determined to not know anything (d.chang ch. 2)

[v. 9 is the opening lyrics to Beautiful One...yes, that is a song]

i'm sorry guys, i'm kind of falling asleep as i write this.

paul is humble. he lets himself be humbled or God has humbled him or both. being who he used to be as a tax collector, a really strong Pharisee, chances are he wasn't born this way. something had to happen for him to get to this point, for him to really follow Jesus, for him to actually be able to write what he says in the first few lines of this second chapter.

he says that when he arrived to them, he didn't have anything. he wasn't strategizing and studying and figuring out how he himself could make a good impression on the Corinthians and maybe save some people. it goes farther than that. he wasn't even paying attention to himself. he was going completely against pride - he completely abandoned even thinking he had much to do with it, except that he was the empty vessel God was filling and using to demonstrate His power and grace. so when paul went to Corinth, it wasn't with "excellence of speech or of wisdom" (v. 1) - all he knew or wanted to know was "Jesus Christ and Him crucified" and nothing else (v. 2). and out of paul's weakness, God was strong. so the work that paul was able to do in corinth was not out of his own power, and wasn't a display of what can happen with the proper preaching and speech and human wisdom. paul attributes all of it to God. the power of God. says that he had nothing to do with it.

later in the letter to the Corinthians, paul starts to talk about the things of God and how the things that are in store for the followers of Christ are like a mystery, something that the rulers of our age couldn't see or understand. but we are supposed to be able to understand what we receive as gifts from the Lord because we have been given the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, to show us everything that has been freely given to us. i guess this goes back to the idea of following God not being a blind faith at all. no one else will really understand if we start talking about the things that we receive from God, and so we might appear as fools or lunatics, but we can understand and know for ourselves what is going on because we have been given the Holy Spirit.

and then it goes on to say that we really don't know what we've been given. we are hinted towards how great it will be, but it says that nobody knows how great are "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." which is pretty cool. if we are blown away by things of our own creation and our own ability, then what God has will be unbelievable. maybe something as commonly talked about as salvation. or grace. or peace. or love.