In the Power of God
1 Corinthians 2:3-5 "And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."
Paul ends his case at the start of this letter by saying something most preachers wouldn’t advertise about themselves. He was, with the Corinthians, in weakness. In fear. In much trembling. The most influential apostle of the first century, the one whose letters fill most of the New Testament, looks at the church he planted in the city of Corinth and confesses that he came to them feeling small.
His speech and his message, he says, were in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. And he tells them why he did it that way. So that their faith wouldn’t rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. This is one of the deepest pastoral comforts in the New Testament.
We’ve spent this week walking through 1 Corinthians 1:18 through 2:5. We’ve watched Rosaria Butterfield carried over two years of dinners from finding the cross foolish to receiving it as the power of God. We’ve watched Sojourner Truth, born a slave the world had filed under nothing, take a new name from God Himself and become a voice the nineteenth century couldn’t ignore. We’ve watched a fifteen-year-old Charles Spurgeon, caught in a Colchester snowstorm, converted by a lay preacher who couldn’t even pronounce his text. We’ve read about a cross the Romans found shameful and the Greeks found ridiculous, becoming, for those whom God has called, the wisdom of God and the power of God.
And here, Paul tells us why all of it works.
What is actually holding your faith today isn’t the eloquence of Bayside's pulpit. It isn’t the persuasiveness of the argument that finally landed. It isn’t the perfection of your last spiritual experience or the quality of your spiritual reasoning. What is holding your faith, says Paul, is the demonstration of the Spirit and the power of God.
This means your faith is as secure as the Spirit Himself.
The same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters in Genesis 1, who came upon the disciples in the upper room on Pentecost, who "raised Christ Jesus from the dead" (Rom 8:11), is the One actually holding your believing right now. Romans 1:16 says it directly: the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Not the power of the preacher. Not the power of the rhetoric. The power of God. Paul will later tell the Thessalonians that their reception of the gospel came not only in word, "but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction" (1 Thess 1:5).
The thing keeping you a Christian is the same thing that opened your eyes to the cross in the first place. The Spirit's work. The Father's calling. The Son's finished obedience on a Roman tree. Your faith is held up by the foundation of His power, not by the bricks of your effort.
So we walk into worship this morning as people whose faith rests where Paul said it must rest. On God. Not on Bayside. Not on the band. Not on the sermon, however good it may be today. Not on the people sitting around us. On God. We come together to live, love, and give like Jesus because the Christ who lives in us by His Spirit is the One actually doing the living and the loving and the giving through us. The verbs of the Christian life were never finally ours.
This is why gathering matters. It matters because we’re coming together to be reminded of what is true. And it doesn’t crush us because the truth is not finally riding on our being there at full strength. We come emptied, and the Spirit fills the room.
Today: Show up to worship with one thing in mind. Your faith rests on God. Sing the songs as a person who hasn’t had to manufacture the music. Listen to the Word as a person whose Christian life isn’t held together by your understanding of every sentence. Pray with the brothers and sisters around you as a person who’s been carried this far by a Spirit who hasn’t stopped working.
When you walk out of the building today, walk out settled. The wisdom is His. The righteousness is His. The sanctification is His. The redemption is His. The cross is His. The Spirit is His. The faith resting on it all is His gift to you.
Yours, finally, is the joy of receiving Him.
Prayer: "Father, I worship You for a faith that doesn’t rest on me. We thank You for Your Spirit, who has been doing the work in my heart that I didn’t even know was being done. Make me a saint whose only confidence is in You, whose only boast is in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, who walks into worship as one being carried by Your unfailing power. In Jesus' name, Amen."
-PK