“You Have Hidden These Things From the Wise and Prudent and Have Revealed Them to Babes.”

“You Have Hidden These Things From the Wise and Prudent and Have Revealed Them to Babes.”

Part 1

How can it be that He hides His wisdom from the wise? Has wisdom become divided against itself? Not at all! Because then wisdom would not be wise after all. The explanation is this: He has hidden His wisdom from those who imagine, think, and reckon that they are wise. They are absolutely not wise and understanding when it concerns God’s kingdom and salvation.

Man’s reasoning and natural talents, his intelligence, are not profitable for anything but earthly things. They tempt their owners to unbelief, to entertain exalted thoughts about themselves, to opposition and objections on all sides, to rebellion, insubordination, and disobedience to all of God’s commands.

When you think that you are wiser than God in this way, then it has been firmly and lawfully decided from God’s side that seven strong, unbreakable seals seal His kingdom and the greatness of His salvation, His glory, and His immeasurable, abundant content, in addition to the way to it.

However, just as it is impossible for such people to look into it and partake of it, so He is just as disposed to reveal Himself to “the babes,” which means to those who in their own eyes are babes as far as the glory of God’s kingdom is concerned, even though they were among the most mature as far as this world is concerned.

The American and the English bible translations read “babes” instead of “immature.”1

The Swedish Bible translation reads “simple,” and the French reads, “children.”

A person is immature or a minor until he is twenty-one years old. You are usually considered to be a child until you have reached confirmation age,2 and after they have reached that point, they generally think they are smarter than their parents. Such teenaged boys and girls also usually have their own opinions and something they want to say in opposition to their father and mother and others, and before they have even come of age, they begin to criticize their teachers.

However, then they are not simple; therefore the Swedish translation is very significant. And how excellent and absolutely unambiguous the American and the English translations are!

God’s grace was certainly over them when it was a matter of choosing a translation that hit the mark. What a direct hit! This is how it is in truth, in practice, in reality. Only such people, regardless of age, intelligence or position in this world, who humble themselves to where they truly belong, acknowledging that they have as little understanding of the glory of God’s kingdom and the way to it as a baby, a little child, an infant—God reveals His way and His glory only to them. This goes according to God’s laws, as does everything else. God is a God of order.

A person’s natural understanding is the main enemy of his happiness when he applies it in opposition to God’s Word and God’s way.

Let us take just a few examples, and it will become clear:

1) Generosity. What hinders it and limits it? Our reasoning. People say, “You have to use your reason!”

2.) Suffering unjustly (not using a lawyer—1 Cor. 6:1). What keeps me from suffering unjustly? What is it that compels me to hire a lawyer? My reasoning. “It is meaningless for me to suffer such injustice, and that the case should be resolved in favor of such a person, someone who absolutely does not deserve it! I am not going to agree to that.” Human reasoning rejects God’s Word, God’s wisdom.

3) Who says that the so-called innocent party can remarry while the divorced spouse is still alive? Hopefully you are not in doubt about it, dear reader? It is human reasoning that is at work again. It couldn’t possibly be the intentions, could it, that the “innocent” party should have to suffer for it? Tell me, you who think you are so smart that you have the authority to decide in this matter in direct opposition to God’s Word. Was it also meaningless that Christ had to suffer such cruel injustice???

4) Who has come up with the idea of family planning? Who has explained that it is good, a manifestation of love? Human reasoning, of course. “It is meaningless that . . . .” This is what that good and authoritative human reasoning decides. Our brains are meant to be used, they say. God’s Word, God’s wisdom, God’s power, and God’s goodness are just trivialities compared to this mighty, wise, human reasoning!!!

5) Submission. For instance, the wife under her husband. What and who excludes, hinders and minimizes it? You are not in the least in doubt about that, are you? They say, “Should I be in submission to him the way he acts, as thoughtless as he is, etc., etc.? That would really be something. If he were different, then it would be possible.”

Has not He, who is God over all things, decided in His unspeakable wisdom that it should be like that?

Human reasoning is so brash that it compels most people to rebel against God and His Word. It thinks it is more understanding than God Himself.