1 Corinthians 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world to our glory: The reasons of this may be stated upon these two grounds. I. THE NATURE AND QUALITY OF THE THINGS TREATED OF. 1. Their surpassing greatness to the mind of man. God is an infinite being, a world in Himself, too high for our speculations and too great for our descriptions. Heaven enters into us, as we must into it, by a very narrow passage. But how shall the King of glory, whom the heavens themselves cannot contain, enter in by these doors? How shall these short faculties measure the lengths of His eternity, the breadths of His immensity, the heights of His prescience, and the depths of His decrees? and those mysteries of two natures united into one person and of one nature diffused into a triple personality? 2. Their spirituality. When we read that God is a Spirit, and that angels and the souls of men are spirits, we cannot frame any notion or resemblance of them. We can fetch in no information from our senses. Imagine a man born blind, able upon hearsay to conceive all the varieties of colour, to draw a map of France, &c. But as it would be extremely irrational for a blind man to deny that there are such things as colours, &c., because he cannot form any mental perception of them, so would it be superlatively more unreasonable for us to deny on the same grounds the great articles of our Christianity. 3. Their strangeness and unreducibleness to the common methods and observations of nature. Take, e.g. — (1) Christ's satisfaction for sin. That He who was the offended person should provide a satisfaction and concern Himself to solicit a needless reconciliation, that a Father should deliver up an innocent and infinitely beloved Son for the redemption of His enemies, are transactions such as we can find nothing analogous to in all the dealings of men. (2) Regeneration, concerning which men wonder by what strange power it should come to pass that any one should be brought to conquer inveterate appetites and desires, and to have new ones absolutely contrary planted in their room. So that when our Saviour discoursed of these things to Nicodemus, he asked, "How can these things be?"(3) The resurrection. II. SOME OF ITS PRINCIPAL ENDS AND DESIGNS. But may it not be objected that the grand design of religion is to engage men in the practice of its commands, and that the way to obey a law is to know it, and the way to know it is to have it plainly propounded? To this I answer, first, that it is as much the design of religion to oblige men to believe the credenda as to practise the agenda of it: and secondly, that there is as clear a reason for the belief of the one as for the practice of the other. They exceed indeed the human reason to comprehend them scientifically, and are therefore proposed, not to our knowledge, but to our belief; but since God has revealed them we may with the highest reason, upon His bare word, believe them. But then, as for those things that concern our practice, they indeed are of that clearness that being once proposed to us, need not our study, but only our acceptance. In sum, the articles of our faith are those depths in which the elephant may swim, and the rules of our practice those shallows in which the lamb may wade. But as both light and darkness make but one natural day, so both the clearness of the agenda and the mystery of the credenda of the gospel constitute but one entire religion. I come now to show that the mysteriousness of the credenda, or matters of our faith, is most subservient to the great ends of religion. 1. Because religion in its prime institution was designed to make impressions of awe and reverential fear upon men's minds. God, who designed man to a supernatural end, thought fit also to engage him to a way of living above the bare course of nature, and for that purpose to oblige him to a control of his mere natural desires. And this can never be done but by imprinting such apprehensions of dread as may stave off appetite from its desired satisfactions, which the infinite wisdom of God has thought fit to do, by nonplussing the world with certain new and unaccountable revelations. To protect which from the encroachments of bold minds, He has hedged it in with a sacred obscurity in some of the principal parts of it, inasmuch as "familiarity breeds contempt." 2. Because religion is delivered by God to humble the pride of man's reason. Man fell by pride, founded upon an irregular desire of knowledge, and therefore Divine wisdom contrived man's recovery by such a method as should abase him in that very perfection, whereof the ambitious improvement first cast him down from that glorious condition. 3. Because He would engage us in a more diligent search into the articles of religion. No man studies things plain and evident. We are commanded by Christ to search the Scriptures, and whosoever shall apply himself to a thorough performance of this high command, shall find difficulty enough in the things searched into to perpetuate his search. For they are a rich mine which the greatest wit and diligence may dig in for ever and still find new matter to entertain the busiest contemplation with, even to the utmost period of the most extended life. Truth, we are told, dwells low, and in a bottom; and the most valued things of the creation are hidden from the common view, so that violence must be done to nature, before she will produce and bring them forth. 4. Because the full know]edge of it may be one principal part of our blessedness hereafter. All those heights and depths which confound the subtlest apprehension shall then be made clear to us. (R. South, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: |
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