God is love. His love is the wisdom and the power of the salvation of man. The wisdom of God differs from that of man; so man cannot understand the wisdom of God.

Therefore people could not know His wisdom when God showed it to them.

" Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:3-5)

His wisdom is His own plan to save men, that is, Jesus Christ.

God however hid Jesus Christ from the people in Nazareth until he was crucified for men, the sinners.

In that time the cross was intended for the worst evildoers. So the work of the cross by Jesus Christ was 'mere destruction' to the wisdom of the world and 'foolishness' to those who were perishing.

But to the wisdom of God it was the power of salvation and the right way of repaying for the sins.

When Messiah comes, Jews thought, they could conquer the Rome, grasp the authority of the countries and rule over the lands.

They had wrong idea of Messiah.

Their ignorance of the wisdom of God caused to crucify the Messiah; the best in the mind of humans resulted in the worst. Jesus Christ seemed to be too humble for Jews to think Him as the Messiah who they had long been waiting and eager for. For Jews He was too out of expectation to be accepted.

Like this the human thought goes against God; it never can reach the wisdom of God.

Greeks also looked for wisdom. They tried to understand the work of Jesus Christ from their views in which every religion is a kind of philosophy. They took the cross of Jesus for granted as a religious event of Jews.

They denied the existence of Messiah but rather liked to boast their philosophical idea that provides them with ability to understand religions.

The wisdom of Greeks is limited; so they could not acknowledge the truth of Jesus Christ.

He is really the wisdom of God and our salvation.

For Jews the work of the cross was a stumbling block and the shame, because from their law the cross was the mark of being cursed.

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)

But for us it is the power of salvation.

" But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:5-6)

" He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24)

To Greeks the work of the cross looked foolish. The philosophy of Greeks and Romans came short of the wisdom of God, because the message of the cross was hidden to them.

But for us who are saved from the sin, curse and disease by His being pierced, being flogged and being wounded for our iniquities, His work of the cross is the righteous execution of His absolute mercy and is the right for us to be saved.

The apostle Paul said that neither through the sign Jews sought after nor through the philosophy of humanism of Greeks anybody could come up to the mercy of God shown to us through His Own Wisdom in order for delivering us from the death.

The salvation is neither a philosophy, nor an ideology of humanism. It is only through the foolishness of what is preached; God wills to let us find the His mercy through acknowledging the life of Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God.

Today many people take Jesus Christ for so-to-spoken one of the four greatest persons in the history. This is the knowledge, wisdom and philosophy of humans. This is the misunderstanding of people about Jesus Christ.

We have to help them correct their misunderstanding Jesus Christ before they are fallen down to death caused by their failure to know correctly. God's will is to give His life to humans, to let it be the power to save those who understand and believe in Him.

Even today the world sees Christianity as foolishness, because it misunderstands the wisdom of God executed by Jesus Christ. Let's look for the souls who misunderstand Jesus Christ and are perishing; let's make them remove their misunderstanding; let's save souls even to one more soul. This is the will of God and the life of the LORD Jesus Christ.

위 글은 교회신문 <57호> 기사입니다.