Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
What God Prepared for Those Who Love Him
1 Corinthians 2:6-10
6 We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown, yet a wisdom not of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are coming to nothing. · WEB
There is a wisdom Paul does teach — but it belongs to a different order than the rulers of this age possess, and the proof is that they crucified the Lord of glory.
We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown, yet a wisdom not of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are coming to nothing 1 Corinthians 2:6.
Having spent a chapter and a half against wisdom, Paul now claims to teach it. The however is the turn: the gospel is not anti-intellectual, and what he refused was a particular kind of wisdom, not the thing itself. Two marks separate them. This wisdom is not of this world, and the world's authorities are coming to nothing — a present participle describing a process already under way. Corinth's debaters were in the act of being dismantled while they debated.
But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory 1 Corinthians 2:7.
A mystery in Scripture is not a puzzle that resists solution but something once concealed and now disclosed Romans 14:24–26 Ephesians 3:4–5 Colossians 1:26. It was hidden and it has been told, and it was foreordained before the worlds — settled before there was anything to settle it in. And its purpose is for our glory, which is a remarkable phrase to write to this congregation: the eternal plan terminates on the good of the people the letter is correcting.
Which none of the rulers of this world has known. For had they known it, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory 1 Corinthians 2:8.
Here is the demonstration, and it is devastating. The competence of the world's best judgment can be assessed by its most consequential verdict, and that verdict was the crucifixion. The men who condemned him were not fools by any ordinary measure — a Roman governor, a high priesthood, a trained council — and they had the case in front of them and got it exactly wrong. A church impressed by the wisdom of its age is asked to remember what that wisdom did when God stood in front of it.
But as it is written, "Things which an eye didn't see, and an ear didn't hear, which didn't enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him" 1 Corinthians 2:9.
Three channels of human discovery are named and closed: sight, hearing, and the reflection of the heart. What God prepared was not available through observation, report, or reasoning — which is precisely why the wisdom of the world could not reach it. The quotation draws on Isaiah's promise about what God does for those who wait for him Isaiah 64:4 Isaiah 65:17.
But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God 1 Corinthians 2:10.
And the fourth channel is the one that works. Not investigation but revelation, and the agent is the Spirit, who searches the deep things of God — not as one who lacks and inquires, but as one at home in them. The next verses make the argument explicit 1 Corinthians 2:11: only God knows God, and he has given his Spirit.
settled What this mark means