All week we have been examining 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Have you discovered the main point that Paul is making? He stresses that the basis of all communication, the basis on which regeneration takes place, and the point at which we have illumination by the Spirit is the Word of God, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
When Paul says in verse 6, “We do however speak a message of wisdom among the mature,” the we does not mean you and me who speak, it means the apostles who have received the revelation. This is emphasized again and again. It becomes very clear when we get to chapter 4, because there the Apostle Paul spells this out in detail. “So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Jesus Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.” He is speaking about the apostles at that point.
It is that same reference he makes here in chapter 2. When you understand that, you understand that this is probably the greatest claim to revelation in all the Word of God, except for the phrase that you find throughout Scripture, “Thus saith the Lord.” In verse 13 you see, “This is what we speak,” we, the Apostles, “not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” What does that mean, “spiritual truths in spiritual words?” Does it mean mystical truths in mystical words? No, it is a reference to the Holy Spirit, truths that the Holy Spirit teaches, expressed in words given by the Holy Spirit. This is a great claim to inspiration.
I find it interesting that when the Lord Jesus Christ was with his disciples following the resurrection, when they were unbelieving, he began to teach them from the Scriptures concerning himself. A great example of this is Christ’s appearance to the Emmaus disciples as they were going home following the resurrection. You find it in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke. These disciples had followed all of the details of that final week in Christ’s earthly life – his arrest, his crucifixion – and because of the Sabbath, they were still in Jerusalem on the morning of the resurrection. But these disciples did not understand; in fact, they did not believe at all. It was when they were in that state of mind – depressed and unbelieving – that Jesus drew near to them along the way.
He could have overcome them with the evidence of his physical presence. But he did not do anything of the sort. What do we read in the story? Jesus went to the Scriptures, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. That is what convinced them.
First Corinthians was written to a group of people who were still very much a part of the culture in which they lived. The Greeks valued wisdom, they wanted to be wise. They were seeking wisdom in the wrong way, and the wrong way was producing all kinds of problems. But Paul would say to these people, and he would say to us today, “Do you want to be wise? If you want to seek wisdom in God’s way, this is where you find it – in this Book – as God the Holy Spirit explains it to you and shows you how all these things relate to Jesus Christ, in whom is hidden all the fullness of the knowledge of God.
