Wisdom of This World Foolish

God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. (1 Corinthians 1:20 NLT)

It is true that we may have a tremendous amount of knowledge and information as this world can give it, and yet the wisest, the wealthiest in knowledge or in any other way, coming into Christ has got to learn the ABC in spiritual things.... It will not be long before we are made to know that we do not know anything. The Lord said: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God!” I think if He had been in another world from the one in which He was at the time, if He had been in the Western world He would probably have said: “How hardly shall they that have knowledge enter the Kingdom.” The boasted knowledge, wisdom, and intellect of the Western world is the great obstruction to the Kingdom. It is not prepared to know anything. When Paul got outside of the Jewish world, that was the kind of thing he was saying all the time, that the wisdom of this world was the great hindrance. With the Jews, gain along the line of wealth; to the Gentiles, gain along the line of knowledge was the hindrance, and anything that appertains to nature has to be set aside. It is a hindrance to our coming into the Kingdom.

The longer we live in relationship to the Lord the more we know that we know nothing. One piece of knowledge we have is that we do not know anything at all, and we are just longing all the time to get some knowledge. There is no royal road to spiritual knowledge, we have to start right at the beginning and learn the things of the Lord as we go along. When we start as young Christians we do think that we know something. But, of course, that is the folly of youth. We are learning everything all over anew. With all the knowledge that we might have naturally, if it should be anything, it does not count here. Spiritual knowledge is a different thing. We have started all over again, but when we accept that place: "Now I have everything to learn, I am open and eager to learn, I know nothing," then the Lord can teach. It is the proud one that never learns anything. The Lord show us what it means to begin, what the meaning of the Cross is in our end to the old and beginning to the new.

~T. Austin-Sparks~