Superficial vs. Spiritual Wisdom...Continued from page 7

The moral word is not one of expediency alone. The ear can hear the great music, but there is a music of grace that goes beyond that which triggers the most rapturous of aesthetic ecstasy.

The human heart can be filled with enormous piety, compassion and even love, but it cannot ultimately set right that which is wrong.

For all of this, we need God's revelation of himself.

Einstein could probe the frontiers of science but couldn't come up with the message of Christ's substitutionary atonement on the cross, which has healing power for all time and even beyond!

Assertion Four: God has revealed His wisdom to us by His Spirit.

Tell me about yourself. Tell me your deepest inner thoughts, will you? I doubt that you will. They are secret, aren't they? They are your private thoughts. No one is going to know them, unless you reveal yourself honestly. And no one can make you do that, can they? You can play games, can't you? And you've done some of that. We all reveal facts about ourselves that fake people out. We all know how to do it, don't we? You can show off the knowledgeable or the ignorant you. You can show the wealthy or the poor you. You selectively choose to reveal what you want to reveal. That is your right, to own your own thoughts. No one has the power to rape your inner private self.

I notice this in my counseling ministry. There are layers on one's self that a person reveals. Seldom do they get down to the deepest level in the first interview or two. That is one reason why we advise long-term therapy. There is so much about a person that remains hidden.

Paul makes this human analogy when he writes, "For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God's except the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11).

You have no opportunity to know who God really is and what He is thinking unless He initiates His self-disclosure to you. He has done it. The result is the wisdom of God that you can only discover through His self-disclosure.

Assertion Five: You have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit of God.

Paul writes, "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual" (1 Corinthians 2:12-13).

Have you ever employed a tutor to teach you things that are simply hidden to your own rational understandings?

Let me reveal something about myself to you. I am not gifted in languages. I have taken three years of Latin, two years of German, two years of Greek and one year of Hebrew twice. In order to pass my required studies in German and in Hebrew, I was forced to employ a tutor. Languages do not come naturally for me.