Superficial vs. Spiritual Wisdom...Continued from page 5

John A. Huffman, Jr.

There are those who still claim the name Christian but repudiate the notion of a Creator, Sustainer God, who breaks into human history in the person of Jesus Christ and who reveals His truth in the Scriptures, which we hold to be "the only infallible rule of faith and practice."

We could go on mentioning other evidences of temporal wisdom. What do they all hold in common? They live within time. They don't really explain where we came from, why we are here and where we are going in a way that equips us with quality for the now.

The second kind of wisdom is eternal wisdom. This is the hidden wisdom of God. It is His natural and special revelation of himself. This lasts forever and is the ultimate ground of all being in which you and I can stake our very lives. Granted, at times, we distort it and misinterpret His wisdom. When we do so, we need to come under the authority of God's revelation, finding correction of our errors through our endeavor to more fully understand the wisdom that goes beyond our temporal, limited, finite, human rationality.

Assertion Two: None of the rulers of this age fully understand this.

Sometimes the phrase "rulers of this age" is used to describe evil, supernatural powers thought to control human destiny. It appears that here Paul is referring to human leaders, since, in verse 8, he says that these are the ones who crucified Jesus and since the contrast in this whole passage is between the believer who has the Spirit and the nonbeliever who does not have the Spirit.

Not many of the rulers of this world understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Power does have a way of corrupting. As has been said, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I do know that, when your citizenship is in the Kingdom of God and you bow your head before His sovereignty, there are those rulers of the kingdom of humankind who are threatened by your allegiance to the Lord. They do not understand this. The currency of the kingdom of humankind is a different currency.

Some of us discover this reality when we travel. One summer I spent two weeks in Scotland. I used British Sterling to buy my meals, to pay for my lodging, to rent a car, to pay bridge tolls, to purchase tickets on ferries, to have my laundry done. At the airport, I tried to change as much of my leftover Sterli

ng as possible into the currency of the European Union. However, I still had some left in my wallet; and when I arrived in Madrid, I tried to buy a newspaper with it at the airport newsstand. It was refused. I tried to give it as a tip to the bellboy at the hotel. He wanted nothing to do with it. It was the currency of another land. What had gotten me in and out of everywhere in Scotland was reputed as irrelevant in those countries of the European Union. I have jar on my dresser at home filled with coins and paper currency of various nations of the world, valuable currency if I ever returned to them but useless to me here-not even worth the time and energy to go to a bank and try to make an exchange.