These are popular Christian buzz words. They effectively
categorize two very different approaches to life and every single issue within
life. They are even used to assess the status of a church and their respective
ministries. The “seeker friendly” church might be critiqued as being too man-centered. For the reformed
Christian looking for some serious meat to chew on, God-centered all the way.
In 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 Paul seems to differentiate between two very different approaches for discerning wisdom. Man-centered wisdom is a human project that relies on the collaborative effort of man to build it's tower from the ground up, trying to reach the heavens. God-centered would refer to man receiving something that God has already created, coming to us out of the heavens and touches the earth. Lets take a look at what Paul says:
In 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 Paul seems to differentiate between two very different approaches for discerning wisdom. Man-centered wisdom is a human project that relies on the collaborative effort of man to build it's tower from the ground up, trying to reach the heavens. God-centered would refer to man receiving something that God has already created, coming to us out of the heavens and touches the earth. Lets take a look at what Paul says:
Yet among the mature
we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers
of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom
of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of
this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the
Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen,
nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man
imagined,
what God has prepared
for those who love him”—
these things God has
revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the
depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that
person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except
the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the
Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by
God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the
Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person
does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and
he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The
spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For
who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the
mind of Christ.
Wisdom Revealed
We realize that Paul is talking about the subject of wisdom and how all true wisdom must be eternal, finding its origin with God himself.
Thus, true wisdom must be revealed, and it now has, in Christ on the cross! This is why Paul quotes
Isaiah, in reference to wisdom, which says it is a wisdom that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the
heart of man imagined.” In other words, man not only didn’t make it up…man couldn’t make it up. It is revealed by
God, the owner and author of eternal wisdom.
The Spirit Is The Key
This wisdom doesn’t originate with man. In fact, unless God reveals it to man they will never discern it on their own. Man needs help, divine help. Without it they must start laying bricks, one on top of another to try and reach the heavens. To be man-centered
is to rely too heavily on the faculties of our intellect and cultural collaboration. Each culture has a way of thinking, a way of identifying
itself and a way to make sense of their existence. Each culture has it’s
acceptable and unacceptable norms which translate into morals and practice and
values and priorities. To be man-centered is to refer to that which is naturally accessible: which is the intellect of the individual or cultural collaboration.
The alternative that Paul suggests is discerning wisdom that comes from God, for which the Holy Spirit
is key. Remember, this wisdom from God is something that man never could have dreamed, which means it
must be revealed to him. Man's wisdom may reach the clouds, but it has no way of breaking beyond this into the heavens. When we consider the expanse of the galaxies, we see the clouds as an incredible limitation. This is where the Spirit of God comes in.
Not only is man unable to concoct a wisdom that would reach God's throne, natural man is equally
helpless to identify it as wisdom without the aid of the Holy Spirit. In other
words, to be God-centered is to be dependent upon God’s Spirit for seeing the
beauty of wisdom and receive it from God. While man-centered wisdom starts building from the ground up, God-centered wisdom receives God's initiative from the heavens down. The mark of God-centeredness in an individual is that they are seeing the cross as a beautiful thing and now seek to apply it to every aspect of life.
God’s Wisdom is
Offensive
Man-centered wisdom is more than an inability to receive God's wisdom. When Paul
talks about being man-centered he isn’t just talking about relying on the intellect and culturally accepted systems of thought called wisdom. He
goes further than this. Paul suggests that the core mark of man-centered wisdom
is opposition to God. Man-centered
wisdom actually hates God. How do we know this? Paul says, in reference to man-centered wisdom, that “None of the rulers
of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the
Lord of glory.”
What they didn't understand is that wisdom is a top down and not a bottom up endeavor. Additionally, it isn't considered an honest mistake that ended in the accidental crucifixion of the Lord of Glory. The failure to receive God's wisdom from heaven is part of human rebellion, a willful refusal that all mankind will be held accountable for. The result of man-centered wisdom doesn’t equal indifference to God's wisdom, it equals
opposition and resentment to what comes from God. To be man-centered is to find the cross to be foolish, irrelevant, judgmental, and offensive.
This says something about how severely dangerous man-centered wisdom is and why Paul urges his people to press on to maturity in
Godliness. Paul is warning his people that by slipping into the culturally
acceptable ways of thinking that they are slipping into opposition to God.
There is no neutrality. If your wisdom is man-centered it will have no eternal
relevancy and it won't lead you to spiritual maturity. More alarming still, it will actually lead
you to resent God. There is something about the cross of Christ that
universally saves and universally offends. If you are building from the bottom up, it will offend. If you are receiving from the top down, it will save. No matter the time or culture, man-centered wisdom will never concoct the bloody cross that saves sinners. This
wisdom will never be beautiful from the human vantage point, it will be something that man-centered wisdom will desire to eradicate, like the rulers did to Jesus himself.
Paul is pleading with his people not to give in to the temptation to pursue their maturity in the hip, in vogue, relevant, celebrated and acceptable wisdom that the culture esteemed. Paul understands the pull that even Christians feel to be "with-it." What he is saying is that man's building project from the ground up and God's building project from the top down are drastically different and they will never intersect. The only pathway to maturity and true wisdom is to receive it from God in Christ, even if it will be considered folly by our unbelieving peers. Christians who remain God-centered allow themselves to be a channel through which God's heavenly wisdom breaks into this world.
Paul is pleading with his people not to give in to the temptation to pursue their maturity in the hip, in vogue, relevant, celebrated and acceptable wisdom that the culture esteemed. Paul understands the pull that even Christians feel to be "with-it." What he is saying is that man's building project from the ground up and God's building project from the top down are drastically different and they will never intersect. The only pathway to maturity and true wisdom is to receive it from God in Christ, even if it will be considered folly by our unbelieving peers. Christians who remain God-centered allow themselves to be a channel through which God's heavenly wisdom breaks into this world.
Be God-Centered
If you are saved it is because the Spirit of God has enabled you to discern the beauty of Christ crucified. You see the cross as the pinnacle of God's wisdom for a sinful world who needs hope. This is not your doing, yet you have the responsibility of responding in faith. If you are a Christian, you have the responsibility to be God-centered in your pursuit of wisdom and you have the responsibility of guarding yourself against the seeping effect of man-centered wisdom. Press on in God-centeredness, continue looking to God as the source of your wisdom, knowing that the rulers and wisdom of this age are not able to discern or appreciate what comes from him. If you are not careful and you let yourself be courted by the man-centered wisdom of this age, Paul warns it will only produce skepticism, doubt, even animosity towards Christ.
In other words: be careful to be God-centered, not man-centered
“What no eye has seen,
nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man
imagined,
what God has prepared
for those who love him”
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