Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
In 1st Corinthians 12:8 we read:
To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit. 1st Cor. 12.8
The word for wisdom is “sophia.” We noted that it is so beautiful a word that is often used as a woman’s name. “Sophia/wisdom” describes what is high and lofty. When we speak of “sophia/wisdom,” we speak of a world of powerful ideas. The most powerful idea that Paul knows is the idea that “the cross of the Risen Christ is the wisdom and power of God” for all who believe. (1st Cor. 1:23—Paul speaks of “Christ Crucified,” but that assumes that Jesus is the Risen Christ who was Crucified!)
I agree completely. The only God I can believe in is the God the New Testament calls “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” If God is not like Jesus Christ, I don’t want anything to do with him. If there is a God and he is not like Jesus Christ, then the New Testament Concept of God is higher than the reality of God. The God of Jesus is a better idea. Of course, we believe that God is exactly like Jesus Christ. In Colossians we read: “he is the image of the invisible God.” (Col 1:15) God is Christ-like and nothing higher can be said of God. It is what God wants us to say of him. (Read Phil. 2:5-11)
And that brings us to knowledge. The word for knowledge is “gnosis.” That word is less beautiful than “sophia.” I don’t know anyone with a daughter named “gnosis.” Personally, I think that is a good thing. In his commentary on Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, William Barclay says Paul uses the term “gnosis/knowledge” to describe the practical application of “sophia/wisdom” to any given situation.
Let me make an easy, albeit overly simplified example. Perhaps you have heard it said that such and such a person has the knowledge gained of books, but lacks any common or practical sense. It might also be said that the person has “sophia,” but lacks “gnosis.”
Now let me lift up a few key examples of how Paul uses the word.
1. Paul uses the word gnosis/knowledge to imply experience.
Experience is ordinarily a good thing. If you apply for a job, they will ask you how many years of experience you have in that particular field. The more experience you have, the more likely you are to get the job. It is easy to find people with a good education. It is harder to find people with a good education and an equally good resume of experience. You can have a string of degrees, but until you get some experience, you are not an easily marketable person.
Paul implies that experience is equally important to a Christian. In Romans 15:14 he writes:
I myself am satisfied about you, my (brothers and sisters), that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.
Paul is saying in effect that the Christians in Corinth have not only goodness—for they have God and God alone is good (Mark 10:18 contrast Romans 5:7), but also the knowledge that comes with experience of Christ on their side, and thus, they are able to instruct one another. Or, to borrow another idea from chapter one of the Romans epistle, experienced Christians can “mutually encourage one another.” (Romans 1:12)
When some people get together they only pool their ignorance. Just this Friday a friend of mine asked me if I knew the Dilbert definition of a committee. I knew who Dilbert was—the cartoon character who lampoons the business world, but I did not know the definition. He said, “ a committee is a group of people whose collective knowledge is less than the sum total of their individual knowledge.”
By contrast, when Christians get together, and Christ is honored, then the collective knowledge of the group is always greater than the sum total of the knowledge of the individuals in the group. None of us has all the truth; but together we have enough truth and experience to get us where God wants us to go.
2. Paul knows that Christians value experience, but he also knows that not all experience is equally desirable. There are bad experiences we can learn from and bad experiences that will hamper us from learning. It is true that that which does not kill us makes us stronger and wiser. It is also true that a child who is beaten daily and abused by a parent will have a difficult time overcoming that abuse. Apart from the grace of God, and an abundance of human caring, he or she will struggle with it for life.
In Romans 3:20 St. Paul says, “no human being will be justified in (God’s) sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
We are all sinners by birth and by choice; but intimate personal knowledge of sin is something God wants us to avoid. God hates sin because it is always hurtful. In this regard God is like a human parent. When I was young my mother warned me not to touch the burners on our stove, even after they had turned from red to black. She wanted to spare me pain. As soon as her back was turned, I put my hand on a burner to see for myself. I wish that I had listened to my mother. Sin is hurtful. Destructive. When we sin we can get forgiveness. The scripture says, “If we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.” Yet forgiveness is primarily a restoration of relationships. There are times when it is impossible for God to remit the built in penalty that all sins carries. God would spare us the experience of sin. It is much better to learn from the example of others who have already wrecked their lives through sin. There are many people in the news who can serve as warning signs. I need not name them.
3. Paul says that the most important knowledge is knowledge of Christ.
In 2nd Corinthians 4:6 the Apostle writes:
For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
There is nothing more important in the life of the Christian than the knowledge of Christ. This knowledge comes by allowing Christ into our lives. It is increased when we allow him to take charge of our lives, and give us direction. It is certainly increased by a long and faithful relationship to Christ.
Let me throw a word of caution here. It is possible to age into infantilism. I know some Christians who stuck on their early experience of Christ. They have not grown. They have not grown beyond their first beginnings. H. Richard Niebuhr regarded himself as a professor of practical Christianity. In his book “The Responsible Self,” he wrote that God’s goal is to produce in each of us “a responsible selves, responding in universal society and in time without end to the ONE (God) behind the many (human beings and forces) acting upon us in all actions upon us.” God wants us to respond in universal society because, “God so loved the world.” Not just our little group. God wants us to respond in time without end, because our framework is not time, not just this life, but eternity. We are “to set our minds on things above,” where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (Col. 3:1) Christ is our destiny. The sacrifices of time are assuaged by the rewards of eternity. “This slight, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal, weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2nd Cor. 4:17)
By contrast there are some very young people who have an extraordinary experience of God. I shall never forget the mother and father of a 15-year-old boy coming to me concerned about their son’s God consciousness. He was so mature in his faith he made them nervous. They need not have feared. Now he is a Moravian pastor, and they are no longer worried. They are very proud of him.
In Jeremiah chapter 1 we read how the word of the Lord came to the prophet saying:
“5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
The prophet protested, saying, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”
7 But the LORD said to him “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. 8 Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.
Then the Lord touched his mouth and said:
“Behold! I have put my words in your mouth. I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Likewise, St. Paul wrote to Timothy saying, “Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”
It is unseemly for a young person to correct her elders, but it is never wrong for a person young or old to set a good example.
But when all is said and done, a long committed relationship is better than a short committed relationship. In Leviticus 19:32 we read:
“You shall rise up before the hoary head (the head covered with frost/white hair) and honor the face of an old man; and you shall fear your God, I am the LORD.”
How beautiful it is to meet an older Christian who has faced the complexities of life and come down on the side of the simplicity of Christ. Not the simplicity that denies complexity, but the simplicity that faces the complexity, and moves beyond it.
One of my favorite texts is found in 2nd Timothy chapter 1 verse 12 and following. Some caution that Paul did not write the Pastoral Epistles. That may be true, but almost everyone admits that the Pastoral Epistles contain genuine words of Paul, and I am quite sure this is one. According to the KJV, the apostle writes:
For I know whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that he is able,
To keep that which I have committed,
Unto Him against that Day.
How can we know the LORD? I think I know. In the Bible, God is the God of history. God reveals himself in history, in the history of his dealings with Israel, and in the history of the incarnate Christ. I believe that God reveals himself in our history. We may not see God at work when we look around us, and we may not see him when we look ahead; but I do believe we can see him when we look back over our history with God. Let me give a personal example.
Perhaps you will recall the story of my conversion. I was in San Diego, California, living two blocks from the Pacific Ocean. I had started to read my Bible. I had stumbled on a verse from James that, in the KJV, goes something like this:
A wise man does not say, ‘I am going into this city to buy, and sell, and get gain,’ but, “If God wills, I am going into this city to buy, and sell and get gain.”
I was struck by those three words, “if God wills.” I had never concerned myself with God’s will, but always my own. I was troubled, day and night. I could not sleep. One night I got up and went to the living room of my apartment. I knelt down and stuck my finger in the air like Adam in the creation scene by Michelangelo. I said, “O.K. God, if you are real, just touch the tip of my finger and I will believe in you, and will follow you anywhere.” There was no touch, no vision of light, no shaking of the foundations of my apartment. Yet, in that ridiculous posture, I felt that I was very near to God, that God was just beyond the tip of my extended finger. I said, “O.K. God, I will do it your way, I will put my faith in your son Jesus Christ.”
For a long time, I was glad to say that there was no touch. After all, I am called to preach that we are justified by faith. Then, one day, I was reading in Luke 11. I saw how Jesus said, “If I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” I remembered how, when Mark and Matthew tell that story, they say, “Spirit of God.” “Finger of God,” “Spirit of God,” do you get it? It suddenly occurred to me that when I was lifting my finger up, like Adam in the Creation scene, God was pointing his “finger” his “Spirit,” down. He did touch me. I could not feel it; but as I look back over the history of my life, I can see God at work.
Does this mean that I have made all the right choices? No! It does mean that God is faithful, and I have learned that faithfulness.
Do you remember that little poem, “Footprints in the Sand?” It is about a man who gets to heaven, and looks back over his life, and sees footprints in the sand, usually two pairs, his and Gods. Then he sees that, at times, there were just a single set of prints. He asks God saying, “And where were you then?” And God responds, “Well, those were the difficult times; I was carrying you.”
There is truth in that. As we look back over our lives, we do see evidence of God’s presence in them. And we often discover that he was most present and most at work transforming us and transforming the course of our lives, in the difficult times.
To some God gives the gifts of the utterance of knowledge/gnosis. He gives to all of us the knowledge of the experience of Him. If only we will look to see it.