Bible Commentaries

The Great Expiation

1 Corinthians 2:2

The Corinth of St. Paul's day had inherited a revival of philosophy, and was a home of culture so much as to induce a rivalry with Athens herself. But it was not in an atmosphere of intellectual restlessness, in a society where energy was dissipated in an excessive love of dialectic, that the Apostle's ministry was carried on. It was a wisdom of the world, worldly; brilliant yet pretentious, that led men no nearer to solving the deeper problems of life. When the gifted Alexandrian, Apollos, had appeared as a preacher of Christianity, a considerable section of the Church attached itself to him. The result of an adherence that ought to have been for good was a very grave misunderstanding—many of them were men in whom the old pagan temper was by no means exterminated, and they claimed the sanction of his name, as it would seem, for a great deal that he would have been the very first to disown. The issue was the beginning of a party spirit, which has been under the most widely diverse conditions the bane and hindrance of Christendom. That there ought to have been no such divisions because the methods of two men in the interpreting of their common belief were different goes without the saying. But so it was, and this was the distressful condition of affairs with which in his first extant letter to them the founder of the Corinthian Church had to deal.

I. Here at the outset we must be on our guard as to a possible misconception of St. Paul's determination. Let it be said at once (we shall find abundant reason to justify it later on) that there is no shadow of excuse in his words for a one-sided presentation of Christ's religion. Such partial treatment, to our great injury, is common enough, but it was not his way who had "not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God". In the conduct of our own life's occupation we all know that limitation of thought and labour for a while is an indispensable thing. It does not mean neglect of other responsibilities. Because the Bishop of Exeter found it requisite to concentrate two years" attention on the vast expansion of Plymouth, he did not overlook the claims of Devonshire at large. And St. Paul did not determine to know anything among the Corinthians "save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," because he knew, not only, as few others, what human life really 1 Corinthians 2:2

"I am determined," said William Lloyd Garrison, the great abolitionist leader, "to know nothing as a public man save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and in this country I see Him crucified again in the person of the slave."

References.—II:2.—R. J. Campbell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p264. Archbishop Benson, Living Theology, p191. A. L. N. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p350. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p44. Joseph Parker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p67. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No1264 , and vol. xlvi. No2673. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p67. A. Barry, The Doctrine of the Cross, p5. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—Corinthians, p19.

Strength and Weakness

1 Corinthians 2:3

Who is it that says so? Weakness and fear and much trembling! Surely he never did any great good. Surely, when he says, "I was with you," he might as well, or better, have stayed away altogether. Was it so? It is none other than the Apostle St. Paul, who was in so many dangers, who underwent so many labours.

What he felt none of us must be ashamed or discouraged if we feel also.

I. To feel our weakness—that is one great way to become strong. If we feel strong of ourselves, we are apt to look to ourselves, and to think that we can manage very well, we can overcome our enemies, we can gain for ourselves a passage to the kingdom of heaven. But when we feel weak, then we are more disposed to go to Him who can give all strength, to Him who is all strength—our Lord Jesus Christ, as He said, "The earth is weak and all the inhabitants of it; I bear up the pillars of it".

II. "I was with you in weakness and in fear." There is enough to be afraid of in this world. But unfortunately we are all just like children, afraid of that which we ought not to be afraid of, and not the least afraid of what we ought to fear. A child will be afraid of a stuffed wild beast, and cry out in terror. The same child will play in a room where there is a most malignant fever, and have no sense of danger.

III. Every man is weak in that which is his besetting sin. Yet God would give us strength to overcome that completely if only we went to Him for it. "The congregations of the ungodly have robbed me," says David. So they have robbed us. The congregations of the ungodly are the devil and his wicked angels.

IV. "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." See where all that ended. He went through fire and water, and he has long since been brought out into a wealthy place.

—J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol. II. p249.

1 Corinthians 2:4-5

"Treasurer Wightman, having glanced at the MS. on the Fourfold State," says Thomas Boston in his memoirs for1January, 1719 , "wrote to me, that he found a vein of true Christianity in it, and therefore would contribute to the publication of it; and this requiring an answer, gave me an unlooked-for errand to the throne of grace at this time. He intimated withal, that the style would be nauseous to the polite world, and that no book had yet been written on the depraved state of 1 Corinthians 2:9

To go to heaven when they die, to gaze upon the face of Jesus Christ and so to be blessed throughout all eternity, is the one great desire of all people, believers in the Christian religion, in their more serious moments of reflection—to go to heaven. But there is a question which confronts every one who has ever so desired, a question so extremely simple and natural that one wonders that a reply is not oftener made to it, viz, What sort of place or state would one find heaven to be if he got there? Granted that earth was done with, its toils and tears for ever over, and a free and full entrance ministered abundantly into that happy realm beyond time and the gloomy grave, what sort of experience would it afford, what sort of occupation would one have assigned him, what kind of society would he find himself, mingling in?

That heaven is a kingdom of unbounded delight, that Jesus is there, and that the ransomed and redeemed of the Lord are there, every one knows who has read even ten pages of the Bible in his lifetime. But this is not the question; but would the newly arrived spirit find it a state of enjoyment if he entered it? Granted that suddenly, as men on the battlefield pass, a soul winged its way into the dread presence of God, and that in the twinkling of an eye the Spirit had sped. If the golden bowl were broken, and the silver cord loosed, and the pitcher broken at the fountain, as happens every hour somewhere in this world, suddenly, and the liberated soul appeared before his Maker, is it conceivable that merely because a man had died and the gates of heaven opened wide to welcome the newly arrived spirit that heaven would be found truly enjoyable irrespective of and wholly apart from the kind of life he had led and the tastes that deepened into habits during that life?

I. Say that a man had led a tolerably forceful and busy life, and had by his personality forged out for himself a well-recognised place in the esteem of his friends and fellow-mortals, and that he was summoned suddenly, as people are constantly, and found himself among the celestial and blessed throng on high, and that gazing round his newly attained, newly entered on surroundings, he found that the company was too good for him, that the employment assigned him was certain to eventually prove uncongenial to him—that the presence of God and the holy Jesus and the blessed companionship of the pure angels and the ransomed and the redeemed liberated from earth's defilements and no longer trammelled by earth's limitations, all conduced to make up a state for him that he was convinced he could not possibly endure or ever be truly happy in; but that, on the contrary, promised to make him miserable beyond the power of words to describe; what would that heaven be? What though its delights were pure and unbounded—its courts hallowed, its streets of gold, its citizens aglow with eagerness to serve the most High God, its infinite expanse pervaded to the remotest part by the consciousness in every heart but his own of the presence of an all-merciful, all-loving, ever-present God! And all this to go on indefinitely perpetuated, with no break, no year of respite, and with no hope of ever terminating an engagement which opened with nothing more certain than the certainty that the experience so often sighed for on earth, and over the attainment of which countless religious services had been engaged in and perhaps occasionally a few insipid tears shed, would end in misery, and this called heaven—longed for, sung of, it may be even prayed for and now at last won! Why, such a heaven would prove itself to one unprepared for it a veritable hell, the torture and horror of which would burn into a man's being like a bar of hot iron into his flesh.

II. Now in these circumstances what can be said in answer to this plain pointed question which every Bible reader finds himself face to face with, nay, which lies before every one who has even once sighed for the joy of heaven and longed to enter there. That question 1 Corinthians 2:9

Hereafter, and up there, above the clouds, you have been taught to think; until you were informed by your land-surveyors that there was neither up nor down; but only an axis of x and an axis of y; and by aspiring aeronauts that there was nothing in the blue but damp and azote. And now you don"t believe these things are prepared anywhere? They are prepared just as much as ever, when and where they used to be: just now, and here, close at your hand All things are prepared,—come ye to the marriage.

—Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (III:72).

References.—II:9.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. pp350 , 403; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p64; ibid. vol. viii. p454.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

"These words," says Miss Dora Greenwell in The Covenant of Life (p101), "and those which follow in the twelfth verse, "now we have received of the Spirit which is of God, to know the things which have been freely given us of Him," and, indeed, the whole tenor of the chapter, make it evident that the Apostle is not looking beyond the time that now is. The mystery with which his thoughts are occupied is the life of God within the soul—that "preparation of the heart of 1 Corinthians 2:9-10

St. Paul claims for himself and his fellow-Christians a certain superior insight and receptiveness, an endowment peculiar and unique, an apprehension which others have not of the things which make up the higher and diviner life. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.... But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit."

I. Now this truth has often provoked the wit of the satirist and the sneer of the infidel. They have laughed at the idea that anything could be revealed to the soul of faith which is not open to the eyes of the intellect And sometimes, alas! their sneer has been not without provocation, for the truth itself has many times suffered in the hands of those who have abused and perverted it for their own ends. The priest has claimed it to silence the laity; the bigot and the persecutor have employed it to stop inquiry and quench the highest aspirations of men. And often the vulgar and self-confident preacher, talking the grossest absurdities, has denounced those who reasonably objected to his utterances as carnal, unspiritual, and incompetent to judge. It is open to anyone who is perhaps equally devoid of modesty and grace to use this as the cover of his own ignorance and arrogance, and to say, "We know these things, and you do not". All this is inevitable. You have read miserable parodies of the loftiest poems, and seen wretched caricatures of the noblest faces. So the sublimest truths may be easily turned into coarseness and buffoonery; but the truths remain great and immortal, in spite of that.

II. There is a spiritual faculty given to men which makes them wiser in the things of the spirit than all which the wisdom of this world knows, and the merest child in faith may feel and know what the intellectual giant has no perception of. There are simple things in everyday life which are close akin to this. You know people who are clever enough in their own department, and yet blind, deaf, unfeeling, and unappreciative concerning the things which are profoundly interesting to you; men who know fifty times more than you know about the world of books, yet have no more sensitiveness than a stone to the music which sets your heart beating with inexpressible raptures; men who could run up a column of figures whilst you are stumbling over the first of them, and who are no more affected by the most exquisite poetry than your favourite dog might be.

These differences run all through life. They determine whether a life shall be coarse and empty or refined and abounding with joy. There are perceptions which no training can give, which no schools can create: they are the endowment of nature, or rather the gift of God, and they are often in the possession of the child, or the untutored woman, and even of the unlearned preacher, whilst the most omnivorous reader and bookworm may be destitute of them.

And if you think of this you may well allow, if you do not understand, that the same truth holds in the life of faith and religious emotion.

III. It is simply impossible for the secrets of the Christian life to be revealed to those who have no Christian beliefs and sentiments. Plato draws a picture of the worshippers in the old pagan Mysteries. They are going through the sacred dance to the sound of sweet music which is being played in the midst of them. But there are spectators watching them from the hillside afar off who say these dancers are mad. The spectators can see the movements of joy, but they cannot hear the music. And people outside the Christian life are like these spectators. They cannot hear the music, and all the rest is strange and inexplicable. They do not know the raptures which are felt when the load of sin is removed; when God, who has seemed far off, comes as near as a familiar friend; when life moves in heavenly places, overshadowed by the love of Jesus, and there is a singing in the heart sweeter than all earthly music. They cannot know. They must taste before they can experience the things which God hath revealed to them that love Him.

—J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p77.

References.—II:9 , 10.—J. W. Houchin, The Vision of God, p132. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p101. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No56. W. R. Inge, All Saints" Sermons, 1905-7 , p92.

The Depths of God

1 Corinthians 2:10

I. The first suggestion of the passage is that as a man's own spirit alone knows the depths of his own nature, so the Spirit of God alone can know the depths of God, the mysteries of the Divine nature. A man also has depths within him; within him deep cries unto deep. The growth of a child is a series of Romans 11:33 Paul breaks into an exclamation as the great deeps become for a moment clear to him: "O the depth of wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God!" It is by this initiation into the depths of the infinite God, and surely by this alone, that we can escape the terror of the infinite universe.

—R. F. Horton, The Trinity, p21.

The Deep Things of God

1 Corinthians 2:10

What do we understand by "the deep things of God"? There are the depths of Godhead, but that is not what is intended in the text. It is not the depths of Godhead, but the deep things of God which the Holy Ghost wishes us to have and enjoy.

I. First of all, there is God's deep love. "God so loved." No plummet has ever been found capable of sounding the depths of that "so". We cannot learn God's love from Nature. Some people say that the Holy Ghost reveals God's love by the Incarnation of Christ. True, in the Lord Jesus we do see God's love, but we do not see its depths in the Incarnation. When the Holy Ghost wants us to know the great depth of God's love, He points us to Calvary.

II. Another deep thing that the Holy Ghost reveals is God's deep wisdom.

III. The Holy Ghost also reveals God's deep mercy.

IV. The Holy Ghost also reveals God's deep righteousness. "Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; Thy judgments are a great deep." The deep things of God cannot be seen by the natural man—they can only be spiritually discerned.

—A. G. Brown, The Baptist, vol. LXIX. p812.

References.—II:10.—Bishop Bickersteth, Sermons, p77. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p286; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p416. II:10-12.—Ibid. vol. iv. p187. II:11.—J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passiontide, p183. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p248. II:12.—T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p125. J. Keble, Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday, p209. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No2087. W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, p59.

The Natural Man

1 Corinthians 2:14

"The natural man." The Greek is the "psychical" Hebrews 5:14). Here we have a fourth characteristic of the carnal Christian; such an one is unable to exercise his senses to discern good and evil.

II. How to get Rid of the Self-Life?—There are three steps: (1) The cross. Whenever the self-life obtrudes, reckon yourself dead to it; reckon that the cross stands between you and it. (2) The Holy Spirit "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." And again: "The Spirit lusteth against the flesh". It was by the Eternal Spirit that Christ offered Himself without spot to God, and it is by the Eternal Spirit that the cursed spirit of self is going to be antagonised in your life and mine. (3) This leads me to my third point, that whilst the Spirit of God in the depth of your heart is antagonising the self-life, He does it by making Jesus Christ a living bright reality. He fixes your thoughts upon Jesus.

—F. B. Meyer, The Soul's Ascent, p75.

References.—II:14.—Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p286. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No407. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p43; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p164; ibid. vol. ix. p456.

1 Corinthians 2:15

"He that is spiritual judgeth all things"—if cleaned from fanaticism and presumption, and taken in connection with "But yet I show unto you a more excellent way"—is at once, I think, our privilege and our duty.

—Dr. Arnold of Rugby.

References.—II:15.—Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p294. II:16.—J. Clifford, The Christian Certainties, p87. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p404. II:31 , 32.—F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p197. III:1.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p198.