“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1).
As we contemplate what Paul says to his readers here, we could easily ask the question, “Why did he make such a statement?” An easy answer to this question is that he knew how people think. He knew those who heard him speak such words about God would have expected him to be a man with a golden tongue and dazzling wisdom.
Paul’s teaching, however, took on a more practical and “common man” approach to subjects that his readers needed to know if they were to align their lives with God’s requirements.
And these recipients were not that different from people in our world today. Some seem to expect God to dazzle them with the spectacular in matters of religion instead of with practical instructions about living the Christian life every day and about just placing God first in their lives.
To please God, that is exactly what we need to do: just listen to and follow the simple teachings of the New Testament so that we can legitimately keep the hope of heaven alive within our hearts, rather than expecting the religion of Christ to be based on lofty man-conceived expectations and dramatic emotionalism.
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