…so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

1 Corinthians 2:5

In keeping with his instruction to Corinth about their need to repent of emphasizing human wisdom and superficial oratory skills over the wisdom and gospel of God, Paul now reminds them that he did not have the extravagant declamation which their Greek culture deemed acceptable for a leader..  He writes, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom” (2:1).  This is especially noteworthy when one remembers that Paul was highly educated.  Having been taught by one of the most prominent Jewish teachers of his day, Gamaliel (Acts 22:3; cf. Phil. 3:5; Acts 26:24), Paul also came from Tarsus, a city which the Greek historian Strabo ranked higher than Alexandria and Athens as a center of learning.  If he had wished, his message to Corinth could have been chock full of quotes from many famous philosophers of previous centuries.  Yet, Paul did not center his message on the wisdom of Socrates or Aristotle.  A casual perusal of his writings and speeches will show him quoting from human philosophers only a scant number of times (Acts 17:28; Tit. 1:12).

Instead, he focused on a message which the world as a whole rejected (1:18-25).  He sums up that message again here in chapter 2:  “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (2:2).  He had “decided” (krino, determined, resolved) to proclaim to them the message which would save them, the good news that their Savior offered himself on the cross in their place to save them from the hell their sins deserved.  He had no wish to “know” anything else insofar as what he needed to preach to them.  He was not going to offer them anything from the latest orator that was turning heads at the Acropolis, nothing from the writings of the latest scholar to come out of the halls of Athens or Rome.  He was, however, going to tell them about Jesus dying on a tree for their sins.

In doing so, he acknowledges again that his presentation did not meet their society’s standards.  “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom…” (2:3-4a).  Luke alluded to the “weakness and…fear and much trembling” of which the apostle now writes, recording of how Paul had met opposition from the Jews during his time in Corinth (Acts 18:5-6) and how it apparently scared him enough so that the Lord felt it necessary to encourage him to “not be afraid” in a vision (Acts 18:9-10).  It’s also possible that the “weakness” Paul speaks of might have been a physical malady (cf. Gal. 4:13).  His enemies in Corinth would later say of him, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Cor. 10:10).  Prizing homiletic ability and what the world would find entertaining and interesting over heeding the rebukes and correction which would come from preaching the whole counsel of God had also been a problem for those who listened to the preaching of God’s Word in Ezekiel’s day (Ezek. 33:30-32).

Now Paul reminds them of what his gospel had truly been built upon, stating that “my speech and my message” were “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (2:4b).  Instead of dazzling them with amazing public speaking ability, he instead confirmed his message through powerful miraculous spiritual gifts (cf. 2 Cor. 12:12; 1 Thess. 1:5; Mk. 16:20; Heb. 2:3-4), gifts which he as an apostle had also imparted to the converted Corinthians (1 Cor. 12-14; cf. Rom. 1:11; Acts 8:14-18).  He did this for a specific reason: “…so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (2:5).  This is a lesson which the church today must also heed.  It’s easy to heed the ways of God with which we already agree…but when the Scriptures demand of us something which we find hard or foolish to do, the siren call of human wisdom is much harder to resist.  This is when the true foundation of our faith is revealed to be either strong or weak.

— Jon