1 Corinthians 2

30. “Ye are,” says the apostle. After speaking of “things that are not,” and of “things that are,” he turns to his fellow-believers and says, “but ye are.” And whence is this existence found? From Him, from God himself, as its immediate origin and still continuous author. And where is it found? “In Christ Jesus.” In Christ Jesus! As the simple voice of faith this word is ever uttered with joy unspeakable and full of glory. But preacher or commentator who may attempt to sound the depths or open the treasures of its meaning, must feel his tongue falter under the sense of the inadequacy of every explaining word. Let us, however, at least assert the reality of the fact which it expresses, for it is no symbolical form of speech, but the statement of a fact, as real in regard to the spirit as the fact of our being in the world is real in regard to the body. T. D. B.

As there is no other channel to God but Christ Jesus, so there is no other beginning or termination to the work of Christ Jesus but God. The language of Scripture on this point is wonderful, unfathomable. It would appear that, as regards the work of grace, God sees nothing but Christ Jesus alone and altogether. He is made to us wisdom by enlightening us, righteousness by justifying us, sanctification by purifying us, redemption by purchasing us into immortality. He justifies as Christ crucified and risen without us; He sanctifies as Christ crucified and risen within us; He glorifies in virtue of both, as Christ enthroned in the fullness of consummate power, and at length “subduing all things unto himself.” W. A. B.—This wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, indispensable conditions of eternal life and sacred earnest of our inheritance, are in germ and principle included in faith in the work of redemption; they come forth from it spontaneously, just as the blade sends forth the stalk, and the stalk the grain. In the soul whose look is fixed upon the Cross there exists a beginning of wisdom, a beginning of righteousness, a beginning of sanctification; and in proportion as the believer’s work is so fixed, the spiritual life, under the three forms which the above terms imply, grows and is silently developed in his breast. A. V.

One day as I was passing into the field, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven”; and methought I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand. There was my righteousness; so that, wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, “He wants my righteousness,” for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself. By this Scripture I saw that the man Christ Jesus, as he is distinct from us as touching his bodily presence, so he is our righteousness and sanctification before God: here therefore I lived for some time at peace with God through Christ. Oh! methought, Christ, Christ! there was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes. I was not now only for looking upon this and the other benefits of Christ apart, as of his blood, burial, or resurrection, but considered him as a whole Christ, as he in whom all these and all his other virtues, relations, offices, and operations met together, and that as he sat on the right hand of God in heaven. ‘Twas glorious to see his exaltation, and the worth and prevalence of all his benefits. Now Christ was all: all my wisdom, all my righteousness, all my sanctification, and all my redemption. Bun.

31. He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.** On the one hand, Christ is “set forth evidently crucified among us”; on the other, we see “the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” On the one hand, “Behold the Man!” and the crown of thorns; on the other, “Behold the Man!” and the crown of glory, and the raptures of an assembled universe! But whether on the cross or on the throne, in Him alike and in Him alone will we glory. W. A. B.

1. AND I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, 2 declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among 3 you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, 4 and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of 5 man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not 6 stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world,

7 that come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart 10 of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things 11 of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in 12 him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know 13 the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth: comparing spiritual 14 things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually 15 discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

PAUL knows nothing but Christ crucified. When he entreats for purity among them, and the purging out of their sensuality, this is his reason: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” Keep your bodies holy as temples, for they are “bought with a price,” and that price is Jesus’ blood. When he remonstrates against misleading or tempting an unguarded heart, this is his expostulation: “Shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?” When he urges them with all tenderness to cherish a forgiving and forbearing temper, this is his motive: “If I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ.” When his own sufferings and weakness oppress him, this is his consolation, that in that infirm and aching body he can “bear about the dying of the Lord Jesus.” And when he comes to offer to the reverential reception of the Church the Supper of the Lord, this is the inmost meaning he assigned to it: it shows forth the Lord’s death till he come; it represents the dying love; its profaners are they who do not discern the Lord’s broken body there. It is plain enough where the apostle Paul sets the doctrine of the propitiatory sacrifice in the New Testament system of theology, and among the practical powers and consolations of the Christian life. He sets it where the church evangelic and catholic finds it, and has kept it, in the supreme and central place. F. D. H.

2. Know nothing but Christ.** Everything which we are to believe, to know, to practice; all which pertains to God and to man; all of the least importance concerning other worlds and other orders of beings; all history from the beginning of time; all prospect and expectation of the future till time shall be no more; all that by any possibility we can know concerning eternal retributions when this world has disappeared from its present place and uses; all arts, all sciences, all discoveries, inventions, and achievements, wars, revolutions, governments, if they be any thing, are related to him for whom all things were made, and by whom all things consist, in their diversity, their totality, and their unity. Be sure of this. When the converted scholar of Tarsus determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified, he restricted himself to no mean and narrow bounds; for he placed himself at that focal center where he could command every radius in the vast infinity of knowledge. W. A.

Him crucified. That Christ had suffered the most degrading form of death, the death of a criminal slave, the death which every freeman would have considered a taint upon his blood and an ignominy never to be wiped out from his family—this was the one great trial of faith to the wise Greek and the proud Jew. It is perhaps impossible for us, by any effort of mind, to appreciate the stigma which, at the time when Paul wrote these wonderful words, attached to the cross of Christ. The reproach of crucifixion, as an historical punishment actually inflicted upon our blessed Lord, is entirely rolled away. His cross has, in fact, become to our apprehensions his crown; the hearing that he underwent this death never wakes in any mind a feeling even of surprise, much less of disgust, or of derogation from his dignity; gratitude and love are the only sentiments which the spectacle of Calvary, looked at through the veneration of ages—a glorifying perspective—stirs in the mind of his professing followers. E. M. G.

Christ is the very foundation and subject-matter of preaching, and all preaching without Christ is building castles in the air. Christ is the life and soul of preaching, and all preaching without him is like a body without life and spirit. Christ is the great end of preaching; preaching is to manifest his glory; and, when Christ is not preached, the great end is lost. R. S.—Let the great end be to render him precious in the eyes of his people, to lead them to him as a sanctuary to protect them, a propitiation to reconcile them, a treasure to enrich them, a physician to heal them, an advocate to present them and their service to God; as wisdom to counsel, as righteousness to justify, as sanctification to renew, as redemption to save, as an inexhaustible fountain of pardon, peace, comfort, victory, glory! Bp. Reynolds.

The New Testament says nothing of “Christianity.” The word is not there. But when God would save the world, he sends the Saviour with a throbbing heart and a living voice. The first teachers said nothing about Christianity; but “Christ crucified” and “the resurrection” they could preach in jails and synagogues, turn the world upside down for and die for, counting it all joy. Dying men speak little of Christianity. They say Christ. Last breaths are too short for abstractions, and can only articulate the one dear and all-prevailing name. The fading sight loses all images but the cross. F. D. H.

4. Paul does indeed discard the “enticing words of man’s wisdom,” but he does not discard eloquent, powerful, and well-ordered discourse; or what mean his own matchless discourses before Agrippa and the Athenian Areopagites, and his farewell to the Ephesian elders, and his descant upon the resurrection? T. H. S.

It is well known that not a few of the Hebrew nation, from the age of the Macedonian conquests, and during the course of the four following centuries, ambitiously addicted themselves to Grecian literature; and in this ambiguous course advanced as far toward a treasonable admiration of polytheistic philosophy, poetry, and art, as could well consist with their professed attachment to the national faith. Some went further than this limit. Scattered indications of the incongruous mixtures of opinions which thence resulted are to be found in some allusions of the New Testament, in the apocryphal books, and in the Rabbinical commentaries. But evidence to the same purport, and more at large, is presented in the writings of the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, and of the Jewish courtier of Jerusalem. But it is observable in all these instances that the superinduction of Grecian modes of thinking upon the Hebrew mind was, to the whole extent of it, a corruption of faith. Philo is but an Alexandrian rabbi and a barbarian philosopher; Josephus little better than a renegade. Paul of Tarsus affords an instance of another sort. He was as well read as Philo; almost as much conversant with active life as Josephus; he was a reader of the Greek drama, and a great master of that mental management which then was to be learned only within the circle of Grecian dialectics and rhetoric. Nevertheless, he remains most completely national in his mode of thinking and his phraseology: it was at the feet of Gamaliel that he sat, though he learned lessons elsewhere. There is no alien spirit, no shrinking from Moses, no blending of things incompatible, no affectation of doctrines more enlarged and liberal or more refined than were taught by the prophets in the writings of Paul. He is not now the Jew, now the Christian, now the sophist; but always both Jew and Christian, and as fully so as Peter or as James. Paul grasped in a much firmer manner than they the vital principles which were the glory of the Jewish people. Even as a Jew, and still more as a Christian, he was better qualified than they to estimate justly the intrinsic value of Grecian philosophy and refinement. He knew how to strike the balance of merit between Plato, or Pindar, or Menander, and David or Isaiah. He neither repudiated the Grecian literature with a rude fanatical arrogance because it was at fault in matters of religion, nor labored to deck himself in its flowers at the cost of consistency; but while he adhered in spirit and letter, in form and substance, to that fashion of thought and language which the divine oracles had set, did not scruple to avail himself of whatever aid might fairly be drawn from a foreign source. I. T.

God and his truth are one and inseparable: truth manifesting God, and God manifest through the truth; truth testifying for God, and God convincing by the truth; truth shining round all divine things, and God making all divine things savingly perceptible. This is the eternal union and coöperation of the Infinite with the light in which he dwelleth. The true idea of “gospel motives” is this—God moving in the gospel; and this is “the love of Christ truly constraining us”; Christ constraining us by the love which his word makes known; while the true “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” lies here, the Spirit demonstrating the power of that “preaching which is not with enticing words of man’s wisdom.” J. S. S.

5. In compassion to our weakness God has placed at our disposal that body of historical proof which, in its combination and details, deserves our admiration as much as the most exquisite arrangements of the organic world. These proofs lead as far as the door of the sanctuary, leaving it to us thereafter to remain outside or to enter. We may remain upon the threshold, holding in our hand the title-deeds which give us right of entrance; but if a last step, a last impulse which is divine, makes us enter, then we believe with a new faith and on new evidence. Our faith had till then been founded in some measure on the wisdom of men; but now it is founded on the power of God, because it is not by any ordinary means of which we can give account, but by the power of God, that this evidence is made complete. A. V.

6. Originally intellect is the ally and discoverer of truth; it finds its highest employment as the instrument of religious truth; and Jesus Christ, who restores the harmony of our nature, speaks “a wisdom” or philosophy “among them that are perfect”—a wisdom of which illuminated intellect is the student and guardian, and which amply recognizes the high and abundant honor which the Creator has put upon his creature’s thought. H. P. L.

7. The gospel, in the language of Paul, is a mystery—the mystery of God—the mystery hidden from ages everlasting in his own bosom, but now revealed unto men. In other words, it is the revelation of the glorious plan of his wisdom and love in our redemption. It is, therefore, a scheme of doctrine—something taught—and that which as taught is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”—that on the knowledge of which all right feeling and all holy obedience depends. Stability in the Christian faith is therefore no less important than stability of Christian character, since without the former the latter can not exist. N. P.

Verses 9, 10 ought to stand, “But as it is written, Things which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, things which God hath prepared for them that love him, hath God revealed unto us through his Spirit.” A.—These glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to imagine or to paint. The apostle meant something infinitely deeper; the heaven of God is not only that which “eye hath not seen,” but that which eye can never see; its glories are not of that kind at all which can ever stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the enraptured ear—not such joys as “the heart of man” can invent or imagine; it is something which these sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate—bliss of another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the Spirit of God—joys such as spirit alone can receive. Do you ask what these are? “The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” That is heaven. F. W. R.

10. The Spirit searcheth. The reliance of the soul on Christ, the singleness and fixedness of purpose in divine things, the breathing of the soul after him, will lead to persevering intensity in prayer, the Holy Spirit will be vouchsafed, and God will shine into the heart so that it will be full of light. The degree of spiritual discernment possessed by a being taught of the Spirit of God depends much upon the habits of the soul, the study of spiritual things, the degree of watchfulness against sin, the faithfulness of the soul in prayer, the time one has been conversant with divine realities, and the habit of living with reference to them. G. B. C.

11. As no one man is acquainted with the consciousness of another man, even so the things of God—his counsels, thoughts, ways of viewing men and actions, objects of complacency and aversion—

“even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” We may hear the echoing thunder of God’s judgments when they are abroad in the world; we may have the examples of his mercy and the monuments of his wrath before our eyes; the still small voice of his gracious invitations may be addressed to us; the letter of Holy Scripture may be familiar to us from our youth upward as a household word; and from these aids we may form some general conjectures as to the Divine character: but to God’s own thought and counsel we must remain strangers, until the Holy Spirit initiates us into it intrinsically, by the communication of the Divine mind into the mind of the creature. E. M. G.—He who has found in his Bible the material for conversation, the topic for discussion, or the field for criticism and controversy, but who has not found in it the unfathomable fountain of peace undisturbed, the solace for every earthly suffering, the silent but faithful friend—he who has not found, in short, “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,” ever inviting him within that volume—though he may know the lore and the languages of antiquity, has yet to learn in the school of the Spirit. W. A. B.

12. Received the Spirit, that we might know the things given of God. The Spirit is both the principle of the external revelation, as having inspired the Scriptures which foreshow this glory, and of the internal revelation also, to enlighten blind minds that would otherwise never be able to discover things afar off: therefore called the spirit of wisdom and revelation, by which the eyes of the understanding are enlightened to know the riches of his inheritance among the saints. Howe.—The Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us; and then what was before like a book in a strange language becomes, on a sudden, instinct with the language of God, which we hear and understand as readily as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born. T. A.

13. “Comparing spiritual with spiritual,” should be “interpreting spiritual things to the spiritual.” A.—It is by the preaching of his gospel, in all varying ways, that Christ, through the Spirit, seeks to illumine the darkened mind and to renew the wicked heart of “the natural man”; to lay the foundations of holy character deep and strong and broad in the understanding and in the affections; to build up and garnish with heavenly graces the structure of individual holiness for which those foundations are laid; to “chase away erroneous and strange doctrines” from the church of God; to keep truth victorious, and to multiply the bright and blessed conquests of Christ’s spiritual kingdom. J. S. S.

14. The persons here spoken of are described

natural, the same word as that used by Jude (v. 19) to express persons “not having the Spirit.” Such men, when the truths of the gospel are proposed to them, though it be “in the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth,” receive them not, see no glory in them, no correspondence with their character and condition; nay, count the representations made to them of spiritual joys and terrors, of corruption in them and mercy in God, of man’s ruin and recovery through the gospel to holiness and happiness, of the vanity of the world and the blessedness of forsaking it for another, to be overstrained, false, gloomy, enthusiastic. They are foolishness unto them. Goode.