The wisdom of God, the truth of Christ and His Word and gospel, is only seen and heard by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. A real Christian is a person who had heard Christ, who has learned Christ, who has been taught Christ - all by the life-working work of the Holy Spirit. Apart from this spiritual work in us by the Spirit, we would never HEAR Christ.
We must be careful to build Christ's church upon the one true foundation - which is Jesus Christ. And we must be careful to add to that foundation by the foolishness of the message preached - Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We must never mingle the wisdom or methods of the world with the gospel.
Christ and Him crucified is the foundation of the church and we must be very, very careful to build upon that foundation and no other. It is sadly possible for a Christian to work very diligently, perhaps even effecting huge "results," when at the Day of the Lord it all goes up in smoke.
Paul continues to admonish the Corinthians for their arrogance which had produced quarreling and factions in the church.
The unsaved man, the man Paul calls the "natural man," has no ability to understand spiritual things. Devoid of the Spirit of Christ, the natural man can only conclude that God's Word is foolishness. By the Spirit alone, through the new birth, is a person enabled to understand the things of God.
Consistently from Genesis to Revelation the Lord tells us that there are just two categories of human beings, and that it is the Word of the Cross, Christ Himself, that is the source of this Great Divide.
Christ is ascended and crowned as the Father's King. The Church triumphant is with Him and He will return in glory one day to judge the kings of the earth and all His enemies.
The wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God are opposites. The Corinthians had remained infantile spiritually and as a result were still thinking like the world. This mindset leads to hell.
The wisdom of the world vs the wisdom of God is a theme that is found all through Scripture. It is a vital topic for us to understand and with which we can examine ourselves to see if we really are born again.
The natural man cannot understand nor accept the things of the Spirit of God. The Word of the Cross is just foolishness to him.
