One would think this gift would endow us with great and clever oratory voice inflections and techniques or story-telling powers or convincing wisdom to capture the attention of those with itching ears who seek only to understand it in their carnal minds. No, not at all.
This gift of speaking the Holy Spirit gives enables us to use the simplicity of God’s Word with conviction in the total belief that our words were first spoken by God through those whom he chose to write them down.
The purpose in using the gift of speaking is as Paul told Timothy, to simply proclaim all Scripture is God-breathed so that we have a foundation to build our understanding on and then use it for “teaching the truth, convicting of sin, correcting faults and training in right living.”
And so, we speak the truth in God’s Word as revealed by the Holy Spirit for use in supporting and uplifting those in the body of Christ on their path to be transformed into the image of Christ.
It is written that God’s foolishness is greater than all the wisdom of the world and to prove it, He chose that which the world considers foolishness to save those who in child-like faith believe in Him. And that foolishness is the idea that someone could die for us and then rise from the dead.
In the carnal-reasoning mind, Christ was just a man who was put to death and that was the end of him. There was no great change in the world, the Romans were still ruling and the emperor still sat upon his throne declaring himself to be a god and being worshipped as one. In their minds, all was still the same before and after Jesus.
But, like Elijah’s servant who reported that he first saw a little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand that eventually grew into a great storm which ended the 3-year drought that had so vexed King Ahab and his Syrian wife Jezebel, so it is with the still small voice of God gently calling to us and for those whom he foreknew and chose, we hear and understand and believe and are being saved and the cloud of believers continues to grow to this day.
Those that are perishing cannot understand the reasons behind God’s actions to send his own son to die on the cross and then to raise him from the dead. But to those of us who are being saved, it is a demonstration of God’s power and His love towards us in that while we were yet without strength, God sent his own son in the likeness of flesh to die in such a way that it takes away our sins and when he arose from the dead, it gave us hope in the promise of eternal life. Without Christ being raised from the dead, our faith would be of no value for we would still be perishing like the rest of the world. We would be the most miserable of people.
To the Jews who are without faith, it is a stumbling block because they were expecting a Messiah who would be king to shake off the shackles of Rome and reestablish the nation of Israel to its former glory.
We see in the gospels that many of those following Jesus abandoned him for this very reason when he said that he would soon be put to death. In answer to Jesus though, Peter said, “to whom shall we go to find eternal life, Lord?”
Peter only understood this great truth because it had been revealed to him by the Father, the Most High. And God reveals his greats truths to us as well through His Holy Spirit so that that which seems wildly impossible is believed with a deep conviction so much so that we would willingly give up this one life we have for the promise of something so much better.
Now, in 1 Corinthians 1:17,21, Paul says the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified was not to be done through clever words and prideful eloquent language to make the power of the cross to no effect, but rather a simple straightforward message as a one who had the witness of the Holy Spirit in him. Furthermore, we see that God chose the foolishness of preaching the cross to confound the wise who depend on their own wisdom (reasoning) to understand things. The carnal mind that reasons cannot accept that a person can rise from the dead: It is only possible through belief and faith in God.
Let’s read how Paul explains these things to the Corinthians.
17 For the Messiah did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the Good News – and to do it without relying on “wisdom” that consists of mere rhetoric, so as not to rob the Messiah’s cross of its power.
21 For God’s wisdom ordained that the world, using its own wisdom, would not come to know him. Therefore, God decided to use the “nonsense” of what we proclaim as his means of saving those who come to trust in it.
And now, what is the simplicity of the Good News in the “Power of the message of the Cross”?
That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son (to be slayed upon a cross for the remission of sins) so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Some say that God loves us just the way we are but that’s just not true because not only does God love us, He’s also Righteous and Just. In God’s justice, he condemns the sin in us, and we are deserving of the penalty of death without remediation. He sent His only begotten son to die the death we deserved so that He could pay the penalty of sin for us. God’s Gift of Grace is that we can take on Jesus’ own righteousness when we believe in him and this satisfies God’s righteousness and justice. Jesus paid our debt and made us right with God. That’s what Justice demands for a Righteous God.
That which saves us from perishing is a heartfelt belief spanning the top of our heads to the soles of our feet that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he died for our sins, was buried and rose again on the third day. Heartfelt is of the mind, not of the emotions.
That belief also comes with a commitment to deny ourselves and take up our own cross and follow Him.
To deny ourselves is put to death our own selfish inclinations (lust of the eyes – coveting, lust of the flesh – sexual immorality and pride of life) and to take up our own cross means being able and willing to endure ridicule and harassment and even imprisonment for our commitment to obey what Jesus asked us to do rather than what the world provokes in us to do.
To follow Jesus means that we agree to repent from our sins as God describes them and allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into someone with the mind of Christ in both our thinking and our outward actions.
In the end, the goal for the Holy Spirit is to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ and it’s a life-long process called being perfected. Not even the Apostle Paul was able to attain that perfection but he never stopped working toward it. And he gave us good advice – work only towards the goal ahead of us and leave the thoughts of that which is behind.
How do we know what it means to have “the mind of Christ”?
In Romans 12:9-21 there are many things we need to put into practice and by doing them, we learn how to live our lives in a way that’s pleasing to him. All the things Jesus taught us are based on unconditional love for each other, the same love God has for us.
Being able to do the things being asked of us requires the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which speaks the mind of Christ to us. And we need to trust in Jesus completely to give us his strength to do the things we must do in our own weakness.
Think about what reading and meditating on God’s Word each day allows the Holy Spirit to do in our lives: First, it renews our thoughts as to what’s really important and He causes us to remember God’s Word when we need it and to stop and think before we go down the path of allowing ourselves to be tempted in our minds and then enticed by our own desires to commit a sin.
In our lesson today, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians speaks to the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t require some clever or impressive words to convince someone because God’s Word is spiritually discerned, and we can’t understand it with the natural carnal mind or believe it without a connection between our spirits and God’s Holy Spirit. Those who believe see it as the very truth out of God’s mouth and trust and receive it in faith.
1 Corinthians 2:1-10
1 As for me, brothers, when I arrived among you, it was not with surpassing eloquence or wisdom that I came announcing to you the previously concealed truth about God;
2 for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal.
3 Also I myself was with you as somebody weak, nervous and shaking all over from fear;
4 and neither the delivery nor the content of my message relied on compelling words of “wisdom” but on a demonstration of the power of the Spirit,
5 so that your trust might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power.
6 Yet there is a wisdom that we are speaking to those who are mature enough for it. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of this world’s leaders, who are in the process of passing away.
7 On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory.
8 Not one of this world’s leaders has understood it; because if they had, they would not have executed the Lord from whom this glory flows.
9 But, as the scripture says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard and no one’s heart has imagined all the things that God has prepared for those who love him.”
10 It is to us, however, that God has revealed these things. How? Through the Spirit. For the Spirit probes all things, even the profoundest depths of God.
11 For who knows the inner workings of a person except the person’s own spirit inside him? So too no one knows the inner workings of God except God’s Spirit.
12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God, so that we might understand the things God has so freely given us.
13 These are the things we are talking about when we avoid the manner of speaking that human wisdom would dictate and instead use a manner of speaking taught by the Spirit, by which we explain things of the Spirit to people who have the Spirit.
14 Now the natural man does not receive the things from the Spirit of God – to him they are nonsense! Moreover, he is unable to grasp them, because they are evaluated through the Spirit.
15 But the person who has the Spirit can evaluate everything, while no one is in a position to evaluate him. For who has known the mind of the LORD? Who will counsel him? But we have the mind of the Messiah!
In 1 Peter 1:20-21 we learn what the depth of the secret wisdom of God is.
20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,
21 Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.
We see that God in His Wisdom reveals a knowledge of all things that are going to happen and for our redemption by His very on Son, he foreordained it before anything was created. And since He knows all that is to happen, then he can know who will believe and who won’t, and He knows that those who are wise in their own conceits will never allow themselves to believe in the simplicity of the preaching of the cross.
May we all be blessed and may God keep all these things in the hearts of us all to uphold our faith and belief in Him until the end of things comes. AMEN