Why It Matters //

The temptation to be like-minded with our friends, colleagues, or even family is real—we all easily buy into the “wisdom of the world” that tells us to behave/speak/dress/live a certain way. And yet, the call to follow Christ is a call to be DIFFERENT, to think and behave INDEPENDENTLY of what others tell you to do or what is typically done. 

Perhaps this is why earlier Paul sharply reminds the Romans to “not conform to the patterns of this world” but to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Rom 12)—as Christians, we are called to a NEW way of living and thinking, in line with God’s character and wisdom, not those of the world. The world’s wisdom is self-indulgent, prideful, and reckless; God’s wisdom is a “tree of life” (Prov 3), directing us to a path of generosity, humility, and love that gives life. In order to obey God and live a life that is pleasing to Him, we desperately need to search His Word and ask for this kind of wisdom—HIS wisdom.

What It's Talking About // 

Written by the Apostle Paul to the young church in Corinth, this first series of letters addresses many of the moral issues Corinthians wrestled with: marriage and divorce, paganism, lawsuits and sexual immorality…In a world (then and now) where values are based on sinful desires and popular opinion, how should the church (and the people in it) live in accordance with God’s will?

In this particular letter, Paul speaks about the role of the Holy Spirit in us, how God reveals the secrets of His wisdom by the Spirit living in us—His Spirit. He makes a distinction between the wisdom “of this age” and the hidden wisdom of God, and how the Spirit enables us to detect and discern the latter. Only through the Spirit are we able to understand the will of God and the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:4-16 NIV

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 human wisdom, but on God’s power.

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

7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 

8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 

9 However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”—the things God has prepared for those who love him—

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 

11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 

12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 

13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.

14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 

15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 

16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.