The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the CorinthiansDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Dods, Marcus
Bible. Corinthians, 1st -- Commentaries
What the contents of this wisdom are, we can readily perceive from
such specimens of it as Paul gives us in his Epistle to the Ephesians
and elsewhere. It is a declaration of the Divine purpose towards man,
or of "the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."
Paul delighted to expatiate on the far-reaching results of Christ's
death, the illustrations it gives of the nature of God and of
righteousness, its place as the grand moral centre, holding together
and reconciling all things. He delights to show the superiority of the
Gospel to the Law and to build up a philosophy of history which sheds
light on the entire plan of God's training of men. The purpose of God
and its fulfilment by the death of Christ he is never weary of
contemplating, nor of showing how out of destitution, and disease, and
war, and ignorance, and moral ruin, and what seemed a mere wreck of a
world there were to be brought by this one healing element the
restoration of man to God and to one another, fellowship with God and
peace on earth, in short a kingdom of God among men. He clearly saw
how through all that had previously happened on earth and through all
that men had thought preparation had been made for the fulfilment of
this gracious purpose of God. These were "the deep things of God"
which caused him to see how different was the wisdom of God from the
wisdom of men.
This "wisdom" which Paul taught has had a larger and more influential
place in men's minds than any other system of human thought.
Christendom has seen Christ through Paul's eyes. He interpreted
Christianity to the world, and made men aware of what had been and was
in their midst. Men of the largest faculty, such as Augustine and
Luther, have been unable to find a religion in Christ until they
entered His school by Paul's door. Stumbling at one or two Jewish
peculiarities which attach to Paul's theology, some modern critics
assure us that, "after having been for three hundred years"--and they
might have said for fifteen hundred years--"the Christian doctor _par
excellence_, Paul is now coming to an end of his reign." Matthew
Arnold, with truer discernment, if not on sounder grounds, predicts
that "the doctrine of Paul will arise out of the tomb where for
centuries it has lain buried. It will edify the Church of the future.
It will have the consent of happier generations, the applause of less
superstitious ages. All will be too little to pay half the debt which
the Church of God owes to this 'least of the Apostles, who was not fit
to be called an Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of God.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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