My Dear Friend,
I sincerely pray that this week’s devotional will encourage you to pray for that which is becoming increasingly rare, which is Wisdom. And not just any wisdom, but God’s wisdom. I hope you will also pray against the forces that keep us from exercising our right to freedom of assembly to worship. As always, you are loved and you are missed.
Love in Christ Jesus,
Pastor Mark
“We speak a message of wisdom…but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom…None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has conceived’— the things God has prepared for those who love Him – the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit…But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
The message is clear: To understand anything of God’s actions in the past and His plan for humanity in the future, we must first have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16b).
Without God’s Spirit, we will never understand such things (v. 14). Without the mind of Christ Jesus, the wisest sages, the most powerful rulers, and the savviest technocrats still fumble along, trying to solve humanity’s relentless crises. But for every problem they thought they had solved, they just created another.
Today, we have more knowledge than we know what to do with. Why then are we not finding life to be increasingly simpler and easier? Because,
Having knowledge is great, but wisdom is what is necessary to know what to do with it.
Regarding the end times, Daniel prophesied that, “knowledge shall increase” (Daniel 12:4). And the Letter to Timothy prophesied that humans would be “ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Today, we are drowning in knowledge while experiencing a drought of wisdom.
In the Older Testament, “Wisdom” is virtually synonymous with the Mind of God. Without the Mind of God guiding us, there is no wisdom. As Job said, “With God are wisdom and might; He has counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13).
And in today’s New Testament passage, the Apostle Paul says, “We speak a message of wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:6). This “message of wisdom” reveals God’s plan of salvation though the crucifixion and resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus. Try as they may, humans will never have the wisdom to save themselves from the mess they keep on creating. But the Good News is this: God loved humans so much (John 3:16) that He (1) became one of them; (2) suffered Himself the consequences of their folly; and (3) provided the ultimate, albeit wholly undeserved, gift: FORGIVENESS FOR THE ASKING.
To Understand God’s Plan for You
Scripture teaches that not just God, but we, too, are a “trinity.” The Greek New Testament says that we are made up of three things: (1) soma (body); (2) psyche (mind); and (3) pneuma (spirit). Your soma is the “sense-gate” through which all worldly stimuli (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch) pass. Whatever enters your senses passes into your psyche, the seat of your emotions, imaginations, reasonings, and memories. But even deeper than your psyche is your pneuma (spirit), the innermost place in you that only God can fill with the Truth.
As simply flesh, your body is incapable of “understanding” anything at all. And while your “natural” mind may “understand” many things, it is impossible for it to understand the things of God (Cf. 1 Cor. 2:14).
It is only your inner spirit (pneuma) into which God breathes the breath of eternal life, thus enlivening your senses of faith, hope, and love for God and then everyone else. That is why the apostle says, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness…because they are discerned only through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:14).
God’s Word must first divide the “trinity” of you into parts before it can be made completely whole: “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow” (Hebrews 4:12). This “dividing” is necessary to distinguish and sanctify your spirit – the place where the Holy Spirit will dwell – from your natural mind and body. Your spirit must be “quickened” (KJV) i.e. enlivened by the Holy Spirit in order for you to know God’s wisdom and be saved from the anti-wisdom that says, “I can save myself,” or “We humans can eventually save ourselves.” We need the mind of Christ to understand what God has already done in Christ Jesus, and what He has in store for those who love Him.
May we pray for the mind of Christ Jesus to be in us today.