The Image of God

Genesis 1:26-27 tells of the creation of man:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The scripture leaves no doubt that man was created in the image of God. The Hebrew word for image here means bearing a resemblance, or being a representative figure. The word likeness used in verse 26 means resemblance – in like manner. Man was a model of God, created by God to have like characteristics and manners.

This leads to several questions of great importance to our faith. How we view the original state of our first parents and their state subsequent to the fall into sin impacts our understanding of justification and the work of Christ. These very first chapters of scripture set the ground work for all that is to come.

Life Before Sin

In this original state of creation, Adam and Eve bore the image of God. What does this mean? God is without sin, so it is safe to assume that they were also without sin. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that they were innocents. There was no concept of sin in their world.

It seems that they maintained an open relationship with God prior to the fall. They were in the garden, in direct relationship with God, without shame. There was no condemnation there. This is a good indication that there was no sin present in the Garden, because God cannot abide with sin. They lived in harmony with God and used all that he had given them without questions of conscience. In fact, in that environment they had no need to distinguish good from evil. Our first parents were morally neutral.

Rebellion or Deception?

If this is indeed the picture that scripture paints of life in Eden, the next question we must ask is this; did Adam and Eve intentionally rebel against God in the fall or were they deceived into sin by the serpent? Witness this conversation from Genesis 3:13:

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Now we’ve probably all heard many sermons about how Eve is simply blame-shifting when she says this. But that is something which is read into the text from a post-fall mindset. Suppose there was no attempt to blame-shift at all and Eve is stating the fact that she was simply deceived into sinning. What if there was no overt thought or intent of rebellion in their hearts at all but they were, in their innocence, truly deceived by the serpent? They saw something that appealed to them which they had been told not to eat, but here was the serpent lying to them about God’s intentions and they bought the lie - not in any kind of malicious way, but simply out of their inability to distinguish ‘good from evil’. (Keep in mind that this was indeed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, again indicating that such knowledge had not previously existed.)

By the way, this understanding of the fall is upheld by the writing of Paul. In 1 Timothy 2:13-14 he states:

For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Adam and Eve were deceived into transgression. Through this deception they became transgressors, not the other way around.

A Counterfeit Image

Returning to the original point about man being made in the image of God, the next question that must be asked is how much of that image remained after the fall? If scripture is to be believed (along with a quick survey of human nature) we would have to conclude that very little survived.

It would seem in some ways that the fall of Adam and Eve was an ‘upward’ fall. The serpent had told them the half-truth in his deception that they would become ‘like God, knowing good from evil’ (Genesis 3:5).  But the knowledge of good and evil did not make them ‘like God’ at all; rather it made them independent of God and in the exertion of this independence they began to compete with God as perverse ‘god’s’ to themselves. The true image was broken and replaced with a counterfeit image of man as his own god.

Evidence of this is everywhere in scripture. Far from being the image-bearers of God, mankind “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:21-23)

It is hard to find any evidence in scripture that very much of God’s image survived the fall. Mankind was plunged under the dominion of sin and became its slave (Romans 6). Men loved the darkness rather than God’s light (John 3:19-20). Natural innocence and communion with God was lost. Condemnation and a wicked conscience became a way of life.

Why All of This Matters

This stuff matters because it has a great amount of influence on how we value the work of Christ. If we believe that we reflect God’s image but have been slightly tarnished by sin, God’s redemption will have little value to us. We will (reasonably) settle for limited amounts of ‘sprucing ourselves up’ to the danger of our eternal souls.

If on the other hand (as I believe is a more accurately represented in scripture) we understand that the nature of Adam reflects very little of God’s image, we come to understand that God is not in the business of ‘spiritual makeovers’.  That old nature must die and be replaced by a new nature – one that once again represents the image of God as we are conformed to the image of His son. The work of redemption becomes humanly impossible – no amount of sprucing up can ever be enough – and so the work of Christ becomes the only answer to our sin. Christ becomes all to us.

One of the things that makes scripture difficult to understand is that our thinking has been clouded by the effects of the fall. We look at Genesis 1-3 as those who have never known and cannot relate to life without the knowledge of good and evil. It is natural for us to assume that our first parents acted out of an evil conscience. It is also natural for us to assume that we can make amends for their sin by being ‘good’. The understanding that the problem was brought about by forces at work that are beyond our power and reasoning brings us to the place where we turn away from our power and reasoning for the answer. We must turn to God’s power and reasoning.

That is the gospel truth.

Godward Thinking

The Struggle

I have been struggling for a couple of weeks now. The struggle has been against an invasive thought that crept into my mind through several teachings and sermons that I heard. The message that came creeping was this: grace is not enough. You are too concerned with being and not enough with doing. You cannot rely solely on the finished work of Christ.

Forensic Evaluation

I guess the first question that must be answered is why I tolerate this. If I could answer that question, doubt would never be a problem. When I can clearly keep law and gospel separated as black and white in my mind, all is well. But when I allow a little bit of law to bleed into the gospel or vice versa, I find that Paul’s advice to the Galatians rings true today; a little leaven leavens the whole lump. I must learn to struggle against this with all my might, because it just shipwrecks my faith. All of the confidence that I have in Christ - my true identity in Christ - comes crashing down and I am left with just my pathetic self again.

If I study the problem forensically, I can see how it compounds in my life. First, I am exposed to some little bit of law which is preached as grace. The tiniest check comes in my spirit that whispers, “See, I told you it wasn’t all about Christ”. Of course that is the voice of the accuser who wants nothing more than for me to believe it. I immediately begin to lose my boldness. I find myself unable to speak with confidence of the things of God. I find that preaching the gospel to myself - even hearing the pure gospel preached by others - does not remove that seed of doubt. I even find myself not wanting to fellowship with others; becoming very short-tempered and self-absorbed. This is not the worst of it.

The worst of it is this; the Word of God starts sounding to me like law, law, law. I go to the scripture in the morning and I find absolutely no comfort there. I read “I am the Lord your God” and all I hear is thunder and rumbling and trumpet blasts. I find myself once again trying to dodge the lightning bolts from Sinai. My most trusted source of security – the very place I go to be reassured that I an accepted and secure in my relationship with God only through faith in Christ – becomes a hammer that tries to smash me to pulp at every turn. I find that I cannot rightly divide the Word of truth in thought or living.

Man-ward Thinking

This is man-ward thinking. This is what happens when we view God from our own sin-stained, guilt-ridden human perspective. When our minds are set on the idea that righteousness comes by the law we never have a moment’s peace or rest. The relationship with God becomes a tremendous burden to us. I shudder to think that I lived this way for nearly 20 years!

I am grateful that I was able to share this with a group of my brothers and sisters. Admitting it lifted a burden from me. I don’t need to try and fake it with these folks. I can tell them that I am struggling. I can admit that I am no spiritual giant; that my spiritual life is completely reliant upon Christ and that when I allow law to creep into that relationship it is spoiled. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much of an admission, but it set me free again. Yesterday morning when I turned to the scriptures I found the words “I am the Lord your God” not as a threat but as a promise. Grace covered the pages again.

Guarding Faith

We must be very choosy about what we allow into our minds. There is much teaching out there today that mixes law and grace (as there always has been). If any teaching or preaching lays a burden on you without also clearly telling you that Christ has taken that burden, that teacher is not rightly dividing the word of God. Good teaching and preaching should cause you to want to run to the light of Christ, not hide in the darkness from the violence of Sinai. Again, Paul’s warning to the Galatians serves as good advice to us:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. (Gal 1:6-8, ESV)

Each of us should train ourselves to sense when we are hearing a different gospel – one that is not rooted in the grace of Christ. Learn to turn it off, regardless of who is preaching. When you hear that little whisper of the enemy that tells you Christ’s work on Calvary is insufficient to cover your sin, shut it down. It may sound silly, but confront him. Ask him this; if Christ’s work is not sufficient, what is? What can I do that the Son of God could not? What can I add to my justification that the Son of God has not already provided? If Christ is not enough, what work must I do to be saved? Even the enemy must answer that there is nothing that can be done.

We must guard our faith jealously from any who would try to steal it. They don’t do it intentionally, but often because they are ignorant or deceived. We then must take responsibility for our own faith and learn to rightly divide the word so that we can develop a God-ward way of thinking that can resist the attacks of the enemy. That is the gospel truth.

Hebrews 11 – Broken Heroes

Sermon manuscript from Sunday, April 21, 2013. Preached at Pioneer Baptist, Neosho.

Introduction

This morning we are going to look at Hebrews Chapter 11. This is a familiar passage of scripture to many of us where the writer of Hebrews gives us a sketch outline of the history of Israel played out through the lives of individuals. We often call it the “Heroes of Faith”.

This chapter, like all scripture, can be read in one of two ways. We can view it through our own eyes – concentrating on the human perspective – or through the eyes of God concentrating on His perspective. I think this passage is most often read and preached from the human perspective, which is what leads us to think of the people featured here as ‘heroes’ of faith. We can easily think that it was the extraordinary faith of these individuals that led them to great exploits on behalf of the Lord. But in doing so we betray the fact that we subtly, if not out rightly, think of faith as something that we manufacture. We forget the great truth of Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

You see, faith is the gift of God. It is God himself who grants us faith when he issues us promise. In our case, that promise is the glorious truth of the gospel, which we believe because we can rest assured that the one who made that promise is faithful and reliable. But if we study, we can see that each of those mentioned in Hebrews Chapter 11 was also made a promise which birthed faith in them. This chapter is not meant to highlight extraordinary people, but an extraordinary God who works through broken heroes.

What is faith and where does it come from?

The writer begins the chapter by providing a definition of faith:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Faith is much more than just hope or belief. Faith is an assurance of God’s promises that is based on knowledge of the character of God. Faith does not look to the circumstances of one’s life for assurance. To live by faith is to know that our assurance, security and stability are in Christ alone regardless of our circumstances. Faith does not even rely on the heart, but on the promise of God. Faith believes that Christ is sufficient even when the heart condemns, as John points out in 1 John 3:19-20:

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

Only faith in Jesus Christ can give us the assurance that our sins are forgiven and we have fellowship with God even when our own hearts condemn us. This kind of faith causes us to abide in Christ, and abiding in Him we will bare much fruit, even as our ‘heroes’ did.

As we read Hebrews 11, we will notice over and over again that the writer the little phrase ‘by faith’. It is of extreme importance that we understand what is meant by that phrase, and we touched on this in the introduction. Faith is the gift of God. Faith is not a natural quality in mankind; it is something which is created by God through the issuance of a promise.

In John chapter 6:63-65, Jesus told his disciples:

“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

There is no stumbling into faith. There is no struggling into faith. Faith cannot be achieved by any work or effort of our own. Faith is granted to us through the promise that God speaks to us. Our faith, like the heavens and earth themselves, is spoken into existence by God. This is why Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 that:

…faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Faith is an absolute assurance that God keeps His promises and draws its strength from its object – which is God – not from itself. The people mentioned in Hebrews 11 did not have unusually strong faith, but their faith was rooted in the character of God and not the circumstances surrounding them. Sinclair Ferguson said:

True faith takes its character and quality from its object and not from itself. Faith gets a man out of himself and into Christ. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!

I think we need to approach Hebrews chapter 11 (and the rest of scripture for that matter) from this Christ-ward perspective if we are going to understand it. If we look at these ‘heroes’ from a strictly human perspective, we are apt to become discouraged thinking that our faith pales in comparison to theirs. But when we look at them with the understanding that faith is the gift of God and draws its strength from the character of God and not our own, we can begin to see our heroes as broken and faltering people like ourselves that God used to accomplish his great purposes. It might be helpful to read through Hebrews 11 replacing the phrase ‘by faith’ with ‘by God’s gift of faith’.

Like us, each of the people outlined in Hebrews 11 received a promise from God. Their faith, far from being a natural ability or something they could muster, was created by God through that promise:

1. (V.7) Noah built the ark having been ‘warned’ by God of the coming flood.
2. (V8-12) Abraham was promised an inheritance in the Promised Land and as many descendants as the stars in the sky.
3. (V11) Sarah was told that she would have a baby boy.
4. (V29) The people of Israel were told to cross the Red Sea on dry land.
5. (V30) Joshua was instructed to bring down the walls of Jericho with marching and a trumpet blast.

We might ask what special qualities these ‘heroes’ had that caused God to select them?

Faith, being a gift, cannot be earned. Paul uses Abraham to illustrate this point in the opening Romans chapter 4:

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…

Basically God made Abraham a promise which Abraham believed, and God credit that belief – that faith – to Abraham as righteousness. God did not choose Abraham to be the father of a great nation because of some particular quality in Abraham.

Even a quick study of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 reveals that they were far from perfect. There appears to be nothing particularly special about any of them, and in many cases they were not naturally gifted to suit their calling. None of them earned their righteousness before God, but like us they received the gift of faith that God offered them through His promises – faith that was credited to them as righteousness:

1. We are told in Genesis 6:9 that Noah “was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” But in verse 12 we are told that “God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” Was Noah not part of the all in all flesh? So was Noah selected by God because he was a blameless man, or was Noah given faith in God through the promise of God which was then credited to him as righteousness?
2. Abraham lied twice about his marriage to Sarah. He took his wife’s servant as a wife to bare him children despite the promise of God that he would have numerous descendants.
3. Sarah, when told by God that she would have a son in her post-menopausal years, laughed.
4. Moses – called to lead the people of Israel – was self-admittedly slow of speech and had some serious anger management issues.
5. (V31) Rahab – called of God to hide the Israelite spies in Jericho – was a prostitute.
6. (V32) David – called a man after God’s own heart – was a murderer and adulterer.

God’s favor and calling are never earned. God does not choose to give faith to any of us on the basis of merit. In fact, there is nothing we can do as sinful people to impress God at all. God seldom selects people on the basis of their natural gifting. Perhaps the greatest evangelist of all time – the Apostle Paul – said of himself in 2 Corinthians 11:6 that he was “unskilled in speaking.” In fact God often chooses to use us in the very place where we are weak so that His glory will show through more clearly. As he told Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul, another of our ‘heroes’ of the faith, described his missionary exploits among the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 in this way:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 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, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Here is a man bring used greatly of God to expand the early church who says that he was among those he preached to in weakness and fear and much trembling. Hardly an obvious choice for someone who will spend nearly his entire life in public ministry. And yet he was tremendously successful as a missionary. If Paul had been reliant upon his natural gifts and abilities, he would have run away from all that God had in store for him. But he walked by faith and not by sight.

How much did our ‘heroes’ rely on their experience of God’s faithfulness?

I think that part of the reason that we become confused about faith is that we often place faith in what we anticipate God will do rather than in the character of God himself. We base our faith on our past experiences with God. We expect God to come through for us in certain ways, and when that doesn’t happen we often become disillusioned.

One of the interesting things about Hebrews 11 is that so many of the people God chose had to live by faith in His promise alone for long periods of time. They had no experience on which to base their faith.

1. It took Noah nearly 100 years to build the ark. This was getting up morning by morning and sawing, planing and joining thousands of board feet of lumber. He did all of this never having seen a single raindrop, let alone a flood. He did not even have experience of the promised events, let alone God saving him through those events.
2. Abraham and Sarah were ‘as good as dead’ when they were promised a son within a years’ time. Abraham lived 25 years between the promise of God that he would become a great nation and the birth of his heir.
3. The scripture says that ‘the way of women’ had passed for Sarah. No wonder she laughed at the promise! Her experience not only told her that what God was promising was unusual, but impossible!
4. The writer says that ‘by faith’ Moses observed the Passover in Egypt. There was no previous experience on which to base his observance of this extremely odd practice. By any standard, this was an outrageous request. But Moses accepted the promise of God and ‘by faith’ the Israelites were spared.

All of that is to say that these people trusted the word of God. They did not look to experience to tell them that God was trustworthy. They trusted His character alone. Not that they never doubted, but their faith was not in the outcome looking forward, but in God’s character. They walked by faith and not by sight.

Until we can look to God’s promises alone – backed by the character of the one who makes the promises – we will ever look to our circumstances and past experience to guide us. If any of these people in Hebrews 11 had ultimately allowed themselves to trust their circumstances, culture or past performance rather than trusting the promise which God had made them, they very well may have never accomplished what God had called them to.

This kind of faith gave them an outlook on life which the writer describes in verse 13 as acknowledging that “they were strangers and exiles in the earth.” They held a unique God-ward view of the world which did not count their circumstances as being greater than the character of God. They did not play by the rules that the world set forth. By faith, they played by God’s rules alone. Nothing truly shook their faith because it was anchored in that rock-solid, unmovable character.

What qualifies us to become ‘heroes’ of faith and do great things for God?

So we see that our ‘heroes’ were not so different from ourselves. They were sinful people too. But they were held by this faith in the unshakable character of God. We are often held by the shakable hope that ‘everything is going to work out ok’. In truth, everything does work out ok, but when we have pre-conceived notions of what ‘ok’ means, we will often be disappointed by this kind of faith. Faith in Christ’s character never disappoints because, as the writer tells us in chapter 13, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” When we build our hope on anything less than Christ’s pure blood and righteousness, we are bound to be horribly disappointed.

One thing I think Charles and I strongly agree about is that a weak gospel message produces weak faith. I already quoted Paul this morning, saying: my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Too often today, what passes as gospel is really a message of reliance upon our own perceived goodness. We teach people to look inside themselves for answers which are not there. We train them to rely upon their works as a means of satisfying God. We speak ‘plausible words of wisdom’ to them and then are surprised when their faith rests upon that wisdom. This is not the faith of Hebrews chapter 11. That faith comes by a presentation of the promise of God with a demonstration of the Spirit and Power and rests on the power of God.

As I said in the first point this morning, faith is the gift of God that is created by hearing the promise of God. I will do my best to present that promise without human wisdom. The promise is this:

Jesus Christ became our sin on the cross at Calvary and died as sin, defeating sin. He then rose from the dead, defeating death. He has become the righteousness of God for any who believe. We are a sinful people, far from God’s righteousness. If we wish to have peace with God, we must become perfectly righteous. Because we are sinners by birth, we can never do that. Which is why Christ lived a life of perfect righteousness in our place and died in our place to pay the penalty for our sin. Heroes of the faith are not perfect people. Heroes of the faith are people who hear the promise of God and receive it with faith. The promise is that if we place our faith in the work of Jesus Christ rather than our own work we will have eternal life. God’s promise to each of you is that if you will receive Jesus Christ as your righteousness you will inherit eternal life.

Those of you who are already believers need to hear this every bit as much as unbelievers. No matter how long you’ve been a Christian, faith still comes by hearing. If you are weary, struggling with circumstances, with a culture, with a heart that beats you up, remember – God is greater than all of these things. He made you a promise, and you can trust that promise because of the one who made it.

This is all God’s doing. If your heart is stirred this morning, that is God’s doing. Do not allow yourself to be deceived into hardening your heart. Let the promise create faith anew or renew your faith right now.

Foolishness?

Today is April fool’s day. Paul uses the terms ‘fool’, ‘foolish’ and ‘folly” frequently in the book of 1 Corinthians. His purpose was to show us that this world considers God’s wisdom foolishness, but also that this world’s wisdom is foolishness to God.

I’ve been on this soap box before. I do not like to hear Christians use the term ‘common sense’ in any context. I especially dislike that term being used from the pulpit (I have not heard it used from a pulpit in a while, unless you consider Facebook a pulpit). But it is absolutely necessary for us to understand, as believers, what common sense is and how dangerous it is.

Paul begins in chapter 1 at verse 18:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Now to those of us who have been believers for some time, the word of the cross (I read this as ‘the gospel’) seems like common sense, not foolishness. We often cannot understand why this is not apparent to our unsaved family and friends. It’s so simple. We have become comfortable with God’s wisdom and so it seems somewhat natural to us. But in reality it is anything but natural. It is anything but common sense. If it were obtainable by the use of common sense, everyone would be saved, because everyone has common sense. Paul tells us that to those who rely on common sense, this ‘power of God’ is foolishness.

You see, common sense is what Paul refers to as the wisdom of the world in verse 20 when he asks, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” Common sense is the wisdom of the world. Paul continues in verse 21 to say that this world did not know God through its wisdom and that God was pleased to save men through the foolishness of the gospel. Common sense is not the wisdom of God – the wisdom of God is the foolishness of the gospel.

It always amazes me to hear a Christian brother or sister comment on some poor lost soul’s behavior as being caused by a lack of common sense. I can look at the same person and see that their self-destructive lifestyle is completely attributable to their living according to the wisdom of this world. The more we exercise common sense, the worse off we become. I think a lot of this misunderstanding comes as a result of minimizing the fall of Adam and Eve. We are told that they were created ‘in the image of God’. It therefore stands to reason, to us, that common sense is God-given – that the way we naturally think is the product of this image. But we fail to realize how completely our first parent’s fall into sin corrupted the image of God in human kind. Scripture leaves little doubt that very little of that image survived. This extends to our way of thinking. The fall of mankind was the beginning of ‘the wisdom of this world’. Being born with corrupt minds, we can never on our own recognize common sense for what it is – the wisdom of this world.

In chapter 3, verse 18-19, Paul returns to the subject once again:

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.

If anyone desires to rely upon common sense to tell them what is right and what is wrong, they had better seek to become a fool; a fool according to the gospel, which is God’s wisdom. For the wisdom of this world – what we often refer to as common sense – is foolishness to God.

Christ died to set us free from the wisdom of this world. We, as believers, live as people free from the worldly Adam-born concept of common sense. We are free to serve as we please, to give as we please, to offer our lives as we please. We are free to die in the act of advancing the foolishness of the gospel if we please. What place does common sense play in any of that? None. Common sense will tell you that all of that is foolishness. That should tell you something about the origin common sense.

Today is April fool’s day. If you are relying on the wisdom of this world today, for the sake of the one who died that you might be forgiven your sins become a fool. For only as you abandon this world’s ‘common sense’ will you begin to live according to the wisdom of God. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless.