Sunday, February 09, 2014

Genuine Christian Preaching: 1 Corinthians 2:5

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:5 about faith and preaching.
that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:5 ESV)
Calvin pointed out the Corinthians benefited by Paul's simple preaching of the gospel.
... His [Paul's] meaning, then, is, that the Corinthians derived this advantage from his having preached Christ among them without dependence on human wisdom, and relying solely on the Spirit’s influence, that their faith was founded not on men but on God. (Calvin’s Commentary on 1 Cor. 2:5)
Charles Hodge pointed out the benefits of a pure faith based on gospel preaching, rather than a so-called faith based on sophistic arguments.
The true foundation of faith, or rather, the foundation of true faith, is the power of God. This is explained by what he had before called “the demonstration of the Spirit.” That exercise of divine power, therefore, to which he [Paul] refers as the ground of faith, is the powerful operation of the Spirit, bearing witness with and by the truth in our hearts. A faith which is founded on the authority of the church, or upon arguments addressed to the understanding, or even on the moral power of the truth as it affects the natural conscience, such as Felix had, is unstable and inoperative. But a faith founded on the demonstration of the Spirit is abiding, infallible, and works by love and purifies the heart. (p. 32, Geneva Series of Commentaries: 1&2 Corinthians, Charles Hodge)
Finally, I copied two quotes by Gordon Fee from his commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:5.
In another context this might seem to suggest that faith rests on evidences; but that would scarcely make sense here. Throughout this passage the power of God has the cross as its paradigm. The true alternative to wisdom humanly conceived is not “signs” but the gospel, which the Spirit brings to bear on our lives in powerful ways. (p. 96, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Gordon Fee)
What he [Paul] is rejecting is not preaching, not even persuasive preaching; rather, it is the real danger in all preaching—self-reliance. The danger always lies in letting the form and content get in the way of what should be the single concern: the gospel proclaimed through human weakness but accompanied by the powerful work of the Spirit so that lives are changed through a divine-human encounter. That is hard to teach in a course in homiletics, but it still stands as the true need in genuinely Christian preaching. (p. 96, ibid)

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