TO ONLY KNOW JESUS

In the First Corinthian letter, the apostle Paul wrote some major principles of scripture concerning how we can ‘know Jesus.’ “Superiority of speech and wisdom” are man’s ways of appearing religious and of “knowing God.” To determine to only know “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” is to relinquish all human control and operate out of “weakness, fear and trembling” and not in “persuasive words of wisdom” but in “demonstration of the Spirit and in power.” This exchange demands giving up our ‘gifts’ to get His gifts.

The Holy Spirit stands ready to give whatever gifts are needed for the explicit tasks and demands that may confront us. Faith rests on “the power of God.” This wisdom and power is not just ours because ‘we know Jesus.’ It is “the word of the cross” that brings us to our own foolishness and points us to “the word of the cross that is foolishness.” Without this transfer we rely on our own training, studies, thinking, systems, and patterns of learning which have no power, but sound good and wise to the ear of those who are as unconverted as the humanly wise orator using such methods.

The converted ear will only hear the Spirit of God. The things of wisdom and power are “unseen, unheard, and unknown” until we “love Him” (2:9) and then we know. The way of the Spirit’s giving is by our loving Jesus. These things are “revealed” and revealed by the voice of the Spirit of the Lord. He reveals them “through the Spirit” for the “Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God’.” There is no concentration, technique, study, system or psychological method or clever idea to ‘search for God.’ Only the Holy Spirit can search God and then reveal to us what He found.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” Jesus