Not to Impress, but to Transform


1 Corinthians 2:1-4
1And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

I was told as a child that people who use foul language when they speak are simply displaying the fact that they have a small vocabulary, which was a direct reflection of their intellectual prowess. (It was my mom who told me that. She had some fairly subtle child-rearing tools.) That idea did a great deal to curb my use of foul language, but it also planted in my mind that words were powerful and using them well was an admirable goal. And without going into it too far, suffice it to say that putting words to paper each day, as I do in this blog, is probably an outgrowth of that conversation. In the time of Paul, verbal discourse was the entertainment of the day. People would stand in the public square and display their vast intelligence with a barrage of words. The less the hearer understood, the smarter the speaker. Paul, who was probably an intellectual powerhouse, goes in the opposite direction. His goal was not to impress, but to transform.

Once again, we find Paul pointing squarely at Jesus. He comes with the wisdom of God rather than the foolishness of men to bring the message of the Gospel. He could have gone the other way and the people would have walked away impressed with Paul's fine intellect and powers of debate. But in that case, Paul is lifted up and Jesus is left behind. Instead, he focuses on Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, and the people are transformed by the Holy Spirit into believers. The Kingdom of Heaven is filled and the people need to find alternate entertainment.

Finally, the message of these few verses is powerful. We know only Christ crucified. I guess that our “era” has been titled The Information Age, and that seems to be an apt description. Many of us carry a smartphone that can give us almost any information we want within seconds. And we are almost addicted to that process; chief of sinners though I be. But in the midst of gaining all that knowledge, we may be losing the most important aspect of living – knowing Christ crucified. So maybe it’s time to lay down that idol of knowledge (which Paul deals with in more detail later in this Epistle) and put all that information (and the love of it) into its proper place – a mere tool that need not gain the admiration of others or even a place of importance in our lives. Instead we too know only Christ and speak of Him in simple words that everyone can understand.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

יהוה שָׁמַר--Yahweh Shamar (God Watches)

Image
Psalm 121 1 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 4 Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. There are numerous passages I cling to when stress takes over my life. I would be hard pressed to declare a favorite, but this psalm would come close. So this morning I listened to Psalm 121 about 20 times as I meditated through the verses. First, I want to point out that the word or idea of shamar appears in every verse expect 6. The NIV uses the word "watch" while the ESV uses "keep". The...
Read more

Excusez-moi

Image
2 Kings 23:31-37 31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. 32 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. 33 And Pharaoh Neco put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and laid on the land a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. 34 And Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz away, and he came to Egypt and died there. 35 And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the money according to the command of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, from everyone according to his assessment, to give it to Pharaoh Neco. 36 Jehoiakim was twenty-fiv...
Read more

Narrow Door

Image
Luke 13:22-30 22 He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23 And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them , 24 “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25 When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ 26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ 28 In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. 29 And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at tabl...
Read more