1 Corinthians 1:30-2:5 (Unintended Consequences)

Good morning, everyone. I thought that I was going to be able to save my voice a little bit to be able to preach this morning, but I so appreciated the songs that Scott had picked out this morning as we prepared that I couldn't help but sing them maybe a little louder than I usually do, so my voice is already a little raspy just as I'm getting going.

A little unexpected, but again, good morning. It's good to see each of you here today.

I wanted to start as we kind of opened up the message this morning in 1

Corinthians. I wanted to start with an interesting story that I came across this week as I was preparing that I think will be a good kind of introduction to a concept, a theme that we'll kind of deal with at the beginning.

This is a true story, a historical story. During the colonial period in India, the capital city of Delhi endured a time when the streets were overwhelmed by the presence of cobras.

Cobras, giant snakes slithering through the streets of Delhi, millions of people in the city bringing all the things that giant snakes bring with them, namely, for me at least, intense fear and likely even death for the people of the city.

And so ever the hero that they are, the government surely steps in to do something about this problem.

And they decided to place a generous bounty on dead cobras. Basically, if someone were to bring a dead cobra to the local officials, the government was going to pay them for this civil service that they were doing.

And expectedly, people began taking up cobra hunting as a vocation in Delhi. They started businesses, recognizing that there was a government funded program that's paying fairly well to people to bring dead cobras in.

So people jumped at the opportunity to earn a living in this way. And this is exactly what the government was hoping for.

So in a sense, they're accomplishing their mission and they're accomplishing their goal. Except things don't always go how we expect them to go, how we plan for them to go.

As the cobra population fell, there's less cobras to hunt. There are these cobra hunters now who need to make a living.

And so people recognized that they needed to find a new way to capitalize on this government program.

And so outside of the city, just outside the city, people started raising cobras in their homes and on their farms.

In which they would then, they'd raise them up, they'd kill them, and then they would deliver them to the local officials to collect the bounty just like they did before.

The government, though, they're not going to be fooled by something like this, right? They're too smart for that. And so they recognize that the cobra problems have pretty much gone away.

The issue has basically been solved. There aren't as many cobras wandering the streets.

And yet they're still paying these fees, these bounty fees, at the same rate that they were before. So there's something going on.

But the problem basically had been solved. There aren't as many snakes in the streets. So they decided the program, it was time to cancel it.

Time to put an end to the program. Very reasonable thing to do, of course, right? The problem with that is that reasonable people don't only reside in the government.

These cobra farmers were reasonable people as well. And so with no more government -funded bounty system in place, these cobras that they've been raising went from being an asset to a liability very quickly.

These cobra farmers are looking around their homes, looking around their farms, and there's these giant snakes just slithering around.

And so very reasonably, they decided it's time to release these snakes. These things are worthless. I don't need these things anymore.

And so they released them back into the streets, and the result ended up being that this industry that was inadvertently, in a sense, created by the government to solve a very real problem now has inadvertently made the problem even worse because there's more cobras now roaming the streets of Delhi than there were before.

Now, before some of the libertarians in the room, I can see you getting a little excited. This isn't going to be a message on civics or government.

I bring this up not to share my opinions on those things, but rather to introduce a concept again that we're going to be taking a look at this morning, central to the text this morning, and that's unintended consequences.

So I want to pray as we begin, and then we're going to read what is really the conclusion of Paul's introduction in this letter to the

Corinthians. We're going to read from 1 Corinthians 1 .30 -2 .5. So let's pray.

Father, I thank You for Your Word. God, thank You that the wisdom that we all so desperately need and even subconsciously long for,

Lord, even when we're not seeking after You and seeking the truth, Lord, we do still yearn for wisdom, for an understanding of the world and why things are the way that they are,

Lord. And we thank You that in Your Word we have those answers. Lord, that in Your Word You've given to us all that we need for faith and life, to understand who

You are, what You would want from Your people. Lord, so we thank

You that as we study Your Word here this morning, as Your people, You will help us to understand it.

You will give us the understanding, as Scott prayed, where the eyes of our hearts would be opened to what it is that You have for us here today.

We thank You for Your grace to us, Lord. I pray that we would see it and recognize it here today,

Lord, that as we take in the things of God, we would recognize it as Your grace to us,

Your mercy to us. We praise You and we thank You in the name of Christ, Your Son.

Amen. So let's hear the Word of the Lord this morning as we begin 1 Corinthians 1 .30

-2 .5. It says, But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that just as it is written,

Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the

Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God.

This is the Word of the Lord. So every decision we make carries with it a ripple effect of outcomes, right, that we're going to call consequences.

And whether it's a decision as seemingly trivial as brushing our teeth before we go to bed or one as serious as who we're going to marry, all our decisions come with a set of consequences, both intended and unintended.

And Paul in our text today, again, he's concluding these opening remarks to the Corinthian church by proving to them and showing to them that the decisions that they've made to this point, since he's left them just a few years earlier, have driven them off the road that they had set out on.

And yet he graciously, in this text today, is going to point them back onto the right course.

So throughout the opening to this letter, Paul has very pointedly, very deliberately rebuked the

Corinthian church for serious errors. These errors have caused grievous sins, which we're going to see later on in the book, but have also caused a lack of unity and idolatry, which

Paul has actually already dealt with even in Chapter 1. We've discussed some of these previously as we've periodically made our way through this book over the past year or so.

We've had a few opportunities, but as we have gone through 1 Corinthians 1, we've seen some of these issues that Paul is dealing with.

First, in the greeting, the first 10 verses of the letter, Paul brings these elitist

Corinthians back down to size, in a sense. Ten times in the first 10 verses, Paul references, by name, the

Lord Jesus Christ, because he's repeatedly reminding them that Christ is the only exalted one.

He is the only authority in the church, and that their high view of themselves compared to Christians of other places and other backgrounds was a foolish thing, because their sainthood, the

Corinthian sainthood, if you look at verse 3 of Chapter 1, was established in the very same way as the rest of the saints of God in every place, by the calling of God.

Similarly, he points out the foolishness of their own divisions internally. Not only had this church set itself apart from the other churches of the first century, they had set themselves up against one another.

They were forming factions and parties within themselves, based on which teacher they thought was the best one.

But Paul dismisses this notion out of hand. It's ridiculous, because he points out in verse 13 that Christ cannot be divided into factions.

And then finally, from verses 18 through 29 of Chapter 1, Paul, I think very eloquently, tears to pieces this idea within Corinth that the wisdom of men could somehow stand before the wisdom of God, that somehow this wisdom of men compares to the wisdom and authority of Almighty God.

And he did this because of the sinful idolatry that was existing within not only the Corinthian church, but the

Corinthian culture as a whole, that idolized knowledge and wisdom. And so, if I had to summarize

Chapter 1, I would say that Paul, he really has set the table for the remaining 15 chapters of the book, where he's going to be rebuking and correcting and yet encouraging this community by reorienting them toward the ultimate authority of the church, which is

Christ. They've lost sight of that, and he's pointing them back to him. In verses 1 to 10, again, he shows them that they are no authority, they're no better than the rest of the saints, because only

Christ is Lord. Verses 10 to 17, he shows them the fruitlessness of making Paul or Cephas or Apollos as their authority, because Christ is the one who sent each of them as his slaves.

So how are one of them an authority if Christ is the authority over them? And then in verses 18 to 29, he shows them that the wisdom of men, which they and their culture have idolized so dearly, is no authority before God, it's foolishness before him.

And so they have an authority problem, and that really is what Paul has gone after here, in the beginning of this letter, in this introduction to this letter.

And it's important to note, obviously, that they didn't intend to divide themselves, they didn't intend to become idolaters, this wasn't what they set out to do.

But they unintentionally accomplished exactly that when they took their eyes off of Christ.

And that's what Paul is, in a sense, resetting here. They've lost sight of their true authority, and they've latched on to gods of their own creation, like human teachers and wisdom of the world.

And so, just as Deli had a bigger cobra problem after the bounty had ended than when it began, the

Corinthians, their search for an authority, their looking at any other things, the things around them as an authority apart from Christ, left them just as misguided as they were before they ever knew him.

And the Corinthians aren't unique here. We see examples of this sin throughout human history, and really, in my estimation,

I would say this is probably, the sin that we see here in chapter 1 is the root of almost all sin, from the very beginning of time.

All sin, I would say, can be distilled to the simple phrase that it's a rebellion against the authority of God.

And that's exactly what Corinth is doing, it's a rebellion against God's authority, and it's causing them to miss him.

A good example of this sin, I think, is found in the Old Testament, and whenever you want to find a good example of sin, you always look at ancient

Israel. They're very good at it. And so, in 1 Samuel chapter 8, we see the elders of Israel, who up until this point,

Israel has been operating with God as their king, and God has established judges for them, prophets who proclaim the words of God and help to judge the people of Israel.

So the elders of Israel come to the prophet Samuel, demanding that there's a change in course.

They look around at the other nations of the world, and they see all the nations are ruled by kings. And so they want

Samuel, now, to appoint a king for them, so that they can be ruled just like the rest of the world.

Why do they do this? Is something going wrong? Is God wronging them in some way? Of course not, right?

God would never wrong his people. But verse 7 of 1 Samuel 8 tells us the reason why

God says to Samuel, The Lord said to Samuel, Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

The Israelites wanted a new king, because they decided that God's rule, God's authority, they had enough.

It was time to move on. The world, the way they're doing it, there's something right about that. In the same way the

Corinthians wanted a new authority. Again, just a few years after Paul leaves, establishes the church and leaves, they already are wandering and wanting a new authority, a new king, because God's kingship has left them wanting something compared to the world around them.

Again, ancient Israel is always a good source for examples of these types of sins. The Old Testament serves us well in that way, to show clearly what sin can do to destroy our relationship with our

Creator. We read of it in Romans 7, how the Old Testament serves us in that way, the law serves us, to teach us what harms our relationship with our

Creator. But another place, another helpful place to look for examples of these sins that destroy us is at our present moment in history.

What better time to look than now? There are several modern examples within the church of this sin of misplaced authority.

Corinth isn't the only church community guilty of this type of idolatry. The Israelites weren't the only ones who were stubborn and stiff -necked and proud, people prone to wandering.

Many Christians today, we've succumbed to the idolatry of personalities. We become followers of particular people and movements, and we lose sight of the source,

Jesus Christ himself. There's obvious examples of this throughout history, obviously we have

Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, others. We've clearly, these organizations, these supposed churches, they begin following the teachings of men, and idolizing and respecting these teachings of men, even if they rise up against and contradict the inspired word of God in Scripture.

This is called a cult of personality. These cults, these particular ones

I just referenced, they've withstood the test of time, in that they've been around for a long time, they've outlasted the lives of their original founders, or perverters, in the case of the

Roman Catholic Church. That was once a faithful tradition, but has been perverted over time. But these types of cults, they gain popularity and they gain followers, when people who don't want

God to be their king, they don't want God to be their authority, they look to other people to fill that void of authority in their lives, because people do long for that authority, that headship over them.

But it's when we allow the voice of the enemy to be the one that is our leader, the one that's interpreting the words of God for us, just like Eve in the garden.

Ultimately, though, these cults are characterized by their distinct submission to the leadership, to the leadership of an organization.

The prophet in Mormonism, who changes. When one dies, a new one is assigned as the prophet that speaks to God.

Or the pope in Catholicism. These are cults of personality, where there's an individual, a human being, at the head.

But to be clear, these instances of cults of personality, they're far more reaching than just these large organizations.

These major examples are major examples, just that. But there are thousands of examples just like them on a much smaller scale.

Even within the evangelical church, there are many churches that are ruled and grow because of the following that the pastor, or maybe even the group of pastors, are capable of attracting and keeping.

These are churches where, I think Pastor Kendall might have referenced this a few weeks ago, one that he previously attended him in Shannon in North Carolina, where the people, they don't follow

God as king, but they follow Pastor Stephen and his leadership. The pastor is the one that they adore.

The pastor is the one whose words they live on. They can't wait to hear the pastor preach this week. The pastor is the one whose friendship they want.

The pastor is the one that, when they come to church to have communion, they're not there for communion with God, they're there for communion with the pastor.

And it might not seem like it, and oftentimes I don't even think that this is really the intended result for a lot of these churches, but as we've discussed, the unintended consequences of elevating insufficient authorities to the place that only

God is worthy to sit are incredibly dangerous. And thousands of people, probably even millions of people today, who believe that they're

Christians, yet have put their faith not in Christ, but in the pastors, are dangerously deceiving themselves.

And we have to be careful, because I think that we are susceptible to this, just like anybody else would be. We have to be careful not to repeat such a sin.

We don't come here for fellowship with Kendall, or to hear the words of Kendall, or of Derek.

Why would you? We come to hear the voice of God.

And that is the only protection that we can have against falling into this trap of cult of personality.

It's not just when there's obvious cults that we can make fun of. Not in mean ways, but when someone's in a cult, you know they're in a cult.

They're drinking the Kool -Aid. We're not in a cult. When we drink that wine or juice when we take communion, we're not doing that because we're in a cult.

We're doing that to be in communion with our God. Another example of this sin, and this will be the last one, or maybe two more.

Again, another similarity to the Corinthians. The modern church, just like Corinth, has a very profound and yet a very misguided respect for the wisdom of the age.

You don't have to search long for examples, I think. When you look around the landscape of the church today, the

Big C Church, and particularly in our neck of the woods here on this side of the

Atlantic. But one obvious area that comes to mind is in church growth strategies that are grounded less in a faithfulness to God and in a faithfulness to His Word, but more in line with business principles.

What's your marketing strategy? What's your value proposition? What are you really giving your people? How are you going to keep them?

What is it that you're actually giving to them? What's their experience going to be like? What's your kids' program going to be like?

Business principles governing the church as part of these church growth strategies.

Churches that are built on the desires of their consumers rather than on the requirements of their king.

Churches that don't preach the Word, but they preach self -help and life hacks, and works, righteousness, subtle false gospels because they're more concerned with scratching itching ears than they are with submitting to the authority of Christ.

Sadly, though, the wisdom of the age isn't only making its impact on the seeker -sensitive movement, which is kind of what

I just described, but more recently, over the past year or so, and maybe even a little longer, but especially over the past year, it's very clearly seen in the social justice movement that many churches have latched onto.

Now, to be clear, justice is important, obviously, and injustices are just that, they're injustices and they're wrong, not good things at all.

And yet, in their idolizing of the wisdom of the current age, many Christians and many

Christian leaders today, they look at the winds of cultural strife and cultural discord and see the great deal of unrest that's happening due to some real and some perceived injustices that go on around us.

And in an effort to empathize with those suffering the injustices, churches and their leaders, again, are very quick to rally alongside different organizations, different groups, different political leaders, in the hopes that, in doing so, that they are clearly stating their commitment to justice and fairness to all people, regardless of things like skin color, which, again, is the most prominently discussed issue, or the difference between people currently and things like gender.

Any other differences, really, that make the human race one that is filled with a beautiful tapestry, a beautiful mix of the image of God.

These are the things that make us beautiful, even our differences. But people are latching onto these things within the church.

And the problem here, again, is not that Christians care about injustice. That's a good and a right thing to care about.

We should care about that. It's important. The problem comes when the people of God reject the one remedy that God has given for solving issues like injustice.

Looking again at the verse we read earlier from the law, in Deuteronomy 17, 15, God says,

You shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves.

You may not put a foreigner over yourselves who was not your countryman. The Lord our God has chosen the cure for sin in the world.

He has chosen who the authority is, who the king is. It's not secular philosophy. It's not church growth practices, whatever it might be.

The king over the church, the king over injustice, is God and His gospel.

It's not, again, a philosophy that someone cooks up and maybe even puts a few cherry -picked

Bible verses into it to support it. It's the gospel of Christ and Him crucified, and nothing more that is the authority that God has established over His church and His people.

The world's always going to search for truth, of course. They're going to look for it anywhere but in the Almighty God. But why would Christians, why would the church follow suit in that?

Why would we go with them in looking for truth somewhere apart from Christ when we know, right?

We know the truth already. We know that the wisdom of the age of the world is insufficient.

Or is it that we have missed that and almost don't even fully trust the sufficiency of the gospel to heal real problems and heal the hurts of real people?

Proverbs 19 .21 says that many plans are in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand.

Many ideas, many philosophies, many plans are created in the hearts of man, but it's only what

God has established as His wisdom that's going to endure to the end. I don't stand here this morning and say all these things about these churches that are maybe going the route of church growth tactics that we might disagree with or partnerships on social justice things that we might disagree with.

We don't say this to say that these people are terrible, these churches are terrible, and we're great. Look how fantastic we are.

That's not the point that I'm trying to make here. The point that I'm making, and the reason we're studying this book, the reason why we study any book in the scripture, is to say that this error is alive and well in the church because this sin is so pervasive in our lives, this authority issue that we have.

These are errors that we're susceptible to if we don't take care to know and understand the mind of God on these things.

The truth is, there are dangerous churches in the world that forsook the truth for the wisdom of the age.

But there are also churches that have been temporarily deceived. And we have to pray for them, we have to challenge them, we have to love them.

That's exactly what Paul is doing here in this letter. These are God's people. These are

God's sheep. They're lost. They've gone astray, but they are God's people. So we have to take care to plead with them that they would understand and they would know the truth.

They would know the power of God and that they would trust in and rest on the power of God alone.

There's so much sin. Again, we're going to see this in future weeks when I'm studying this book. So much sin in the Corinthian church. But Paul is committed to them.

He loves them. And he's teaching them. Again, why else would he be writing this letter if he wasn't committed to them, knowing the truth?

And that has to be our heart here as well. We have to be for the people of God.

As deceived as they might be, as much as we might disagree, we must be for the people of God who are here, part of this church, and in other churches.

We have to be committed to the truth and we have to be committed to our brothers and sisters that they know the truth.

That we know the truth and that they know the truth and that we all rely upon it alone. And if we see error, like Paul, may we be a people that lovingly corrects that.

But at the same time, with that correction, we come with love and prayer and teaching and gentleness and patience.

That's the heart of God for his people. That we love one another and build each other up.

That we're patient and kind and forgiving of one another just as God in Christ has forgiven us. That's the heart of God for his church.

That we would love each other in such a way. With that introduction out of the way, the difficulty of the preaching on 1

Corinthians every few months makes it a little more difficult to continue on the same wavelength.

So I had to give a little bit of an introduction recap of chapter 1 and how we got here.

But it brings us to where we're going to spend the rest of our time today. We're going to start in verse 30 of chapter 1. Paul, having now confronted some of these problems that their misplaced authority has inadvertently caused to the church in chapter 1, he's now going to point

Corinth to the only sufficient solution. The only thing that will heal their division and their worldliness.

I'm going to read it again, our text this morning. It says, Just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the

Lord. And when I came to you, brethren, and I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

So Paul has established that there's an authority issue in Corinth. They've lost sight of Christ as King and Lord over them because they've pridefully looked to the worldly things around them to fill the void as they've rebelled against God's authority.

And so now, he's going to call them back into right fellowship with God in Christ. And he does this,

I think, so beautifully in verse 30. There's so much just beautiful and rich theology in this one verse.

And it's so pastorally given by Paul to Corinth. As I studied this week and over the past few weeks, this verse in particular just really stands out in the amount of love and care that God gives, or that Paul gives to the

Corinthian church and, of course, that God gives to them. But the idolatry of human authority that Corinth was guilty of had caused a division between them and the global church, caused division within themselves, caused them to elevate and desire the wisdom of men over God.

And so, what does Paul do with all this division? He shows them that God is able and even has already healed the wounds that they created.

He's proving to them that Christ's lordship, which they have rejected, is so good that Christ has already fixed the brokenness and the hurt that their foolishness threatened to destroy.

Again, verse 30. But by His doing, by Christ's doing, by God's doing, you are in Christ Jesus.

Despite your sin, despite your rebellion against God's authority, dear Christian, he's saying, be comforted in the knowledge that you are in Christ Jesus.

You divided yourselves from the rest of the church, you're divided within, but you are united to Christ forever.

Just as at the fall you were in Adam and guilty in him of sin, you now stand with and to Christ forever.

That's what this word, in, he's basically saying. It's an inseparable thing. You are joined together.

You are now in Christ, Corinth. All these problems that you have, all these problems you've created for yourselves by rebelling against God's authority, even after you believed, right?

This is after they became Christians. Even after you believed, and you still do these things, understand that you are in Christ.

Because when you are in Christ, God's grace is sufficient for you. Your unity with Him is unflinching, it's unchanging.

It can't be broken because it was accomplished not by your doing, but by His doing.

So don't worry about losing something that you didn't find for yourself in the first place.

We know that all of Jesus' sheep will be saved. We know that He'll never lose one of those sheep.

We've been studying this in John as we've gone through this over the past several months. But if we don't believe, if we don't understand, we can know these things, but if we don't truly understand and grasp that God has not just saved us, but that He has united us to Himself in Christ, then we are losing out, we're missing out on an amazing treasure that it is to understand that God so loves

His people that He has brought them as close as they can possibly be, that they are indistinguishable from God the

Son. And God the Son prays for us. Jesus Christ prays for us continually to be united with Him in this way.

In John 17, Jesus prays in His high priestly prayer for us, verses 20 -23, I do not ask on behalf of these alone, talking about His disciples, but for those also who believe in Me through their word, talking about us, that they may all be one, even as you,

Father, are in Me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent

Me. The glory which you have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one,

I in them, and you in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent

Me and loved them, even as you have loved Me. This is how good of a

King our God is to us. This is no harsh master. This is a gracious and merciful

Lord who loves us with the same love that the Father has given to the Son.

And so He's worthy of our submission. He's worthy of our worship, and yet we rebel against it, and yet even still, even in our rebellion, those who are in Christ are the recipients of this love.

And that's what Paul is telling the Corinthians here. Again, this is the introduction to the letter, and he's already gone through three things that had just been destructive to them, destructive to their church, and there's a lot more to come.

That's even worse. I don't want to put degrees on things, but it's pretty bad, right?

And yet God is telling them that they are united in Christ to God forever.

And this is just such a model of handling sin biblically within the church.

Paul is modeling it for us so well here. We don't just point out the problem. We don't just say, hey, you have an authority issue, you need to figure it out, and then leave the people to kind of fend for themselves and try to learn.

What is my authority issue? Where am I going wrong? We point out the error. That's what Paul's doing. He calls it what it is.

It's wrong, it's sinful, it's causing destruction for them, for their church. He shows why it's wrong in the light of who

God is, that God is a God of unity. So your factions, they're not helpful to you.

These are terrible things. This is not who God is. But then he restores his brother to a right relationship with God.

This has to be our model for church discipline, for handling sin biblically. We don't just point it out.

We don't just tell people why they're wrong. We restore them. Restore them to right relationship with God by helping them to see the beauty of Christ.

It's the beauty of God here, in verse 30, that is going to win the

Corinthians back to him. It's understanding how good he is that is going to help them to understand that this is the only authority that I need.

And Paul knows this, right? Of course, as he's ministering to his friends. These are people he's spent years with. His friends in Corinth.

They're steeped in grievous sin. But at the root of it all is this authority issue.

And he's saying to them, remember that you are in Christ and you are not just in... Understand what that means, that you are united to Him forever.

And that means that you are in the perfect unity of the love of the Trinity forever.

We were saying it before, Christ is mine forevermore. We reside and live, even right now, within the bounds of the perfect love of the

Triune God. And we'll know it in its fullness someday, but right now that's our reality.

And Paul... Again, this is an issue that they... This is something that they've been searching for. They're just searching in all the right places.

So Paul's pointing them back to where the right things to focus on. But he doesn't stop there in verse 30 just on unity and being able to reside in the love of God.

He knows that they also... He's already pointed out that they also esteemed and honored the wisdom of men in a way that only

God Himself is worthy of. But in His grace, those in Christ are given gifts that they don't deserve.

And that's what Paul's going to point out here to the Corinthians as well. He writes, By His doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

Paul tells us that despite our tendency to trust the wisdom and the counsel of men over the counsel of God, despite the fact that the wisdom is foolishness to God, that our good

God has still chosen to give us, to give the Corinthians the true wisdom, the true

Christ Jesus, who is the wisdom from God. So desperate they were to attain wisdom in the respect of the world around them for their wisdom, that the

Corinthians and many Christians today, as we discussed, we forget to look to God for the timeless wisdom that He's already revealed to us, already given to us in Christ.

And so we look to temporal things around us for the things that God has already revealed. We ask for a king so we can be like the rest of the world.

But God has already given to us all that we need in Him. And Paul even helps us understand in part, in this verse, the nature of this wisdom that God has given to us.

Paul's not saying that Christ has become to us wisdom and righteousness, or He has become wisdom from God and righteousness from God and sanctification from God and redemption from God in verse 30.

What he's saying is that Christ has become to us the wisdom from God. And that wisdom is characterized by righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

And we know that based on the structure of the sentence and the context of the passage. The focus of chapter 1 being so fully on the

Corinthians' idolatry of wisdom and the wisdom of the age. Paul is pointing out to them that the wisdom that you really need, the wisdom that is, that will set you apart forever, has been given to you by God.

And this is what it's about. It's about righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

And this would be revolutionary to 1st century Corinthians because, contrary to the

Greco -Roman understanding and norms of the 1st century that esteemed wisdom as this brilliance rhetorically, this being a very polished speaker is how you would esteem someone as a wise person.

Your ability to gather a crowd and to keep a crowd, that would be your estimation of wisdom in that culture.

Paul has pointed out that true wisdom is not like that at all. It's not about sophistication of speech or fancy words.

True wisdom has a soteriological character to it. It has to do with our salvation.

That's what that word soteriology is about, our salvation. This is what true wisdom is.

And this is what they've already been given in Christ. And so, he's saying that if you understand righteousness before God, if you understand justification, that only

Christ the Son can stand before the Father on the merit of His own works. You can't stand before the Father on the merit of your own works.

No other authority stands before Him. Only Christ can stand before the Father. If you understand that, you have an understanding of what the true wisdom is from God.

That only by faith in Him can we rest in Him confidently justified before God. And he says, true wisdom understands sanctification and holiness

In this situation, this isn't talking about the sanctification of our kind of slow and steady progression towards becoming more holy.

That's one element of sanctification, one perspective of sanctification. But in view here, what

Paul is talking about here is not that progressive sanctification. He's talking about our status before God.

Our holy status that God has given to us. It's a positional that you are sanctified.

You are set apart and holy. Not that you are being sanctified. You are sanctified.

Just like we do every week. You are not becoming pardoned. You are declared pardoned by God in Christ.

And it's our positional, it's a definitive sanctification, a permanent set apartness to be in the perpetual union with Christ.

And then he says, the true wisdom understands redemption. That by faith that we've been liberated from our slavery to sin.

We've been liberated from these other authorities. He's saying to them, the wisdom that you're searching for, you're so desperate for, is already been given to you in Christ.

So understand your righteousness before God. Understand that you are justified. Understand that you have been set apart for a perfect union with Christ.

You will be perfected in that unity. And understand that you have been redeemed. You've been bought out of that world that you're craving to be loved in.

It will do nothing for you. And so again, all of chapter one is dealing with these consequences of Corinth's errors with authority.

And in one verse, and again this is why I so appreciated this verse this week, one verse, verse 30, he has fully reset them to understand, right, that their position with God is secured because they are in Christ.

Right, their station is what it is, not because they're special, not because they're Corinthians, not because they're doing something right, or because they're smart, or because they're wise, or because they have the right teacher, or that the world thinks that they're good, that Paul is saying that being a

Christian, first and foremost, is about being in Christ and knowing that He is

Lord, knowing that He is your authority. He wants them to rejoice at that fact because God's authority,

God's rule over them is a good rule. Don't look to these other things. Find in Him the very things that your spirit is longing for, unity and peace in the love of God and the true wisdom that is revealed only in Christ.

Find everything that you are searching for in Him. That is what being a

Christian is, right? It's not about having the right words or the right whatever, it's about being in Christ fundamentally.

So let's continue reading verse 31. He says, "...so that," just as it is written, so He says all these things about by His doing, we are in Christ, right?

"...so that," just as it is written, "...let him who boasts boast in the Lord." Again, Paul has reset them to the understanding that they are submitted to God's authority in all that He has given.

So therefore, if we ever dared to boast about anything that we have, anything that we've done, it wouldn't be because we're something special, it wouldn't be because we're wise, it would be because we would be boasting about how good and generous our

God is to us, despite how undeserving we are. And Paul reiterates this personally for him, "...when I came to you, brethren," this is in verse 1 of chapter 2, "...I

did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God."

Paul came to them boasting in the Lord, not in himself. He's a man who was called to apostleship by Christ in a way that is uniquely personal.

No other apostle was called in the way that Paul was called. And he tells us in his letter to the

Philippians that he's a man with every reason to have confidence in the flesh. A man whose intellect is practically unrivaled historically.

And yet Paul, he doesn't rely on these things in his ministry. He doesn't trust in himself. He doesn't boast in them at all.

The truth is, he would have been more than capable intellectually to engage with the Corinthians in the way that they would have been used to.

Very rhetorically and brilliantly, like the rest of their culture would have wanted and been used to.

And they would have naturally gravitated towards. But he didn't come to give them what they wanted. He went to Corinth to give them what they needed, which was the testimony of God.

And so he boasted in God, not in himself. Now with all that being said, as we kind of hit the home stretch of the conclusion at the beginning of chapter 2, the conclusion of the introduction of the letter,

Paul's going to outline a few key, and what I consider to be very practical, implications of the theology that he gave in verse 30 in the response to the sin of Corinth in chapter 1.

So there are practical implications for this theology. It's not just high and lofty things that we think about and we believe and know, but these are things that will impact the way that we live our lives.

And it ultimately is going to serve as a protection of sorts against the type of error that we've looked at today.

So Paul's saying, based on this theology, these things should be, these should be the outpouring of this theology in your life.

And ultimately, it's going to protect you from these errors that we're seeing in chapter 1, these misplaced authority errors.

And again, these are things that, if we're understanding Paul rightly, should have a profound impact on us, on the way we do ministry here as a church, and as individuals as we go out into the world.

So, looking at chapter 2, verse 2, Paul writes, For I determined, and this is really the central, the central point of the introduction of the letter, that what is going to be the thing that drives you, the thing that keeps you, and helps you to stay focused on Christ.

He says, For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

He's saying that, given that Christ is our Lord and authority, He's the uniter of the global church and our local churches, and that He is the true wisdom of God, the salvation of lost and sinful people, and further, that our own authority, our own wisdom, these things are utterly insufficient to stand before a holy

God. Given all these things that are established in chapter 1, Paul's saying that the right and true implication of that fact is this, there is nothing of greater importance for the church of Christ to focus on and to teach than Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

There is no philosophy of man that would suffice. The only thing that is sufficient for the

Christian life is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Paul understands that if these things that we say that we believe about God, and that includes us in this room, if we say we believe these things about God, and they actually are true, then we should know that the divisions within the body, the factious nature of Corinth and the tendency of many churches today, they do nothing for us.

They don't accomplish anything. Efforts to appeal to the wisdom of the age, to virtue signal our way into the good graces of the world around us, these things are fruitless.

They don't accomplish anything in the economy of God. Again, Paul was more than capable to engage in these things in Corinth.

A man whose genius few, if any, have matched in the 2 ,000 years since he lived. We could be capable to engage in the philosophy of the world, but Paul's telling us that he determined that this is the right course.

Determine among yourselves. Be resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Because if we understand that this truth is fundamental to the salvation of, not only the salvation of the lost, but to the godly living for us as believers, if we've already been saved, we still need

Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We need to understand it. This is what he's telling them, that you've lost sight of godly living because you've lost focus on the

King that God has established. That's the crucified King, Jesus Christ. Without the teaching of the cross, the lost can't be saved.

Without the teaching of the cross, the saved are in constant jeopardy of slipping because it's the abiding knowledge of this crucified servant

King that preserves us and keeps us walking uprightly. And so it's by clinging to this truth that we protect ourselves.

Like I said, this verse isn't just God telling us, hey, I only want you guys to talk and think about certain things.

Although that obviously is true. God wants to protect our minds and our words. But Paul isn't saying here that this is the only thing you guys are allowed to talk about at church.

Paul's saying this because he wants to protect us. He wants to protect the Corinthian church and give them that guardrail that doesn't let them go way off the deep end.

Subtly drifting. Or not even way off. It could just be a little bit of a veer off the road. A subtle drift from the truth like was happening there in Corinth and like is happening in the church today.

Effectively, what he's laying out here is that if we keep our focus on Christ, if we take care, if we take the time to always know and understand the work of Christ on the cross and these other things, namely unity and wisdom in Corinth, will be added to you.

Resolve. Determine to know nothing among yourselves but Jesus Christ and him crucified. And these issues that we've talked about, well, they won't be there.

Because Christ at the cross unites us. And Christ at the cross is the definition of wisdom.

Another point here I want to make as we draw near to the end is that Paul was a man who lived with conviction.

He knew the truth. He wasn't going to let the world dictate to him how that truth was going to be proclaimed.

Again, he says it to the Corinthians in chapter 1 that he wasn't going to come in sophistication of speech so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

He wasn't going to come and give them the presentation in the way that they wanted to hear the presentation.

He was going to come and give them the presentation of the cross clearly, not demonstrating the power within himself but the power in the cross.

And let that be a lesson for us that we don't need the wisdom of the age to bring our gospel appeal to the world around us.

We don't need to fit in with the latest and the greatest from the secular philosophers and sociologists.

We need only the conviction of faith that Christ died a sinner's death on a

Roman cross so that sinners could inherit the kingdom of God by faith.

That is the only knowledge that we need to understand. And so as we close,

I just want to make a few final points from verses 3 through 5 of chapter 2, kind of in line with what we just saw or see in Paul as far as his conviction.

That when you're a man or a woman or a church that operates according to conviction, and when I say that, I mean basically walking by faith in the

Son of God and according to the necessary implications of believing what the

Bible teaches about God, about man, about sin and salvation and so on in the church. When we walk with conviction on these things, we will be viewed, you will be viewed by the world and probably even by some within the visible church as a prideful and a stubborn and an arrogant and closed -minded person.

And so I want to encourage today that this is not the case. While it might be the case sometimes, right?

There are instances. We're all imperfect. We're all sinful. There are instances where we're going to be prideful in our convictions even and stubborn and arrogant.

And so we should, we do well to examine ourselves in those situations. But even when it's not the case, many people in the world will view us living our lives according to the convictions of our faith as prideful and arrogant things to do.

But again, I want to encourage this by pointing out what Paul tells us here in verses 3 and 4. That living out the faith we confess is not a prideful thing.

Trusting in the cross of Christ is not a prideful thing. It's the opposite. Doing this is actually the mark of a humble servant of a good and gracious and crucified king.

He says in verse 3, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom.

Paul is saying, I knew the truth that you really needed. And so instead of trying to fit in with you all to make it easier for me to, instead of trying to present it in a way that would make it so you guys really liked me,

I just gave it to you straight. I gave you the truth. And this is humility.

This isn't pride. This is humility. Paul would never dare to boast before God for his craftiness of speech and winning over Corinth.

He would never dare to boast before God for his ability to persuade someone to believe it.

He understood and he believed rightly that salvation comes from God. And therefore he trusted entirely on his power to do the work of salvation by not daring to stray from the message of Christ and him crucified.

And again, people will tell you, people will say, that maybe we need to modify things a little bit.

Maybe we need to change the language a little bit. You know, stop saying certain words or talking about certain things like wrath and things like that.

The song we'll sing in response, this is a tangent, but the song we're going to sing in response, in Christ alone, there was a lot of, there was large denominations of churches that asked the writer of that song to allow them to change the words from, that referenced the wrath of God to instead reference the love of God.

And the songwriter refused to do it, but the point being that people don't want to hear certain things, right?

And so we have to be, it's not prideful to say, no, that's the way I wrote the song, it's staying that way.

That's not a pride, it's a humility to say, no, this is the truth. The truth is that Christ was crucified for sinners.

And so if we, standing in that is not pride, it is humility. And so we take heart in this as Christians, right?

Because it's a good thing for us. Right? God has promised that the ministry of the church will succeed.

That it will move forward. Not even the gates of hell will stand against the ministry of the church and the success of the church. We don't need to rely on the world's methods, right?

Or to try to convince them or change the message in any way. Those things are vain. The world's methods are vanity. We don't need the wisdom of the world.

It's foolishness before God. And so where there's sin, we find healing in the beauty of Christ.

We find healing in our perfect unity with Him and in Him. Sin has been dealt with at the cross if you are in Christ.

Past, present, and future. And so we find healing in our union with Christ. And so let's rejoice as a people that our salvation is fully accomplished in Christ.

Let's boast in the Lord that His grace, His mercy, and our undeservedness are all here present in us every day as we minister to those around us and to the world around us.

And let's humbly, I think this is a key thing here, that as individuals and as families here, as a church, let's be humble enough to keep our focus upon the crucified

Savior, our Lord and King Jesus Christ, because that's what God has called us to.

For His glory, right, in the proclamation of His gospel, we keep the focus on Christ and Him crucified, but also for our protection.

Again, if we stay focused on these things, if we stay focused on our crucified King, the deviation from the faithful gospel message is not a risk that we are susceptible to.

But if we start to lose focus, if we lose focus of what Christ has accomplished for us, that on the cross,

He took all of our sin upon Himself, bore the penalty, the just and due penalty that we deserved, in doing so, in humbling

Himself in that way, God the Father has elevated Him as the name above all names, the name in which every knee will bow.

And so let's rejoice in that, but let's stay humble as we pursue the cross and not the latest methods.

Let's not succumb to those trends and topics that bring potentially a temporary gain to our cultural popularity just because we agree with the world for once.

Let's not let that be our motivation. And may we do all these things in the knowledge that it's our sure and steady

God who is with us, even to the end of the ages. Paul says in verse 4 and 5, and we'll close with this, my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the

Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

The power of our message is not in our delivery, it's not in our words, it's not in our wisdom as the world defines it.

The power of the Church's message is found only in the power of God, the One, 2

Corinthians chapter 4 says, the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

He is the One who shines it in our hearts. The power is His, and it's on His power that our faith rests as we rejoice in Him today.

It doesn't rest on the wisdom of the world, it rests on the power of God. And so, may we rejoice together as we close this morning, and may we rejoice in that knowledge as we go from here out into the world to glorify our

Savior. Let's pray. Father, thank You for the grace that it is to know, to know by the testimony of Your Word that our walking with You, our keeping with You, Lord, is not something that we accomplish,

Lord, but rather, this is something that You have already accomplished, our station with You if we are in Christ is permanent.

God, we can't be taken out from You, nor would You ever cast us out,

Lord, because You have called us to You, Lord, to love and to shepherd forevermore.

Lord, so we rejoice in this truth that our unity with You is being perfected, and yet at the same time is one that we can't shake away from as hard as we might try even at times,

Lord, and so we thank You and praise You for this truth, Lord, and we thank You for the protection that You have given to the

Church, Lord, with Your Word and helping us understand what is true, what is right, what is good, and what is wise,

Lord, so that we would know to always keep our focus upon You, Your cross,

Lord, what You have given for us, and that we may not be deviated from that by the winds of change throughout the world.

God, may You give us a spirit and a peace, a spirit of peace and a spirit of power to walk in that humility, to cling to You and to You alone.