DEVOTION
THE 1ST
LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS
THE POWER OF THE
SPIRIT
1 Cor 2:1-5
2:1 When I came to you,
brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to
you the testimony about God. 2 For I
resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him
crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My
message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a
demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on
men's wisdom, but on God's power.
NIV
The lifestyle in Greece was the opposite
of what Paul says about how he came to them to preach the gospel. That is in
Greece they were all about the wisdom of the world, and having eloquent discourse
with all the gracefully formed sentences and the skill of the arrangement of their
arguments. Paul, on the other hand, came simply to preach about Jesus Christ
crucified. In fact, he was nervous even speaking with such men who looked to all the correct rhetorical compositions as that standard for speech. Has
anything changed in our modern times? Of course, there are all the scholars,
the wise men, and even the rhetoricians with their persuasive words, and we
must include the theologians. There is so much wisdom in the world, and it has
even infiltrated into the church. There are courses designed to give the
preacher the proper format for a sermon, the three-point sermon, with proper illustrations,
and fitting within the expected time frame, using all the appropriate language
skills of the rhetoricians. Then we have
hermeneutics which we must apply to our study and interpretation of scripture. It
seems that we have become a people who seek wisdom rather than Jesus Christ crucified.
We cannot help but think that all we need to do is preach the word as it is
written. Of course, there are those who must find those esoterical meanings
within. But, did Paul mean something other than what he spoke by the inspiration
of the Spirit? We do not need all the fancy degrees, the wisdom gained by the world’s
standards, to preach Jesus Christ crucified. It could be helpful to have a formal
education in biblical studies, to garner the thoughts of others, which could assist
us in seeing certain aspects of the truth. However, what we really need is the influence
of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. How have we become a people so
much in need of education as the world is? How have we allowed the standard of
this world, to have so much influence in our pursuit of the scriptures? Is not
our faith in God, our faith in Jesus Christ, our faith in hearing the voice of
the Spirit as he leads us into all, and that is not some, but all truth, not
enough? We do not need fine words, or even all the right words, or correct methodology
in preaching Jesus Christ crucified. We need faith in God and an open spirit to hear the Spirit. That is what Paul is talking about here, he preached to demonstrate
the power of the Spirit. This should be our goal in our presentation of the
word of God, to demonstrate the Spirit’s power. Yes, it is all about learning
to lean, to lean on the power of the Spirit, so the power of God is revealed,
rather than the power of men.
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