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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Corinthians 4:20 - 4:20
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20. οὐ γὰρ ἐν λόγῳ. See note on ch. 1Co 1:5. Like our words sermon and discourse, the word λόγος contains within itself the notion of matter and oral delivery. Of what the Apostle meant by power, we are scarcely fit judges. We have been too familiar with them from childhood to be able to comprehend what power the Apostles’ words must have had upon the hearts and lives of those who heard them. We may gain some slight idea by comparing them with the best passages of the earliest Christian writers after the Apostles; and still more by comparing them with the utterances of the Greek sophists and dialecticians of the time. The kingdom of God, St Paul would remind his hearers, i. e. His sovereignty over the human heart, is not simply an affair of the intellect, but of the spirit. It does not consist merely in the acceptance or establishment of certain propositions, but in influence over the life and conscience.