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When I first encountered inductive logic in my mathematical education, I did not trust it. It seemed too soft. I wanted cold, hard deduction. All of my mathematics up to that point had relied on deduction. I knew I could depend on it. Induction involved positing that a statement was true for one or two specific cases and then showing it was true in the general case based on those assumptions. It took a while, but I finally appreciated the power of induction. Its power is determined by the reliability of the assumptions. Since most mathematics is axiomatic, the assumptions can be shown to be true.

“Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’ Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my forefathers deliver them: the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph and the people of Eden who were in Tel Assar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, or of Hena or Ivvah?” - 2 Kings 19:10-13 NIV

Those are the words that Sennacherib, King of Assyria, sent to Hezekiah as his army was preparing to attack Jerusalem. He was appealing to the logic of induction. Just as the other armies had fallen, just as their gods had failed them, so would the LORD fail to protect his people. There was just one flaw to his proof. The God of Israel is not like the gods of Gozan and Haran. His fundamental assumption that all gods are alike proved to be incorrect. The king of Assyria learned this lesson within one night through the destruction of his army. It does not appear he took this to heart since he was later assassinated by his sons while worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch. Induction is powerful - when based on solid assumptions.

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We know why God gave us the Good Book. It serves as a guidebook to life — a set of rules to be obeyed. There is no part of life that is not directly addressed by at least one verse if we will only look for it. And yet when we go looking for a car to get us to church potluck dinners and committee meetings, we ignore the wisdom that God has for us.

Let us consider 2 Chronicles 1:16-17: “And Solomon had horses imported from Egypt and Keveh; the king’s merchants bought them in Keveh at the current price. They also acquired and imported from Egypt a chariot for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for one hundred and fifty.”

So we see that the Scriptures are crystal clear on this topic. We must purchase foreign cars even as Solomon imported foreign horses and chariots. For what were horses and chariots in those days but means of conveyance as automobiles are to us today. And remember that it was only two paragraphs ago that God gave Solomon great wisdom and knowledge so we should not doubt his judgement. The parking lots of America's churches ought be filled with Honda’s, Toyota’s and Volvo’s.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

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Here is the text from the NASB:

“But by His [God's] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption”

There is significant depth in this verse due to the usage of such terms as righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The verse also sparks questions like what does it mean to be “in Christ Jesus” or what does it mean that Christ became wisdom for us. Now the first question may not seem like much to someone who grew up in a church and knows “church language”, but to many others it is probably difficult to define what is meant by being in Christ. The second question can only be understood within the context of the first few chapters of this letter alongside the culture of Corinth. I prefer to write about the three terms I mentioned earlier so I will leave these questions unanswered here.

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The “you” here is plural and so refers to the church. But what does it mean to destroy the church? It must be more than building it with “wood, hay or straw” for the man who does that sees his efforts burned up, but he himself survives. In contrast, the man who destroys the church is in turn destroyed by God. That sounds painful. This verse leads to the corresponding question of what does it mean for God to destroy a man. The Bible Knowledge Commentary also points out that this sounds like an application of the Old Testament law of retribution (an eye for an eye).

As a side note, when I was comparing different translations of these verses, I decided that I preferred the NIV version for two reasons. One, it was the only one that I looked at that preserved the second person plural pronoun when talking about the church. English does not have a distinct second person plural pronoun unlike many other languages. The translators communicated this information by using “you yourselves” instead of just “you.” (I suppose it could have been “Don't you know that you all are God's temple.”) Two, the NIV uses “destroy” for both the man's and God's actions unlike the versions in the KJV family. Doing this does a better job at preserving the reference to retribution that a reader might remember from a passage like Genesis 9:6.

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In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman makes an interesting suggestion regarding the Second Commandment. Worshipping and serving God required abstract thinking by the Israelites. He does not exist in bodily form nor can he be properly comprehended through any physical analogies. People who record their experiences in and communicate through images, statues and the like will probably struggle with the idea of a universal, spiritual God. This is why God reveals himself through the Word, which is conducive to abstract thought.

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Church as Field
The Corinthians did not understand that God deserves the glory, not man. Making things grow is so much more difficult than just planting or watering.

Church as Building
Paul writes “Let each one take care how he builds upon it [foundation of Jesus Christ].” We will sometimes build with the wrong “stuff.” It is not always obvious to us what is the best way to build the Church.

General Observations
In both metaphors, there is a reward, but it is given in the future, not in the present. It is also given by God, not by man. Also, farming and construction both require multiple participants due to the amount of work and the different skills required (especially with construction). In both metaphors, Paul begins the work — planting the seed and laying the foundation — while others continue the work. One person doing all the work is not the ideal.

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The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ. (NIV)

• When Paul says that the spiritual man makes judgments about all things it is in contrast to the worldly man who can only judge worldly matters with human wisdom. It does not mean that the spiritual man's judgement is perfect as we will see in chapter 4. The Corinthians (as worldly people) are trying to judge Paul in spiritual matters.
• To make the interpretation of the second part of verse 15 clear, the NKJV adds the word “rightly.” The spiritual man will be judged by men using human wisdom. It just will not often be the right judgement. Certainly Gideon was crazy to attack the Midianites with such a small army...from a worldly perspective.
• Paul finishes his explanation of why the Corinthians are not qualified to judge him (and other leaders) by noting how far God is beyond man and that God's wisdom has been revealed to Paul. I tend to think that Paul uses “we” in this verse to refer to himself and the other teachers — not to say that it cannot be applied to mature believers in general.

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“which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.”

You may recognize this as a verse that often appears in discussions of verbal inspiration. The differences are not due to the underlying Greek texts used by the various Bible versions. There is only one variation between the Textus Receptus and the Nestle-Aland text: the word “Holy” does not appear in the latter text in connection with “Spirit.” The ambiguity is rather in our understanding of three Greek words within the context of this passage.

The first one (in the order of translation) is συγκρινοντες and only appears in two verses in the Bible. It has been translated as ‘comparing’ in the NKJV, ‘combining’ in the NASB, ‘interpreting’ in the ESV, ‘explaining’ in the HCSB, and ‘expressing’ in the NIV. The two other words that make up the clause do not provide much help due to their uncertain meaning. They are both forms of the Greek word πνευματικος. Bible translators are unsure of the gender of the second; it could be neuter or masculine. The first one is translated as ‘spiritual things’, ‘spiritual thoughts’, or ‘spiritual truths.’ The second becomes ‘spiritual’, ‘spiritual words’, ‘spiritual people’, or ‘spiritual men.’ This is a verse (more specifically, the last clause) where an expositor has to be careful putting too much emphasis on a particular word from his version of the Bible.

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This verse frequently comes up in discussions on infant baptism. I am more interested in how it relates to the inspiration of Scripture. God did not forget if Paul baptized others, and we believe Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this letter to the Corinthians. How do we explain this? All the commentaries that I sought out for this very reason did not deal with it nor did any of the notes in the study bibles that I possess. It did not come up in Sunday School either. I was surprised by this since it was the first question that I had after reading this verse.

First, let's consider the competing theories of inspiration (this is not exhaustive). At one end of the spectrum is where God dictates everything word for word and the prophet or apostle is nothing more than an amanuensis. J.C. Ryle is an example of someone from this camp. [Edit: I was wrong about Ryle. John R. Rice is a possible example though.] On the other end are the more liberal Protestant scholars who are antisupernaturalistic and consider the writers of the Bible to be similar to Shakespeare or Aristotle in that they had great insight. In between are a wide range of possibilities including God inspiring the writers with the ideas or concepts and the actual words belonging to the authors. Verbal plenary inspiration is probably the most common theory among conservative evangelicals. It holds that God inspired more than concepts or thoughts down to the individual words but that the human writer played a contributing role also. There is a mystery to the interaction between the two, similar to Jesus being fully God and fully man.

Any theory of divine inspiration that is based on word for word or even thought for thought inspiration will be challenged to some extent to explain this verse. This is where a partial inspiration theory excels, but that is a slippery slope for it places each verse under the judgement of individual believers. How do those who hold to verbal plenary handle this? They probably say this is an example of the human nature of the author showing through. Did Jesus ever forget where he laid down his staff for that is certainly part of the human experience.

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A positive example of applying a framework in the interpretation of a verse can be found in 1 Corinthians 2:10b - “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (NIV). Reading this verse gives me the image of a man methodically exploring a library. The man learns new knowledge as he reads the books. We know that God is a triune God so this analogy is incorrect. The Spirit is God and therefore omniscient. The word searches could have been knows or understands, but those words do not have the sense of activity that search possess. No, searches is the right word, but we have to understand it differently from how we might search for car keys that were misplaced.

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In the NIV, this verse from Isaiah reads as follows:
Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

In the context of this section, the verse is speaking to the uniqueness of God. Israel is remembering how God has cared for them. There is no other god that has done this for them or for anyone else.

In the same version, 1 Corinthians 2:9 is translated as
However, as it is written:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him”

This is definitely not a quote of Isaiah 64:4 and not a paraphrase as many commentators claim. A paraphrase maintains the same meaning even though the words are different. The focus of Paul's quotation is on the salvation that God has prepared — on the gospel, which is God's secret wisdom that is being revealed. This is very different from talking about the uniqueness of God. I have read that almost the same quote can be found in some apocryphal writings. The dating of those writings makes it likely that they borrowed from Paul rather than vice verse. Another possibility is that they are both quoting from a third source. It would not be the only occasion that Paul quoted something outside Scripture.

Regardless, the application is the same for the Corinthians and for us. I still would not mind finding a source that deals with this more completely.

Note: I looked at other translations but the NASB, ESV, and HCSB were all too painful to read to use here.

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Just a few comments on these verses:
1. Paul switches from “I” to “we” in this section on spiritual wisdom. This shows that all the apostles and leaders of the church are teaching the same wisdom. It also does not give the Corinthians who champion Paul any reason to claim that he has any special wisdom that the other leaders do not possess.

2. Paul makes sure to reiterate that this wisdom for the spiritual mature is not the wisdom of the world. The world's wisdom is like the tower of Babel. It may make us proud of our achievements, but it does not get us any closer to God. God has to reveal his wisdom to us.

3. This wisdom is the gospel. I conclude this because Paul writes this is the wisdom that “God decreed before the ages for our glory.”

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