1 Corinthians 2:2: “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
I recently read where the Dalai Lama spends up to six hours a day in study and meditation. Ha, what an amateur. I spend that and more in study, mediation on the Word of God and in prayer every day and I can’t even figure out the kenosis, the trinity and the mystery of the cross as well as dozens of other enigmas to explain it to myself let alone to someone else. So what makes him so do gone wise?
The Apostle Paul was the smart one, he pleaded ignorance on everything except Jesus Christ and the historical fact that He was crucified. Paul was no dummy, he was one who was advanced in Judaism beyond many of his peers. He was well schooled in Stoic philosophy using many Stoic terms and metaphors. Stoic philosophy is a school of Hellenistic philosophy which taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment and that a sage or person of moral and intellectual perfection would not suffer such emotions. This may explain why he is claiming to not know anything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
A wise man in ancient times, as you might even find today, will keep the knowledge of his wisdom a secret and even pretend to be ignorant. They know if people found out about their wisdom they would inquire about matters that are difficult to understand and controversial. You know like the gun fighter entering a town and trying to keep the notches on his gun a secret because everyone would start to challenge him to a duel. You remember Shane? He was just Shane. Our hero was just Paul. Not Doctor, Professor, Reverend, Rabbi, Bishop etc. Just Paul.
If word got out that he was a former member of the Sanhedrin, a scholar who studied under Gamaliel the grandson of the great Hillel, Paul would have spent most of his time arguing that Epistemology was indeed a presupposition to Neo Orthodoxy. So Paul set the record straight right at the beginning. I am here to speak of the only thing we can be certain about and that is Jesus Christ and His Crucifixion.
The Aramaic Bible, the Peshitta, reads “And I did not judge myself anything I knew except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” He did not judge himself. That word judge in the Aramaic is dan which has the idea of arguing or debating. So Paul is saying: “I didn’t come here to argue and debate. I remember my years in Seminary and Bible College, it seems all we did was argue and debate theological concepts. Some of these interchanges would get pretty heated and our professors usually let us have at it. Then out professors usually ended by explaining what our evangelical beliefs were and should be, not that his position held all that much weight after we exhausted our own fancied intellectual assumptions. Paul probably had a life time of debating and arguing the law with his peers. He was probably the fastest Talmud of the East. But he was not there to show off his intellectual skills or argumentative abilities. He was there to present Jesus Christ.
He said he would not argue anything as though he knew. Actually in the Aramaic there is a personal pronoun I. He would not argue anything “I know.” That word know in Aramaic is the word yida which is very similar to the Hebrew word yada’ and is an intimate knowing. I am sure we have all found ourselves in discussion or argument with someone who did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about. But rather than admit he did not know the subject as well as he claimed, he just kept arguing making a greater fool of himself. That is not Paul, he knew his subjects and he knew them well. Paul could have debated the best of them in Corinth and made fools of them. But that was not what he was there for, he was there to proclaim the fact of Jesus as the Messiah who was crucified. He did not mention anything about the resurrection the ascension, or the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit returned. These things were most likely mentioned in the course of Paul’s preaching, but to him the most important issue was Jesus as the Messiah and the fact that He was crucified. In Jewish tradition, one of the key identifications of the Messiah would be that he would be torture and killed.
The cross carries a lot of meaning. Last Sunday our pastor preached a whole sermon on the crucifixion. It was so refreshing to hear a sermon on the crucifixion. It is the corner stone of our faith, our very Christian symbol is a cross. I often wonder what our Christian symbol would be if Jesus died by a sword or dagger. Nonetheless, the very symbol of our faith is an instrument of death. Other religions have pretty symbols of stars and moons, but we Christians have a symbol of death and torture. We are declaring that the God we worship is a God who loves us so much that he suffered and died a horrific death for a crime he was totally innocent. Show me another God that can make that claim.
Every other religion, except Judaism who worships the same God as we do, are fearful of their gods, they follow their gods out of the threat of something bad happening to them if they do not show their god the proper or due respect.
After spending up to six to eight hours a day in study, meditation on the Word of God and prayer I have nothing to report to you. I have no great revelations to share, I have no deep hidden secrets to reveal. Any revelations, insights, hidden knowledge that I would share would be something that someone, anyone could argue against and blow the whole theory apart. But, like Paul, there is one thing and one thing alone that I will stand firm and fight to the finish on and that is Jesus is the Messiah and He is such complete and total love that He died in my place on a cross two thousand years ago.
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