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… 1. It must not be thought that the gospel despises wisdom. The gospel is itself wisdom, only it is God's wisdom and net man's. "We speak wisdom... yet a wisdom not of this world." There is nothing which some of us need more just now than a demonstration of this sort. 2. It is constantly assumed that the progress of knowledge has exploded the gospel; that the cultivated intellect leaves faith behind; that the triumph of reason means the overthrow of religion. 3. This is bad enough, but what is worse is that some Christian people countenance such a view. They look askance at science, believing it to be an enemy of the faith. Huxley and Tyndal are very terrible names to them. They are uncomfortable when they find their sons are beginning to question and to think. Reason has an unpleasing suggestion of "The Age of Reason" and the French Revolution. Then these good people quote, "Not many wise are called," omitting the qualifying "after the flesh." 4. Does Christ relinquish His claim on able men? No. The Christian religion is distinguished from all other religions in this, that it is an appeal to the reason, it calls into play all its powers and welcomes all the established results of science. It asks us to believe that we may know and understand. It calls for faith, but only that faith which reason allows or requires. And as the religion differs from other religions, so our Scriptures are distinguished by their constant eulogy of wisdom. The Bible is not only an appeal to the conscience; it is also an appeal to the brain. It is so constructed that it demands diligent study. I. WHO ARE THE NATURAL MEN NOWADAYS WHO CORRESPOND TO THOSE WHO, IN ST. PAUL'S TIME, WERE INCAPABLE OF RECEIVING THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD? 1. Those who tell us that matter can explain Spirit, that thought is a mere function of a grey, unthinking substance called the brain. Now they cannot receive the wisdom of the gospel — not because they are wiser than every one else, but because their wisdom is after the flesh, and a limited and foolish kind of wisdom. So far from being really wise, they do not even comprehend the question which agitates all earnest men, viz., the meaning of the spiritual world of which you are all more or less conscious. They say, "The spiritual world is only part and parcel of the material world with which we are familiar." But if thought comes from brain, then it must be already a thinking brain from which it comes. If spirit is a mere outcome of matter, then it must be already a spiritual matter which produces it. Materialism cannot apprehend the wisdom of the gospel, for it has juggled away the very meaning of its terms — spiritual and material. 2. Those who speak as if the understanding could answer all the questions and meet all the needs of the human spirit. The understanding ,cannot comprehend God; therefore, say they, God does not exist. The understanding cannot explain the freedom of the will; therefore the will is not free. And not admitting the existence of God or the freedom of the will, moral responsibility is quickly discredited. On the same showing love and hope and self-sacrifice ought to be dismissed as chimeras — and perhaps by some they are. Now, such people cannot understand the wisdom of the gospel; not because they are so much cleverer than all the world, only because they have made a rather childish mistake, they have not noticed the limits within which the understanding is able to work; they are like men who should deny that the atmosphere exists because they cannot walk on it as the birds of the air can. The understanding is only a part of our being. Every man is more than understanding; he is also heart, conscience, will. The understanding is only absolute within its own sphere. II. THE WISDOM WHICH PAUL "SPEAKS AMONG THE PERFECT" IS NOTHING LESS THAN THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN MAN. Just as consciousness alone can be aware of our own inward life, so God's consciousness alone can understand the depths of God; and only by being made partakers of God's consciousness can we search those depths. 1. Such an indwelling Spirit will rescue us from the two errors on which we have been reflecting: of materialism and the undue exaltation of the powers of our own understanding. This indwelling Spirit forces us to recognise that the world and life, as we see them, stand forth out of an encircling sea of mystery in which their origins and issues are hidden. It makes us glad to learn from science all about the process of development, but it clearly teaches us that in the last resort it is only in the will of God that either the world or the life upon it could have its birth and find its issue. 2. But this wisdom of the gospel is more than an admission of mystery and of our own limitations. It comes to us as the explanation of the mystery and as the aid of our limitations. The gospel gives us the key to creation, culminating in humanity, the Incarnate God-Man — Christ Jesus; the key to man's great dumb longing for God in God's great uttered longing for man; the key to the heavy sorrow which oppresses the life of man, in the suffering of the God-man; the key to the dead weight of sin in the complete and voluntary sacrifice of Christ. 3. Nor is this all; in the mind of Christ, an intellect in which there meets the fullest understanding of God with the most tender sympathy for man, is really hidden a treasure of wisdom, a solution of all the questionings of our imperfect spirits. "We have the mind of Christ." The humble and unlearned believer is made partaker of that wonderful mind, is allowed to share its workings, and so to apprehend the answer which it is always giving to the searchings of man. III. THUS, AS WE REFLECT ON PAUL'S PREGNANT SENTENCES, WE BECOME AWARE THAT THE GOSPEL DOES NOT SUPPRESS WISDOM; IT IS A WISDOM FAR SURPASSING THE WISDOM OF THE WORLD. It would be the greatest mistake to suppose that by the "wisdom" of 1 Corinthians 1:20, 21, 26 Paul means the reason, or the exercise or products of reason. Indeed, there is not a little almost unintentional irony in his use of the word, and his comment on its rarity among the "called." He speaks rather as one might speak to a number of miners who have just come out of the bowels of the earth into the broad light of day. "You see your calling, my friends; not many torchbearers among you; not many people carry safety-lamps." No; and, indeed, under so glorious an expanse of sunlit blue there is not for the general purposes of life much need of them. We have had among us in this generation many brilliant "natural" men, highly gifted with wisdom after the flesh. There was the late Professor Clifford; there are Haeckel, Maudsley and Spencer. Have they thrown light upon the universal question? Why are we-intelligent spiritual beings, with conscience, will, and hearts — why are we here at all; whence coming, whither going? So far from superseding this wisdom of which Paul speaks, they fall very short of it. For the most part they modestly confess they have no answer to the question. But Paul has an explanation; and to spiritual minds reason is satisfied. (R. F. Horton, 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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