Paul and the Gap

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

-1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Paul, who was usually confident and forceful, in this letter to the Corinthians described his attitude during his first visit to them as one of weakness and fear. Why would an apostle with such an assurance of the call of God confess weakness? He certainly was not intimidated by his hearers, because the rest of the epistle is a straightforward attack on their carnality and immaturity.

The underlying key to his fear was the fact that the Corinthian congregation was primarily Greek; folks who, though not with the sophistication of the Athenians, still revered and expected persuasiveness and rhetorical skill from their teachers. Paul had the training that made him capable of both.

His fear was that his ability as a preacher and theologian would get in the way of the pure gospel of the Lord Jesus. He knew that “plausible words of wisdom” would cloud the power of the Holy Spirit and, while tickling the minds of the Corinthians, would leave their souls empty. He knew that the release of the Spirit’s power to change hearts was directly connected to an accurate portrayal of what God had done not merely through Christ, but through “Christ crucified.” Paul could not allow his hearers for a moment the impression that Christ was a great teacher or example, or the logos only, or one emanation in the Gnostic chain of being.

Paul had to be perfectly clear about his message from the beginning. He had to present Christ to them as Son of God, redeemer, substitute, ransom, reconciler, savior, and Lord, but above all, Christ as crucified. Christ crucified was a brutal shock to the neat and orderly quest for beauty that existed in the Greek mind. It disturbed religious complacency and was an indication that there was something terribly wrong with humanity, so terrible that it needed a terrible remedy. Paul trembled because he wanted his preaching to be so true to the gospel that repentance and faith would follow, and no hearer would escape its clarity, or be misled by eloquence. And it is likely true that Paul wanted his own heart to be so full of the presence of Christ that he would not be tempted to fall back on his natural ability to explain and persuade.

This gap between the head and the heart continues to manifest itself in the life of the church. Several years ago I read about the number of pastors and church leaders who drop out of ministry in their fifties and sixties, not because of heresy or immorality, but because of burnout. The article stated that the ministries of these men had outrun their spiritual capacity. They had developed proper exegetical and rhetorical skills and learned to rely on them in the pulpit and in counsel, but on the inside their reliance on the Holy Spirit was neglected.

I also remember a discussion about this issue with my pastor in a former church, a man who fortunately understood about the gap. He said that many a preacher reads a text, runs it through the sieve of proper word study, proper theology, proper homiletics, and produces an impeccable intellectual creation with some appropriate illustrations to engage the emotions. But he seldom takes the time to let the Holy Spirit work the passage into his own heart to create repentance or joy or awe, and the hearers may learn something, but have not touched the life of God in their leader.

Of course the gap not only applies to leaders, but to all Christians. It’s sometimes referred to as the “evangelical disease:” the presumption that because I walked the aisle and prayed the prayer forty years ago, I must be OK with God even if I only give Him an occasional passing greeting. More simply, it’s the assumption that because I know something, I am living it.

Let me give a suggestion in light of the “impending distress.” The nation is in a mess within and without. Our great ship of state (forgive the clichés) has loosed its moorings and is floating in uncertainty. Everyone is thinking and analyzing overtime. The left, the right, the middle, and the lunatic fringe are shouting their agendas, and are less and less heard. But we don’t need just knowledge; we need light and life.

There is a short phrase in 1 Samuel 30: “And David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” David was in distress. His family was in danger, he was homeless, and Israel was on the verge of losing a war. At a time when the logical thing was to figure things out, he turned from his mind to his heart and to a relationship that transcended circumstances. I wonder if the best thing Christians can do now is to leave the arguments that separate us from the culture and from each other, and turn to the glory of the person Christ, to strengthen ourselves in him—not just so we can achieve peace, but also so we can be refilled with the light and life that the world needs.