Listen

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I didn’t come preaching God’s secrets to you like I was an expert in speech or wisdom. I had made up my mind not to think about anything while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and to preach him as crucified. I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Think

Paul’s message here is not that we shouldn’t care about learning, or that speech and human wisdom cannot help us understand our faith. His message is that our faith in God must depend on God, not on what we can say about God. And this means turning away from ourselves and our own arguments. It means turning away what we think is the strength of our faith. We must instead turn to Jesus Christ, and learn what he can tell us about God.

This turning to Christ is a great part of wisdom for Paul. And by turning to Jesus Christ, crucified, we can then see how different the wisdom of Christ is in comparison to what we, “the world,” think is wise. The wisdom of Christ is something that we each have to learn over the course of our lives, of course, so it would be hard to try and summarize it. But as another step in this learning, we can say that God’s wisdom is not God’s own strength and might. It is instead love and grace for creation.

Ed Watson

Pray

Lord God, I pray that I remember my wisdom is found in turning to you, not in trying to prove you by my own intelligence. And I pray that I remember your wisdom is revealed as love for your creation. Amen.

Go

Be wise today by seeking to relearn wisdom through Jesus.

Look to the ways in which the light of Christ reveals things anew.