Faith's Resting Place

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he makes it very clear that faith’s resting-place should be the power of God and not the wisdom of man. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4-5; emphasis mine).

In other words, Paul was telling the saints of the church at Corinth that he purposed to do nothing, not even in his message or in his preaching, to influence them to believe that true faith has anything to do with the wisdom of man. Paul was fully convinced that when faith rests on the wisdom of man, it can only produce what man can conjure—nothing of lasting value.

Paul confirmed this in chapter one: For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God . . . (1 Corinthians 1:21). In other words, when all the wisdom the men of the world could put together has accomplished all it could possibly accomplish, it will not have borne the fruit of even one person coming to know God, not one eternally significant thing will have been accomplished! And that, in the wisdom of God, not in the wisdom of man! It is so very true: The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1:25). Man has NOTHING about which he can boast!

If your faith is resting on the wisdom of men, then all you will ever see is what the wisdom of men can accomplish. You will never see what true faith in God can accomplish—the works of the Spirit.

Obviously, this is true, not only for an individual believer, but also for a local assembly of believers. If any local assembly of believers places their faith in the wisdom of men, all they will ever see is what the wisdom of men can accomplish. To the eyes of the world, that might be much; but to the eyes of those whose faith is resting on the power of God, all that the wisdom of man could accomplish, put together, would only be the pitiful and shameful fruits of man’s labors—works of the flesh.

To be specific, if this local assembly rests its faith in the wisdom of men, believe me, it will see only what the wisdom of those men is able to achieve and that is not what any of us want for this church! Surely each one of us wants to see the sovereign and strong hand of God move amongst us in ways that we have never before seen. At the very least, we want to see Him continue to do the things He has been doing since before the foundation of the world. Surely we want to see Him continue to call into being that which does not exist (Romans 4:17), continue to raise the dead (John 11), continue to heal the sick (Luke 6), continue to give sight to the blind (John 9), continue to cast out demons (Luke 8:26-39), continue to equip the saints for the work of service (Ephesians 4:12), and above all, continue to draw men unto Himself (John 12:32). These things never happen as the result of the wisdom of man! They can only happen as man allows his faith to rest on the power of God.

MY PERSPECTIVE: The faith that rests on the wisdom of man is really not faith at all because its end is to see what man can accomplish; consequently, most of what we call faith is really not faith at all.