Introduction
Honestly, I
love the ministry God has entrusted to me. I don’t just preach or opine from afar.
I don’t present ivory tower philosophies with no idea if they work in real life
or not. I know my lessons are accessed by a large cross-section of people in
many different cultures around the world. I don’t know how they affect everyone
who reads them, but I tend to experience the fallout of my lessons at opposing
ends of the belief spectrum. On one end of the spectrum are those who read my
lessons and reject God out of hand as a foolish superstition reserved for the ignorant
or weak. On the other end of the spectrum are those who have nowhere else to
turn. The way and wisdom of the world and their own strength and intelligence
has left them broken, bloodied, and laying in life’s ditch on the side of the
road. For those people, God’s power to save them was the only thing left to
turn to. God has blessed me with the opportunity to interact with people at
both ends of the belief spectrum and every time I do, the truth of the
Scriptures come alive for me. People who reject God today sound just like the
people who rejected God that are recorded in the Scriptures generally and the
New Testament more specifically. And time and again the Scriptures tell the
stories of people who have run out of options; used up all their own wisdom;
found out that no one else’s wisdom is any better, and have finally turned to
God where they found direction for their dead-end lives. When nothing and no
one was able to save them from their hopeless lives, God was there with the
power to save them. People during the New Testament era didn’t appear to be all
that different from people today when they believed that a God who died on a
cross as a means to save people was viewed as foolishness by people who fancied
themselves wise. However, those who were being saved were also not very different
from those being saved today. For those who have tasted God’s salvation, there
is nothing sweeter than The Wisdom Of
God’s Foolishness.
Subject Text
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
18For
the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is
the power of God. 19For it is written: “I will
destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will
frustrate.” 20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For
since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not
know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand
miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but
we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to
Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom
God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the
foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. 26Brothers,
think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you
were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not
many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things
of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of
this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to
nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore,
as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Context
Overlooking the city was the Temple
of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Although the temple was in ruins during
Paul’s time, the successors to the 1,000 cult prostitutes of days gone by were
nevertheless still busy plying their trade in the streets below the Temple when
Paul traveled there. However, prostitution fails to capture the complete
picture of Corinth as a city with an unsavory atmosphere. Modern archaeological
excavations have also unearthed 33 wine shops with living spaces above them
that likely housed some of those prostitutes. Corinth “had a reputation for
commercial prosperity, but she was also a byword of evil living. The very
[Greek] word korinthiazesthai, [meaning]
to live like a Corinthian, had become part of the Greek language, and meant to
live with drunken and immoral debauchery…The very name Corinth was synonymous
with debauchery…until it became a Greek proverb, ‘It is not every man who can
afford a journey to Corinth,’ In addition to these cruder sins, there
flourished far more recondite vices, which had come in with the traders and the
sailors from the ends of the earth, until Corinth became not only a synonym for
wealth and luxury, drunkenness and debauchery, but also for filth.”[1]
Grecian
culture was as cosmopolitan as it got. It boasted an enlightened tolerance
derived from self-proclaimed human wisdom and philosophy. And based on the
wisdom they derived from their own existential understanding, they concluded
that a God who would use the cross, an instrument of unspeakable brutality, as
a means of reconciliation between humanity and God, was foolish. But Paul had a
different existential and salvation understanding of The Wisdom Of God’s Foolishness.
Text Analysis
18For the message of the cross is
foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the
power of God. 19For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Paul
confronts the Corinthian culture’s contempt for God’s salvation method head on
in vv. 18-19. Greek gods, who were
many in number, would never have lowered themselves to the level or humanity or
allowed themselves to be humiliated or abused or insulted in any way whatsoever—and
certainly not for the benefit of humanity. Greek god worship was the consummate
quid-pro-quo arrangement. The Greeks did whatever they believed would be
pleasing to the gods and hoped their gods would approve and show them favor.
Greek gods were other-worldly and untouchable. There was no relationship
between the gods and humanity. For the Greeks, a message that preaches a God
that sacrifices Himself for the benefit of humanity was unequivocally foolish
to them. But to Paul, and all us who have chosen to believe that God must know
what He’s doing, we have experienced, first-hand, that if God’s methods are
foolish then we must have everything backwards when it comes to what is wise
and what is foolish. And this is in essence what Paul is saying in v. 19 when
he paraphrases the prophet Isaiah who revealed God’s pronouncement in saying,
“Therefore, once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the
wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish
(Isa 29:14).”
Humanity,
since the very beginning, has believed the lie that they control their own
destiny; they are their own god. They have believed the lie that wisdom and
knowledge; understanding the difference between good and evil; right and wrong,
renders the need and sovereignty of God obsolete. Once Adam and Eve ate the
forbidden fruit in Eden, humanity, from that point forward, fell time and again
into the trap that God was unnecessary; that they knew what was best for
themselves and for others. However, Paul is telling us that those who proclaim
themselves to be wise are perishing even while they condemn God’s salvation
method as foolish. However, those who are being saved, happily accept God’s
foolishness as they witness the demise of those who think they are smarter than
God and think they know, through their own wisdom and knowledge, what is good
and evil, and what is right and wrong. Does that sound familiar? It should, I
just described the fatal flaw in humanity that began with Adam and Eve. Unbelievers
in all ages have elevated their own wisdom over the wisdom of God but “God will
find the means of vindicating His wisdom and saving His people…The [Old
Testament] and [New Testament] situations are analogous: Gentile and Jewish
wisdom, united in rejection of the Gospel, are coming to a like breakdown; and
Paul draws a powerful warning from the sacred history.”[2]
20Where is the wise man? Where is
the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the
wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world
through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of
what was preached to save those who believe. 23but we preach Christ
crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but
to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God.
Paul’s
questions in v. 20 are rhetorical as
we find out in vv. 21-24. Unlike our
modern culture, most, if not all, people in Paul’s day recognized that a divine
sovereign existed in the universe. What Paul is angling at is that, to that
point in history, there had been no self-proclaimed wise man or scholar or
philosopher who had adequately devised a means of dealing with humanity’s sin
once and for all. The Jews, of course, relied on a system of religious ritual
and sacrifice for dealing with sin that needed to be constantly repeated. The
Jews also constantly sought and relied on God’s miraculous intervention in
their lives to prove Himself to be worthy of their worship and devotion. The
Greek belief system included giving in to sinful temptations as a means of
pleasing the gods. Gnostics, also popular in Paul’s day, ignored sins that
affected the body because they believed that only the human spirit mattered and
not the physical body. Consequently, sins committed while in the body didn’t
matter. Only God had the prefect solution to deal with humanity’s sins
regardless of how foolish many would believe it was. In God’s wisdom, He knew
that sins committed against an eternal God would create an eternal offense.
Therefore the only way to atone for an eternal offense was through a sacrifice
that was not bound by time and place—a Divine sacrifice. What humanity sees as
foolishness is actually a stroke of divine brilliance—God Himself would be the
sacrifice to atone for humanity’s sins. The Jews only recognized the God who
performed miraculous wonders; a God who conquered Egypt, split the Red Sea and
lead Israel, guided by one miracle after another, to the Promised Land. God
dying on the cross did not fit their religious paradigm and would always be a
stumbling block to their belief. The Gentiles, on the other hand, relied on
themselves and considered a humiliated God dying on a cross as a foolish belief
system.
I wonder, do people rely on human
wisdom because they can’t bring themselves to believe that there is nothing
they can do to save themselves? Do people deny the existence of God because
they don’t want to admit they can’t do anything to save themselves? Are people
so proud that they would rather perish than bend their knees before the cross
and admit that there is no human wisdom or knowledge that can save them? Yes,
evidently they are. “God has turned the wisdom of the world into foolishness.
This did not take place with words or arguments, where sentences of worldly
wisdom were confronted with sentences of Christian wisdom. Rather, it was
through an action, namely through the death of Christ on the cross, that God
has turned the wisdom of the world to foolishness. For as wisdom is not
essentially the accumulation of a body of knowledge, but a mode of existence
before God, so, too, folly is not a lack of knowledge, but the absence of this
mode of existence. Since, however, in God’s will ‘Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God’ has been revealed, revealed in fact as the Crucified One,
and only as the Crucified One, worldly wisdom which rejects the cross, whether
in its Jewish or Greek variety, is objectively proved to be that which it
always was: foolishness, i.e. rebellion against God, in the form of human
self-exaltation and boasting. Men have closed their minds to the wisdom of God
as they encountered it in the works of creation, and instead attempted to
create their own wisdom. But God has chosen to save those who believe through
the foolishness of the preaching of the cross. Every attempt to demand a proof
for the truth of God is as condemned to failure as is every attempt to boast of
oneself.”[3]
25For the foolishness of God is
wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s
strength.
It almost
sounds like Paul is conceding in v. 25
that God is foolish and weak. But that’s not the point Paul is trying to
convey. Instead, what Paul is saying is that if there were any foolishness in
God, it would still be wiser than any human wisdom and if there were any
weakness in God, that weakness would still be stronger than any human strength.
In other words, God’s wisdom and strength is so far beyond our human
understanding that we don’t even have a point of reference when it comes to
understanding it. “In the cross God ‘outsmarted’ his human creatures and
thereby nullified their wisdom. In the same cross God also ‘overpowered’ his
enemies, with lavish grace and forgiveness, and thereby divested them of their
strength. Thus played out before human eyes is the scandalous and contradictory
wisdom of God. Had God consulted us for wisdom we could have given him a more
workable plan, something that would attract the sign-seeker and the lover of
wisdom. As it is, in his own wisdom he left us out of the consultation. We are
thus left with the awful risk: trust God and be saved by his wise folly, or
keep up our pretensions and perish…One can scarcely conceive of a more
important—and more difficult—passage for the church today than this one. It is
difficult, for the very reason it was in Corinth. We simply cannot abide the
scandal of God’s doing things his way, without our help. And to do it by means
of such weakness and folly. But we have often succeeded in blunting the scandal
by symbol, or creed, or propositions. God will not be so easily tamed, and
freed from its shackles, the preaching of the cross alone has the power to set
people free…[But] such ‘weakness’ in God is scandalous to those who think of
themselves as righteous and thus in no need of forgiveness; but to those who
recognize themselves as in need of mercy this is the good news that sets us
free to follow him. Thus this weakness is also the ultimate power, and
therefore the final wisdom of God.”[4]
26Brothers, think of what you
were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not
many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose
the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of
the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this
world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things
that are, 29so that no one may boast before him.
It is for
good reason that Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the
eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom (Mt 19:24) and
why the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) was primarily directed at the lowest of
the low and those who were marginalized the most. Oddly enough, Jews and
Gentiles share common ground here in vv.
26-29. Let me demonstrate: Jews believed that if they were healthy and
wealthy, that they were doing life right and God was rewarding them for their
hard work and efforts. Gentiles believed that if they were healthy and wealthy,
it was because they were wiser and stronger than others who were less
fortunate. Notice the common ground that Jews and Gentiles shared? A self-centered
life. For Jews, God’s actions are a by-product of their efforts. For Gentiles,
God is essentially unnecessary except as an after-thought because they are
strong enough and wise enough to do life on their own. But for those on the
outside of society’s perks looking in, God was the only place to turn. Paul
reminds the Corinthian church that many of them were on the outside looking in
but they were the ones that God invited to be saved. Society didn’t think they
were worth much because they weren’t influential or wise, but God thought they
were perfect to carry the message of the cross to a lost and dying world.
Paul says
that God uses those who are weak and foolish to shame those who are strong and
wise. That can be a hard concept to understand so let me see if I can explain. Paul’s
not specifically talking about consequences in this life. Instead, the shame
that Paul references is likely intended to point to the final judgment when
unbelievers will finally kneel before
Jesus who still bears the marks of the cross on His body and realize they were
wrong. The wise and the strong will be put to shame by the very people they
thought were “foolish” and “weak” for believing that God would die on a cross
for them. At that point, the “weakness” and “foolishness” of God will be
vindicated all to the shame of those who refused to believe. “The image of
shaming and dishonoring would have been vivid in the Corinthian context…The
worst thing that could happen was ‘for one’s reputation to be publicly
tarnished.’…But Paul does not have in mind a moral-psychological shaming as in
2 Cor 9:4. Instead, the verb ‘to shame’ should be understood in its [Old
Testament] matrix to refer to ‘coming under God’s judgment.’ God vindicates the
faithful and brings the ungodly to shameful ruination. It has ‘eschatological’
connotations: ‘In choosing the Corinthians God has already begun the final
vindication over his enemies.’ ”[5]
Let me just
say that I haven’t met too many people who were soaring through life on the
wings of their success personally, professionally, or relationally who gave God
even a second thought. I mean, why? Why tamper with something that isn’t
broken, right? I’m not saying it never happens but my personal experience is
that it is usually those with broken wings who have crashed their lives into
the ditch who seek God. Again, why? Because when they get around to flying
again, it won’t be because of anything they’ve done; all credit for their
renewed life will rightly belong to God. They will have moved from lives that
were self-centered to lives that are God-centered. “God chose the foolish and
the weak, things despised by the world, so that those chosen can never boast in
the presence of God…People’s abilities, social standing, or knowledge have
nothing to do with God’s choice. Skill and wisdom do not get a person into
God’s Kingdom—faith in Christ does—so no one can boast that his or her
achievements helped him or her secure eternal life.”[6]
30It is because of him that you
are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our
righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is
written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Paul does
in v. 30 what he instructs the
Corinthians to do in v. 31. Gives Jesus
the credit, credit for their righteousness, holiness and redemption because
they had neither to strength or wisdom to accomplish those things for
themselves. “Believers have these things because of their union with Christ,
and believers are in union with Christ because of God…Thus Paul reminds the
Corinthians that they owe everything to God. That their very existence as the
people of God is predicated on the activity of God in Christ. There are grounds
for boasting but only in Christ’s redemptive work.”[7]
This attitude reorients our lives back to the way things should always have
been but became distorted as the result of sin. In the Garden of Eden, Satan
enticed Adam and Eve into the sin of doing the one thing God told them they
must not do—eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the hope
that they would become like God. Consider the irony in the events that took
place there in the Garden. Humanity was created in God’s image and Satan was
banished from heaven because he wanted to be God. After Adam and Eve’s sin,
what has been the recurring theme of humanity? Humanity has, time and again,
tried to wrestle God’s sovereignty over their lives away from Him and set
themselves up as god over their own lives. Sin has tempted humanity to do the
same thing Satan attempted to do—usurp glory and honor for themselves that
belongs only to God. Redemption begins to reverse this tendency in humanity and
replaces it with the realization that any and all righteousness and holiness in
our lives is the direct result of God’s grace and love. It is only after we
have been redeemed that this truth becomes evident in our hearts and minds. Until
then, we are trapped in Satan’s lie that there is no God but we can each be our
own god. “Human concepts of wisdom are shown up as spurious, things that humans
have invented rather than things that have been revealed…Paul argues
[elsewhere] that sinful humans have a natural propensity to confuse the
creation with the Creator, substituting created entities for their having been
made by God. Paul’s argument clearly centers on the fact that humanity has been
allowed to define the framework of reference for understanding God, rather than
allowing God to establish that framework himself…Human ideas of wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification and redemption are not merely relativized, but
are shown to be spurious by the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is not simply
that God’s ways are not our ways; it is that our way of thinking precludes us
from discerning those ways in the first place.”[8]
Application
As you
know, I spend Thursdays returning messages I receive from people who read my
lessons on Wednesdays. How would I characterize those messages? Well, the best
way for me to characterize them is to tell you that I’ve officially titled
Thursdays as “Hate Mail Thursday.” That probably tells you all you need to know
about the content of the messages I get. One of the messages I received last
week was particularly pertinent to this week’s lesson. The topic of discussion
was my query of the possibility that unbelievers so vociferously oppose the
message of the cross and occupy their lives with countless pleasures is an
attempt to quiet that nagging voice in their heads that tries to tell them that
there’s more to life than just this life. That simple query obviously touched a
nerve that set off a firestorm from unbelievers who immediately rejected the query
with the insistence that the purpose for occupying their lives with countless
pleasures was because this was the only life there is and they were going to
enjoy every minute and not squander any of it. I’m guessing you probably picked
up on the irony haven’t you? I ended the conversation with a simple question,
“If this is the only life there is and you don’t want to squander any of it,
why are you squandering your time arguing with a “kook” pastor about something
you don’t even believe in?” Remember, the message of the cross is foolishness
to those who are perishing.
I often get to experience first-hand
the second part of Paul’s opening verse of our Subject Text as well in my daily encounters with people who have
nowhere else to turn but to God. For them, the message of the cross represents
the power of God that has saved them and continues to save them daily. For
these people, their former belief that God didn’t exist and that this life is
the only life there is left them bruised and battered by life and lying on the
side of the road in the ditch because life without God can leave even the
wisest and strongest person searching for answers. And those answers are found
in the message of the cross. Through Jesus Christ we have become new creations
with a new perspective on life. Life doesn’t somehow become miraculously easy
just because we have accepted Christ. Instead, our lives are, through the work
of the Holy Spirit, infused by the wisdom and strength of God to live lives of
holiness and righteousness according to His will and purpose especially when
life gets hard. The message of the cross makes no sense to those who have set
themselves up as god. It’s foolish just like all those who believe that
message. But to those of us who have relinquished our lives to the one true God
in Jesus Christ, we are the beneficiaries of the wisdom and power of what was
accomplished on the cross. With minds that have been renewed and transformed by
God (Rom 12:2), we now easily recognize, appreciate, and give thanks for The Wisdom Of God’s Foolishness.
[1]
William Barclay, The Letters To The
Corinthians, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), p. 3.
[2]
W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor’s
Greek Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 1983),
p. 767.
[3]
Colin Brown, gen. ed., New International
Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 3, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1986), pp. 1,030-1,031.
[4]
Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the
Corinthians—The New International Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), pp. 77-78.
[5]
David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians—Baker
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2003), pp. 76-77.
[6]
Bruce Barton, Philip Comfort, Grant Osborne, Linda K. Taylor, Dave Veerman, Life Application New Testament Commentary,
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), p. 653.
[7]
Mark Taylor, 1 Corinthians—The New
American Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2014), p. 77.
[8]
Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, Daniel G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and his Letters, (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 194.
