Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

September 25– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“[Jesus Christ] has become to us wisdom from God.'”

—1 Corinthians 1:30

Man’s intellect seeks after rest and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Men of education are apt, even when converted, to look upon the simplicities of the cross of Christ with less reverence and love as they should. They are snared in the old net in which the Greeks were taken, tending to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation for those of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of “Christ crucified” and to invent, as it is sometimes put, a more intellectual doctrine. This led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism and all sorts of heresies. This is the root of Neology and other ideas which were so fashionable in Germany some years ago– and which to this day ensnare certain religious groups.

Whoever you are, dear reader, and whatever your education may be, if you belong to the Lord, be assured you will find no rest in philosophizing divinity. You may receive the teaching of one great thinker or the dream from another profound reasoner, but, as the chaff is to the wheat, so these postulations will be to the pure word of God. All that even the best-guided reason can do is find out the A-B-C’s of truth, and even that lacks certainty. But in Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fullness of wisdom and knowledge.

All attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian and Liberal-Church thinkers would approve of must fail. True heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the farmer’s eye flash with joy and gladdens the heart of the poor– “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when he is believingly received, but apart from him the mind of the regenerate discovers no rest. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Those that keep his commandments have a good understanding. [M&E]