God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 1:20-21
God cannot be understood by our own human modes of wisdom. All the logic and best thinking of the whole history of the world cannot fully comprehend God and his ways. Instead, God’s intent was to use the Church – the “foolish” ones according to the word – to display his wisdom within the world (Ephesians 3:10-11).
He deliberately made it so that our only way forward to true wisdom was to trust him through Jesus. God has said “I will destoy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent” Isaiah 29:14. And this is self-evident. Any non-arrogant thinker without an agenda will agree that there are mysteries of the universe hidden from our understanding.
If then, God cannot be understood, how can we so easily dismiss his wisdom? How can believers irrationally presume to pick and choose what in the Bible they are and aren’t willing to believe? I am thinking of the church organizations who have allowed mainstream cultural and political values to change God’s word in order to garner acceptance.
The answer of course, is sin. Our lack of understanding ultimately comes from our preference for sin over submission, and its affects on us and the whole entire creation are felt each time someone thumbs his nose at God.
There is a thought that seems to keep coming back to me in recent days, and that is a conviction of the many ways in which I insist upon my own preferences and ways that butt heads with the word of God. From my taste in media to influence to appetite, these are the things that turn my head and heart away from Jesus. No one is immune, but we are not left on our own.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says: “We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.”
That word for “stronghold” in the original Greek is ochryroma. In this context it means “of the arguments and reasonings by which a disputant endeavors to fortify his opinion and defend it against his opponent”. All our justifications, all our hurts, all our reasonings. It is tempting to want to defend my creature comforts with words like just, and only.
But this is where the stretching happens and I can literally feel the pierce of the double-edged sword from Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Even in the throes of pain inflicted by myself and others, I can’t shake the truth that it doesn’t matter. No matter how much someone doesn’t deserve my forgiveness, it doesn’t matter in the light of eternity. There is no other answer I can give for not obeying God’s word to “agape-love” others and forgive 77 times (Matthew 18:21-22).
If it becomes apparent to me that something in me is wrong and on the edge of sin, God knows it too. There’s no point in trying to argue it away or deny. This is where the bending of my will to his is the right thing to do.
All scripture references taken from NLT unless otherwise noted.
References
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
“G3794 – ochyrōma – Strong’s Greek Lexicon (nasb20).” Blue Letter Bible. Web. 15 Feb, 2023. <https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g3794/nasb20/mgnt/0-1/>.
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