Scripture References: 2 Corinthians 3:18

The Apostle Paul determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). He did not request a place for his God in the Greek Parthenon; in essence, he was demanding the destruction of the Parthenon as not necessary. His God had made the world; their gods were but idols made by the hands of men. He did not offer Jesus as a teacher of equal rank with Socrates; he required that they bow at the foot of the cross. He had used great plainness of speech by challenging the wise men of the world.

And the secret of it all? Paul believed in the God whose face confronted him everywhere. He believed in that God in whose hands the hearts of kings are as watercourses. Paul believed in Christ. He believed in that Christ who stopped him on the way to Damascus to change him from a persecutor into an apostle. Paul believed in the Holy Spirit. “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4).

The Holy Spirit has blessed his ministry. There is a church at Corinth. There are those who have believed what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor that which has entered into the heart of man. There are those who “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” (1 Corinthians 2:12). That which was impossible with men has proved to be possible with God.

But again the Jews blasphemed and the Greeks ignored or ridiculed. Who did this Paul think he was? Did he know more than all the wise men of the past? Again the temptation comes to compromise. Again Paul resists the temptation. They ridicule his claim to special knowledge from God. He does not condescend to justify himself by appealing to their own standards.

“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again” (2 Corinthians 3:1), when we say that “we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing?” (2 Corinthians 2:15). Those that think themselves so wise, are so foolish. You know that what Paul has spoken is the truth. You know that we all once thought this truth was nothing but foolishness and fanaticism. Each of us is manifestly declared to be the “letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3). Paul will continue to speak plainly. He will continue to challenge the false assumptions of men. He knows “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” (1 Corinthians 2:14), but he also knows that the Holy Spirit of the sovereign God freely gives the spiritual discernment they need. Thus when he tells the Corinthians that he has used great plainness of speech he suddenly turns aside to the elevation of the dispensation of the Spirit. In the midst of a discourse that speaks of his own ministry as an apostle of Christ he turns to a tribute and testimonial on the dispensation of the Spirit in general. In it Paul glories in the spiritual discernment of New Testament believers.

To Be Continued

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