1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Recently I did a preaching series here was about how we as Methodists do our
theology or to put it more simple language how we understand God. I talked
about the Wesley Quadrilateral and how we draw on four things – Scripture,
Reason, tradition, and experience to help us understand God, the world and our
place in that world. Just what parts of the Quadrilateral we prioritize is up
to us. As someone who is more evangelical in their theology, I tend to prioritize
Scripture followed by our tradition and then reason and finally experience.
Others may rearrange things to fit their understanding of God.
This is really
helpful for those Christians who really want to think about how their faith relates
to the world. It means very little to those who are happy to keep their faith
simple. And both sides of the fence of valid. Sometimes those who have decided
that a simple faith is enough, are those who have the strongest faith. In fact, the times when I wanted to jack in everything about the church and faith have
been when I have studied theology. And I find myself thinking far too much
about theology and philosophy.
Paul’s approach was deliberately not to be complicated. It would not have fit him
anyway. He knew the emptiness of philosophy. Philosophy occupies us for a while
but then the next philosophy shows how foolish it ultimately is. It’s a bit
like the health surveys we get. Don’t eat processed meat it’s bad for you and
the go-ahead it’s okay.
Philosophy, and
theology to a lesser extent, claims to answer the great questions about life,
but in the end, it ends in frustration and disillusionment. The only thing that is
constant is the message of the cross, of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This
is the message that has power to transform the world. That message of love and
grace and power is revealed to us, not through clever philosophical arguments or
deep theological reflections, but is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.
And I think we as
members of the Church have become very good at tuning out the Holy Spirit. There
have been times when I’ve looked at some of the material coming out of the
Church and I’ve asked myself, where is God in all of this? We have had an
article in our Connexion magazine recently that was well written about our
priorities as Christians, but not once did it talk about God and worship. It
may be they assumed we’d know this was a priority but it’s a big assumption.
And Paul highlights in a later verse of the chapter when he writes: ‘This is
what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by
the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 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.’
In the letter to
the Romans Paul writes: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because
it is the power of God unto Salvation.’ That is the purpose of the Gospel. To
bring people to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and the redemption we are offered
through Christ. What we do with it after that is up to those who hear it. And
this where the Spirit comes in.
It is the Spirit
that convicts and challenges and demonstrates the love of God, not our clever arguments
and theories. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we don’t study Scripture
or think about what we believe. Peter tells us to always be ready to give a
reason for your faith. But Jesus promised us that when we stand up to speak to
people about him it would be the Spirit that would give us the words to speak.
If we think about
all the millions and millions of books that have been written about what we
believe, they can be all summarized by this sentence: ‘God loves you.’ That’s
it. And maybe this week as we go about our week and we are given the opportunity
to share the Gospel maybe just tell someone that God loves them and trust the
Spirit to do the rest.
