Power and Wisdom

The power and wisdom of God are revealed in the proclamation of the Messiah who was crucified to save the World. Jesus performed miracles and taught with great authority, and for a time, he attracted large crowds. But his contemporaries failed to recognize who he was despite his displays of supernatural power. Only the Roman centurion at Golgotha perceived that the Nazarene was God’s Son when Jesus breathed his last.

The idea that miraculous signs and wonders win souls to faith in Jesus does not fit the pattern found in the gospel accounts, and it does not match the negative response of many people to the preaching of the Gospel by the Apostles after the Day of Pentecost.

[Photo by Matteo Grando (Treviso, Italy) on Unsplash]

God does provide supernatural help to His people, including divine healings, but miracles themselves are a means, not an end. As the Bible demonstrates, unexpected signs and great displays of power do not guarantee that anyone will understand God or His Son. As Paul wrote:

• “For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews, scandal, and to Gentiles, folly. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” - (1 Corinthians 1:21-24).

Only the man who has the mind of the Spirit of God understands that His power and wisdom are found in the Crucified Messiah, Jesus Christ. Not even the most powerful of the spiritual powers and principalities understood what God was doing through the Cross, even though His plan from the beginning was to conquer death and sin by the death of His Son:

• “We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, ONE THAT HAS BEEN HIDDEN, which God marked out before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age had known, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. <…> But God revealed them to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God” - (1 Corinthians 2:7-10. Compare Isaiah 48:6).

• “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach to the nations THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES of Christ, and to make all men see what is the participation of the mystery, which for ages has been hidden in God, WHO CREATED ALL THINGS, to the intent that now, unto the principalities and the powers in the heavens, might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to THE EVERLASTING PURPOSE, WHICH HE PURPOSED in Christ Jesus our Lord” - (Ephesians 3:7-11. Compare Job 5:9, Isaiah 44:24, 46:10-11, the Septuagint).

THE ROAD TO EXALTATION

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus heals the sick and exorcises demons, impressing the multitudes. The Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and priests did not do anything remotely similar. Yet only the demons exorcised by Christ recognized who he was.

At one point, on the verge of understanding Christ’s identity, Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah. Nevertheless, his sudden insight lasted only until Jesus explained what it meant to be the Messiah: betrayal, suffering, and death. Then Peter rebuked him, and with Satan’s very words.

• “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes; and they will condemn him to death, and they will deliver him to the Gentiles. And they will mock him. THEY WILL SPIT UPON HIM. THEY WILL SCOURGE HIM, and they will kill him” - (Mark 10:33-34. See Isaiah 50:6, 52:14, 53:3).

The only human being who recognized that Jesus was the Son of God and declared his identity was the Roman centurion who was present at his execution, and very likely, he was the officer in charge of the execution squad:

• “And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom. And when the centurion, who stood by over against him, saw that he had expired, he said, Truly, this man was the Son of God” - (Mark 15:38-39).

Only in his sacrificial death was Israel’s Messiah revealed. But in contrast to the pagan centurion, the Jewish religious leaders mocked Jesus as he was dying. They sarcastically called him “Christ and King of Israel,” but they certainly did not accept his messianic status.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus declares that when he is “lifted up, then you will know that I am he,” that is, the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the World. The death of Christ and his resurrection from the dead become the foundation of God’s Kingdom and the heart of the Gospel: “If I am lifted up from the Earth, I will draw all men to me.” And so, the nature and purposes of God can only be understood through the Cross of Christ - (John 12:32).

• “And as Moses LIFTED UP THE SERPENT IN THE WILDERNESS, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes may have everlasting life in him” - (John 3:14. Note the verbal allusion to Numbers 21:7-9).

• “When you have raised up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing with myself, but as the Father taught me, I say these things. And he who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him” - (John 8:28).

Despite his powerful miracles, Jesus died alone, rejected by the Jewish nation, abandoned by his disciples, and crushed by the power of Rome. Similarly, Jesus asked his disciples to renounce themselves, to take up the cross daily, and to follow his path:

• “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. And whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it” – (Matthew 16:24-25).

After his resurrection, Jesus began reigning at God’s right hand, but his exaltation came only after paying a great price. As Paul wrote, “he poured out his life unto death, becoming obedient even unto death, even death on a cross” - (Philippians 2:5-9).

We want power and revelation, but only by finding ways around the Cross, by walking a very different road than Jesus did.

The preaching of Christ crucified is foolishness to the ideologies of the current world order. The idea that God achieved victory over sin, death, and Satan by the unjust death of a politically powerless man is nonsensical to our way of thinking. Yet Paul called the message of Christ crucified, the Word of the Cross, the very power and wisdom of God.

Jesus cannot be understood apart from his death on the Cross. Likewise, no man or woman can be his true disciple without emulating his self-sacrificial service to others, and by living a cruciform life. That is what it means to be his disciple.

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[Citations of Old Testament passages in this article are based on the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (see the links here and here). Text printed in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS represents quotations and verbal allusions from the Old Testament. The Septuagint is represented by the Roman numeral for ‘seventy’ or LXX based on the Latin name of the translation, ‘Interpretatio septuaginta virorum’] 

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SEE ALSO:

• Recognizing Jesus - (It was only when he died that the Roman centurion in charge of the execution recognized that Jesus was the Son of God)

• Christ is King! - (The reign of Jesus Christ from the Messianic Throne began following his Death, Resurrection, and Exaltation) 

• Servant and King - (Following his baptism by John, the voice from heaven identified Jesus as the Son of God and the Servant of Yahweh)

• La Parole de la Croix - (La puissance et la sagesse de Dieu sont révélées dans la proclamation du Messie qui a été crucifié pour sauver le monde)