist, or of the artist, or of the poet. Nay, does not the ignorant conceit belong rather to those who think that without faculty, without study, they can understand as well as the most assiduous and learned? A spiritual man must know that he has a faculty of spiritual discernment, just as a poet knows that he has a faculty of poetic discernment. And an unspiritual man should know this also, that he has not the spiritual faculty which the other man has. The great doctrine of the apostle is that in religious things right feeling, a right disposition, is the condition of all knowledge. "If any man will do His will," &c. If you begin with an ignorant or unspiritual man by simply instructing his understanding in the hope that his heart will be affected, you have this difficulty — his hardened spiritual feeling will hinder understanding. We all know how difficult it is to make men understand what they do not like. All the training of a university will not make some men mathematicians. Again, if a man does not love truth and honesty, you cannot make him true and honest by expounding truth or honesty; you must begin by creating within him a feeling of truth and honesty; then you can easily teach him what things are true and honest. You must have a moral faculty for discerning moral things. 2. I think, therefore, we may see the profound wisdom of the gospel method. It begins by setting man's feeling right, producing in him a desire for holiness and a hatred of evil. The apostle tells us that this is the working of the Spirit of God. Take the little faults of men; you cannot reform a habit or a temper by merely teaching about it — nay, by a mere resolution of the will. The root of the thing is in the love for it, and you must begin by destroying this and cultivating love for good, or you will never succeed. You can cure a bad passion only by producing a good one; you can expel an evil affection only by the Spirit of God. 3. The way of the world in seeking religious truth and life is to investigate evidence, to exercise the reasoning faculties — just as you would investigate a problem of history, or demonstrate a proposition in mathematics or logic. Hence it is that so many learned philosophers and theologians never attain to Christianity; to them it is simply an intellectual study; they study it as they would study Buddhism or Mohammedanism. They can understand theology as a science of God; they can understand religion as a theory and a morality; but they have no conception of its spiritual character. "The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit"; they are discerned only by a spiritual faculty. II. BUT THEN IT IS WISDOM, EVEN TO THE PERFECT, OF A MYSTERIOUS KIND. 1. A man cannot reason out such a system as God's salvation by Christ; it is discerned, as Paul says, by spiritual recognition, just as the poetry of a landscape cannot be discerned by a mere mathematician, by a mere engineer. Christianity is a revelation of facts, not a mere notion; Christ tells us what God is, that He is "our Father in heaven"; what God has done, that God "has given His only begotten Son, because He so loved the world." Now these facts could not have been imagined, could not have been demonstrated by human reasoning. But when they are testified by God, when they are proved by evidence to be facts, then, if I am a "perfect," i.e., a spiritual man, I at once feel that this revelation of God in Christ is true; that it is exactly suited to my personal need; it "commends itself to every man's conscience in the sight of God." None of the princes of this world in thought or in politics have believed. They did not see the principles of truth, righteousness, and love that were manifested by Jesus Christ. Had they seen these as the man of spiritual feeling sees them, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Pilate had some philosophical knowledge; he felt even an interest in and wanted to save Christ. He talked with Him about His kingdom and about the truth; but Pilate's corrupt selfishness, his political interests, permitted him to sentence a man to crucifixion — whom he knew to be innocent. There was the moral blindness in close conjunction with the philosophical intelligence. 2. Every teaching about God must have mystery pertaining to it that can never be revealed. This is true, indeed, of everything in human life. Let a man begin to think about God and about moral being, and how soon he comes to a blank wall that he cannot penetrate! Well, it is not that God purposely conceals things, it is that we cannot comprehend them. Instead of adding to the mystery of God, we understand more of God through Jesus Christ than we can on any other theory. And yet how much remains that is impenetrable! We are compelled to exclaim, "Oh! the depths," &c. Who can fathom the mystery of the incarnation, of the atonement, of the quickening of spiritual life in men, &c. In the love of Christ, in the love of God, there are heights and depths that pass knowledge. And yet observe — (1) That there are no mysterious things in Christianity. Christianity has no sacred rites, inscrutable puzzles, artificial concealments. (2) That Christian mysteries are revealed to men so far as they are qualified to discern them. Nothing in Christianity is purposely concealed. The religious life of us men and women who have to do with the business of this great city, is never so powerfully moved, so loftily inspired, so practically directed, as when we simply stand before the great Christian doctrines. (3) What a practical temper this gives to the religious life! What a passionate desire for God, for the study of God, in His Word, in prayer, in worship! (4) The domain of the knowable is sufficient for all the practical needs of man. It is so in science. We eat without knowing the chemistry of food; we act without knowing the philosophy of motion. It is so in religion. I may, however ignorant of the higher mysteries of being, practically realise the life of virtue and piety. The way of life through Christ is plain. (H. Allon, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: |
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