The problem, as we have mentioned already, is that our minds cannot conceive spiritual truth without the help and blessing of the Holy Spirit. And when you begin to talk about God’s process of revelation, what you come to next in the steps of God’s dealings with fallen human beings is regeneration, by which God takes one who is spiritually dead, and by means of the Holy Spirit makes him spiritually alive through the preaching and teaching of the Word. As a result, he now hears and understands that God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ in the Gospel and the need for that one to be born again.
The problem, as we have mentioned already, is that our minds cannot conceive spiritual truth without the help and blessing of the Holy Spirit. And when you begin to talk about God’s process of revelation, what you come to next in the steps of God’s dealings with fallen human beings is regeneration, by which God takes one who is spiritually dead, and by means of the Holy Spirit makes him spiritually alive through the preaching and teaching of the Word. As a result, he now hears and understands that God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ in the Gospel and the need for that one to be born again.
Some years ago, I received a letter from a pastor out in western Canada who was asking a number of questions about what he perceived to be contradictions in the pages of the Word of God. I could not tell from his letter whether these were genuine questions, or whether he was one of those people who already had already made up his mind and was just giving in the form of questions the reason why he would not believe that the Bible was the Word of God. I took his letter seriously and I answered it at some length.
Thus, not only do unbelievers fail to recognize God in nature; they also fail to see how God is revealed in the coming of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s “secret wisdom” has now been given, but apart from the Holy Spirit people are unable to perceive what God has truly communicated and performed in the person and work of Christ.
This portion of 1 Corinthians is one of the great sections of the Word of God for the doctrine of revelation. And verse 10, plus the verses that surround it, are a great analysis of what God has done to make Himself and the Gospel known to fallen men and women who, apart from His revelation, would live and die and perish in utter ignorance of that which alone would be their life and salvation.
That brings us to the final point that Paul develops in the first verses of chapter 2, which is the implication of all this for the preaching of the Gospel. Paul understood that the power of God was to be found not in the power of men nor in the wisdom of men, but in the simple Gospel of the preaching of the cross. That is precisely why Paul was so determined to preach the message that he did.
We come now to the third section, where Paul begins to think about how God works. It is not only that God has demonstrated His wisdom at the cross in what Jesus Christ achieved there;
God also demonstrates His wisdom by choosing the foolish people of this world to come to Christ, not the wise.
A third error in Carl Sagan’s view of the universe is to suppose that somehow in that kind of a closed, materialistic system which excludes God, moral purpose and moral obligation can come about. If I am the accident of the universe, why do I owe anybody anything? I do not. I am not answerable to anything. How am I answerable to an impersonal universe? And yet, Sagan cannot live with that kind of a universe, so he projects moral values into it, apparently not realizing that the impersonal cosmos is not able to account for morality.
Canadian Committee of The Bible Study Hour
PO Box 24087, RPO Josephine
North Bay, ON, P1B 0C7
