"Wisdom Personified" 1 Corinthians 1:24 Sunday Evening Worship Service

We're just gonna look at verse 24, but I'll read the beginning in verse 20.

First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20.

1 Corinthians 1:20

Where is the one who is wise?

Where's the scribe?

Where's the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs, and Greeks demand wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks.

Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

I have at home my favorite coffee cup.

I have a personal relationship with this coffee cup.

I kiss it good morning every day.

This coffee cup, you might have a similar one to me, especially if you went to the Pines last year at Word of Life, you might have a similar coffee cup.

But you do not have the same coffee cup.

This one is uniquely mine.

And I am its.

That is my coffee cup, even if I'm not home.

It's in the cabinet right now at my house, or in the dishwasher, maybe I'm not sure.

But it's in my house, I'm here, and yet it is still mine.

We're absent from each other, and yet our identities are still connected with each other.

I would say its identity to me more than me to it, but if that coffee cup were to be taken from me, it would still forever be my coffee cup.

We are, in a sense, physically and spatially distinct.

We're in different places, different locations, and yet I can't conceive of that cup without it being mine.

Even though we are distinct creations, our identities are interwoven.

I am not it, it is not mine, and yet our identities are so wound up with each other, especially for it, you can't even conceive of it without from this point forward.

When you go to my house and you ever see it, you will know that is the coffee cup.

I have made it mine.

But that's silly.

Coffee doesn't define me, does it?

I'm still me without my coffee, I would like to think.

My coffee cup would be different without me, that's for sure.

We're not the same.

But we have inside of creation a shared experience, an identity that is interwoven and intertwines.

Now, I am not saying that the Trinity is like the coffee cup.

But I am saying there is an element of that illustration that is Trinitarian.

It helps you appreciate what happened on Christmas morning even better.

The Son of God is not the Father.

But the Father, in every sense, defines the Son.

While there are two distinct persons, their identities are so interwoven that they are in a very real sense one.

Now that analogy breaks down very, very quickly.

Me and the coffee cup had independent existences for so long.

I can remember a time where I did not know my coffee cup.

That, of course, is not true with God.

There was never a time when the Father was without his son.

Me and my coffee cup are made from different material, but the Father and the Son are not made at all.

They have a shared substance, a shared nature, a shared essence.

They are, in that sense, the same.

When the early church set out to define and describe and argue for the Trinity, they were confronted with a basic reality in the Bible.

The Bible says time and time again that there is only one God.

And then you arrive at the New Testament, and over and over again, the New Testament says that Jesus is God and that he is sent from the Father.

So if you are in the early church and you don't have the word Trinity in your language, you are stuck.

Your Christian faith is stuck with those two realities.

There is only one God, and there are at least two, and within a few years, people start counting one, two, three, different persons that the New Testament describes as that one God.

How can that be?

All kinds of errors developed.

Those that said the Father is the Son, and the Son is the Spirit.

That's of course a heresy, modalism.

All kinds of other errors developed.

I won't drag you through all of them this evening.

But the early church quickly settled on three different ways to describe and defend and develop the doctrine of the Trinity.

And I tell you these three ways because we ignored the third of these three ways.

But in the early church, the third was in fact the most important and significant.

The first approach is the three persons at one time in one place approach.

And you know, that's when people say, Can you prove the Trinity from the Bible?

That's normally what they mean.

Can you show me a passage in the Bible that has the Father, Son, and the Spirit in the same place, in the same time, but they're not the same.

And there are a few passages like that, aren't there?

The baptism of Jesus.

You have the voice from heaven, the dove that descends upon Jesus, Jesus in the water.

Three persons, one place, one time.

Isaiah 42 describes the Father, Son, and the Spirit.

Isaiah 48, verse 16.

Isaiah 48:16

The Great Commission, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

So there's those kind of verses.

That for us is probably where our minds are more naturally drawn.

The second way people argued for the Trinity is to try to defend the distinct personhood of the three people.

In other words, find verses that establish that Jesus is God.

Find verses that establish that the Holy Spirit is God.

Maybe they're doing something like God does.

Maybe they're creating or they're described as omnipotent or omniscient or those kind of things.

You say, oh, only God is those things, and here the Son is God, and here the Spirit is God, and obviously the Father is God.

And so there, the Trinity.

You can start to connect those kind of arguments like Psalm 2 to Psalm 110 to Hebrews 1 kind of argument that the Lord says to his son, I'm going to put him on the hill.

In Psalm 110, the Lord says to my Lord.

Hebrews 1 says that it's the Lord speaking to Jesus, that you take them all together, boom, the Trinity.

But the third way, and it's a way that we often overlook, but it was when you read some of the early church fathers, this was the way where they built their Trinitarian house.

It's to look at the titles of Jesus.

To look at different words that are describing Jesus, not as adjectives, but as proper nouns.

And one that might come to mind right away is the word logos, John 1, that Jesus is the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

From that we deduce Jesus is the Word.

That's less about finding Jesus and the Father in the same place at the same time, and more about saying Jesus is the Word of God.

Probably the most important of these kind of passages in the early church was 1 Corinthians 1, verse 24.

1 Corinthians 1:24

And it's a passage that we just read, but I want you to look at it with that argument in mind.

To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks.

Remember, the Jews are looking for signs, Greeks are looking for wisdom to both of them.

Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Now, in one sense, Paul's choosing those two names for Christ because they match what the Greeks and the Jews are looking for.

The Jews are looking for signs, and so Christ is the power of God.

The Greeks are looking for wisdom, and so Christ is the wisdom of God, and so there's a nice correlation there.

But if you look at the exact Greek more carefully, these are the words that are listed here without the articles.

And there's not really even a verb in the Greek.

And so it comes across very awkward depending on the English translation.

Sometimes English translations will put in a verb there.

Christ is the power of God, or he is the wisdom of God.

Sometimes translations will just put in the article like the power, the wisdom, like the ESV does here.

But in Greek, that verb is not there, and the articles are not there.

So it is very jarring.

The Jews are looking for signs, the Greeks are looking for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified Jesus.

Christ, it says in verse 24, power of God and wisdom of God.

Not is, not the, just Christ.

Power of God, wisdom of God.

Those are titles.

Now if Christ is the power of God as a title, what does that mean?

Or if Christ is the wisdom of God, what does that mean?

Again, they're not so much descriptions as titles.

And by titling Jesus with that, it means that the identity of Jesus is God's power.

The identity of Jesus is God's wisdom, or that God's power and God's wisdom are actualized, personified.

They subsist, whatever word you want to use, in the person of Christ.

Of course, different events can display God's power, and different events can display God's wisdom.

The parting of the Red Sea displays God's power, doesn't it?

The creation of the universe displays God's power and wisdom both.

But they don't personify God's wisdom.

They display it, but you wouldn't say that's God's wisdom in a material form.

You wouldn't say creation is God's wisdom as a person, because creation is not a person.

You wouldn't say creation is God's power as a person.

It displays God's power, it isn't God's power.

But here in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 1.24, it says Jesus is the wisdom of God.

It's not that he displays the wisdom of God, it's not that he has the wisdom of God in some way that he's been taught by God, that he's had a front row seat in heaven and is taking good notes and has passed all of his exams, and so now he's certified God's wisdom, nothing like that.

It sees the actual personification.

If God's wisdom subsisted as a person, that person is Christ.

That's what it's saying.

So much so that you could recognize him, identify him, even call him God's wisdom.

And it would be true.

Here's another human illustration that might be helpful.

We have in our legal culture the idea of a power of attorney.

You can give someone power of attorney.

When we purchased our uh our house, we were in California, and there was a bunch of things that need to be signed, so we gave somebody out here the power of attorney, and it was, oh, sweating bullets.

Do we trust that guy?

What's he gonna do?

Are we gonna show up and there's gonna be a new car in our driveway?

That would be nice until we had to pay for it.

Power of attorney, you're giving somebody your authority, your wisdom in a sense.

But of course, that's limited, and that person's not you, and he doesn't take on your identity just on the forms, I guess.

It's not that Jesus has the power of attorney.

It's that he is the power of God.

It's that he is the wisdom of God.

It's not something he possesses, it's who he is.

It is power and wisdom incarnate in another person.

Jesus is the subsistence, and subsistence is just a word that means when something exists as it.

Jesus is the subsistence, he's the existence of the wisdom of God.

That means that all of God's thoughts, all of God's plans, all of God's purposes, all of God's glory is actualized, it subsists, it exists in the person of Christ.

And if all of God's power and wisdom and glory and attributes and knowledge and plans and purposes exist as a person, that person most certainly is God.

There's no other conclusion.

You recognize just the impossibility of any other description.

If I said this person over here exists as me, as all of my identity, as all of my power, as all of my plans, as all of my attributes, as all of who I am, they exist in that person.

That person has to be me.

There can be no other answer for it.

So in 1 Corinthians 1.24, it says, Jesus is the wisdom of God.

It means that Jesus is God.

He is the image of God, he is the wisdom of God, he's the radiance of God, he's the thought of God, he's the word of God.

All of those titles are wrapped up in that.

And of course, I was excited for this passage on Sunday night because when you hear the phrase wisdom of God and you are a student of the Bible, your mind has to go to one passage above every other passage, and that's Proverbs chapter 8.

Proverbs 8 · chapter mention

That is the longest chapter in the Bible about wisdom.

Proverbs is the longest book in the Bible about wisdom.

Proverbs 8 is the longest chapter thoroughly devoted to wisdom from top to bottom.

And in the middle of Proverbs 8 is a person who declares that he is the wisdom of God.

And you remember in Proverbs 8, that person, wisdom, describes himself as the word of truth, describes himself as pure righteousness, describes himself as the fear of Yahweh as a person, describes himself as the judge of evil, as the one who possesses insight and power, as the one who appoints kings, as the one who gives love to those that love him back, as the one who is found by those who seek.

If you knock on wisdom's door, wisdom opens to you.

That's Proverbs 8.

By me, wisdom declares in Proverbs 8, kings are appointed, kings are anointed, and by me they fall.

In Proverbs 8, wisdom is one who loves, judges, and hates, as God loves, judges, and hates.

Wisdom is active in the world.

It's not a mere principle.

Personalizing wisdom forces you to ask, if wisdom was a person, what would that person be like?

Or if God were a person who dwelt among us, what kind of person would he be?

And of course, Proverbs has answered that.

God's wisdom would love truth, would be righteous, would display the fear of God, would judge evil, possess insight and power, appoint kings, love those who love her, and be found by those who seek.

That's exactly who Jesus is.

He is all of those things.

Moreover, wisdom.

Unlike my coffee cup, I knew I'd get back to it.

Wisdom is internal.

The coffee cup is obviously outside of me.

Wisdom is internal to you.

Your clothes are outside of you, your family is outside of you, your house, your pets, your coffee cups are outside of you.

But your wisdom is inside of you.

It is who you are.

To separate you from your wisdom would be to separate you from life.

And yet Jesus is the wisdom of God.

That means he's internal to God.

That means that he is within God, distinct from the Father, and yet possessing all of the Father's glory, thoughts, attributes, all of his wisdom.

As a person thinks wisely, their wisdom exists.

Yet the wisdom is not identical to the person who thinks.

You understand that?

Your wisdom is you, but it's not you at the same time.

Otherwise, you would need to say, your wisdom.

True wisdom would be fully and completely possessed by the person who is truly wise.

And there would be a true unity between a person and his wisdom.

There is a unity in there, even though they're not identical.

There is a distinction between the person and his wisdom, but also a unity.

And you can't explain that anymore beyond that.

Right?

You can't explain how a person is distinct from their wisdom and yet they're the same thing as their wisdom, although you know intuitively both of those are true.

Yet how can they both be true?

How can your wisdom be distinct from you and yet identical to you at the same time?

It just is.

And the same thing is true with God.

Christ is the wisdom of God.

He is the totality of God.

He is identical to the Father in every way.

And yet, just as your wisdom is distinct from you, he is not the same as the Father.

He's not distinct from the Father.

Christ is not identical in every way to the Father.

He's distinct from him because he is the Son.

That's what it means by identifying Him as the wisdom of God.

As a person thinks wisely, their wisdom exists.

As God is wise, his wisdom exists.

And that is more than a partnership.

It is not a partnership between the Father and the Son, like it might be with me and my coffee cup.

It is a unity of essence, of nature and being.

Wisdom is essential to the person.

Your wisdom is your essence, it is your nature, it is your being, and so it is with God.

And moreover, everything God does displays His wisdom.

Everything he does.

There's nothing God does that you can look at and say that's not wise.

Nothing.

Every single thing he does, every thought he has, every act he has into the universe, every creative act, every redemptive act, every providential act, every single thing God does is wise, which means every single thing God does displays Christ.

Everyone.

It is internal to God and yet constantly displayed through everything God does.

But God is spirit.

Even the Son is spirit.

The eternal Son is spirit.

So we asked earlier in Proverbs 8, if wisdom was a person, what kind of person would he be?

And we described it.

If wisdom was born, what would he look like?

And that's what is celebrated in Christmas morning.

The eternal and internal wisdom of God is born.

He's always existed as the Son of God.

He's always been the image of God.

He's always been the radiance of God's glory.

He's always been those things.

But in Christmas morning, the eternal, invisible wisdom of God robes himself in flesh, takes on a human nature, and is born and dwells among us.

What would wisdom look like if wisdom came to earth?

Wisdom would be Jesus Christ, born on that Christmas morning.

Lord, we are grateful for your wisdom.

Wisdom personified, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Truly God, truly man, truly an everlasting wise.

We know there's a sense in which your wisdom is perpetually and infinitely always on display.

Even before creation, your wisdom is overflowing from you, our Father, our fountain, overflowing to the Son.

And yet in creation, that wisdom breaks into time in all that you have done.

And finally comes to Bethlehem in the manger.

Wisdom in the flesh.

Jesus will always be the God man, and so we pray to him.

He has human ears to hear our prayers, and he is omniscient, so he knows our prayers.

He has a human body to be our mediator, and yet he is the Son of God, always in the presence of the Father.

Both are true.

And his name is Christ, and it's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

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