There are some heretical preachers I have listened to lately who lay claim to knowing some things which others do not.  They proclaim secrets which few can understand, or so they believe.  There is no value here is recounting these secrets as they come from the devil himself (Rev 2:24).  Here I am more interested in why such men have many followers.  To understand this we must begin at the beginning.  When Adam and Eve were first created they were told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because on the day they ate of it they would surely die (Gen 2:17).  But the serpent came to tempt Eve and claimed that she would surely not die (Gen 3:4).  The serpent is the devil who is the father of lies (John 8:44).  What he implied by questioning what God had spoken to the first humans is that God does not tell the whole truth.  He leaves out some things which they really needed to know.  The forbidden tree was, the serpent claimed, the way to knowing the things which only God knows, that is, good and evil.  If only the people would eat its fruit they would become like God.  “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it” (Gen 3:6).  The tree which was forbidden seemed so desirable because the serpent lied and said that it held out promise to reveal the secrets which God was not willingly telling them.

Ever since that day human beings have yearned after secrets.  People love secrets; gossip is something exciting because it is about other people’s secrets.  Christians also seem to love secrets, but are drawn to supposed spiritual secrets.  What is wrong with wanting to know spiritual secrets?  There are some things which human beings are not created to know (Deut 29:29).  Like Adam and Eve seeking out what is forbidden we desire to know what has not been revealed by God.  This is the same fundamental sin as it was in the first garden, a failure to believe that the God who created us loves us and is truthful.  We continue to disbelieve the word of God to us and imagine that there is something which God is unwilling to let us know but which we need to know.  So Christians are sucked into listening to heresy, because they do not trust that God is both truthful and good.

The New Testament indicates the particular truth that even Christians seem bent on bypassing if possible.  In Matthew 11:25-27 Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.  All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”  There are two kinds of people: those from whom the things of God are hidden, and those to whom the kingdom of God is revealed.  The wise and learned are clever and want to find out the secrets for themselves.  They desire to discover God without Jesus.  But this is precisely the problem since no one can know the Father except the Son and the ones to whom the Son reveals him.  In other words, if we want to know the things of God, we must be like little children who know that we can never bypass Jesus.

What exactly is it about Jesus that we want to avoid?  In Matt 16:13-20 Simon has his named changed by Jesus because he had received a revelation from the Father that Jesus is the Christ.  This was no doubt a powerful revelation of the truth, but is seems that Simon, now Peter, did not want to accept exactly what this meant.  Not long after this Jesus told his disciples that he had to suffer and die.  “And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’  But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan!  You are a hindrance to me.  For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man’” (Matt. 16:22-23).  Peter was happy to know the secret that Jesus is the Christ but he certainly wanted to bypass the cross.

1 Corinthians 2 provides a similar insight.  “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.  But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.  None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”–these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.  For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:6-10).

There are secrets which God has hidden in the past, yet they are not secrets which can be revealed only by certain teachers.  Rather they are secrets which are now revealed to the people of God through the Spirit of God, who searches the depths of God.  Looking to the wider context of this passage shows us what this now revealed, secret wisdom of God is.

“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.  For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’  Where is the one who is wise?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.  For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:18-25).

The wisdom of God is revealed in the cross of Christ.  It appears foolishness to the world, but wisdom to the spiritual.  This may be the key as to why many Christians are drawn to listening to the heresies which proclaim God’s so-called secrets.  The cross appears to be foolishness.  Paul writes, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom” (2:6), but the Corinthians were not mature.  “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ” (1 Cor. 3:1).  This is why he had to remind them that his preaching is always about Christ and him crucified (2:2).  What is happening, then, among many Christians is that they are immature and still yearn after secrets, because they do not understand the cross and think it to be foolishness.

The appeal of the heretical preachers who proclaim the secret things is that they offer a means of living the Christian life which bypasses the cross.  This is of course nothing short of magic.[1]  The work of God is always accomplished by the cross and resurrection of Jesus.