“We speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. …None of the rulers of this age understood God’s wisdom, for it they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:6, 8)
There is a divine wisdom that this world will never understand, nor will spiritual babes. It can only be appreciated by the spiritually mature. The world will always be impressed by arrogance and bravado. It will always show contempt for humility. Yet it was by His humility that Jesus defeated Satan and destroyed his kingdom.
This world in its wisdom did not see this defeat coming. Satan and his minions could not have grasped God’s strategy. If they had, they would not have incited the religious leaders of Jerusalem and its Roman occupiers to crucify the Lord of Glory. It came as a complete shock to Satan that Jesus – by suffering humiliation and death in obedience to His Father – would deliver a knockout punch to the devil’s jaw and put him down for the count. God’s wisdom was like top secret intelligence that the devil never grasped.
God’s wisdom is counter-intuitive for the worldly and unspiritual mind. But it’s imperative that the Christian believer understand it. You see, in God’s wisdom we overcome evil with good, lies with truth, hatred with love, curses with blessings, persecution with prayer, and the satanic with the divine. This is why Paul tells us to be “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” (Ephesians 6:10). Key to winning our spiritual battles is to acknowledge our own weakness and cling to God for strength. In this way, we exchange human frailty with divine power.
This is why Paul did not use cleverly devised arguments when he preached the Gospel to the Corinthians. He knew that it took more than winning arguments to save sinners. It took the Holy Spirit’s power to open blind eyes, soften hardened hearts, and raise people from death in trespasses and sins. Paul had to rely on God’s power to do God’s work. By doing so, the Corinthians’ faith was not in human wisdom but in God’s power.
But the Corinthians were slipping back into worldly thinking. They were allowing themselves to be divided into factions. They were becoming prideful and viewing their fellow believers with contempt. In the guise of “open-mindedness” they were tolerating gross immorality among them – forgetting that their Lord had called them to be holy. Paul is calling them back to think like their heavenly Father, back to His divine wisdom.
REFLECTION
- Do you feel relentless pressure from this world to adopt its thinking and ideas?
- What does the Bible say is happening to this world and its wisdom (1 John 2:17)?
- Let’s recognize that God calls us to march to the beat of a different drum and to please a different Master. We owe our allegiance to Jesus, not to this world.
