Devotional Sharing, Submitted by Bryan Song, Gracepoint Austin
What can I learn about evangelism and Christian life from this passage? I learn that evangelism is not really about one’s ability to wax eloquently about God, nor Christian life about a person’s strong character or level of wisdom. What evangelism and Christian life are ultimately about is the power of God. Apostle Paul made this point very clear through his own life testimony, reminding the Corinthians that he came to them in weakness, fear, and much trembling. The Apostle Paul, the great evangelist, the leader of the early church…The fact that he himself confessed to being weak, full of fear, and much trembling in his Christian walk is quite sobering and humbling. Apostle Paul’s life, however, was so powerful because he was a man full of Jesus Christ, and nothing else. Though he felt weak and much fear, his life was potent because he was so full of the Gospel. This is the kind of life I aspire to live, emptied of oneself and full of the Gospel. It’s so natural to approach evangelism and my Christian life through a self-centered lens, thinking merely about how good or bad I am at something, and how I measure up to a given task. The truth that I need to keep reminding myself of is that I don’t have what it takes to make it on my own, and that is why I need the power of God daily in my Christian life. When I look at my character, I see areas that still need to change, and how my heart needs to still grow in love. And the truth is I will always have faults and shortcomings. Especially here in Austin, I feel weak and unqualified to do all that God has called me to. And yet here I am nonetheless, entrusted with the weighty responsibility of building up this church, of loving and guiding these students here at UT to become disciples of Christ. I dont’ have what it takes to bring about salvation on this campus. I need God’s power to sustain me because not only do i fall short, but this task is much greater than myself! Though I feel weak, I thank God that He provides me the strength to continue persevering in this good work.
Reflect upon v.2 and what it says about the exclusive centrality of Christ and the cross for Apostle Paul. What would be the result of a life so intensely focused on the truths proclaimed by Jesus and his crucifixion? To what extent do I share this resolve to make Christ and “him crucified” the central theme of my worldview and my understanding of the gospel? A life intensely focused on Jesus Christ and his crucifixion results in a very powerful, blessed filled life. Apostle Paul lived this kind of exclusively Christ-centered life. He refused to be distracted by the things of the world, and as a result became a source of blessing for all of Christendom today. I desire to be like Apostle Paul, fully surrendered to God, and fully focused on Jesus Christ. I want to live out the death of Christ Jesus in my life by continually dying to my own desires for comfort and success. I know that these things are temporary and utterly selfish. What compels me to die to myself again and again is the awesome, life-changing work of the Gospel in peoples’ lives. This past Sunday, Gracepoint Austin experienced 4 salvation and lordship decisions. I marvel at the miraculous salvation work that God did in the hearts of these students. Though I didn’t play a direct part in their decisions, their changed lives compel me to want to give more of myself for the Gospel work here in Austin, as there are still many more people who need to meet Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:6-9
What is it about the “wisdom of this age” that cannot comprehend God’s wisdom in the cross? The wisdom of this age cannot comprehend God’s wisdom in the cross because this age’s wisdom runs entirely contrary to God’s ways. Society calls people to live for themselves, advance their status, and strive to do whatever will make them happy and comfortable. God’s wisdom, however, calls people to die themselves through loving sacrifice for others. That is what He first demonstrated through the cross, by sending his beloved son Jesus to die for man. As our church prepares for the upcoming church plants and new ministries next year, I realize it is time to ante up and kick in. It is indeed because of the cross of Jesus that we continue spreading our community throughout the world. What we do is incomprehensible to the world – leaving the comforts of the Bay Area, the security and joy of friendships, quitting good jobs to relocate to a new city for the sake of ministering to college students. But I’m so thankful to God to be a part of a church that refuses to live the conventional Christian life, which I think ultimately boils down to living a comfortable life. As our church prepares to plant new ministries across college campuses, I’m reminded again of the lot God has given me, which is to bear the cross here on the UT campus.
Devotional Questions:
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
- What can I learn about evangelism and Christian life from this passage?
- Reflect upon v.2 and what it says about the exclusive centrality of Christ and the cross for Apostle Paul. What would be the result of a life so intensely focused on the truths proclaimed by Jesus and his crucifixion? To what extent do I share this resolve to make Christ and “him crucified” the central theme of my worldview and my understanding of the gospel?
1 Corinthians 2:6-9
- What is it about the “wisdom of this age” that cannot comprehend God’s wisdom in the cross?
- What God prepared for mankind is something that no human mind could have conceived. What does this imply regarding my ability to fully understand everything God is doing in history, or in my life today?
1 Corinthians 2:10-14
- How does one come to understand the things of God?
- How do I feel about the fact that I have been given the Spirit of God, who searches all things, even the deep things of God, and that through him I “may understand what God has freely given us?”
- How have I personally experienced the work of the Spirit of God in my life?
1 Corinthians 2:15-16
- Reflect upon the fact that I have “the mind of Christ,” and that the “spiritual man makes judgments about all things.” To what extent has my judgment and discernment grown as a result of my Christian life?
- In what ways do I grant undue authority to worldly values or philosophies that hold no spiritual truths?
Commentary:
vv.1-5 “These verses contain Paul’s narrative of community formation. […] Note what he chooses to place at the center of the picture: ‘Christ Jesus and him crucified!’ Neither his comportment nor his rhetoric drew attention to Paul; both, however provided free rein to the Holy Spirit and God’s power. It is no surprise, then, that Paul judges his work among the Corinthians as leaving no room for confusion; their faith is grounded on God’s power, not on human wisdom or performance or status associated with sophisticated speech.”[1]
v.2 “For Paul the critical question is what stands at the center of the picture by which all other parts of the picture gain their meaning and keep their perspective. Paul’s answer: He made the careful decision at the beginning of his time with the Corinthians that it would be Christ and the cross, not just at the beginning but throughout. […] If the crucified Christ is at the center of the picture and all else takes its definition and proportion with reference to that, then a constitutive, formative decision has been made about how the community can distinguish between what is important and what is less important or even indifferent.”[2]
vv.3-5 “Paul’s own personal bearing mirrored his message. His self-presentation was not like that of the esteemed and confident Greek orators; rather, his weakness and fear corresponded to his foolish proclamation of a crucified Messiah. We know from 2 Corinthians 10:10 that some rival preachers regarded Paul as being an unimpressive figure: ‘For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.’’’ Interestingly, the words weak and contemptible are two of the words that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 to describe the vehicles that God has chosen to shame the strong and privileged. (The NRSV translates the latter in 1:28 as ‘despised.’) So, Paul did not fit the popular stereotype of the dynamic orator, and he did not employ artful rhetoric—so he says—to sway his hearers. Why? Because he wanted his preaching strategy to be consistent with ‘the word of the cross,’ with the workings of a God who refuses to play games of power and prestige on human terms.”[3]
vv.6-16 “Verse 6 opens with an invitation for Paul’s hearers to include themselves among the mature, the spiritual people, who can receive Paul’s not-of-this-age wisdom, and closes by giving them the opportunity to identify themselves with the spiritual person who understands (2:14-15). It even adds the extraordinary claim, ‘We have the mind of Christ’ (2:16). Paul’s notoriously ambiguous use of ‘we’ sometimes refers to him alone but, as here, it sometimes leaves an opening for the hearer to identify with Paul. So this passage is framed by an invitation to the Corinthians to think of themselves as mature and also to think of themselves as having the ‘mind of Christ,’ which locution in Paul usually means that persons pattern themselves after Christ (cf. Phil 2:1-5).”
v.7 “The secret and hidden wisdom of God is, therefore, nothing more or less than Jesus Christ and him crucified. Though hidden and secret for generations, he has now been revealed as the Son of God and as the Savior of the world. The word secret (Greek mysterion) has a double stress: mere man cannot penetrate the secret, but God has in his love unlocked it to those who humble themselves before him. It remains secret and hidden to those who still rely on human wisdom.”[4]
vv.10-16 “Paul has shown two fundamental assumptions about people and life in these verses. First, just as there are two ways, so also all humans can be divided into two groups: those with the Spirit and those without. Second, those with the Spirit can discern everything that the unspiritual persons can plus all that is disclosed by the Spirit, who, we must recall, fathoms even the depths of God (2:10). For that reason, Paul concludes (2:15) both that the truly spiritual person ‘examines, knows, discerns’ all things and that the truly spiritual person can claim, with Paul, that ‘we have the mind of Christ’ (2:16).”[5]
vv.13-16 “The contrasts in verses 13-16 have received widespread abuse in the history of the church. As with 1:18-20, they cannot be used to legitimate anti-intellectualism, although they certainly oppose all forms of godless intellectualism. Nor do they justify attempts at interpreting God’s will, including his revelation in the Scriptures, apart from standard, common-sense principles of hermeneutics.”[6]
v.15 “The community has the responsibility to guard the God-given holiness of the congregation, to warn any who stray too near the borders as designated by the vice lists, and to censure anyone, like the man mentioned in 5:1-5, who has violated the sanctity of the borders. This type of judgment, which clearly from 5:5 is not final like divine judgment, but provisional and admonitory, is not only acceptable to Paul but necessary for the health of the community. An important part of community life for Paul is believers’ upbuilding, encouragement, consolation, and warning of one another in the daily walk of faith.”[7]
“Verse 15 too is susceptible to severe misunderstanding. […] Here, therefore, he is thinking primarily of being unjustly evaluated by non-Christians (or by Christians employing worldly standards), who have no authority to criticize believers for their misbehavior, since they themselves do not accept the standards they employ in making their judgments. Christians, on the other hand, may legitimately evaluate the truth or error of non-Christian beliefs and behavior, although their primary concern should be to keep their own house in order (5:12-13).”[8]
v.16 “We can begin to see why Paul must have felt so frustrated by the sheer fleshliness, or carnality, of the Christians at Corinth. They, like all Christians, had access to the very mind of Christ; but they were precluding themselves from the privilege of being able, by the work of the Spirit, to judge all things (15) through God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, the very wisdom of God. […] Paul is saying that Christian believers can revert to behaving like unbelievers. When a person has been born again by the Spirit of God, he becomes potentially a ‘spiritual man,’ but he is not automatically going to continue walking in the Spirit.
“We must beware of any tendency to sit back on our haunches and to feel that we have ‘arrived.’ We must determine to love God with every fiber of our being. We must link closely with our fellow-believers in the body of Christ, because to have the mind of Christ is essentially a corporate experience; ‘we have the mind of Christ.’ As we pursue these priorities, the Spirit will unfold to us more and more of the wisdom of God in Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord.”[9]
[1] Paul J. Sampley, “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002) 817.
[2] Paul J. Sampley, “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002) 817.
[3] Richard B. Hays, “1 Corinthians,” Interpretation (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1997) 35-36.
[4] John R.W. Stott, The Message of 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985) 51-52.
[5] Paul J. Sampley, “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002) 821.
[6] Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, The NIV Application Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994) 67.
[7] Paul J. Sampley, “The First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002) 823.
[8] Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, The NIV Application Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994) 68.
[9] John R.W. Stott, The Message of 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985) 53-54.