No Common Ground

Paul has set these the wisdom of God and the foolishness of the world in complete opposition, without any middle ground. This opposition is easy to describe and easy to understand. Understanding it doesn't require any academic degrees, special instruction or special intelligence. Of course, the understanding God's Word and the nature of this opposition between wisdom and foolishness requires two things: 1) regeneration and 2) diligence. But, its full extent -- the pervasiveness of its application -- is seldom realized, understood or spoken of because it is so different from what we have all been taught from our earliest childhood.

Cornelius Van Til, a Reformed scholar at Westminster Seminary until his death in 1987 spent a lifetime working out the philosophical and theological implications of the differences between the wisdom of God and the foolishness of the world. Van Til's work can be easily summed up in the phrase: "there is no neutrality." It means that no one can be neutral or objective about anything, much less the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Because everyone has a particular perspective. Jesus said the same thing, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters" (Matthew 12:30).

Conversely, no one has a multiple perspective. To be an individual is to have a unique perspective. While we all need to be considerate of others, and attempt to "walk a mile in the shoes of another" no one walks in quite the same way. If you walk a mile in my shoes you will have a very different experience than I do when I walk a mile in them. The point is that every individual has a unique and different perspective.

What is more, the matter of God's existence provides a veritable watershed for human consciousness and understanding, dividing the human perspective into two separate categories. Those categories are 1) those who believe in God, and 2) those who don't. This divide that Paul has spent the first three chapters of First Corinthians discussing is so basic, so fundamental, so all-pervasive that it effects everything about every human being ever born. It essentially divides humanity into two categories or two cultures. These two cultures can be -- and have been -- variously labeled as believers and unbelievers, or the saved and the lost, or covenant keepers and covenant breakers. Thinking that the difference between them had to do with race and nationality, the ancient Israelites called these categories "Israel" and "Gentiles." But the difference is not national or racial, it is cultural.

Is there such a thing as common sense or a universal human perspective that all people share? Not according to Scripture. Of course, you and I share many things in common and the foundation of our shared perspective is our faith in Jesus Christ. But those who do not share that faith have a radically different perspective. So different, said Van Til, that virtually nothing is understood in the same way. Even when we do math or hoe the garden we do it very differently than those who do not believe in God. Believers do whatever they do in service to God, unbelievers do not. In other words, God is both the first and the final referent in all that believers think, say and do. Apart from that foundation people think, say and do very different things. Even when it appears that they are doing the same things, they are not because faith in God fundamentally changes everything.

Paul teaches that there is no significant common ground between these two groups of people. Paul will speak more fully of this division in his second letter to the Corinthians. "What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty'" (2 Corinthians 6:15-18). Such is the difference between the wisdom of God and the foolishness of the world.

Of course, the sun shines on the good and the evil, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). But the sun also shines and rain falls on spiders and algae. All of God's creatures have many common experiences -- rain and sunshine, food and shelter, death and taxes. (Well, spiders and algae don't pay taxes -- yet!) But believers and unbelievers do not have the same kind of experience of anything. The reason that we do not have a common sense is that faith in Christ makes a real difference in our lives. If the difference that Christ makes is insignificant or trivial, then we might say that our experience or perspective is not much different from that of unbelievers. But if Christ makes a significant difference, a real difference, then Paul is telling the truth. Because we don't see things in the same light, we don't know or experience things in the same way. We don't do things for the same purposes.

Paul's ability to discern this important difference, which is a function of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in his life, gives him great wisdom, real wisdom. Paul is a wise man of God, and as such we accord him honor and respect.

By: Phillip Ross

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Phillip A. Ross has been a pastor for over 25 years and is the author of many Christian books. Loaded with information about historic Christianity, Ross founded www.Pilgrim-Platform.org in 1998. In 2008 he published a profound exposition First Corinthians that demonstrates the Apostle Paul's opposition to worldly Christianity. Ross's book, Arsy Varsy—Reclaiming the Gospel in First Corinthians, shows how Paul turned the world upside down.