But we speak wisdom among the perfect; but wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who come to nought.
Paul has just said that his preaching came without clever words, so that faith would rest on God's power. Now he turns the corner. The gospel is not short on wisdom. But only the full-grown can take this wisdom in, and it does not come from this passing age.
Paul had set aside the world's cleverness. He had not set aside wisdom itself.
It is not that "wisdom" is missing from the Christian scheme. It could not be missing. Christ, who is everything in it, is God's wisdom, and that wisdom has a character, height, depth, and extent proper to God. So it suits His children — at least those weaned from the first man and from the world where he seeks activity and importance. In a word, it suits "the perfect" or full-grown. It does not suit the babes. They are wrapped up in their own needs, and at best they want milk, not the meat that a riper condition needs for its nourishment.
Where the ESV reads "the mature," older translations read "the perfect." That word confuses people. It does not mean being flawless. It means being grown up.
A perfect man is one who is full grown. He has passed out of infancy. He knows what the cross has accomplished, and new creation in Christ has opened up before his eyes. The Corinthians should have reached this, but they had become stunted in growth; they stayed small. The apostle blames them for it. He had to feed them with milk.
Something in the believer's own state can block the hearing.
We may be believers. But we may still be unsure how we stand before God. We may still be caught up in ourselves over questions of deliverance from the power of sin. While that lasts, we have neither the heart nor the leisure to learn the wisdom of God. That wisdom is expressed in His counsels and purposes, which were once a secret but are now made known.
The Corinthians wondered why Paul had told them so little. He answers that the fault lay with them, and his answer carries a warning for us.
"See," replies the apostle, "I will tell you why I did not say much more about these secrets of wisdom. You are far too involved with the wisdom of this world. That is why I could not speak of it." ... The more time we spend in the wisdom of this world, the less able we will be to understand these hidden things of wisdom. That was the trouble with the Corinthians.
Older translations say "this world" here. The word really means an age — a span of time with an end.
The word "world" in verse 6 is really "age." In another Scripture Satan is called "the god of this age." The god of this age uses the princes of this age to put forward the wisdom of this age. At the same time he blinds their minds, so that they have no knowledge of God's wisdom — the wisdom God ordained before all the ages. When the Lord of glory was here, he so blinded their minds that they crucified Him.
Paul does not attack the rulers' intelligence. He states their expiry date, and sets it against where the believer is going.
First, he tells us it is not the wisdom of this age. It is not even the wisdom of the few intellectual giants who shape the thinking of the world. These intellectual princes, for all their wisdom, "come to nothing." The believer is the opposite: he comes to "glory" (verse 7), in the company of "the Lord of glory" (verse 8). Those who shine in the glory of this world come to nothing, while those who are nothing in this world come to glory.
History makes the point:
All the combined wisdom of the chiefs of this world is worth nothing before God. The chiefs themselves turn the world upside down and do more harm than good. Then they disappear from the scene and come to nothing. Napoleon himself regretted that one day his exploits would fill only half a page of general history. And where are Julius Caesar and Alexander now?
So what is the standard of maturity? Not human progress, but a Person.
It is no perfecting of the race of Adam ... It is the perfection of the glorified Christ, the centre of all God's glorious and eternal counsels. That is perfection, and there is no other.
- Wisdom. The gospel is not short on wisdom. Christ Himself is God's wisdom, with a height and depth proper to God.
- Mature. "Perfect" here means full-grown — past infancy, knowing what the cross accomplished — not sinless.
- Milk. If we are unsure where we stand with God, or soaked in the world's thinking, we cannot take in more.
- Age. The rulers Paul names belong to a passing age whose god blinds minds; they proved it at the cross.
- Glory. Those who shine in this world's glory come to nothing; those who are nothing here come to glory with the Lord of glory.
But we speak God's wisdom in [a] mystery, that hidden [wisdom] which God had predetermined before the ages for our glory
Paul has just set aside the wisdom of this age. Here he names what he does speak: God's own wisdom, kept secret, settled before time, and aimed at a glory that belongs to us.
Older translations read "in a mystery" where the ESV has "a secret and hidden wisdom." The word does not mean something unclear or hard to follow. It means something human thinking could never reach on its own.
It is God's wisdom "in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom". Those words do not mean it is unclear or puzzling. They mean no human cleverness could ever have discovered it. What is more, all through the ages it has been "hidden", so you will not find it in the Old Testament Scriptures.
The secret had a time limit.
It was hidden from the minds of men. They could not understand it until Christ Himself appeared to take away our sins. God's wisdom came long before the wisdom of men. It is simple in its greatness and great in its simplicity, yet man's highest wisdom could never find it.
The verse reaches back before the ages, to God's own plans and thoughts.
The first thing we learn is that these counsels of God were before the world. I am not speaking of election here, but of the plans and thoughts of God before the world was. That is the contrast in this verse: God's thoughts and counsels, ordained for our glory, set before the world we now live in with all its responsibilities. These counsels, which were before the world, came out as a result of the death of Christ.
Because God ordained it, the outcome is not in doubt.
We ourselves were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. More than that, God's wisdom had our glory in view before the ages began, and He ordained it all then. And what God ordains always comes to completion when His hour arrives. So our glory is certain. It is tied to Christ's glory and serves it. Christ's glory comes first, but ours is as sure as His, and God ordained it just as truly.
The final phrase is the surprise of the verse. We would expect God's wisdom to be aimed at His own honour.
So far as I know, this is the only thing the New Testament ever calls ordained for our glory. We read of what God ordained for His glory and for the glory of Christ, and by grace He brings us into that. But here it says He ordained this hidden wisdom for our glory. Oh, that we valued it more!
And that glory is promised to people the world counts as nothing.
This wisdom held God's secret counsel, settled before the ages, for the glory of His people. We might have expected the Apostle to say for the glory of God and of Christ. It will indeed be for the glory of Christ. But here the Apostle presses this on us: our calling shows that believers are the weak and despised of the world, and yet they are marked out beforehand for glory. We may not be wise, or mighty, or noble in this world, but we are called to glory.
The phrase "our glory" needs unpacking.
So this points to God's eternal counsels in Christ (see Ephesians 1:3-6). They were kept secret until now, but the Spirit has made them known through Paul's ministry (vv. 9, 10). In this light the words "our glory" become clear. They cover the full carrying out of God's purposes in Christ for His people, and so their likeness to Christ and their place with Him in glory.
God's aim was not only to show that His wisdom is greater than ours.
This was not only to display the superior wisdom of God. It was designed "for our glory" — to bring sinful mankind into a place of dignity and glory never imagined before.
People sometimes use the words "no eye has seen" to excuse not knowing.
How often we hear a Christian quote the words "no eye has seen, nor ear heard," to excuse an ignorance that the Spirit of God takes pains to show is no longer excusable. What God has prepared for those who love Him is now made known.
- Hidden — God kept this wisdom secret. It was never too tangled to follow. It was simply out of reach of human cleverness, and it is not in the Old Testament.
- Ordained — God settled it in His counsels before the world began. What God ordains always reaches its end.
- Revealed — it came out after the cross. The Spirit made it known through Paul, so ignorance is no longer excusable.
- Ours — God ordained this wisdom for our glory: likeness to Christ, and a place with Him.
- Yours — the weak and despised of this world are the very ones marked out for that glory. The only question is whether we value it.
which none of the princes of this age knew, (for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;)
Paul has just spoken of a wisdom God settled before the ages. Now he names the one event that proves the world's leaders never grasped it: they crucified the Lord of glory.
The phrase points to the leaders of a passing era, and to the whole set of influences that shape it.
Romans 12 tells us not to be conformed to this age, and 1 Corinthians 2:8 speaks of "the princes of this age." The first means we are not to be shaped by the influences of the moment we live in, whether literary, scientific, philosophic, political, or social. They are, in fact, the sum of everything that forms the life of men as men at any time. The princes of the age are the world's, or the nation's, leaders. They are wise, as men count wisdom, in their own generation, but completely blind about the things of God.
The sentence came less from an ignorant crowd than from the leading men of the day. The notice above His head named the three cultures that led the world.
They condemned the supreme Lord of glory to a death of supreme degradation and shame — and not so much the ignorant crowd as the princes of this age. They wrote the notice on His cross in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The Greeks were beyond dispute the intellectual princes of the age. The Romans were the princes in military strength and in the art of government. The Hebrews were princes without a rival in matters of religion. Yet all shared in the crucifixion of the Lord of glory.
Commentators differ on what they failed to know. One says it was the wisdom of God, not the Person Himself.
It does not say they did not know Him, but rather they did not know the first thing about the wisdom of God, and the result is they crucified Him.
Others say their ignorance reached to Christ Himself. That leads to a blunt verdict on their wisdom.
Why did they crucify the Lord of glory? Because they did not know Him. Well, if their wisdom did not enable them to recognize their Creator when they saw Him, it stands condemned.
Paul does not call Him the Messiah here. The title he chooses reaches past Israel and past this earth.
This glory goes beyond the glory of Christ as the Messiah, reigning over the earth in connection with Israel. That earthly reign is no mystery. The prophets are full of glorious predictions about the kingdom glories. "The Lord of glory" speaks of a wider scene than this earth. It speaks of a rule over the whole universe, taking in every created thing and being, with the crucified One as Lord.
One writer measures the distance between what He is and what they did to Him.
They have given the place of the greatest shame and disgrace to the One to whom all glory belongs, the One in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9).
Paul points to the Person crucified, not only to the fact of the cross.
He adds that none of the princes of this world knew, for they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Because He was that, you get His Person, and not just the fact of the cross. It is a very strong thing to put before man. It is what wrote folly on their wisdom and on the grandeur of this world.
The rulers knew nothing of God's purpose. Yet the act they chose served it.
None of them knew it when Jesus was here, yet they too served as instruments in laying a basis for it. For the cross of Christ on earth answers to the glory of God in heaven, and that glory answers to the cross. Wonderful fact — a man exalted over the whole universe, risen and glorified, with all things put under His feet at God's right hand!
Their ignorance also cost them the outcome they were aiming at.
They had no idea that what they considered their victory over Christ was their actual defeat.
- Who — the "princes of this age" are the leaders of the moment: political, intellectual, religious. Wise by human measure, blind about God.
- What they missed — commentators differ: the wisdom of God, or the Person Himself. Either way, they knew nothing.
- Who they killed — not only Israel's Messiah, but "the Lord of glory," Lord over every created thing.
- What it proved — a wisdom that could not recognize its own Creator stands condemned. The cross wrote folly across the world's grandeur.
- How it ended — the act meant to finish Him laid the basis for His exaltation. Their victory was their defeat.