Omniscience
God questions men, not to learn, but to carry out his will. We speak "without knowledge” (Job 38:2). But he never lacks knowledge: e.g. where Cain’s murdered brother Abel was (Gen. 4:9); how many righteous men he’d find in Sodom (Gen. 18); and where Job was during creation (Job 38). God interacts with people because he wants to reveal himself and work on us. He declines to “hide” his ways (Gen. 18:17) forever. Rather, he wants us to “see” him (Job. 42:5) and “learn from [him]” (Mat. 11:29); and knowing the very best way to deal with people (e.g. Gen. 4:13-15, Job 1:12), God chooses to interact with us in a personal way.
Wisdom
Men utterly fail when trying to know God through their own wisdom (1 Cor. 1:21). So God chooses ways that are so far from what we’d choose that we must lean on him instead of on “[our] own understanding” (Pro. 3:5). Even in doing something apparently silly in men’s eyes, i.e. using a bunch of nobodies (1 Cor. 1:26-27) to preach “Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23), God’s wisdom remains perfect and unchallenged. Thus, Paul says the “folly” of the gospel (1 Cor. 1:21) is the power of God [to believers] (v.18). Logically, man’s wisdom cannot improve God's power one bit (v. 17).
1 Cor. 1:25God’s “foolishness” and “weakness” are wiser and stronger than men (v. 25). Of course he’s never foolish or weak. Rivaling God is like showing up to work earlier than your coworkers, but on the wrong day, or more realistically, in the wrong century. The point is that we can never outdo God.
Thad,
ReplyDelete1. Excellent. You are really getting the idea of what we're looking for. Good blend of truth, logic, scriptures.
2 & 3. I think you got some of the contra-human wisdom in 1 Cor., but stopped short of the real controversy--the cross itself as the ultimate work of God in weakness (Christ dying on the cross). This apparently weak and unwise act of God through the foolish means of proclaiming it is greater and wiser than anything men can invent.