A number of years ago I did a series of sermons on the passages in the Bible where the words, “but God,” occur. There are a number of very significant passages that use those two words, such as Ephesians 2:4, for one example. The verses immediately before talk of our sin and the way we have ruined ourselves by our sin, and mention the fact that we are under the wrath of God. And then in verse 4, immediately after that word “wrath,” we read, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us.” Another example is in the fifth chapter of Romans. There Paul presents the ultimate example of human affection or love, the fact that for love of a good man, someone might even be bold enough to die. And then the next verse says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In each of those verses and many others like it, there is a great contrast between God and man.
We have something like that in 1 Corinthians 2. When we looked at the second half of chapter 1 and the first few verses of chapter 2, we were talking about the foolishness of this world’s wisdom. This world is very proud of what it knows, and what it is able to acquire by way of information and analysis. Paul looks at that and says that for all the acknowledged ability of the human mind to accumulate data, so far as spiritual things are concerned, there is no true wisdom that flows from it. That is because the things of the Spirit have to be spiritually discerned and because God will not allow man to boast in his wisdom. So Paul tells how God has torn down the wisdom of the wise. He has made the wisdom of this world to be foolishness just as He has made the strength of this world to be weakness and the nobility of this world to be nothing in order that He might glorify that which is thought to be nothing according to the judgment of human wisdom. Paul speaks of the Gospel, which is nothing in the eyes of the world but which is the wisdom of God unto salvation.
Those previous verses dealt mostly with the foolishness of this world’s wisdom, and Paul wants to show that what the world calls the foolishness of the Gospel is actually wisdom. And that is what verses 6-16 talk about. Furthermore, it concerns the deep things of reality which God imparts to us by means of His Holy Spirit. That is where these words, “but God,” come in. Verses 6-9 speak of human limitations, that is, what we are unable to do so far as the perception of spiritual things is concerned. Then in verse 10 Paul writes, “But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”
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.
The first aspect of revelation is that of general revelation. There is a revelation of God in nature which people can see but do not understand it rightly as pointing to the existence of the one true God. Paul develops this kind of revelation at great length in the book of Romans, when he writes of the revelation of God in nature which holds all men accountable concerning a knowledge of God’s existence and power. In Romans 1:18-20, Paul has a very perceptive analysis of what God has done in nature. Paul says in those verses that God has revealed His eternal power and godhead. But, Paul continues, men and women in their sin do not like the fact that a God of that description exists. They would be glad to have a God if He was a limited God who was not sovereign and all-powerful. They do not want a God who is their Creator and to whom they owe allegiance.
