Transcription
Now this morning, we're going to take, uh, the rest of the answer, not all of it, but as much as we can, the rest of the answer to the problem of division in Corinth that occurs in chapters 1 to 4. We're going to look especially at the material that occurs in chapter 2 through 3:5 or 3:4. And then, uh, look in our second hour at 3:5-23. Now, it may very well be that we'll not take those nice, neat one-hour blocks, but in the two hours, the next two hours that we have, uh, available, uh, we're going to handle those two chapters.
However, before we do that, and especially for the sake of those who are watching on video after the session, uh, yesterday morning, there were a couple of questions that were asked, and I felt that it would be to our advantage for me to repeat those questions and to put them on the video tape, uh, partly because there's some things that I wanted to say and ran out of time at the conclusion of the second hour of this series.
The, the problem, uh, where we left it was that after two hours of how to do exegesis of Jesus and some concerns about hermeneutics, uh, there is a kind of sense of being overwhelmed, in fact, even threatened by all of the things that have been said. A kind of sense that if I am right, that this is the way we're to go at the study of scripture, then we have almost taken the scriptures out of the hands of the common man, for whom, in fact, it was originally given. And just as in the Middle Ages, the scriptures were taken out of the hands of the people and kept only in the hands of the clergy, so it's possible that we might, in fact, take the Bible, or it sounds as if we might be taking the Bible out of the hands of the people and putting them into the hand, putting it into the hands of the experts only.
And so, I just want to say a couple of words about this. And both of the questions basically have to do with this. Um, the first, the first word, and the word that I want all to hear, and those who are sitting here to hear again, is the word: Don't despair. Uh, the reason for that is that what is absolutely basic in the word of God is plain to all who will read it. The, the word that Augustine heard when he was lying on his face weeping in the presence of God, and some child in a neighborhood in the neighboring house playing a childish game, crying out, "Tolle, lege! Tolle, lege!" Take up and read, take up and read. That's still the watchword of those who believe scripture to be the word of God. Take it up and read it. You don't need the, the expert to read and to understand that which God is trying to say to us. That is absolutely basic. It isn't, it isn't greatly difficult for us to understand those things that He is trying to say. Uh, our difficulty is with obedience. And so I say to you, take it up and read it, and let it become a part of your life.
The greatest gift of hermeneutics, still, is sanctified common sense. That kind of common sense which comes to the scripture with a, uh, with what I, you know, the, the common grace that God has given to His people. Some things make sense. And even if, as one who spends his life dealing with a biblical text and trying to understand some of those places where it's not so clear, where God is speaking, but we're not quite sure precisely what is going on, even then, the, the response of the Spirit within you, that is a response to the Spirit that is speaking through me, is still a response that comes at the level of common sense. It makes sense. You know, there's, there's a, a great sense of, of personal gratification because, hey, that makes sense. Of course, that's what God is trying to say.
Now, the problem that the expert has, and here is something that needs to be said to the experts, which I'm not assuming those of you listening to me are, but it's something that we need to hear regularly. And that is our tremendous capacity and tendency to dig first and look later. And many times, in digging first and looking later, we cover up what is quite plainly there. That all one would have to do is just go ask any old person, "What does this mean?" And they could tell you what it means, and it is almost certainly the correct meaning. But some scholar has been so busy digging down underneath things, trying to find deeper, hidden meanings, that he's missing the point. And that's a warning that all of us need. It isn't the deeper truths. And let me say again what I said yesterday: It is not uniqueness. It isn't originality that one is after in Bible study. It's truth. What is truth? What is God truly saying in the text? Not what is some kind of unique understanding of the text. And we've had enough of that in the church, and we can do well without it.
Now, the second thing that we need to say, after saying, "Don't despair, what is plain is plain to all and is there for you," is that there are, in fact, as we indicated in those two hours yesterday, a lot of passages that aren't so easy and aren't so plain. Maybe they aren't so basic either, but nonetheless, they're there. And since I have this thing that the Bible is the word of God, I have a great urgency to understand everything that God is saying to us.
And what that means for those of you who don't read the Greek text and who do not have the time to do the kind of work at the exegetical level, you know, what was being said, that that first step, uh, for those that don't have the time to do a lot of that, you must come to grips with the fact that you've got to have to trust the experts. Now, the experts don't always agree. And I know that we did that exercise on translations yesterday. Here are people who are really concerned about the word of God, and even here, you know, there was not agreement in terms of how we're going to translate that text in 7:36. So I grant you, the experts don't always agree. But there comes a point where you have to learn to trust the experts.
And at this point, if I can use it in a different way, and I don't like the word "experts," let's try another word. Uh, I, I think we need to take seriously that God has given gifts to the church. And among those gifts to the church are the gifts of scholarship, the gifts of those people who are, in fact, spending their lives doing exegesis. Now, not everybody has the time to do exegesis in the kind of way that means all of those kinds of questions that we were, uh, wrestling with in terms of the content and the context of the biblical text at that first level. But there are those of us who have been given that privilege. And some of us, not myself, but some, write commentaries, and some put some of this data in other kinds of books.
Now, that leads me to say a word about two kinds of source materials that will be very helpful to you. One is a Bible dictionary. That was the question that was asked: "Where can I find out about Corinth?" The kind of things that we, we put in the lecture yesterday. And the answer to that question is that there are two good Bible dictionaries, both of them very large. That is, one's four-volume and the other's five. In fact, the four-volume one now has a supplement, so it is now five volumes. Uh, two five-volume dictionaries. Now, that tends to exclude those easy one-volume dictionaries, which are, are all right for, for immediate reference for such things as "What's a Sabbath Day's Journey?" But if you want to find out, uh, in greater detail, the kinds of things like we were doing with what is going on in the city of Corinth, what was the city of Corinth in antiquity, you really need one of two Bible dictionaries.
One of them is *The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible*, called the IDB. It is published by Abingdon Press in the United States. It's a four-volume plus one. It was done by the very best of, uh, international scholarship, including French, German, English, Italian. Uh, it's an international work, but it is not always conservative. Now, that isn't bad when it comes to Bible dictionaries, as long as you're looking up things like Corinth and, uh, papyrus and, uh, you know, coins and that type of thing. But when they start to deal with some theological issues, I have a little uneasiness in terms of some things to say about this. But nonetheless, it's, it's good, sound, solid scholarship, even if it is not always, uh, conservative.
The other one is *Zondervan*, and this was done by, uh, evangelical scholarship. *Zondervan Pictorial*. This is a five-volume work, and it was done by, uh, by evangelical scholarship, and again, international in scope, but all of the, uh, scholars are evangelical, so that the theological, uh, articles will be basically from a conservative evangelical position. Unfortunately, I tend to think that one is a little less even in some areas than, uh, the former. But nonetheless, it is, it is probably the one that most of you will at some point want to consult. Now, they're very expensive. But my point is, along the way, you're going to have access to, to libraries of, you know, good libraries. Keep little notes to yourself of things you want to look up in a larger Bible dictionary, and then go do it. Sometimes spend three or four hours in a library doesn't hurt anybody. You know, even by osmosis, something might, uh, happen by just going through the door. So I commend it to you.
Now, the other thing is commentaries. Commentaries. Now, commentaries are of many kinds: good, bad, indifferent. But what we're after, and this is the, I'm going to make a distinction between commentaries and commentaries. And what I'm concerned with is a commentary that does what we were doing yesterday at step one. I'm not concerned with a commentary that moves to steps two and three. That's what you should be doing. After all, it seems to me that that doesn't take the expert to do the hermeneutical quest. That's precisely what we, we urge you to do in prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit is to, is to move from "What did it say?" to "What did God say to them?" and "What is God saying to us?" But at the first level, at the exegetical level, you're going to need some helps many, many times. I think we just need to face that.
Now, a good commentary is going to wrestle with exegesis and do a good job of it at that level. Now, there are some commentaries that try to move on to steps two and three, and, and the people say, "Boy, I really like that." But those are what I call commentaries intended to turn one on. My point is, let this, let the truth, uh, be the thing you find in the commentary, and then let the Holy Spirit turn that on. Do it. You know, let the Holy Spirit turn the truth on. Don't let somebody else's being turned on be the thing that turns you on. So get a good commentary, even though that might seem dry and and dull and dusty. A good commentary is one that really handles the exegetical question.
Now, in Corinthians, and by the way, there's no such thing as a good one-volume commentary. That doesn't exist. Mostly because a good one-volume commentary is simply going to give you good overviews. You know, but you can find that in a, in a, in a survey book. It's not going to deal with "What about that passage that says, uh, 'on account of the angels'?" You know, you're not going to find out much about that in a one-volume commentary. Now, what you want is a commentary, for example, in that passage that deals with, you know, you know, "on account of the angels," that really knows what the options are and says, "This is a possibility, and this is a possibility." And in the process of giving possibilities, gives reasons for why one might go this way or why one might go this way. And then, finally, uh, analyzes all of these possibilities and suggests, "Given all the data, this is probably the best way to go." Now, that's what a good commentary will do.
And in First Corinthians, there is a commentary like this, and it's a very good one, and you don't need to know Greek in order to handle it. It's an excellent commentary. C.K. Barrett. It is, in fact, the only really good commentary on First Corinthians. There is another good one that's in a series that really does require one to know Greek, so I don't even say a word about that one. But this is far and away the best commentary: C.K. Barrett. Now, commentaries sometimes come in, come in series, and this one does. It's a series which in the United States is published by Harpers, called *The Harpers Bible Commentaries*, or in England, uh, published by A.C. Black. And I commend this one to you. He also has done the one in Second Corinthians in this series, and it's also the best commentary there is on Second Corinthians. Just happens to be first-rate kind of commentary.
Now, I'm not going to get into Romans or Galatians, you know, those, that's not my, what I'm concerned with. But for First Corinthians, uh, this is the one you'll eventually someday want to pick up and make a part of your own library. It's worth your doing that.
Now, that leads me to say one final word about some of these kinds of things, and that has to do with translations. Those questions were being asked regularly around the table and otherwise yesterday. So maybe we should just spend a moment, since I said something about translation and feel that, uh, there is something that does need to be said. Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time with this. This is an area that I have a great concern with, so, you know, every once in a while I spend too much time on those kinds of things. But the real question in translation, there are two things that deal with translation. One is the question of text, and the other is the question that comes, what I use the word, taste. Uh, text and taste.
Now, taste is a bad word because it means far more than that. Taste is a very subjective, "I like it," you know, kind of thing. And that's not what I mean. But nonetheless, text. Now, text has to do with the original text of the New Testament, those documents that were originally penned and then were copied for 1,400 years, and we have over 5,000 copies, none of which are exactly alike. How do we move back through all of that and get back to the original text of the New Testament? Well, almost any contemporary translation will be based on a good Greek text. The one translation that is absolutely out, because the text that it used was a very late medieval text that is very corrupt, in fact, it is two and a half pages too long in the New Testament alone, it is filled with so many corruptions, is the King James Version.
Now, the great glory of the King James Version is that corrupt as it is, even that is the word of God. Even through the King James, God speaks His word and gets His job done in the world. That's to God's greater glory, because the text is a corrupt text that has nothing to do, well, it has nothing, has everything to do, but it has, in terms of, uh, of accuracy, it is simply a text that one can't trust. You have things in that Bible that you're reading as the word of God that, in fact, God had nothing at all to do with. Simply came into the text through many, many years of tradition and scribal copying and scribal error. So that one is out.
Now, in terms of taste, it's always, it especially for people who like Elizabethan English, as I do, every once in a while the King James has the, the turn of phrase that says it better than anything else. "1 Peter 1:9, and filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Now, I don't know, that might not mean anything, but I just, that turns the phrase for me. I like that. That certainly beats the pedestrian RSV that talks about being "full of joy" or something like, you know, "joy unspeakable and full of glory." There are moments in the King James. Or, or take that passage in Third John where it says, "Diotrephes, who loveth the preeminence." Now, that's a magnificent translation, and that just totally, totally beats the RSV that says, "Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first." I mean, there are moments when you might as well let translation at least be poetic and magnificent. And "Diotrephes, who loveth the preeminence," that says it. You know, you don't need anybody else to come along and interpret that for it and to put it into that pedestrian RSV language. So there are moments when the King James is exalted, in, in fact, it is almost always exalted in terms of its language. The difficulty is that it's based on a Greek text that comes from the late Middle Ages and simply is not trustworthy.
Now, what about translations then? And that has to do with the science of translation. Oh yes, they told me about this. Don't do that. They said, "Let's cover that up for a moment." Use another one and see if we can't, yeah, thank you. The science of translation is going to deal with, uh, the grid that goes all the way from what we'll call literal to paraphrase. And what this is, what this deals with is the amount of interpretation that is involved. That is, there's an, there's an interpretive, uh, scale that goes along the way, and one can go from the very literal to the very, very paraphrastic and, uh, you know, find a lot of things somewhere in between.
Now, ordinarily, neither ends of this spectrum are any good as far as translation is concerned. Now, that's true about literal, especially. Now, let me just say a word about literal translation. I can put one out here, the NASB, that is simply not a good translation. Now, it's very literal, but it's not a good translation. In terms of the science of translation, there wasn't a, I'm convinced there wasn't a single person on that committee who knew linguistics, who had any sense of this, of the study of language and moving from one language to another language, which is, which is necessary in translation. That is, you have to have enough sense of linguistics to know that a certain idiom in one language is going to just bomb out in another language. And therefore, you have to translate one idiom into, "How would these people say it?" And to, to translate literally is simply not good.
The great trouble with the NASB is a very simple one. I can take the NASB and take the English text and retranslate it back into Greek, and almost always keep the very word order of the Greek. Now, anytime you're doing that, you're not translating at all. All you're doing is just having an interlinear and then taking the Greek out. Now, that's not good translation. Good translation wrestles with this: "How would they say it in Greek?" which is the original language. "How would I say that same thing, keeping exactly the same idea, the same words, as close as possible, but say it in the receptor language?" Which, in this instance, we're talking about English.
Now, a paraphrase doesn't do that either. So what does well, a good, what we call a good idiomatic translation, that is, one that really understands the Greek idiom and understands the English idiom and gets them together, something that gets somewhere in the middle. There are two that I, that I recommend highly at this point, but one above the other. One of them is the NIV, the New International Version. The more I use that translation, the better I like it. It is, it is, I got quoted in *Christianity Today* here a couple weeks ago for having said publicly that this is a great translation because it, they're not afraid to, to be gutsy with regard to their exegesis. That is, they make some gutsy choices and good choices. The kind of thing that sometimes, uh, because of the whole tradition of the King James, we're afraid to leave that tradition and and really come to grips with what Paul was really saying. Well, the, this is being the NIV just does this magnificently. Uh, I, I'll give an illustration of this in a minute.
But the other one is the TEV, which is known to you as *Good News for Modern Man*, *Today's English Version*. These two are equally excellent, uh, idiomatic translations. Now, I'm, I'm talking about the New Testament. I'm not so convinced that the, the *Today's English Version* that just came out this last year in the Old Testament is as good as its New Testament counterpart. What I have seen so far of the Old Testament of the NIV, which is out in Isaiah, is maintaining the same high standard of excellence in the Old Testament that it had in the New. I am convinced that once this comes out, I'm going to put my RSV on the shelf and put my NEB on the shelf, and, you know, and I'm, I'm going to just simply use the NIV all the time. It is simply one great translation.
Now, there are others that fit into the same general category that are also good. The *New English Bible*. The only difficulty with those of us from America using the *New English Bible* is that it's too English. That is, it's, it's got an English idiom, and it's a very high literary quality of English, uh, much higher literary quality, if you will, than the original New Testament itself, which wasn't so much high literary quality, it was just the language of the people, you know, the coin, the common language. But nonetheless, it's a very good translation. The *Jerusalem Bible* is basically a good translation, uh, although there are, I have difficulties personally with, you know, with everything at some point, but it's, it's a good translation. And, uh, there are others that fit into that category.
Almost all of the translations that come from the Tyndale, who preceded the King James, that come in English through from the Tyndale, Geneva Bible, Common Bible, King James, and all of these are simply one revision of another of another of another that finally comes through the American Standard Version, through the RSV and the NASB. All of these are simply revisions of a single translation that all goes back to Tyndale. And that's all good. But what has happened is they're revisions of a revision of a revision of a revision. They're not fresh translations. And, uh, they're worthwhile. The RSV tends to belong more over here, for example, in the NASB, but it's still far too literal.
Now, let me just give you an illustration of the kind of thing I mean by an idiomatic translation. I would like somebody, if he can, to tell me what the, what the phrase "the endurance of hope" means. The endurance of hope. Do you know anybody who speaks the English language who would ever use that phrase? "The endurance of hope." Can you imagine yourself ever saying that? "The endurance of hope." Now, what I'm saying is that there isn't anybody speaking English who would ever say that. That if you'll look at 1 Thessalonians 1:3 in the RSV and the King James and the NASB, they're going to translate the Greek phrase that says "endurance of hope" that way. Now, that is, in fact, what the Greek says: "endurance of hope." But there isn't anybody who speaks English who would ever say that.
Now, what that means, therefore, is that the Greek uses this kind of phrase, which we call a genitive phrase, in a far greater number of ways than people who speak English as their own, as their, you know, native language. Now, and that happens to be true. The Greek uses the genitive. We would say something, we use the "of" kind of phrase, that kind of genitive phrase, uh, many times. We, in common parlance, uh, but it's not, it's not an ordinary way of speaking in English. We do not usually describe things with an "of" phrase. We usually describe things by some kind of adjective. We do not say "a book of red." We say "a red book." You understand? But the Greek will often say "a book of red," as it will "a red book." In other words, it's, it's a way the genitive is a way of using adjectival ideas. And, and the genitive just does all kinds of things in Greek that it doesn't do in English. Now, we can do it in English, but we don't ordinarily do it in English.
Now, who in the world would ever say "endurance of hope"? Well, nobody would. Now, what does it mean when Paul says, "When I think of your endurance of hope"? Well, what he means by that phrase is, "When I think of your endurance that hope produces." Now, that makes sense. You see, "When I think of your endurance that has been brought about by your hope." You see? Well, that's exactly how the NIV translates it, and it makes sense. You see, and it's exactly what the Greek idiom means. Now, my point is, that's what an idiomatic translation does. It takes it, it takes it out of how the Greek says it and says exactly the same thing, but says it in the receptor language. So to say, "Well, it's literal, therefore it's better," is to say nonsense, because many times literal means to destroy the receptor language from the original language.
Now, again, let me repeat what I said the other day, and that is, get a lot of translations. Don't rely upon one. Don't think, "Ah, Dr. Fee said the NIV, so that's all I'll use." No, I said, "Use a lot of translations." I happen personally to think the NIV is the best of them all, but don't always rely on that either. There are going to be some points, even in First Corinthians, where I'm going to have to call attention to the fact the NIV seems to be incorrect. It seems to be okay.
Now, to First Corinthians chapters 2 and 3. Now, when we turn to chapter 2, verse 6, in 1 Corinthians, we come to a very difficult text. It is, first of all, filled with some very specific difficulties. And furthermore, the text seems to be full of contradictions of a variety of kinds. And when we start to ask ourselves the questions, "What's the point?" That is, "How does this particular passage now fit into the into the argument that we assume is going on?" Because we can see how those first three paragraphs so clearly are a part of an argument, and when we get to chapter 3:5, we'll see how this is clearly a part of an argument. The question is, "What's going on in chapter 2:6 through 3:45?"
Now, let's review the argument up to this point, because this will help us to come to grips with this text. You remember from the last lecture that we noted that there is division, or division that has strife in it, in Corinth. The Corinthians are rallying around their favorite teachers, and they're in the process of turning Christianity into merely another of the *sophia*, another expression of wisdom. Now, to answer this, Paul recalls the nature of the gospel, and that's what we talked about last night. Their divisions, Paul says, are absolutely contradictory to what the gospel really is. The moment one starts to say, "I am of Paul," and "I am of Apollos," and starts to think of Christianity as some expression of human wisdom, you have totally blown the gospel. Because the gospel comes by way of the cross, and that is an expression of absolute contradiction to to human wisdom, absolute contradiction to Paul and Apollos as some kind of superior or important people.
So, in contrast to wisdom, the gospel that Paul preaches is weak and foolish, and yet it is, in fact, God's power and wisdom. Salvation, Paul argues in this section, is God's thing from beginning to end. And then we suggested in the paragraph that begins verse 26, they are the prime examples of this truth that he has said in 1:18 to 25. "If God were, if, you know, or predicated on human wisdom, who would have chosen you?" And then in 2:1-5, he goes on to say that his own preaching is evidence of what he has said in 1:18 to 25, namely, that it came not with persuasive words of wisdom, but in fear and in weakness and in trembling, but accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now, I know a lot of people who always read that last text, "in the power of the Holy Spirit," and don't read that earlier part that says, "it came and he was there in much fear and trembling." You know, "but in the power of the Holy Spirit." That is, he appeared from all outward appearances to be a very weak human being. But he says, "The Holy Spirit still worked effectively through me." Not because there was some kind of demonstration in power in the Apostle himself, but how? In the fact that the Corinthians heard the gospel and were transformed. That's where the power was. It wasn't in what Paul was doing and saying. The power was, in fact, not even to be seen in Paul. The power was to be seen in the effects of his ministry. So if you had looked at Paul, you would have not said, "Here is a great preacher." You would have said, "Here is a man who is in weakness and in fear and in trembling." But through that, the Holy Spirit got His job done, and there was a church that that sprung forward. So it's both, remember that Paul says.
Now, in verse 26, there is a turn in the argument. Although Paul seems to be saying, "We decry wisdom," we do so only as it is conceived in human terms. That is, when wisdom is a, is is grounds for boasting in the presence of God, then we have to decry wisdom. But in verse 6, he says, "We do speak wisdom, the wisdom of God in a mystery." Now, this text, all the way through 3:4, has been the battleground of a lot of things that have gone on in the church that it seems to me are simply perverse. Now, most of the things that have come out of this text are the result of taking texts out of context. If you to start with 2:6 and read through 3:4 and read that all by itself, you know, out of the context and all by itself, just as sure as I'm here, every single one of us would come up with some kind of an idea that Paul sees certain levels of Christians. There are the deeper life types, there are the spiritual types, and there are the non-spiritual types. There are the mature and there are the babes. There are those who are really with it, and there are others who seem to be just sort of there in name but not really with it.
Now, if you read the text out of context, that seems to be the kind of thing he uses the words like "mysteries" and "hidden" and "revealed" and all of that kind of language, which is the esoteric language, the kind of thing that stands almost, it's, you know, it sounds as if it's standing in direct contradiction to what, what it was said last night on the basis of 1:18 to 2:5. And it doesn't take some superior insight into mysteries to understand what God is about. But what in the world now is he arguing for mystery, you know, for hidden wisdom, the wisdom of God? Well, that's one of the problems that goes on in the text. The nature of divine wisdom, especially. Look at the language that is used with regard to it. He talks about the mature. He uses the word "mystery," "revelation." He used the term "the deep things of God," "the expression," "words taught by the Spirit." Then he says things that are "spiritually discerned," and then uses the term "the mind of Christ." It almost sounds as if we have a Christian Gnostic on our hands. A Christian who has imbibed some kind of Gnostic language that thinks about esoteric knowledge. U, it's the kind of thing that some Mormon or Christian Scientist would really groove in on, uh, because it's so basic to their, uh, mentality, that God doesn't reveal himself to, you know, to everybody, but just to that kind of inner circle of people who are kind of on the inside. Once you're kind of, you know, really among the esoteric, then you get the deeper things. And so we have what I call the "deeper conferences," you know, the "deeper life conferences," the "deeper things of God" mentality. And, and then there's always this, the, the great problem with Christian Gnostics is that it always seems to me to end up in some kind of pride. There's a kind of pride of knowledge that the Corinthians themselves are already grooving in on. Look at chapter 8:1. "We all have knowledge." Paul says, "I know that." But remember, "knowledge puffs up; it's love that builds up." So what good is it for one to say, "We've got knowledge. We know. We know." In fact, a Mormon one time, many years ago, who was working me over and trying to convert me, mostly because we were working together and I was sitting at a desk, and he would come by my desk and then just, you know, lay heavy on me, as it were, uh, and one day finally I just said, "Hey, look, I want to tell you something." And so I gave him my own personal testimony, what God had done in my life and the gift of the Spirit and the ministries of the Spirit. And I said, "I want to just ask you one thing: What is it that you want of me to make me a Mormon, given my life in Christ?" And he says, "Well," he says, "when somebody has deeper knowledge of God, he likes to share that." I said, "Yeah, that's exactly where you are. Deeper knowledge of God." And what does knowledge do but puff up and lead to pride? That is the great problem. Say, "Ah, I've got deeper insights." Is that it? It doesn't lead to humility, it leads to pride. Isn't it? And how we like to always leave the impression that we know just a little bit more. Teachers do this. I do this. It's kind of, you know, there's a little bit more that I haven't quite told you yet, that leaves me one-upmanship on you, you know. Oh, man. And if I sound like I'm doing that from time to time, just remember that I said that to you, and I know that that kind of thing happens. It's, it, it's, uh, it's a gross thing for us to do.
Now, Paul simply doesn't sit there. I mean, all you have to do is read the Apostle Paul, and you know that somehow this passage almost couldn't have been written by Paul if it means what we often make it to mean. Now, secondly, there are some contrasts that are set up. Contrasts between the mature and babe, that's verse 6, is over against 3:1. In verses 8 to 10, there's a contrast between the rulers of this age and us. In verses 14 and 15, there's a contrast between the, oh, I'm so tempted to use Greek words here because it's very difficult to translate Greek words at times without just totally, you know, leading us onto some tangents, but the *psuchikos* and the *pneumatikos*, the, the people who are, who are, I, I'll just use the terms "without the Spirit" or "with the Spirit." Natural, spiritual. Natural meaning, uh, without having received the Spirit of God. And then in verses 3:1-5, we have the same *pneumatikos*, that is, the spiritual, but now they're set in contrast to the *sarkikos* and the *anthropinos*, that is, those who are fleshly or those who are living simply as mere men, *anthropoi*. All kinds of contrast.
Now, that's one of the things that causes us to ask, "Is Paul here building up again the very thing that he's trying to tear down in this whole section?" I mean, you know, verses 26 to 3:4 really should present you some problems, given, you know, what Paul's trying to do, and that's to tear all this down. "You who think you're wise," Paul says, "become a fool that you might be wise." And you're right in the middle of this, he starts talking about deeper, hidden wisdom, you know. H, what kind of thing is he doing? And then, finally, "What's the point of all of this in the whole section?" Or is this simply a digression?
Now, to get at this, we're going to do two things. We're going to look at the inner arguments and some of the time that we have, and then make some comments about these contrasts and this wisdom that Paul is here referring to. Let's begin by looking at verses 6 to 9 or 10, because this is going to be crucial, it seems to me. Paul says, "We speak wisdom among the mature." Whoever they are, we're not going to prejudge that. We're just going to say, "among the mature." The word in Greek, uh, means those who have grown up, but it can also mean, in some situations, it can have reference to those who belong, as over against those who don't belong, that is, to the initiates as over against the uninitiated. So we're just going to leave it at that point, "among the mature," and come back to asking who that might be.
Now, Paul makes some contrasts. He says, "We speak wisdom among the mature," but he says, "it is not a wisdom that belongs to this age," nor, he says, "does it belong to the rulers of this age who are in the process of being set aside." Now, he's already said something similar to that, that is, "not that we speak wisdom," well, something similar to that in 1, chapter 1, verses 24 and 25, that the wisdom of God is wiser than men. And in verse 19, citing that Old Testament passage, he says that God is going to set aside the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent. He's going to set those things aside. So Paul says, "We speak wisdom," but then he first of all tells us what he, what he doesn't mean by that. He doesn't mean wisdom from a merely human point of view.
And when he does go on to tell us about wisdom, he says, "it is the wisdom of God in a mystery." Now, here's one of the words that we need to come to grips with. What does the word "mystery" mean? And one of the problems of translating this word into English is that we have a, we have a, you know, "mystery" automatically brings connotations to our minds that in this instance are far removed from this text. And this is why I, I don't know how to translate it. The, the Greek word is *mysterion*, and from that we get "mystery." It's, it's this is a borrowed word in English. We just simply write out of the Greek, you know, "mystery," *mysterion*. But sometimes we're misled when we take the Greek word and then use its transliterated word into the English language. "Mystery" means, to me, something that is that is hidden. You know, if I say, "It's a mystery," I mean, "I don't understand it," and usually I mean it's not likely that I'm going to understand it. Mysteries need, are, are have deep plug and they need to be unraveled. A mystery is something that is hidden.
Now, what you need to understand is that that's not what Paul means by the word "mystery." Oh, I know he goes on to say, "it is hidden in God," but what he also goes on to say in verse 10 is that "it has been revealed to us through the Spirit." Now, when Paul uses the word "mystery," he means something that goes on a time scale. That there was a time when it was hidden, men couldn't see it, because it was hidden in God. But now it is no longer hidden, it is something that is wide open because it has been revealed.
Now, the point, therefore, is that Paul is not trying to say, "We speak hidden mysteries." He says, "What we speak is the wisdom of God which is in mystery," but what we mean by mystery is that which was hidden in God at one time so that human beings could not see it. It was, it was locked into God himself. There was no way that the human being could fathom what God was about. All the depth, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, "how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out." It's hidden in God himself. But Paul says, "Now it has been revealed to us by the Spirit." The wisdom of God, therefore, for the Apostle Paul, is not something that is now hidden. If it is hidden, it is hidden only to a certain group of people, namely, those who do not have the Spirit. That is, those who are still living, uh, according to the flesh, who are still living according to the old aeon. The new aeon, the new age, has now come. But the age of the Spirit is dawned. In the coming of the age of the Spirit, God has now revealed what He's about. It says, in fact, in one place in the New Testament, "Even prophets wanted to look into this and couldn't understand." But this has been revealed. What God was doing and is doing has now been made known. It's manifested. It's not hidden. Say, "The only hiddenness lies precisely among those, uh, of whom Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6, that 'the God of this world has blinded their mind so they cannot see.'" But it's not a mystery in our language. It's something that was once hidden, but is now plainly to be seen.
Now, that's all that Paul is trying to say in this text. "The rulers of this age," had they known, in fact, it's quite obvious that they didn't understand what God was about. Why? Well, because they crucified the Lord of glory. But then, of course, that's part of the hidden mystery. That's part of the wisdom of God that is now revealed to us, you see.
Okay, now, what is he setting up then? Well, obviously, when he says, "We speak wisdom among the mature," at this point, he does not mean mature Christians as over against immature Christians. That obviously can't be the meaning, because what he is contrasting is those who have the Spirit, that is, the, those who understand the wisdom of God, and those who cannot understand the wisdom of God. In fact, that's what goes on all the way through the passage. Look at at verse 9. He says, "According as it is written, 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.'" It happens to be one of those places when Paul says, "It is written," you're not going to find any text where that is written. Uh, that's Paul's way of saying, "Just put the whole Old Testament together." You know, a phrase here and an idea here. In other words, this is what, what I call "it is written" in the sense of biblical theology. It is there in the Old Testament, but there's no one text that says this. But, but in fact, the, the Old Testament regularly says enough things that this is, in fact, a reflection of Old Testament ideas. So it means "it is written" in that sense.
Now, what does he saying? Oh, when I was a kid, we used to sing a chorus in my church that that used to always puzzle me. It goes, "Isn't He wonderful, wonderful, wonderful? Isn't Jesus my Lord wonderful? Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, what's recorded in God's Word. Isn't Jesus my Lord wonderful?" I used to puzzle over that. I was one of those kind, you know, who everybody else got blessed singing the choruses, and I was always trying to figure out what the words meant. You understand that God is a God of grace. I always take great heart in the fact that Thomas is among His, uh, disciples, because I fit into the entourage of the Thomases. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." But I happen to be one of those who many times had to come to see before I could believe. "Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, what's recorded in God's Word. Isn't Jesus wonderful?" Well, my goodness sake, you know, I used to say, "What in the world? That can only happen by taking texts out of context."
What Paul says is, "As it is written," and he's referring to these rulers of the age who crucified Jesus. That's who verse 9 is reflecting. The, the rulers of this age, those who couldn't understand what God was doing, and therefore crucified the Lord of glory. He says, "As it is written, 'Eye hasn't seen, ear hasn't heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what God is preparing for those who love Him.'" But he says, and there's a very emphatic "but" that follows that, "but God..."
has revealed it to us by his spirit, and it's quite clear that there's a contrast between them and us. And Paul isn't talking about Apostle and Corinthians when he says them and us, you know, we and they. He's talking about we, us, namely Corinthians, and Paul, namely Christians, and they, them, that is, those who are still living according to human wisdom and according to man. God's revealed it to us, and then the rest of the chapter simply deals with how is it that we know what God is about, the wisdom of the Cross. And the answer lies, of course, in the spirit. How is it that God is revealed? He is revealed by his Spirit, and the spirit becomes absolutely crucial to everything.
Now notice carefully, especially verses 14 and 15. Paul says, "The unnatural man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, for he is not able to understand them because they are discerned by means of the Spirit." Now, I know the translation many times says "spiritually discerned," but whenever I say "spiritually discerned," then you get a small "s" in that, you know, "spiritually discerned," and that means that somehow they're discerned internally as over against by some external way. Now, please don't do that. When Paul uses the word "Spirit" or "spiritual," almost 99% of the time he means the Spirit, not "a" spirit or not "the" spirit of man. He means the Holy Spirit. We understand what God is about because the Spirit has revealed it to us. The natural man cannot understand them because they are discerned by means of the Spirit, Paul says.
And then in verse 15, he goes on to say, "The spiritual man," and that means the man who has the Spirit, "understands or discerns all things, and excuse me, is not himself to be judged by anyone." And I'm convinced that here Paul is at this point, at the only point in these first three chapters, is making a singular little reference to himself, that he's not to be judged by them. He's a man of the Spirit, and therefore is not to be judged by the Corinthians, even not by anyone, not by the outsider or by the insider, the man who has the Spirit in terms of being called into question.
Now listen carefully. The contrasts therefore are contrast between those who have the Spirit and those who don't have the Spirit. And therefore, and listen even more carefully, therefore the contrast is between Christian and non-Christian. There can be in no way in these 16 first, you know, verse 6 through through 16 of chapter 2, there is in no way and in any place that Paul is arguing about two levels of Christians. It is simply Christian, non-Christian. Everything in the text says that there isn't anything that would have ever led you reading up through verse 16 to have ever thought otherwise. It's when you begin to read chapter 3, verses 1 to 4, that you begin to think otherwise, and we're going to have to come to grips with that text. But don't start with 3:1 to 4. That's to start where they wouldn't have started. You know, that's to start backwards. That's to assume that when they read the text, they read 3:1 to 4 and then went back and read 2:6-6, and that's not the way to read the Bible. You read it through.
And in this instance, Paul is simply arguing that there are Christians and there are non-Christians. And the reason there is a wisdom that we can talk about, and therefore the word "teos" mature means those who are initiated, those who are Christians as over against those who are non-Christians. He isn't even talking about two levels of Christians in that word. Now, that's the word that tended to give us the idea that he might be talking about, you know, levels of Christians. There are the inner Christians, no, the really spiritual Christians, and then there's the carnal, more natural kinds of Christians, as if it's possible to be a Christian and not have the Spirit.
Now, I want to say a few words about that before this time gets away from me. For the Apostle Paul, there is one absolute as to what makes a Christian, and that's the presence or the absence of the Holy Spirit. Now, I'm not talking about charismatic expressions of the Spirit, although I am personally convinced that in the early church, that's the, that's the normal experience of the Spirit. That is, and I don't mean as a second experience, I mean it's the normal thing that happened at their conversion. They simply had charismatic experience when they entered into life in Christ, all in the same package. It just happened when they happened, and I think that was the normal thing that went on in the early church.
Now, I'm arguing that at the seminary, in a class in the book of Acts and in 1 Corinthians, not because I have a Pentecostal axe to grind, and I'm born and raised as a Pentecostal, and I'm not ashamed of that, but I'm not a crusader either. I'm concerned about what the scriptures are really teaching, and in this instance, I am convinced that it was simply a normal experience. Now, the question is to whether that becomes normative and therefore or must, that's another question. That's hermeneutical, that I'm not going to try to wrestle with here. But the point is, it was normal. It was simply when they entered into life in Christ, they entered into life in Christ which was dramatically and dynamically experienced by the Holy Spirit.
When Paul asks the Galatians whether they've been saved or not, you know what kind of thing he says? "Hey, did you get saved by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" Now, that's the way you and I would have asked the question. But you know how he asks that same question? "Hey," he says, "did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" Now, you know what he's asking there? Is, did you become a Christian? And how did they know that they had become a Christian? Because they had received the Spirit. The Spirit was the absolute, the, you know, the Latin has a word for it, the *sine qua non*, that without which you ain't got none. You just ain't in there if you don't have the Spirit. The Spirit was the absolute line of demarcation. If you don't have the Spirit, you're not. If you have the Spirit, you are.
And even, you know, Paul doesn't even talk about the forgiveness of sins as the initiating experience. He doesn't talk about confession or repentance or what causes a person to be Christian. It is the presence of the Spirit in his life. In fact, the great imperative of the Christian life is: walk in the Spirit, be filled with the Spirit, live in life in the Spirit, be under the control of the Spirit. Everything for the Christian is that you are a spirit person, a person of the Spirit. That doesn't mean that a certain part of your life is secular and a certain part is sacred. It means that the whole life is sacred. That one is just as spiritual when he's playing basketball, if he's full of the Spirit, as he is when he's on his knees praying, full of the Spirit. You can't be more filled with the Spirit when you're praying and less filled with the Spirit when you're playing basketball. It has to do with the fact that the Spirit invades your life, and His fullness is to abide there. And if basketball is in His will, then that's being living in the Spirit. That's the fullness of the Spirit in that moment in your life.
Now, Paul doesn't think of people as being spiritual and carnal. You say, "Oh, but 3:1 to 5 says that." 3:1 to 4, yeah, I know that. I know that's what he says. But what I want you to hear is that he is not suggesting that that's what really is an option. That is, when he comes to 3:1 to 4, he's now applying what he has said in 2:6-16, namely, there's only two kinds of people: those who have the Spirit and those who don't.
Now, he says, "When I was with you, I couldn't reveal all I, you know, I couldn't get into all the the things that that need to be said, and he surely didn't mean the cross." And after all, everything he's talking about here is the wisdom of God that comes in the cross. He says, "I grant you that when I was there, we didn't say everything that there was to say. A wisdom quote was not the great uh thing that uh that was on our minds." But he says, "Even now, he says, here's where the problem lies. I wasn't concerned what happened when I was back there, but even now." And then you'll notice that he changes metaphors, and it's the change of metaphor that gives us our difficulties. The first metaphor is Spirit, non-Spirit, that is, Christian, non-Christian, spiritual, non-spiritual. But now he says he changes the metaphor and talks about babes, and that recalls that *teoy* now in a different way, that mature. You see, back in verse 26, he says, "Even now as babes." Now, what's the point that he's trying to get across? Well, verses three and four are the clear point. "For while there is jealousy and strife among you," Paul says, "are you not of the flesh? Are you not mere men?" Or as the RSV says it so beautifully, "Are you not behaving like ordinary men?"
Now, what he is saying, you see, is that there's only two options: Spirit, non-Spirit. You, he says, have the Spirit. These things that we're talking about, God is revealed to us, and you have the Spirit, but you're acting like people who don't have the Spirit. And the point is, stop it. Now, it's not an option. And there isn't a single suggestion in the text that something that can be called carnal Christianity is an option. There is no such thing as carnal Christianity. I know people say, "Well, I know Christians who are carnal." Yeah, so do I. Okay, that's at the experiential, existential level. I know that that's true, but that's not an option. I want you to know it's like discipleship is not optional. It isn't optional as to whether you're going to take up your cross and follow Jesus. That's not an option. Some Christians do and some don't. No, there's only one kind of Christian, and that's the one who has the Spirit. And many times, those of us who have the Spirit act like mere human beings, and that's precisely the thing that we need to repent of. We need to bring ourselves before the cross and let the cross once again crush and bring us into that experience where we move from acting like mere human beings and begin to act like people who live in the Spirit.
Now, the problem, you see, as long as there's strife and jealousy and those kind of things among you, Paul says, "Are you not acting like mere human beings?" But you can't act like mere human beings. That's not an option. He says, "We have the Spirit. We're not people who are unnatural, I mean, who are natural, who are unspiritual. We are those who have the Spirit. We have the mind of Christ." Now, it's in light of that, in light of the cross that we've been talking about, all of this should be plain to us, because in fact of the Cross. Now, Paul says, "Let's be about hearing what God is going to say to those who have the Spirit," and that's what we're going to pick up with in uh verses uh five through the rest of the chapter in chapter 3, okay? For now.