To Know Nothing....

1Co 2:1- 9 When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,  so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.  Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish.   But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.   But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him"--

We live in an age that is dazzled by education, where we eagerly turn to literate, educated people to explain the secrets of life. When Oxford evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins tells us that God exists only “in the environment provided by human culture”, [1]  we are tempted to doubt our Creator – just because an educated man says so!  Similarly I have seen how often we Christian leaders have taken on academic titles to enhance our presence. When a preacher adds Rev. Prof. Dr. as a prefix to a name it adds weight to the words of the sermon.  St. Paul emphatically disagrees with “the wisdom of this age”.

The Apostle Paul is educated, cultured and certificated!  In Philippians 3 he notes that he is entitled to claim superior lineage of one who was “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee”. [2] Yet he rejects this, choosing instead  “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”  This is not because of some false modesty. Paul’s desire was that the faith of the Corinthian followers of Jesus “might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.”

Let us remember that all of life is mystery. When some claim to know the will of God based on a superior education, or when others use their education to claim that there is no God all – we all need to discover the humility to admit to the limitations of our human knowledge. Live today open to the possibility of the Divine Spirit taking us by surprise. Who knows what we might learn!    

 

 

No eye has seen and no ear has heard
And no mind has ever conceived
The glorious things that You have prepared
For every one who has believed
You brought us near and You called us Your own
And made us joint heirs with Your Son

CHORUS
How high and how wide
How deep and how long
How sweet and how strong is Your love
How lavish Your grace
How faithful Your ways
How great is Your love, O Lord

Words and music by Mark Altrogge
© 1990 Integrity’s Praise! Music/Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI)

 

 Third Sunday after Trinity

34 Our Weakness and God’s Strength
The Scripture passage for the day is drawn from Reuben Job and Norman Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and other Servants, (Nashville, The Upper Room 1983), 213.
This reflection is from my own devotional exercises for the day.

 

 

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[1] Richard Dawkins

[2] In Acts 23:6 he noted that he is “a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees”.