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[0:00] Good morning, church. Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We're looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 6 through 16.

[0:17] It's found on page 953 in your pew Bibles. Let's read this passage together.

[0:30] Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom. Although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

[0:51] None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

[1:10] These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?

[1:24] So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.

[1:35] That we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words. Not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

[1:50] The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

[2:03] The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

[2:15] Reality is often far stranger than we would expect. One of the fascinating aspects of the history of science is that many of the most groundbreaking discoveries came as an absolute shock to most scientists of the time.

[2:34] In 1888, Simon Newcomb, an early American astronomer, said, We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy. Well, he had, in his time, large telescopes didn't exist, so he had no knowledge of distant galaxies, the expanding universe, dark matter, and all sorts of other things that astronomers study and marvel at today.

[2:57] Or in 1900, Lord Kelvin, the physicist, said, There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement. But not too long after Lord Kelvin said this, physicists would discover what we call quantum mechanics.

[3:11] At the very small subatomic level, there are tiny bits of matter and energy that don't follow the laws of classical physics. Now, I won't try to explain quantum mechanics here.

[3:23] I'm not sure I can. But I'll simply say it's mind-blowing. According to quantum mechanics, light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. And depending on how you measure it, it behaves differently.

[3:37] And the more precisely you measure one aspect of it, its position, for example, the less precisely you can measure its momentum. So you can never really know where it is or what it's doing anyway. Quantum mechanics had all sorts of unexpected implications.

[3:51] It has rocked scientists' and philosophers' worlds. Now, it's not what anyone predicted that we would discover, but the evidence for it is undeniable. So the history of science is full of these unexpected discoveries, surprising revelations that no one could have predicted.

[4:10] And if the past is any indication of the future, the future of science may yield more such discoveries that may revise or even overturn some of our current scientific paradigms.

[4:22] But one thing is clear. Once a new discovery has been made and supported by clear and compelling evidence, the old ways of thinking are never sufficient anymore.

[4:35] When Copernicus, for example, demonstrated that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, some people tried to hold on to the old idea that the earth was the center of the physical universe, but over time, it made less and less sense to do so.

[4:50] Now, in this passage, the apostle Paul is making a similar claim about human knowledge of God, what he calls the wisdom of God. And this morning, I want to look at two aspects of God's wisdom.

[5:04] First, what God's wisdom is and second, how we can know it. So first, what God's wisdom is. In particular, God's wisdom is counterintuitive and paradigm shifting.

[5:18] It means it's unexpected and it makes us think in a whole different way. So the wisdom of God, you might say, well, what does that refer to? Well, I think it refers to God's character and God's plan for his creation.

[5:31] And Paul's saying that's not something that human beings can guess or simply project their own wishes onto or discover by their own reasoning or speculation or experience.

[5:46] Now, Paul's not saying that we have no awareness of God at all. Paul wrote in Romans, God's eternal power and his divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

[6:01] In other words, many people throughout history have had some awareness of a transcendent being or universal moral law or an author behind the beauty and order in the world.

[6:14] These are common perceptions across many cultures and religions. John Calvin said, human beings naturally have a common and confused awareness of God.

[6:25] But what Paul is saying is that we may have some general idea that there's something out there. We may have some general sense that there's something more than ourselves in this world.

[6:38] But Paul says, the wisdom of God has been secret and hidden. Verse seven, secret and hidden wisdom of God. Verse nine, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined.

[6:49] It's not something that we can guess or discover or expect. But what Paul is saying is that the wisdom of God, God's character and God's plan for his people has been revealed.

[7:04] It's been revealed definitively in the person and work of Jesus Christ. in chapter one, verse 24 and verse 30, Paul has said, Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God.

[7:20] And what that means is in Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and glorification, God has shown us clearly and definitively his character and his plan for the world.

[7:34] And yet, Paul wants to remind us, Jesus Christ came in a way that nobody expected. Verse eight, none of the rulers of this age understood this. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, condemned Jesus to death even though he also said that Jesus hadn't done anything deserving criminal punishment.

[7:55] For the most part, the religious authorities of Jesus' day rejected Jesus' claims and accused him of blasphemy. Even Jesus' own disciples didn't understand what he was up to most of the time if you read the Gospels.

[8:07] So what Paul is saying here is that the message of Christianity is very counterintuitive. That it's not just something we would come up with on our own. It's not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age.

[8:20] Verse six. It's not just some combination of our reason and our intuition and our cultural tradition and our personal experience all mixed together. It's a totally new paradigm that we would never have come up with on our own.

[8:33] I mean consider the central claims of Christianity. Number one, Jesus the Messiah died on a cross for our sins.

[8:45] Now many people in Jesus' day were waiting for a Messiah. Right? A king. A conquering king who would come and bring justice and righteousness to the world.

[8:58] But no one expected that this great king would be executed in a shameful and publicly humiliating way. In the Greco-Roman world as Christianity spread many people mocked Christians for worshiping a crucified man.

[9:20] One satirist named Lucian of Samoseta talked about Christians. He said, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time.

[9:34] Which explains their contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them and then it was impressed upon them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers and sisters from the moment they are converted.

[9:46] And they deny the gods of Greece and worship the crucified wise man and live after his laws. That's what he said. No one expected the savior of the world to be crucified.

[10:00] No one. And then second major claim of Christianity is this same Jesus who was crucified was bodily resurrected. Again, no one was expecting this. No one in outside outside the Jewish world no one believed in bodily resurrection at all.

[10:19] Some people were materialists. They thought, well, you die and it's all it's over. That's it. Other people like Plato said, well, you die and your soul flies off somewhere else to a different, to the realms of light.

[10:37] Only the Jewish people, most of them at least, believed in bodily resurrection that God would raise his people to life at the, but they expected this to happen at the end of the age.

[10:51] at the final judgment when all the righteous dead, the righteous who had passed on would be raised to life in God's new creation but no one was expecting a single person, a single individual to be raised from the dead in the middle of history.

[11:09] So it's, you know, it's one of these things if you're, if you're, if you're considering Christianity, you have to ask the question, how did these early Christians come to believe something that no one had believed before?

[11:22] You know, Christianity is not like fusion cuisine. Okay, it's not a little Jewish tradition with, mixed with pagan superstition with a side of philosophical reason with special sauce on top.

[11:35] No, Christianity was and is a revolution. It's a new paradigm that has the potential of overturning and reframing everything else. C.S. Lewis said this about Christianity.

[11:48] He said, it is something we could never have guessed. And yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already.

[12:02] And he went on in another lecture to say this. He said, when I accept Christian theology, I may find difficulties at this point or that in harmonizing it with some particular truths that are derived from science, but I can allow for science as a whole.

[12:20] Granted, that reason is prior to matter and the light of God illuminates finite minds, I can understand how people should come to know a lot about the universe that they live in by observation and inference.

[12:32] If, on the other hand, I swallow scientific naturalism as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, I can't even fit in science. if minds are just brains and brains are dependent on biochemistry and biochemistry in the long run on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

[13:00] He says, Christian theology, the Christian worldview can account for science, art, morality, and even the insights of non-Christian religions. The scientific point of view can't fit in any of those, not even science itself.

[13:17] And so Lewis says, I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it, I can see, I can understand everything else.

[13:29] And that's what Paul wanted the Corinthian Christians, and that's what God wants us to do, is to see everything in the world in light of the crucified and risen son of God.

[13:40] to let go of the mental frameworks and cultural habits and the things that we tend to hold on to so tightly and to reexamine and reframe everything in the light of Jesus Christ.

[13:59] Paul says, because Jesus has come, the wisdom of this age and the rulers of this age are doomed to pass away. Now, you might say, what does that mean?

[14:15] Well, remember what Paul's been saying these last two chapters. The wisdom of this age, the culture of Corinth, perhaps the culture of New Haven in so many ways, was self-promoting, self-exalting, establishing your identity and your self-worth through competition and comparison, resulting in rivalry and envy and quarreling.

[14:41] And Paul says, the cross of Jesus Christ explodes that wisdom of this age. It turns it upside down because it says, God's power has been manifested in weakness.

[14:54] God's wisdom was displayed in what, to the world, looks like foolishness. foolishness. God came to establish his glorious kingdom among weak and poor and humble people.

[15:08] He came to make his dwelling place within everyone who will humble themselves and confess their sin and admit their need for God's mercy. Paul says, the wisdom of God has come in Jesus Christ and so the pride of this age is doomed to perish.

[15:27] Paul also says, the rulers of this age are doomed to perish. And some people have wondered what exactly is Paul talking about? Is he talking about governments? Is he talking about demons?

[15:39] Both? Well, I think the best answer is this. What are the rulers of this age? All authorities and systems that are operating in opposition to the wisdom of God.

[15:54] Seeking to establish their own kingdom instead of God's kingdom. You know, most of the Corinthian Christians as we saw, most of them weren't powerful and of noble birth.

[16:08] And Paul wanted to warn them, don't be co-opted by influential people just because they're powerful in this world. Don't crave their approval. Don't envy their high position.

[16:20] Don't be intimidated by their threats. If you are in a position of power, Paul would say, don't exercise power just in the way that this world always expects you to.

[16:34] Don't use your power for your own self-promotion. Use it as Jesus Christ did to serve others.

[16:46] Live as citizens of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the wisdom and power of God. So that's what Paul's saying. He's saying, remember who you are in Christ. Remember who you belong to.

[16:59] You don't, and don't follow the wisdom of this age, the pride of this age, or the rulers of this age, those authorities and systems that are operating in opposition to God.

[17:10] He says, brothers and sisters in Christ, in God's wisdom, in God's eternal plan, decreed before the ages and carried out in Jesus Christ, verse seven says, we are destined for glory.

[17:28] We have something far better than this world can offer. That word glory in both the Old and New Testaments is a rich word. It means weight.

[17:41] It means brilliance. It means blessing. It means beauty. It means honor. It means salvation.

[17:51] Verse eight says, Jesus Christ is the Lord of glory. And in him we are destined to share in his glory. And this glory that we have access to in Jesus Christ is far beyond anything we could imagine or come up with on our own.

[18:08] What no eye has seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. Paul's paraphrasing Isaiah 64 verse four.

[18:22] And in the context Isaiah was making the point that God will be faithful to act on behalf of those who wait for him, who trust in him. And Paul wants to remind the Corinthians, remember who you are in Christ.

[18:35] Remember what the wisdom of God is. It's counterintuitive. It's not what you would expect. And it's paradigm shifting. It changes the way you think and act about everything. So remember that.

[18:48] That's the first point. What God's wisdom is. Second point, how can we know God's character and God's plan for our lives? And Paul's answer in this section is God has revealed this to us by his spirit.

[19:06] Now some of Paul's language in this section is dense. Sort of like a double bacon cheeseburger at five guys all the way. Right? With all the toppings they have. And you can barely bite into it.

[19:19] Right? So I want to take this bite by bite. So one or two verses at a time. Verse 10 11. These things God has revealed to us through the spirit.

[19:31] For the spirit searches everything even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him. So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

[19:43] The point of these verses is we can't know God's wisdom. Right? God's plan and purpose for us. The heart of God just by looking in from the outside.

[19:54] Or just by guessing. You know maybe you've tried to reach out to someone and initiate a friendship and they just blew you off. Or maybe you wanted to date someone and they wouldn't give you the time of day.

[20:08] Right? In order to get to know another person at a deep level they have to choose to open themselves up to you. And even more so with God. God is infinite.

[20:18] We're finite. I mean if God doesn't want to show himself to us we're hopeless. Right? We can't even comprehend how the natural world works. How can we expect to comprehend God? The only way that we can truly and deeply know God is if God chooses to show himself to us.

[20:37] God opens himself up to us personally. The same point that Jesus made in the passage which we read earlier from Matthew. No one knows the son except the father.

[20:48] No one knows the father except the son. By nature only God knows God. Paul says no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

[21:01] Then the good news is this. Verse 12. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

[21:14] So the good news is God has opened himself up to us. He has drawn us into himself. God has revealed these things to us through the spirit. Not only has he sent Jesus to become wisdom from God on our behalf.

[21:29] As Paul said righteousness holiness and redemption. He has sent his holy spirit into our hearts. So that we might take that wisdom into ourselves. So that we might have God living in us.

[21:43] By his spirit. So that we might personally know him. And experience his love and glory. This is what Jesus promised to his disciples the night before he was crucified.

[21:57] He said I will ask the father and he will give you another helper or another counselor. He's saying I've been with you through my life on earth.

[22:10] He had been walking with his disciples for three years and he said when I leave, when I ascend back into heaven, I will send another helper.

[22:22] Jesus Christ was God incarnate. When his disciples were talking to him, they were talking to God himself. But Jesus said when I ascend into heaven, I won't leave you alone.

[22:35] I won't leave you as orphans. I'll send my spirit, the Holy Spirit, another helper, another counselor. God himself to be with you and in you.

[22:46] You will never be alone. And so just like Jesus warned and comforted and guided his disciples when he was on earth, the Holy Spirit warns and comforts and guides us, particularly through the scriptures.

[22:59] But like Jesus went with his disciples when he was on earth, the Holy Spirit goes with us wherever we go. Now the Holy Spirit does a lot of things.

[23:10] According to the New Testament, he empowers us to bear witness to Jesus. He gives spiritual gifts to every believer. He is grieved when we resist God's instructions.

[23:21] He works within us to produce good fruit. He helps us to pray when we feel weak. The Holy Spirit's active in a whole bunch of ways. But this passage emphasizes the Holy Spirit enables us to understand God's wisdom, God's character, again, God's character and God's plan for us as it's been revealed in Jesus Christ.

[23:41] Now you might say, what does that look like? The Holy Spirit helping us to understand the things freely given us by God or the blessings of our salvation. Jonathan Edwards said, there are two kinds of knowledge that human beings are capable of.

[24:00] And the first kind of knowledge is what sometimes we might call like head knowledge. He says, merely notional knowledge. The second knowledge, he says, that we might call heart knowledge, that which consists in the sense of the heart.

[24:14] As when the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of something. There's a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace.

[24:30] He says, just like there's a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. You can agree that honey is sweet without ever tasting it.

[24:42] You say, oh yeah, sure, it is. Other people say it, I believe them. But you can't have a sense of its sweetness unless you've tasted and seen that it's good.

[24:55] It's like New Haven pizza, right? Right? You can acknowledge the fact that people come from hundreds of miles away just to go to Worcester Street, to Pepe's and Sally's or Bar and Modern.

[25:08] Right? And some magazine rated Pepe's the number one pizza in the whole country. But if you've actually tasted the pizza, hot from the coal fired oven, right?

[25:20] If you've personally experienced its goodness, it's a whole different kind of knowledge. And you'll speak about it in a whole different way. And that's what Paul is saying.

[25:30] The Holy Spirit enables us to understand God, not just in an opinion way and an abstract, detached, distant way, but in the second way, in a personal heart way.

[25:47] To stand in awe and reverence before him. To be overwhelmed by his glory and love. To taste and see that he is good. To glimpse the eternal glory and taste that eternal glory that we are destined for.

[26:01] In verse 13 through 16, show us two results of knowing God in this way, through his spirit. First, Paul says in verse 13, we have a growing capacity for spiritual communication.

[26:16] Right? We talk about God differently, in other words. Second, we have a growing capacity for spiritual discernment. So let me look at these, those two results of knowing God through his spirit.

[26:28] First, spiritual communication, verse 13. We impart this, or simply we speak this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit interpreting or explaining spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

[26:45] Now, this doesn't mean that Christians speak a weird language that nobody else can understand. Sometimes Christians do speak in sort of weird ways. But that's not the point.

[26:57] Okay? Paul wrote in normal Greek and some of the other authors of the New Testament, there's a whole range. Some of them are very sort of literary. Some of them are very down to earth, common language.

[27:14] Okay? So it's not about speaking in sort of weird words. What it does mean is that as the Holy Spirit dwells in us, as we have this experiential understanding, understanding at a heart level of the blessings of salvation freely given us in Jesus, we speak about them in words to one another.

[27:34] You know, one of the real privileges I have as a pastor is sitting down with many of you and hearing how you came to faith in Jesus or how the Holy Spirit is continuing his work in your lives.

[27:46] And so often I'll ask questions like, what's your spiritual background? Or how did you come to faith in Jesus? Or what has God been doing in your life lately? Or what have you been learning from God's word?

[27:58] Now I realize that in some churches, it's sort of unusual to ask those questions. You know, sometimes you might talk about a lot of other things, church activities and Christian perspectives on politics and Bible stories.

[28:14] But sometimes in some Christian circles, we rarely talk about what is God teaching you through his word. How did you, what is God doing in your heart?

[28:27] What sins is he exposing? What struggles are you facing? What joys are you experiencing? But this is one of the privileges of having God's Holy Spirit dwelling in us.

[28:38] That we can speak to one another in words about what Paul calls spiritual truths or things of the spirit. So we can study the Bible together and talk about it and, and learn to discuss it.

[28:52] And, and we all have more to learn. We can help each other see how the Holy Spirit continues to be at work in our lives. Sometimes that's a way you can encourage someone else.

[29:03] Sometimes it's hard to see how the Holy Spirit's are working in your own life. And sharing with someone else, this is what I'm learning from the scriptures. This is something I'm struggling with and I'm praying about and sharing those things.

[29:16] And sometimes you can say, you know, I can see the Holy Spirit at work in you because a year ago, you never would have been concerned about that at all. A year ago, you didn't even think that was a problem in your life.

[29:28] Now, now, now you realize it. But now God's working in you, right? Now maybe that's not the way to say it, right? Now you, now you realize your problems.

[29:39] But sometimes that's what the Holy Spirit does is he shows us our sin more clearly. But when he does that, that's good news.

[29:50] It's not meant to make us despair. It's meant to help us grow, meant to help us turn to Christ and see that Jesus is all that we need and all that we're facing.

[30:02] So we can speak with one another. We can share with each other all the trials and the joys that come from being united to Jesus. We can interpret or explain spiritual truths or things of the Spirit to one another who are filled with the Spirit.

[30:17] So this is a growing capacity for spiritual communication. And so let me encourage you to pursue that. If this feels new, if this feels awkward, you know, if I ask you that question, I'm not grading your answer and comparing it to everybody else.

[30:31] What's God doing in your life? Sometimes the answer is, I don't know. But, you know, I'm sticking with it. And, you know, sometimes that's where you are. And we can encourage each other to grow in our life with Christ.

[30:47] So spiritual communication. Second, spiritual discernment. This is verse 14 through 16. Verse 14. The natural person, that is a person without the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, doesn't accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him.

[31:03] And he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Some of you can look back on a time in your life when you heard about Christianity.

[31:13] Maybe you grew up going to church, but the message didn't hit home. It just went in one ear and out the other. And you heard it and you had no desire for it.

[31:26] And that's what Paul's talking about here. Apart from the Holy Spirit opening our heart, we're stuck. We're sort of like scientists before quantum mechanics, stuck in their old paradigms, thinking that there's nothing beyond what we've already come to know and experience.

[31:47] And Paul says the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to a whole new world. Opens our eyes to see Jesus in a way we haven't seen him before.

[32:01] And Paul says through the Holy Spirit, we have a growing capacity for spiritual discernment. Verse 15 and 16. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

[32:12] For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him. That's a quote from Isaiah 40, 30, 40, 13. But we have the mind of Christ. Now, what do these verses mean?

[32:24] Well, the word translated judges in verse 15, that verb, is the same word translated discerned at the end of verse 14. So verse 15 could be translated, the spiritual person discerns or examines all things.

[32:37] One person said, the profane person cannot understand holiness, but a holy person can well understand the depths of evil.

[32:50] In other words, the more we understand the wisdom of God revealed in Jesus Christ and applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, our capacity for spiritual discernment grows. Again, take the pizza analogy.

[33:04] If you've tasted Sally's pizza, my personal favorite, you won't be too excited to eat at Domino's tomorrow night. Okay? Now, if you only have New Haven pizza once or twice a year, maybe you can have Domino's the rest of the time and be fine and not be bothered.

[33:19] But if you get into the habit of eating really good pizza, then that becomes your standard. And Paul's saying, it's the same thing with music. I could use a music analogy, but then I have to decide what kind of music do I, and everybody likes different kinds of music.

[33:34] So, but you get the same idea. If you've heard really good music, pick your type of music, you can tell the difference between really good music and mediocre stuff.

[33:49] And in the same way, when the Holy Spirit's at work in you, when you feed on him day by day, through prayer, reading his word, you'll have a growing capacity for spiritual discernment. Discerning truth from error, spiritual depth from spiritual shallowness, godliness from selfishness.

[34:04] Paul concludes this passage by saying we have the mind of Christ, which is just another way of saying we have the spirit of Christ. Now, maybe you read these last two verses and you think, but that sounds a bit, doesn't that sound sort of arrogant?

[34:19] The spiritual person judges all things, but is to be judged by no one? We have the mind of Christ, the mind of the Lord himself. But you have to read these words in context.

[34:32] Look down at chapter three, verse one. The next thing Paul says is, but I brothers could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

[34:44] Verse three, for while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? What Paul's doing in chapter two is he's reminding us of our identity in Christ.

[34:58] He's saying, in Jesus Christ, we've received the Holy Spirit who enables us to understand and internalize the blessings of our salvation. But then in chapter three, he says, my dear Corinthian brothers and sisters, you are not living as if this is true.

[35:18] You're destined for glory in the age to come, but you're living like people whose only hope is to be found in your life in this world. You've been given the spirit of Jesus Christ.

[35:28] You should be able to be discerning, but you're living like people of the flesh, comparing and competing with each other and trying to establish your identity by getting ahead of someone else.

[35:41] You think you're mature. But really, you're infants spiritually. That's part of Nick's sermon next week. I won't preach any more of that for him. But you need to see what Paul's doing because sometimes people have taken verses 15 and 16 or isolated verses in this chapter out of context and said something like, well, I'm a spiritual person.

[36:03] I have the mind of Christ. Therefore, I won't listen to anyone else who disagrees with me. And I'm not willing to submit to accountability from spiritual leaders. That's exactly the opposite of what Paul is saying.

[36:17] Paul's saying to the Corinthians, Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. And he displayed God's wisdom by laying down his life for others in love. That's the pattern of the mind of Christ.

[36:33] He says, if you have come to believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in you. And so you have the mind of Christ. And so he'll call the Corinthians throughout the rest of the book to live into and live out of their identity in Christ.

[36:51] As he said in Philippians, Paul said, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

[37:10] Being born in the likeness of a human being. Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

[37:22] Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

[37:38] Paul says that is God's wisdom. Jesus Christ crucified and risen. Paul says, remember who you are in Christ.

[37:51] Remember this wisdom that God has shown you. Live out of that new paradigm. And remember that God's spirit is working in you. Let's pray.

[38:11] Father, we thank you for sending your son Jesus to lay down his life on the cross for us so that we might be brought into your family so that we might receive your spirit and have you dwelling in us that we might know you and be overwhelmed by your love and glory and peace and joy.

[38:41] That our lives might be characterized by holiness and truth and integrity and mercy. Lord, we thank you for what you've done.

[38:57] We pray that you would help us to remember who we are in you. We pray that you would help us to live not according to the patterns of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

[39:08] Lord, we pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.