Know Nothing but Christ

“How did you keep from despairing during my two years of spiritual highs and lows? a friend asked. Through God’s grace she had gained spiritual stability and now was trying to help another new Christian. Watching the new convert stumble, she wondered how to keep from despairing.

“First of all, I’m not going to say that I always kept faith for you,” I admitted. “But the Lord helped me to say nothing if I lacked assurance. However, my focus was not on you. My concern was, ‘Am I pleasing Christ in this relationship?’ I wanted to be sensitive to God. What did He want me to say to you?”

Soon after that conversation I read 1 Corinthians 2 and noticed that Paul also had desired to know that he pleased God in his relationship with the Corinthian Christians. “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.”

He could have said, “I came not to you with great intellectual wisdom and insight, analyzing your needs and giving you wise advice.” Instead, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” His focus was not on the Corinthians but on Christ.

In verse 6, Paul states that the mature in Christ recognized the wisdom in his words. Because he relied only on Christ, he was enabled to come in the wisdom of Christ.

Dear Jesus, help me to remember that the most important thing for me to do in any relationship is to seek to please You.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).