Chapter Two (CSB)

In chapter one we learn that the Corinthians, despite the odds, had come to believe the gospel that Paul preached to them. After he assures them of God’s ongoing faithfulness to keep the church “blameless until the end”, Paul brings up the first problem that we was told the Corinthian congregation is facing: Its members have become balkanized, indicating to Paul that the cultural tendencies of the city—and Rome—are beginning to hold sway over the peoples’ hearts. They’ve started doing what they know by jockeying for position. 

Paul reminds them at the close of the chapter that the gospel they heard and accepted is unlike anything that had known before. It not only offers them a new way of living but also a salvation that they would never be able to achieve though any effort—neither as a patron or a client. The gospel brought them life and a purpose not through strength or wealth or social standing or political influence but though self-sacrifice, weakness, service, and trust. In fact, Paul says, I didn’t even bring you this gospel in the ordinary, expected way. He carries this thought into chapter two. 

How unlike the usual way of doing things. Paul’s gospel is not what anyone expected! As he writes in chapter one, “…God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong…” The Corinthians would have had frequent contact with orators who would make their living moving their listener’s minds and hearts. In fact, they would charge admission for those wanting to hear their rhetoric. Paul’s message, on the other hand, was offered without charge. Based on his description he would have likely had to pay them to get the Corinthians to listen. So not only is the message foolishness by the world’s estimation but so is the delivery. The very fact that the Corinthians did listen may well indicate the divine hand at work. 

In verse two Paul provides his motivation for sharing the gospel in Corinth. He “determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” This is his rationale for not making his message eloquent as someone with “superior…speaking ability or wisdom” would. Paul removes himself from the equation so that the gospel message of the cross can be heard clearly. How different would the Church be today if its messengers would take this practice to heart? This is not unlike a message that he shared with the Galatians when he reminded them that he did not share the gospel with them to have them like him but did so only for the sake of obedience to his calling. 

What’s more, if Paul could remove his influence on the message, then when the message takes root and produces fruit, he would be able to see the result of Christ’s work clearly and the Corinthians would know that they were in the presence of God’s Spirit and power. 

I remember a time when news reports did just this—reported the news with no editorializing or attempts to influence. And in a way, Paul’s m.o. makes even more sense when we, again, consider the world in which the members of this congregation have been raised in and live: patrons and clients peddling themselves for their own advantage and nothing being given to others without a selfish motive. On the contrary, Paul’s message to the Corinthians was given for its own sake and nothing more! Shouldn’t that be the same for today? 

In the absence of any ulterior motive for giving them gospel, the Corinthians would arrive at one inescapable conclusion for its offering: God truly loves them. 

 

Paul tells the Corinthians in verse 6 that even though he has just stated that true knowledge of God occurs in ways quite removed from the ways that it occurs in the world, he is nevertheless imparting wisdom to them; although this wisdom is unlike the world’s as well. The apostle imparts this knowledge to those who are “mature”—a state that may mean different things to different people. Maturity here does not refer to the listener’s age, since we all know many older, more mature people who act like children and children who would be mistaken for the two old guys in the Muppet show if it weren’t for their pimples. 

 

“Mature” for Paul means to be whole, complete, “to be all that one can be.” The Greek he uses here means literally “the perfect.” And this is not a state reserved for only a few Corinthians. As we will see later in his letter, Paul expects that every Corinthian will come to this deeper knowledge. Also, understanding perfection as completion—or being made whole—is in keeping with Jewish thought. To those who are complete, then, Paul’s gospel message is wisdom. (Sacra Pagina, Vol. 7, 129) This gospel wisdom does not reenforce the world’s wisdom or, in a way, its way of doing things. The “rulers of this age” cannot possibly understand God’s wisdom because they have not faith in Christ Jesus; for them, the truth of things is “hidden”. It is obscured to them not by God but by their own choice.

 

Paul writes in verse seven, “but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory”. Understanding what is true and what is real has been “predestined” by God to transform us: “to our glory.” The rulers of the world would think that they needed no such help from the Almighty. Paul says that this is evidenced by the fact that they cruficied Jesus. 

 

In short, Paul is telling the Corinthians that the good news of Christ Jesus is a wisdom that is given by God that is intended to change their lives, and it is only accessed through humility, since “the rulers of this age” cannot access it. For the Corinthians, this would be a radical and difficult thing to understand because of society in which they lived. Remember, if you wanted to get anywhere in Corinth—wanted to be somebody—it was up to you. 

The ”‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,/ And which have not entered the human heart,/All that God has prepared for those who love Him’” Paul tells the Corinthians have been revealed to them through the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is only this presence that can cut through the darkness, only this presence that reveals God’s thoughts and ways. Otherwise, as we will see in verse 14, there is no way that we human beings, we mere mortals, can understand. Verses 10-13 stress the absolute necessity of the Spirit if we don’t want to hear the message of the gospel, the message of the cross and the resurrection as total gobbledygook. The closing verses of the chapter reveal why this presence is required.

 

Paul puts it rather bluntly. Those who focus their minds upon earthly things cannot accept the true wisdom that the Spirit brings; but worse, they are unwilling to accept it, “for [to them the things of the Spirit of God] are foolishness”. Knowledge for them is based on their senses, but what Paul has presented to the Corinthians is only “spiritually discerned.” Paul is warning the congregation its heart must remain centered upon God—focused on the Spirit. For as soon believers take their eyes off Christ and turn them toward the desires and ways of the world, God’s wisdom starts to sound like nonsense.

I have long believed that the Church has become too practical, too common sensical; so much so that we modern, Western Christians would be hard to distinguish from the “rulers of the age” in the eyes of Christians from other less prosperous and more dangerous parts of the world. The Corinthians are in the process of blending into the background, it seems, and the apostle is reminding them here of the benefit of clinging to the understanding that they have received through the Spirit. When things get tough, the Christian can’t just go home again. Paul tells them that if they remain in the Spirit, they will begin to see things as they really are. The spiritual person “discerns all things”. This person, he says, is the exact opposite of the worldly person—who happens to be, as we say in the South, ignernt.