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. (2) For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. (3) I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. (4) And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (5) that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

The first letter to the Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul. Paul had recently come to Corinth from Athens where he had preached an eloquent sermon on Mars Hill with meager results. He then went to preach in Corinth where he put aside everything that was merely human, in absolute dependence on the Spirit. He preached God’s purpose and preached Jesus Christ crucified – a personal saving Christ and the stumbling block for both the Jews and the Gentiles. The central fact of his teaching was uncompromising and the subject matter was the real form of his teaching. The truth of the gospel comes from the Spirit and power of God so there was no glory of a human teacher. Paul was simply a witness.

The truth of the gospel is undiscoverable by the wisdom of men; the revealer is the Holy Spirit because only He knows the secret purposes of God. Paul taught Jesus Christ crucified; not as a teacher of a perfect man which is philosophy but as the Christ dying for our sins. Paul did not use words of man’s wisdom to entice nor his skill in persuasion but taught in demonstration of the power of the Spirit. The success of the gospel does not depend on skills of the preacher – it is not reason or argument but God’s method. Philosophy cannot save men.

c.s.Lewis on faith: “The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be – perhaps not ever – experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.”