Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:8
“None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:8, NIV)
The Remedy says these were leaders who “value the survival-of-the-fittest principle,” the opposite of the self-giving Love of God. TEV puts it starkly: they “nailed the Lord of Glory to a cross.”
Why didn’t they understand? It wasn’t for lack of evidence. They had seen the sick healed and Lazarus raised from the dead, and their answer was to plot His death (John 11:47–53). Understanding truth is as much a choice as stopping a bad habit. We have to choose to know, and grow to love the truth.
Remember, His Glory is His character. When they crucified the Lord of Glory, they nailed Love itself to the Cross and did not recognize it. And Love answered, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
This is where the Glory of Love and Truth repulses those who choose not to know it. It brings them real pain, because the lies they have been hiding behind are burned away when they stand in the presence of the Fires of Truth and Love. Christ was full of this fire. Those longing for truth were drawn to Him, but those who had chosen to refuse the truth had their world rocked by the fire that flowed freely from Him, and it caused them real emotional pain. We see it again in the death of Stephen. His face shone “as it had been the face of an angel,” and they “stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him” (Acts 6:15; 7:57–58). Those who have no power to hurt will seethe with the hate they feel; you can feel it when you are in their presence.
So we must open our thinking, our wanting for something new and better. This is where trials are such a blessing. In painful times we are able to embrace, want, and long for something better. By choosing to praise God while we embrace all the truth and learning a trial brings, we are changing our very hearts and minds to be more in line with the character of Christ. “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:2–3).
Our trials help us to see where we are still in need of healing. They let us know the worst of our case and send us to our knees, asking for healing and Grace to overcome and rise above, if for no other reason than so we never have to go through that trial again! God is faithful, and He will take us over the same ground again and again until we overcome it or it overcomes us. Israel circled the wilderness for forty years so the Lord could “humble thee, and… prove thee, to know what was in thine heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2). We cannot move forward until that issue is decided.
We are choosing to stand in the flow of the Fires of Truth and Love, which can burn away all the sinfulness and selfishness in our hearts. The more we understand the truth about the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, the more we are healed, because the power for healing is in the truth of who They are. As we learn the truth, we shed the lies about God from our hearts and minds.
No matter the heartache or pain, it is all a chance to grow. We are being given the opportunity to become more with every trial and every heartache we embrace. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).
This is the healing Glory of God.
