Why all this situation in Corinth? Why this declension, this spiritual decline, why? This state of things... why these quarrels and contentions and schisms and divisions and this constant expression of the ego? “I am of Paul! I am of Apollos! I am of Israel...” I! For every one of you professes “I”, every one of you says “I”! That’s a type of humanity. It's the humanity of Selfness, of the ego, of the assertion of man’s soul, and you know what the assertion of the soul is or what the soul is, look again. In this letter you’ve got it so clearly defined. They’re craving for worldly wisdom. We know all that the apostle has to say right at the beginning of the letter about the wisdom of this world.
The wisdom of this world... why talk to these people so much about the wisdom of this world? Oh, because they’re very interested in the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of this world (philosophy if you like but that’s too technical a term) natural, soulical wisdom... the wisdom of the soul which is just the intellectual realm to begin with, intellectual Christianity. It covers a lot of ground, a lot of things. But just this, this projecting of the mind into things with its thousand and one, more than eleven questions; curiosity and interest you know, and playing with Scripture in a mental way... going out in the natural mind into the realm of the things of God. And the apostles had something to say about that. The intellectual side of the soul, an intellectual Christianity, a mental thing after all. After all, interest in Christian things, in Christian truth, in the Bible; all has to do with Christianity, an interest that is merely mental interest. Not only that, but you go from the intellectual and you find yourself immediately in the next sentence in another aspect of the soul, that is: the desire for power.
T.A Sparks
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