Summary - I Corinthians 2:6-13

Then and Now: Paul wants the Corinthians to understand what he was doing as a teacher. Theoretically he could speak to them as mature individuals in the body of Christ. They knew what the world's rulers didn't - death was conquered in Christ's resurrection. No more would the power of the state be supreme because the fear of death was removed. The political powers were continuing to operate with world values and systems which Christ had put to death, but Christians now worked with knowledge and insight gained from the Spirit. They could look past the present age to the one which was coming. Indeed, its presence already existed with Christ's resurrection.

The passage brings in two themes (Wright, p. 25): (a) Political powers do not understand the Cross, and (b) the Holy Spirit within each believer gives him/her the ability to know the mind of God. That means Christians have a life-long opportunity to know more and more the things of the Spirit and that they have a life-long requirement to teach, work for change and sometimes confront the misuse of governmental power.

If these are the tasks, then the job of church leaders is to lead by example and to keep track of (notice) the spiritual strengths and weaknesses of the members of the body. As leaders, Paul, Cephas, and Apollos had God's wisdom and were able to speak it as God revealed it to them. They received the Spirit of God (not the spirit of the world) which enabled them to proclaim spiritual knowledge and direction. Thus, by implication, they would speak wisdom to church members in Corinth.

I Corinthians 2:2

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified (KJV)

Then: To preach truth in Christ, believers need to throw out all cleverness and brilliant oratory because the truth can get lost in the words. Paul, fully able to compete intellectually, wants his readers to know what he did (Thiselton, p. 208-209). He got rid of the artifices, stripped down to the facts of death, burial and resurrection and offered them as the foundation for the Corinthians to use. Adding rhetorical styles takes the chance that listeners hear the witticisms and not the message of the cross.

Now: It's a good thing to attract people to hear the gospel, but let them hear the gospel and not be so enthralled with the frills that they cannot remember the teaching, only the teacher's video clips, jokes, or dramatics.

Extra source: The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text by Anthony C. Thiselton (Eerdman, 2000) http://books.google.com/books?id=aNkcqC9bdAMC&dq=Thiselton+Corinthians&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=eoboOUfSJM&sig=9hfoo_G6zvecJwOGkoKR93iL6II&hl=en&ei=ITsdS8SuCsnM8Qb1maDUAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I Corinthians 2 - Overview Summary (Leadership)

Then and Now: In the main content of this letter, Paul mixes in the readers personal faith and service in the church with discussions of the work and service of church leaders because every believer is expected to be a leader of some kind. Church members lead their friends, their families, their fellow group members before having opportunity to be selected as teachers, speakers, deacons, elders, ministers or missionaries. Everyone within the chuch leads in one fashion or another. These chapters cannot be skipped. Read them at both levels. Commentators help us think. Magness and Wright bring out Paul's leadership points for verses 2:1 to 4:21.