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To Misjudge Is Human
1 Corinthians 2:14-16
October 29, 2017
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kids’ Korner.
The sermon starts at 16:00 in the audio file.
Or, The Power of a Spiritual Starting Point
Today is a monumental day in church history. It is the closest Sunday to October 31st, the day that is usually acknowledged as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther made public his 95 Theses against indulgences. It is as impossible for us to know how much we’ve been influenced by the 500 year-old Reformation effects as it is for a fish to know how wet the water is. We’re in deep Christian waters due to God’s blessing on the Reformers’ work.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16 is not the text of Scripture that broke open the protest, but it sure does explain a lot of what was happening. This paragraph probably isn’t the first one that comes to mind when we think about the five solas or the five points of the doctrines of grace, and yet it does, at least in context, touch all ten doctrines. For many years after my own “conversion” to Calvinistic theology, verse 14 may have been my single-most referenced verse regarding evangelism and preaching and teaching and pastoral counseling, especially when it came to wondering about why it seemed so difficult for people to listen.
Paul has been poking at the immature divisions among some of the Christians in Corinth since his greeting to them at the beginning of the letter. Their quarreling came about because they were focused on the wrong things. It is not too simple to say that they were focused on man’s things—his abilities and accomplishments and social ranking—rather than on God’s things. This is no good on a number of levels, including the self-evident demotion of themselves. If you could choose, whose trail would you rather follow to the top of Mt. Wisdom? The path of the old Sherpa or that of the new prancersise instructor? And what does it say when you start dividing into tribes by what brand of hair product the prancerciser-prophets use? You’d say that has nothing to do with whether or not they can get us to the top of the mountain.
The philosophers of the world are the pracerciser instructors. They are dancing around selling their particular brand of leotard as the key to wisdom, and the only thing sillier than that is that Christians copy their moves. As if a certain hair spray or pair of stretchy pants will help us promote Christ.
You can’t get someone to love the gospel with gimmicks. And it’s laughable for men to convince themselves that they can think God-level thoughts apart from God-given help. It illustrates the great axiom: to misjudge is human. We are constantly getting things wrong, including our stubborn tenacity to deny that we’re getting things wrong. “Nuh-uh.” The only way out of this, the way that Luther and Calvin and Tyndale and other Reformers realized, is by God’s Spirit.
Here is a Reformation text worthy of a 500 year anniversary, even knowing that it will only be any good to us as God’s Spirit helps us to appraise what we’ve got and why it’s so great.
In 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 there are two declarations of reality, one about the limits of human judgment and one about the reach of spiritual judgment, and then one amazing celebration of these realities.
Every Man’s Logical Misjudgment (verse 14)
Paul’s just said in the previous paragraph that he and the preachers of the cross “do impart wisdom…a secret and hidden wisdom of God…revealed to us through the Spirit.” He’s completely dependent on God’s Spirit for his own understanding: “we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” He doesn’t need or use rhetorical eloquence as defined by the world, he is “interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual,” the ones who have God’s Spirit.
Now he contrasts the one who is spiritual (verse 13, and again in verse 15) with the one without the Spirit. He’s called the “natural man,” the man in hi[...]
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By Trinity Evangel Church1 Corinthians 2:14-16
October 29, 2017
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kids’ Korner.
The sermon starts at 16:00 in the audio file.
Or, The Power of a Spiritual Starting Point
Today is a monumental day in church history. It is the closest Sunday to October 31st, the day that is usually acknowledged as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther made public his 95 Theses against indulgences. It is as impossible for us to know how much we’ve been influenced by the 500 year-old Reformation effects as it is for a fish to know how wet the water is. We’re in deep Christian waters due to God’s blessing on the Reformers’ work.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16 is not the text of Scripture that broke open the protest, but it sure does explain a lot of what was happening. This paragraph probably isn’t the first one that comes to mind when we think about the five solas or the five points of the doctrines of grace, and yet it does, at least in context, touch all ten doctrines. For many years after my own “conversion” to Calvinistic theology, verse 14 may have been my single-most referenced verse regarding evangelism and preaching and teaching and pastoral counseling, especially when it came to wondering about why it seemed so difficult for people to listen.
Paul has been poking at the immature divisions among some of the Christians in Corinth since his greeting to them at the beginning of the letter. Their quarreling came about because they were focused on the wrong things. It is not too simple to say that they were focused on man’s things—his abilities and accomplishments and social ranking—rather than on God’s things. This is no good on a number of levels, including the self-evident demotion of themselves. If you could choose, whose trail would you rather follow to the top of Mt. Wisdom? The path of the old Sherpa or that of the new prancersise instructor? And what does it say when you start dividing into tribes by what brand of hair product the prancerciser-prophets use? You’d say that has nothing to do with whether or not they can get us to the top of the mountain.
The philosophers of the world are the pracerciser instructors. They are dancing around selling their particular brand of leotard as the key to wisdom, and the only thing sillier than that is that Christians copy their moves. As if a certain hair spray or pair of stretchy pants will help us promote Christ.
You can’t get someone to love the gospel with gimmicks. And it’s laughable for men to convince themselves that they can think God-level thoughts apart from God-given help. It illustrates the great axiom: to misjudge is human. We are constantly getting things wrong, including our stubborn tenacity to deny that we’re getting things wrong. “Nuh-uh.” The only way out of this, the way that Luther and Calvin and Tyndale and other Reformers realized, is by God’s Spirit.
Here is a Reformation text worthy of a 500 year anniversary, even knowing that it will only be any good to us as God’s Spirit helps us to appraise what we’ve got and why it’s so great.
In 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 there are two declarations of reality, one about the limits of human judgment and one about the reach of spiritual judgment, and then one amazing celebration of these realities.
Every Man’s Logical Misjudgment (verse 14)
Paul’s just said in the previous paragraph that he and the preachers of the cross “do impart wisdom…a secret and hidden wisdom of God…revealed to us through the Spirit.” He’s completely dependent on God’s Spirit for his own understanding: “we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” He doesn’t need or use rhetorical eloquence as defined by the world, he is “interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual,” the ones who have God’s Spirit.
Now he contrasts the one who is spiritual (verse 13, and again in verse 15) with the one without the Spirit. He’s called the “natural man,” the man in hi[...]