September 25, Evening

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"Who of God is made unto us wisdom." — 1 Corinthians 1:30 · KJV

Man's intellect seeks rest, and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Even educated men, when converted, are apt to look on the simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving. They are caught in the old net that took the Greeks, and hanker to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation for the man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified and to invent, as they call it, a more intellectual doctrine. This led the early churches into Gnosticism and bewitched them with all sorts of heresies; it is the root of the rationalism and other fashionable systems that in days gone by were so admired, and that still ensnare certain classes of theologians. Whoever you are, good reader, and whatever your education, if you belong to the Lord, be assured you will find no rest in philosophizing your theology. You may take up this dogma of one great thinker, or that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat, so will these be to the pure Word of God. All that reason, at its best, can find out is but the ABC of truth, and even that lacks certainty; while in Christ Jesus is treasured up all the fullness of wisdom and knowledge. Every attempt by Christians to be content with the watered-down systems that rationalizing thinkers would approve must fail; true heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality that makes the plowboy's eye flash with joy and gladdens the pious pauper's heart: "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." Jesus satisfies the loftiest intellect when He is believingly received; but apart from Him the mind, even when renewed, finds no rest. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." "A good understanding have all they that do His commandments."