Contrast helps us see more clearly, doesn’t it? There’s a reason why bright jewelry is typically displayed against a dark backdrop in the jewelry store. The contrasts helps us see the brightness and beauty of the jewelry more clearly. It’s often when we hear of others’ struggles that we realize how blessed our lives are, something that is less clear without the contrast of another’s suffering. Or on the other end of things, sometimes we are content until we find out that another has achieved something greater than us, out-performed us, or received greater praise. The contrast of our life and theirs changes our perspective on ourselves.
The biblical authors capitalize on this reality that things are seen more clearly in contrast. Jesus himself, for example, tells us that if we’re evil and give good gifts to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit and good gifts to those who ask him. The contrast of us being evil and yet doing good with the infinitely good God we serve, helps to highlight just how much we can trust in our Father giving good gifts to us as his children. And another place we see a biblical author utilizing contrasts in order to teach his readers effectively is right here in 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4.
This texts is full of contrasts. Throughout the text, Paul contrasts those who understand God’s wisdom and those who don’t, the Holy Spirit and the spirit of the world, the natural person and the spiritual person, and those able to handle solid food and those who can only handle milk, like infants. But not only is the text filled with these contrasting images throughout, the whole section we’re looking at this morning is itself set up in terms of contrast. Paul wants the Corinthians to see how blessed they are and then contrast that how they’re thinking and acting. And by showing it in the stark contrast that he does, his rebuke comes across strongly, sin appears as foolish as it is, and, consequently, a desire for holiness should grow within us.
And what’s helpful for us is that what Paul says to the Corinthians is true concerning us as well. Therefore, this morning, I want us to see how greatly we’ve been blessed in Christ, then I want us to see how foolish sin should appear to us, and then I want us to see a weapon that I think the text provides for us in our fight against sin.
Let me start, then, by showing us three ways that we have been richly blessed in Christ, but I want to show this through the contrast that Paul holds up in each section. In 2:6-10a, Paul holds up:
Now, these first few verses of our text can have some confusing language, so let me help orient us a bit to where Paul is and what he’s saying as he begins verse 6. Paul has just argued in 1:18-2:5, as we saw last week, that the way God has provided salvation (i.e., by means of Christ’s death and resurrection and our proclamation of that message so that men might believe and be saved) is seen as folly in the eyes of the world. And Paul has argued that this response isn’t a surprise to God because part of his very design in crafting salvation for his people was to destroy the wisdom of the world, not appeal to it. Moreover, when he sends us out to preach Christ crucified, he knows that we will be mocked by many (i.e., most), yet that’s because the world will always regard the message of the cross as foolishness.
Therefore, when Paul begins writing in 2:6, he is continuing that argument about the message of the cross, our preaching it, and it not coming across as wisdom but folly in the world’s eyes. So, in verse 6, Paul wants to make sure we understand that it’s not as if the cross really is foolish. Yes, its design is to appear in the eyes of the world as foolish, but the message of the cross is the magnificent wisdom of God; not the wisdom of this world. Thus, Paul writes, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.”
And when Paul says “mature,” I think he means simply all Christians. All who have been called by God so that when the gospel was preached, instead of thinking, “This is folly” thought, “Christ is the power and the wisdom of God.” Those people, all believers, Paul calls “mature.” And he may well be doing it because some believers in the church at Corinth were exalting themselves as “mature” over against other believers, and Paul wants them all to know that maturity begins with simply recognizing the message of the cross as God’s power and wisdom.
But then in verse 7, he continues to talk about the wisdom of God’s work of salvation through the death and resurrection of his Son. He writes, “But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.” The reason Paul calls Christ’s crucifixion and the preached message of the cross “secret and hidden wisdom” is because for years, for centuries, it was unsure how God would precisely save us. We have promises throughout the Old Testament that salvation was coming. In Genesis 3 we’re promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. We hear in Isaiah 27 that God will slay the twisting serpent in the sea. We see pictures, like that found in Exodus, of God destroying the Egyptians and freeing his people from their bondage in slavery. But none of that clearly suggests God the Son taking on flesh and destroying the enemies of Satan, sin, and death by laying down his life, does it? The image of the seed of the woman crushing the head of the serpent makes you think, “Ah yes, he’s going to bring salvation to us as we’re held in Satan’s grip by coming and drowning in his own blood on a Roman cross.”
This was God’s plan for salvation, as Paul says “decreed before the ages for our glory,” but it was a “secret and hidden wisdom” in the sense that few in any anticipated the cross as God’s design of salvation for his people. No one of the wise men in the world imagined it. Not one person of noble birth saw it coming. Not one great and mighty ruler of the earth was talking about it. That’s why Paul says in verse 9, “But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.’”
Do you see how verse 9 works? This isn’t a reference about the coming glory of eternity at the resurrection. This is talking about the cross. For ages no one saw it coming, or talked about it, or even imagined just how God was going to redeem those who love him. And it wasn’t clear until Christ actually came, died, and was raised. Jesus’ followers didn’t even see it coming. Peter tried to stop Jesus from dying. And the Sanhedrin, and Pilate, and Herod, and the Jews didn’t understand that God’s plan of salvation was to save his people through a crucified Messiah. As Paul says in verse 8, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” The Sanhedrin wasn’t looking to fulfill God’s plan of salvation. They were trying to destroy the Messiah. Had they known that by killing Christ they would bring about God’s very purposes in and through his Son, they wouldn’t have killed him. But they didn’t know. They simply were rebelling against God. And as they did it, Herod and Pilate along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel were merely doing “whatever [God’s] hand and [God’s] plan had predestined to take place,” in the words of Acts 4:28.
So, none of the wise rulers of this age understood God’s plan to save his people through a crucified Messiah. They saw his death as their victory. They saw him as a failure. They saw his followers as hopeless and abandoned. No one understood God’s that this was God’s wise work of salvation. But, and here is the first contrast in our first section of text, these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (v. 10).
We are the blessed of God who understand the cross as victory. We are the blessed of God who by the Spirit understand that Jesus conquered death through his death. We are the blessed of God who look to the cross and see it as the work of God to free us from Satan, sin, and death. We are the blessed of God who look at the cross and see our Lord and Savior. And the reason we see it that way is because we have received the blessing of that reality being revealed to us by the Spirit of God himself.
We are those who by the Spirit of God have been blessed to understand the cross as the glorious work of salvation that it really is. That’s the first blessing I want us to see in this text. We get to see the cross in the glory and beauty that it truly demonstrates – our salvation.
We then see our next blessing through the contrast found in verses 10b-13. There we see more clearly:
Verse 10 has begun by showing us that God has revealed the glory of the cross through the Spirit. Apart from the Spirit, none of us would see the cross as God’s glorious work of salvation for his people. We would all look at the cross as the failure of the Messiah. The wisdom of the world just isn’t sufficient to comprehend the wisdom of God in the cross. We can’t get it. And we can’t get it because we’re sinful and in rebellion against God apart from his saving work. What we need is for God to reveal the truth of the cross to us, open our eyes so that we can see. And the means he uses to do that is his Spirit. Why the Spirit? Paul explains in 10b-11.
Paul writes in these verses, “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except he spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
No one knows the innermost thoughts of a person except the person, right? I mean, we can say I know you and you know me, but nobody knows my thoughts except me and nobody knows your thoughts but you. Well, in the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except God. Thus, Paul tells us that the Spirit of God obviously knows the thoughts of God because he is God. He knows the depths of God because he knows the depths of himself.
And here’s the amazing news; we have the Spirit of God. Paul writes in verse 12, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” God gave us his Spirit so that we might understand what he’s done for us.
So, if we’re doing the math, not only did God provide for us salvation by sending his Son to live, die, and be raised for us. But he gave us his Spirit so that by the power of the Spirit we might have the ability to comprehend the wisdom of God, understanding that the cross is our glorious hope of salvation. What a blessing!
And Paul concludes that when we therefore share the message of the cross with others, this has an impact on how we share it. He writes, “And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (13). This is a basic reiteration of what Paul had said in 2:1-5. When you go to preach the gospel, don’t worry about appealing to man’s wisdom. Man’s wisdom is not the path to knowing God. Speak in a way that simply highlights what God has done, and trust that the Spirit can give insight. By that of course, I don’t mean we don’t plead with men, as I’ve noted many times before. But I mean we don’t alter the gospel message. It is spiritual wisdom understood by spiritual people (i.e., those who have the Spirit opening their eyes), so altering the gospel in such a way as to appeal to man’s worldly wisdom is pointless.
So, do you see then the blessing we have thus far? God has worked salvation for us through the death and resurrection of his Son, something that no one understood, but we get to understand it and profit from it. We get to see the cross accurately and know salvation because of it. But we see clearly and profit from it not because of ourselves but because God the Spirit, who knows the depths of the thoughts of God, has been given to us so that we might understand these things that have freely been given to us in the work of Christ.
But there’s another blessing we need to see. In verses 14-16 we see:
Paul lays out in these verses the benefit we have because we have the Spirit of God. He writes in verse 14, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The person who doesn’t have the Spirit continues to deny Christ’s work and deny salvation because they look like folly to him. And the reason the work and message of salvation looks like folly to him is because he doesn’t have the ability to understand how wise and glorious the gospel is.
Now, don’t be misled here. The reason the man without the Spirit can’t understand the cross isn’t because he’s somehow physically unable, as if he just doesn’t have the brain power. It’s because he’s in moral rebellion against God in his sin and is such rebellion that he suppresses even what he knows to be true. You might almost compare it to a couple who has grown to hate each other so much that neither can recognize any good the other is doing. They can’t recognize the good not because they lack some physical senses they used to have. Rather, it’s because they’ve let their hatred blind them to what others on the outside of this relationship could clearly see.
So it is with unbelievers. They can’t see the message of the cross as glorious, and that’s why they keep rejecting it as foolishness. But again, we have the Spirit. He’s opened our eyes. That’s why we can see the cross as glorious.
And note the beneficial position this puts us in. Paul writes in verses 15-16, “The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.’”
Here’s what Paul is saying, because you and I have the Spirit, we have been given wisdom to understand the cross as the wisdom of God in saving his people. And that’s exactly what it is. We judge rightly when we look at the cross and say, “The power of God and the wisdom of God.” However, the believer (i.e., the spiritual person) also can make accurate judgments about the world and the person without the Spirit can’t we? We can say of the unbeliever that the reason he can’t see the cross as glorious is because he’s bound in his own rebellion against the Lord. We can say that he’s exalting foolishness when he chases after the wisdom of the world.
Because we have the Spirit, we can judge all things. We rightly understand the cross and we rightly understand where the unbeliever stands. We can even say that we know what drives the unbeliever better than he understands what drives him. But the reverse isn’t true. That is, he can’t understand us. He doesn’t make accurate judgments of us.
What Paul is saying is that when you share the gospel and the person rejects it and mocks you as a fool, his judgment of you in that moment is wrong. That person isn’t in a place to be able to understand true wisdom, so he can’t judge you accurately and isn’t judging you accurately. But when you walk away knowing he’s caught in the foolishness of man’s rebellion, you do accurately judge him. And the reason you can is because you have the Spirit.
And this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, as Paul reminds us, “Who has understood God’s mind?” It’s not surprising that the unbeliever isn’t saying, “Man, you’re wise.” He can’t understand God’s wisdom. However, when you remember that we have the Spirit, who knows the mind of God (or as Paul says in verse 16, “the mind of Christ,” which is simply a parallel to saying we have the Spirit), it isn’t surprising that we can view this world from the perspective of having the very wisdom of God.
That’s the benefit and blessing of having the Spirit. So, putting this all together. The death of Christ was God’s wise way of saving us that the world deemed foolish. Second, not only was Christ’s work for our salvation but we can understand it and rightly see it as such because we have the Spirit, who alone opens the eyes of anyone to believe. And, finally, because we have the Spirit, even though the world cannot make an accurate judgment of us (calling us fools when our belief in the gospel actually shows forth the wisdom of God), we are in a position to see them accurately, make judgments of where they stand and call them to repentance as we proclaim to them the gospel. Do you see then how blessed we are?
But all of this that Paul wants the Corinthians to know sets up this contrast with what Paul sees in how they are thinking and living. The Corinthians were valuing man’s wisdom and chasing after what this foolish world said to them was valuable and should be prized. They were trying to exalt themselves, know glory and fame, get man’s prize. They were letting the unspiritual, foolish world around them tell them what they should prize and treasure and were believing it and acting on it, and it was destroying the church. That’s why Paul shows us in 3:1-4 that:
Paul starts in 3:1, “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” Paul had to come to them as if he was approached a bunch of people who didn’t have the Spirit of God – though he knew they did have the Sprit. They have walked in immaturity. He then points out that their thinking and actions show that they’re living like those who don’t have the Spirit and therefore don’t understand the Lord’s wisdom.
He writes in verses 2-4, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving in only a human way? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human.”
You see, as blessed as we are (having the Spirit, understanding the gospel as glorious, being able to understand unbelievers and ourselves rightly, according to the very wisdom of God given us), when we begin to chase after and long for what the world says we should treasure, we’re acting as if none of those blessings is true of us.
When you’re jealous of some success of the person down the street, envious of the riches another possesses, or covetous that someone has an ability that you lack, aren’t you just taking your cues from a world that only has the wisdom of this age and are doomed to pass away? Aren’t you acting as if you’re captured in darkness and foolishness just like they are? Aren’t you acting as if you’re a mere man, as Paul says?
Yet these values of the world are tempting aren’t they? They’d taken hold of the Corinthians. The Corinthians were set to destroy the church because they were so caught up in taking their cues from the world. They wanted to be the richest, or smartest, or best. They were even applying the world’s values to spiritual things, thinking of themselves as more spiritual gifted, or more mature, or a better Christian than their brothers and sisters. If identifying with Apollos made them feel elevated above their brother, they did it. And this infiltration of the world’s value system was causing them to be gripped by jealousy and fight with each other – to behave like mere men.
So, Paul’s approach is not just to rebuke them, but to show them that God has blessed them by freeing them from having to be shackled to the values of the world. They don’t have to chase what the world chases, which only leads to jealousy, strife, and emptiness. They have the Spirit. They understand the gospel. They are privileged children of God.
And I want us to understand the same. If we’ve succumbed to the prison that is found in chasing after what is passing away, let us repent and walk away from it this morning, and let us live as those who have the very wisdom of God, as we have the very Spirit of God. And let that free us to live in a way that rejoices in another’s good, lifts up our brothers and sisters, and seeks to celebrate and grow from another’s giftedness. This will make an impact on the world as we uphold before them the godly wisdom of life lived under the guidance of the Spirit of God, who helps us walk according to divine wisdom. Amen.