In 1 Corinthians 2:7-8 Paul wrote, “But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden which God foreordained before the world unto our glory: which none of rulers of this world hath known, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory …”
In previous verses the apostle had discussed the wisdom of God and how man had viewed it: to the Jew, God’s wisdom was a stumbling block and to Gentiles, foolishness. Furthermore, to the discerning among both races, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul discussed another focus of the gospel, the doctrine of Christ: God’s wisdom. That wisdom was a mystery hidden from before our world. Various idol religions had “mysteries” to which their worshippers longed to be privy. But those secrets, whatever they were, were all vanity. Not so with the hidden mystery God had provided.
This mystery to man was couched in a statement God made to Eve and Satan. After Adam and Eve had sinned, God confronted them with the consequences of their sin, saying also to Satan, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed; and he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). How this was to be wrought and the consequences of it was part of that mystery hidden from the world’s foundation.
The revelation of that mystery depended upon God’s choosing when to reveal it. In 2 Corinthians 2:10, after commenting that had the rulers of the world known the mystery of God, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory, Paul wrote, “But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” He observed that no man knew the mind of another man; only the man’s spirit knew. And as that is true with man, much more it is true with God. Paul states, “Even so, the things of God none knoweth but the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Then the apostle continued, “But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God; that we might know the things which are freely given us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12). That revelation is certain and sure, for the apostle wrote, ”Which things we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth, combining spiritual things with spiritual words” (1 Corinthians 2:13). This is the apostle’s profound claim for Scripture: God gave BOTH the thought to the one who would reveal His truth, and, additionally, the WORDS to express it!
What has the Spirit revealed about this hidden mystery of God? He has revealed it unto us in the church. Paul wrote by revelation “that unto him was made known the mystery” (Ephesians 3:3), by which all men might “see what is the dispensation of the mystery,… to the intent that now is made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God which he purposed in Christ” (Ephesians 3:10). Paul is not saying that the church is the agency through which God’s wisdom is known (that is true); in this passage he means that the church itself is the revelation of God’s mystery. God’s hidden wisdom was that God, through the church, might restore to man what man lost in his fall: a secure stand with God. He accomplished this by robbing Satan of his power (a “head wound”). He reveals that power in Hebrews 2:14-15: “Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to naught him that had the power of death, that, is, the devil, and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
By His death our Savior provided for forgiveness of sins, and through His resurrection He robbed Satan of power to bring permanent death to man. And because Jesus demonstrated that He could rise from the dead Himself, it was proof that He can and will do the same for every human who ever lives, for so He has promised.
Jim McDonald