SET APART: But Not Alone

Gaining wisdom is almost universally considered a virtue, but what kind of wisdom are we seeking?

The term philosophy means “Lover of Wisdom.”For centuries, many considered Greece’s Oracle at Delphi to be the single-greatest source of wisdom.  The Oracle’s priestess was sought out by people from all around the world in hopes of learning what Apollo might say through her.  

Recently, archaeology has deduced that the Oracle’s “powers” arose because she was situated over an unventilated pit over a volcanic fault line that generated hydrocarbon gases that intoxicated her.  So, in a nutshell, the Greek world of that period was guided by a petrocarbon-huffing, intoxicated “junkie”.  Has much changed in our world today? 

Later in Greece, the Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian philosophers spent their time discussing ideas.  And even later the Romans created libraries of human knowledge. It seems humanity frequently believes that the knowledge of other humans is superior to anything.  Today people desperately search for advice about how to live.

We have at our fingertips the greatest repository of human “knowledge” compiled to date – the internet.  The question is at anytime in human history has human knowledge resulted in anything BUT discord?  Since even the time of Cain and Abel humanity has been warring with itself, what makes us believe that human knowledge today will result in anything different?

The point of this study is that the Holy Spirit helps us to know how to live holy lives.

The setting is that Paul established the church in Corinth on his second missionary journey and stayed there for eighteen months.  In Corinth, a cosmopolitan city, Paul struggled to disciple the new believers.  His struggles were caused by the immorality of the cosmopolitan way of life, and the strong emphasis on human wisdom that the Greek culture valued.  Paul was teaching that God’s wisdom came only through the Holy Spirit and was superior to human wisdom.

1 Corinthians 2:6-9

6 We do, however, speak a wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

7 On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory.

8 None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, because if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9 But as it is written, “What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived — God has prepared these things for those who love him.”

The phrases “wisdom of this age” and the “rulers of this age” refers to the age of “humanism” prior to the age of Holy-Spirit-Guided Spiritualism.  Humanism is a system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than to divine or spiritual matters.

Currently we live in a digital age which represents what historians now call the fourth industrial revolution. Each revolution was marked by technological advances that were novel for their time. Each produced quantum leaps forward in key areas of human progress.

The world has encountered the shift of the computer age, the information age, and the digital age. These periods have produced an exponential explosion of knowledge.  We are now moving quickly into a phase of digital age that is producing the “Internet of things.” These web enabled tools are networked, and connected to the Internet for a variety of purposes that include health mobility, communication, leisure, and entertainment. Collectively, the Internet of things is called smart devices.  We are even moving into artificial intellect for our smart devices.

But while the ingenuity and imagination they reveal fascinates us, these technological advances have contributed to our dehumanization. They may be “smart”, and may provide the unlimited library of worldly wisdom with just a click, but they cannot bring lasting fulfillment, nor meet our deepest needs.

So, though we live in a world that appears infinitely more advanced than the first century of Paul’s day, the issues, raised by Paul in first Corinthians are largely the same. He was witnessing the deficiencies of the wisdom of the age, and of its rulers, who were “coming to nothing.”

We too are reliving the same circumstances in our culture today.  The “utter hopelessness of it all” as we drown in knowledge and worldly wisdom that was unimaginable only decades ago, but has produced a pandemic of emotional pain and personal meaninglessness.

Paul declared that the kind of wisdom on which his preaching was based with something very different, and was understood by those who were mature spiritually, and who thought like adults.

In contrast of the world’s, false and temporary kind of wisdom, Paul’s message was based on God‘s hidden wisdom. Paul called it a mystery.  In the Greek culture of the first century “mystery” religions were popular. The Latin word for hidden, or secret, or concealed is “occult”, so the world of Paul’s day was full of occult religions that celebrated the “secret-ness” of their beliefs rather than seeking to uncover and understand the “truth of their world.”  They had secret meetings and rituals, and only those who went through these rituals were granted access. 

But that was not the kind of mystery Paul meant here. In fact, he went to Corinth to share the good news of Jesus to all who would listen.  While he used the word mystery Paul was referring to it as something being confusing or difficult to understand.  This is WHY DISCIPLESHIP IS SO VERY IMPORTANT:  because complex theological issues CAN confuse and lead to doubt, it is the exploration and understanding of these “mysteries” that leads to growth.  

The culture of Paul’s day celebrated the “not-understanding” of the world while Paul was trying celebrate the understanding of God’s Gospel.  Paul explains this mystery was God‘s revelation of the way to salvation through his the only true “hope of glory”– faith and belief that GOD provided his son to lead the way in demonstrating that the mystery can be understood and that reconciliation with God is not only possible, but IS achievable through faith.

1 Corinthians 2:10-13

10 Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. 13 We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.

Paul spoke about God’s wisdom, as being “hidden“ and “a mystery” and referring to it as something not understood. In this passage, he explained that the Holy Spirit enables those “who are called” by God to understand God‘s truth.  So what is the mechanism of understanding?  Our brain.

Our brains are remarkable. Every sonnet, and every song came through a brain, as did every mathematical equation or algebraic theorem.  Each building design, blue ribbon recipe, and artisan’s craft was originally nothing more than a notion.  Every book ever published, was written by the agency of the human brain. 

But as Paul has demonstrated, the brain CAN be an “insulator” to spiritual understanding.  Spirit is the energy of God flowing through us and sometimes the brain, like an insulator on an electric pole, can keep that current from passing through to the brain.  This is where the “mystery” arises, the uncomprehending as God’s messages just don’t “get through” to the human brain because we so strongly resist the flow of God’s energy. 

Paul stressed that the only way we can see past the world’s wisdom is by supernatural, divine revelation. Choosing to “remove” the insulating factor of the brain from our incomprehension and allowing the Spirit to directly communicate to our selves the message of God. 

The one who carries out this task is the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is “better than the internet”.  The internet contains everything that HUMANITY can think to put into it, but Paul explained that the Holy Spirit searches EVERYTHING. Without the aid of the Holy Spirit, our minds can be misled and spiritually exploited, and this is where the devil gains a foothold.  

Recall the devil’s tactics in the Garden, and with Jesus in the wilderness.  The devil INVOKES the use of the brain/mind in questioning the directives that Spirit has given, e.g. the Spirit said “don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or you will surely die.”  Satan asked “did God really say you would DIE?”  He invoked the comparatively  “weak recollection” of the human brain to “override” the stronger directive of universal Spirit.  That is why the mind must be guarded and focused on the things of God.

With the help of the spirit, the mind of Christ can help us understand and remember accurately God’s will.  Without the Holy Spirit we will be incapable of understanding the things of God. A mind unsubmitted to the authority of the Holy Spirit will unwittingly distort truth, or misunderstand God’s actions in our lives, just as Eve did when questioned by the devil.

The Holy Spirit affects and enables our ability to meditate on truth, interpret scripture, and discern error. This ability is freely available to every fully surrendered believer. We are able to understand the things of God, and live them out, because the Holy Spirit empowers us. God imparts wisdom through his spirit. 

1 Corinthians 2:14-16

 

14 But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

15 The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, and yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone.

16 For “who has known the Lord’s mind, that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

God’s word refers to those who have not been born again as being “without the Spirit.“ The unsaved person doesn’t have the capacity to fully appreciate or interpret the things of God.  Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about being “born again” spiritually was nonsensical to Nicodemus and he could not comprehend.  

The simple reason that those without the Spirit can not comprehend is that of perspective.  One individual coming from the perspective of physical-nature-rules will have great difficulty comprehending the perspective of someone coming from the perspective of spiritual-nature-rules.  It would be like trying to explain the physics of the structure of skyscrapers to a toddler.  They just don’t “get it.”

One must CHOOSE to seek the perspective of the spiritual natured in order to comprehend and ultimately to be born again as a spiritual human.  The literal translation, for the person without the Spirit is “a natural human.”  The term for “natural” comes from the Greek noun psyche, which simply means “life.” When used as an adjective, the meaning is “natural”, “unspiritual”, or “worldly”.

Clearly, Paul intended to stress the contrast between the unspiritual person, and the one who is Spiritual and able to comprehend God‘s hidden wisdom.  Paul, more frequently spoke of this contrast by using the words, flesh and Spirit.  Paul referred to the innermost part of the person as his spirit.  The innermost part of something is its “core.”  The Latin word for heart is cor.  So often you will hear the word heart used interchangeably for the word spirit because it is referencing the core of our being.

As Jesus’ disciples, through the Holy Spirit we have the ability to view life with the same perception of reality as Jesus.  Or to state it simply, we have, or can, learn to “think like Jesus” and thus we can perceive the world as Jesus did – as the Son of God who cares as deeply for the World as his Father does.  We too can know that we are not alone in this world, but the very Holy Spirit of God is with us to guide us, listen to us, comfort us and more.