Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Monday, October 13, 2008 3:08:29 PM
Is there more of an intellectual Christian that the writer of Romans? Yet, he says that in the wisdom of God, the wisdom of man did not know God. Men who by nature suppress the knowledge of God do not grow out of atheism into the truth of the gospel. They are bound to their sin and without ability to do anything to help themselves; they are idolaters and spiritually dead with regard to the wisdom of God revealed in the gospel.
A radical change of heart is necessary. Christ called it the new birth. The apostles called it regeneration. We must be born again to see the kingdom. A man cannot enter into what is unseen until he has been given the eyes of faith.
Every believer has been confronted by Christ on his way to Damascus. Perhaps not as dramatic as Paul, but to some extent the risen Christ invaded our world; He changed us so that we began to walk in a different direction.
Intellectual persuasion has no power to raise the dead. That power rests with Christ alone. That is why Paul could write these words…
‘And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God’ [1 Corinthians 2:1-5].