Illumination

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you want to be wise? That’s a very good ambition. How are you going to be wise? Are you going to find wisdom in the world’s way? Oh, if you seek it that way, you’ll be thought wise by the world but you’ll be spiritually foolish. Or are you going to seek wisdom in God’s way?