1 Corinthians 2:1-6(NKJV) 1And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. 2For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 6However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
Yesterday we talked about the need for balance between the Word of God and the experiential working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This balance is most important if we are going to occupy what we possess by driving out our enemies.
We need to have an experience with the Lord. Emotionless Christianity lacks power and vibrancy. However, we also need to understand that we must have a foundation in the Word of God. This foundation will keep our experience within the framework of godly principle. It will give us something that never changes for the inevitable times when we do not feel the presence of God.
We have already seen this demonstrated in the ministry of Jesus. After he drove the moneychangers out of the temple, the bible says he taught the people what the purpose of the temple was supposed to be. In today’s scripture, we see this same balance in Paul’s ministry. He contrasts two ministry approaches he had taken in Corinth.
Paul says that when he first came to Corinth he did not come with “persuasive words of human wisdom. Instead, he came with a demonstration of the Spirit and power of God. Paul is describing the initial stages of his ministry in Corinth. He was preaching the gospel to the unsaved residence of a heathen city. At that point, they did not need deep spiritual wisdom. They needed the Gospel.
Paul was possibly the most knowledgeable person in the scriptures who ever lived. Before he met Jesus, he studied under the greatest bible teacher of his day. After his conversion, he spent a great deal of time in the wilderness where Jesus revealed the truth behind the scriptures to him in the spirit. Much of what we hold as Christian doctrine today is based on Paul’s letters to the church. The church as we know it would not exist without his teaching.
However, we read in these verses that he made a conscious effort to refrain from speaking any of this to the Corinthians. He says, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He chose to refrain from giving the Corinthians a message they could not understand. He simply gave them the Gospel.
The gospel message is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. That is what the unsaved person needs to hear. Jesus died for your sins. Jesus was buried as payment for your sins and Jesus was raised from the dead because your debt was paid in full. Anything more than that is irrelevant to the unbeliever.
Paul then says he backed up the Gospel message with the power of God. In the book of Acts, we read that Paul performed special miracles. That is the kind of power that the Corinthians saw in his ministry. Why did he withhold the knowledge that he had learned from his years of study? He tells us in verse 5.
1 Corinthians 2:5(NKJV) 5that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Paul understood that without experience and relationship, knowledge does no good. You do not learn your way into being a Christian. You must be born again to become a Christian. You do not choose the philosophy of Christianity; you meet the person of Jesus Christ himself. Being a Christian is about whom you know and what experience you have with him. If you do not know Jesus experientially, the knowledge of Bible philosophy and principle will do you no good.
I believe one of the tragedies of the church today is the number of people who think they are Christians because they were persuaded to accept the Christian religion but never met Jesus himself. They heard a message that had some impact on their mind or emotions, they came forward and repeated a prayer and someone told them they were saved. They may have been saved; however, I believe it is also possible that many of them never really met the Lord. They just accepted a philosophy but they had no experience.
When someone meets Jesus, he or she is changed. They will not fully understand this change, but they are changed. This inward change will manifest outwardly somehow. They will begin to want different things in life. They will begin to feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit where sin is concerned. They will begin to speak differently. They will begin to understand the Bible on a different level. They may not experience all of these things right away but they should experience some of them.
If a person prays the sinner’s prayer and a year later there has been no impact on his lifestyle, I believe we need to ask the question, “Did he really meet Jesus. Did he really believe when he prayed? Did he really have an encounter with Jesus or did he just mentally accept that Christianity might be a better philosophy of life. Did he accept Jesus as Lord and savior or did he accept Christianity as a solution to some problems. I am not saying people do not come to Jesus when they are hurting and seeking answers. They do all the time. I am saying that if there is never a change they may not have actually believed on Jesus.
I believe the same can be true of the backslider. We all know people who “get saved” and do well for a time, but after weeks, months or even years, they fall away. They go back to their old lifestyle. I believe we must ask the question, “Were they ever saved?” Many times I have been in the counseling room with someone who is having problems and I have asked them that question. I tell them, if you were, we cannot do any harm by making sure. Then I ask them to pray again to receive Jesus as not only savior but Lord as well.
I think too many people are trying to do something by discipline based in the flesh that can only be done by being born in the spirit. I think too many people are Christians by knowledge but not by experience. This makes for the weak, ineffective church that we often see today. Why is this so? I believe it is because we have forgotten what Paul told the Corinthians.
We need to believe God for the power to preach the gospel. I believe God wants to do wonderful things for his children. However, until you receive Jesus as Lord and savior you are not his children. I believe that for Christianity to be real in a person’s life, his faith must rest in the existence of the power and person of God. If we believe in philosophy alone, our faith rests in the wisdom of men. Paul knew this because of his experience. He met Jesus in a manifestation of power. Then God taught him how to use the knowledge of the scripture.
I believe we need to believe for the power of God in healings and miracles to accompany our preaching. That is certainly part of what Paul was talking about to the Corinthians. However, we also need to believe for the anointing of God on our words. When we speak we need to forget about trying to explain things to people. We need to understand that they are not saved because we answer all their questions. They are saved because Jesus died for their sins. That is what we need to tell them and the power will be there to back up the message.
Without a faith that rests in experience and power, the knowledge of the Bible is irrelevant. However, what of those who have received Jesus as Lord? What do they need? We will begin with verse 6 tomorrow.
Leave a Reply