As Chapter 1 ended, Paul concluded that we are in Christ Jesus, who became for us the wisdom of God, only because of God, not anything we deserved.
Paul now makes it clear that he was just a person like everyone else when he came to Corinth, even weaker than most:
“And I, when I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor 2:1-5).
Paul is such an encouragement to me! Coming with no sophistication as judged by the world, but only the crucified Jesus, so I come with even less – the living Jesus praying to his Father for perfect unity among his children! There are days when I sit down to write and all I hear is, “Who do you think you are?” Yet as soon as I open my Bible and write, that tempter is pushed away. Thank you, Jesus, for the power of the Spirit:
“Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor 2:6-7).
More encouragement for me – God has provided the impetus for the Cycle of Perfect Unity in our age at least partially through me, which Jesus decreed all the way from before creation until his departure from this world (John 17:20-23). I just keep on keeping on as guided by the Spirit:
“None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’ – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:8-10; see also Isaiah 64:4).
Have you ever pictured the Spirit searching the depths of God? This is the same Spirit that lives in us when we accept Jesus as our Savior (Romans 8:16). Our journey through the Old Testament showed us God the Father; the Four Gospels led us to God the Son; and the Acts and Epistles are leading us to the Holy Spirit. The depths of God are everywhere in his word (Psalm 92:5):
“For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Cor 2:11-13).
The things that God has revealed to me became the Cycle of Perfect Unity being revealed to you. This is just one way that God reveals himself through his Spirit. But it has changed my life and I hope it has impacted yours a bit as well.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:14-16; Isaiah 40:13-14).