1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Christ the Wisdom and Power of God: 1 Corinthians 1:18–31✞

In the last passage Paul ended by talking about the power of the cross of Christ, and the fact that Paul didn’t preach the Gospel in the way that the Corinthians might have hoped. (See that post for a discussion of this.) In this passage he expands upon that thought, comparing and contrasting the wisdom of this world against the wisdom of God.

I’ll start slightly out of order from Paul’s thoughts, to talk about this difference:

¹⁹ For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

²⁰ 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? ²¹ 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. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, …

This passage is based on the fact that not all wisdom is alike: there is the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. If we didn’t know any better, we might assume that the wisdom of God is additive to the wisdom of the world – in other words, you can be really wise and then, if you add the wisdom of God on top of that, you’ll be even more wise. Paul tells us, however that that’s not true; the wisdom of God actually sounds like foolishness to people who have the wisdom of the world! We think we know how things work, we think we understand how righteousness works and how to relate to God – and then He comes along and tells us that we’re completely wrong, and, without the help of the Holy Spirit, what He’s saying sounds like nonsense.

Of course, if God were speaking to us face-to-face we might find it difficult to tell Him that He’s being foolish – but we have less trouble saying that to someone like Paul, who’s just a man.

So what is this wisdom of God that sounds so foolish to the world? It’s the cross:

¹⁸ 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. …

… ²³ but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

“If God is going to overcome sin,” we think, “He needs a display of power!” “Actually,” He responds, “I’ll overcome sin by the ultimate act of weakness: by dying.” Jews hearing that message would call it blasphemous; to call Christ God in the first place is already blasphemous enough, but to then claim that God died? Doubly blasphemous! It’s a “stumbling block” that a Jewish hearer of the Gospel would find hard to overcome. Gentiles, on the other hand, would just call it foolish. How can you overcome something strong by doing something weak? It’s ridiculous! It’s “folly” that a Gentile hearer of the Gospel would find had to overcome.

However, if I may state the obvious, God knows more than we do, and His wisdom is better – it’s actually true, while ours is wrong-headed. To those who are called—whether Jewish or Gentile—what sounds, at first glance, to be a stumbling block or folly, is actually the power of God and the wisdom of God.

But it actually goes even further than that, because once God saves people, He then uses very ordinary people to advance His kingdom further:

²⁶ For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸ God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, ²⁹ so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

On this point Paul’s Jewish listeners might have had a better understanding of what Paul was talking about than his Gentile listeners, because this is how God had always worked, throughout the entire Old Testament!

For example:

Passage	Example
Judges 7✞	Gideon is going to battle the Midianites, and brings with him 32,000 troops, but God thinks this is too many, so they send home all but 300 – because otherwise, people are going to think the Israelites won the battle, but God wants them to know that He won the battle
1 Samuel 17✞	The Israelites are faced off against the Philistines and there is a giant of a man named Goliath challenging them, so God sends a shepherd boy with a sling to defeat him, so that, again, it will be clear this was God’s victory, not a victory of the Israelites. Speaking of the wisdom of the world against the wisdom of God, this one is very much misremembered and misinterpreted throughout history. We like to take the lesson from it that even a little guy can beat a big guy, if you’re smart about it. David himself, however, credited God with this victory, not himself; the one who was actually in the story got it right, even if we don’t.
Deuteronomy 7✞	In fact, the entire nation of Israel was chosen not because they were more numerous or more powerful than other nations – quite the opposite! Every time the Israelites won a battle, or triumphed over their enemies, it should have been clear that it was God who’d done it, not them.

These are just some examples, but there are more. Christians carry on that tradition: by and large it was the poor and uneducated who were saved in the early church, and that continues to this day! And yet Christianity is now one of the dominant religions in the world; it started out in Palestine but is now in every continent around the world; when people look at Christianity honestly, they can’t say it spread because Christians were so rich, powerful, and pedigreed; it’s only the power of God that could account for it.

More importantly, we ourselves, as Christians, also can’t boast! It’s definitely not in our own power that the Church grows! In fact this passage ends with a word to us who are saved:

³⁰ And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹ so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

I am saved, in Christ Jesus, because of him. I have no cause to boast, but I have no need to boast – I rest in the work done by Christ, and boast in that instead of about myself.