It Starts Small

We continue our look into 1 Corinthians 1. There are a couple immediate questions that come up.

Who are “those who are perishing”?

Why is the cross foolishness to them?

To the unbelievers the cross makes no sense. This was written at a time when most people believed in some form of a god. In Corinth, a Greek society with a cross roads of many foreigners, there was no demand for a good of some sort. Not only was there worship of false Greek gods, there was deep worship of Asian false religion practices. Practices like necromancy and fortune telling. You did not have to go far to find something to worship. People believed in the supernatural. They believed they were created. They believed in miracles. But they STILL thought the cross was foolishness. How much more today when people don’t believe in any god. They don’t believe in anything supernatural. They don’t believe we were created. They don’t believe in miracles.

Paul shows us again and again in this chapter, the cross just makes no sense to an unbeliever. Today, Christendom is a myth or a legend on the level of Santa Clause or the easter bunny. Why? Because humans in our “great wisdom” would never think of such a way to save the world. Seriously, save the world by letting your Son die? A lot of people think God should just forgive anyone. Others think they would do it another way if they were God.

On the other hand, to believers the cross demonstrates the power of God. It demonstrates God’s love for the world.

How does the cross destroy the wisdom of men?

Why does God want to destroy the wisdom of men? Didn’t He create us with wisdom?

²¹ For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached.

1 Corinthians 1:21

What does it mean “in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God”?

From verses 19-21 we see that it is not just by chance that God’s way seems silly to the world. God DESIGNED it like this. He WISELY chose the cross to purposely conflict with the wisdom and cleverness of the world. Let that sink in for a moment.

God WANTED to force people to give up their own wisdom and self-confidence to come to Him.

Why? Because pride and self-confidence is not acceptable to God. As we see in the end of the chapter, God does not want any boasters. He does not want us to brag we saved ourselves. He did not design a way to save the world for only the smart and educated. He wanted everyone to understand and believe. Instead, He designed a way. Only those who were willing to give up self-reliance, self-trust, and pride could believe.

Self-reliance. Self-trust. Pride. The world can not fathom giving those things up.

This means that in a sense God wants us to become stupid. Much of the cultural knowledge, intellect, and principles we assimilate are not helping us. They are obstacles that hinder us and pull us away from God. We need to realize that God’s ways are not our ways.

Stop here and think about how the world has infiltrated and perverted God’s Word. i.e. God does not give more than you can handle.

We need to stop trying to conform God to who we want. We should not expect Him to be what we want. Instead, we should start listening to what He has to say. We need to stop explaining things with our own wisdom. We should start explaining things through the lens of God’s wisdom. We need to be willing to appear foolish in the eyes of the world. This way, we can be wise in God’s sight.

¹³ Who among you is wise and understanding? By his good conduct he should show that his works are done in the gentleness that comes from wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and deny the truth. ¹⁵ Such wisdom does not come down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. ¹⁶ For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil practice. ¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without pretense.

James 3:13-17

The contrast between human wisdom and the wisdom of God. The Greeks loved philosophy. They tried to use human wisdom to understand everything about the world, the meaning of life, values, and more. There were many conflicting philosophies and each person chose their favorite philosopher to follow.

This is why there was division in the body of believers at Corinth. Some followed Apollos. Some followed Peter. Some followed Paul. What the people failed to recognize is none of these men were speaking a different gospel. They were preaching the truth and what was more important was the message. Not who was delivering the message.

This created numerous factions. Numerous divisions. It touched the church too. Anytime too much importance is given to something besides God and His revelation there will be problems and divisions. Human philosophy is subjective to the moment and circumstances. There is no ultimate standard in human wisdom. In the end it is just human speculation and opinion.

Today the same problems are true. People are in love with philosophies and psychologies. They think that people hold the answer to everything. But these are often deceptive and misleading. Sure, sometimes they are right in some areas. There are amazing aspects to psychology, but they only believe that the problem is incurable.

But these are often wrong as well, and where they are wrong they are misleading. It is not necessary to look to humans for wisdom in these areas. God’s revelation is the standard. Nothing can be added or subtracted.

⁸ Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ.

Colossians 2:8

Not all wisdom is bad. Science has brought us many technologies and lengthened life expectation. We can learn a lot from human learning. But when it comes to understanding key areas of human life, like the meaning of life, how to have joy, where we came from, and where we are going, we need to look to God’s revelation, not human wisdom.

Why is Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks? Why the different words?

Jews liked to see signs. We all like to see signs. Signs validated that someone was speaking the truth. When Jesus was doing signs many people at least had a surface belief in Him. Why is Jesus a stumbling block to them? Because Jesus died. They were expecting a Messiah that would keep on doing many signs and become more and more famous. Yet Jesus died. Dying was the opposite of a sign. Dying on a cross was a shameful thing, not fitting for a normal person, much less the Messiah. Jesus was a stumbling block to the Jews. It was very difficult for them to believe in a Messiah who had died. Of course, what many did not realize was that He had arisen, which is the greatest sign of all.

The Greeks just enjoyed wisdom.

Because what you say sounds strange to us, and we want to know what these things mean.”

Acts 17:20

They spent a large majority of their time just sitting around and discussing ideas. Logic, philosophies, and sciences were what was important to them. So why was the cross foolishness to them? They could not understand the logic. To them, it appeared ridiculous that God would come and sacrifice Himself. They would have never done it this way and therefore could not conceive of God doing it this way.

What does it mean the “foolishness of God”?

God cannot do anything foolish.

Oh, the depth of the riches
and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments
and untraceable his ways!

Romans 11:33

He knows everything and His plans are always perfect. So it does not mean that “even the mistakes of God are better than the successes of man.”

I believe it is referring to the things that God does that appear foolish in man’s eyes. Even these things that appear foolish to us are still far better. They surpass any of the greatest things we can do.

Can you think of any examples of this in the Bible? The one that sticks out to me is Gideon fighting tens of thousands of enemy fighters with 300. How about Joshua marching in silence around the walls of Jericho six days and on the seventh, they shout and the walls fall.

For those who are called, Christ is the power and wisdom of God. We can see that God showed His power by raising Jesus from the dead. God also showed His wisdom through this perfect plan of salvation. It balances His justice and His grace.

What makes the difference with those who are called? Why is it wisdom to us and not others? Are we just smarter?

Of course it has nothing whatsoever to do with our own intellect or talents. The highly intelligent and the nimble in brains can all be called. It has less to do with intelligence. It is simply God working in our hearts, opening our spiritual eyes, and enlightening us. Without Him we are blind and can not see. Our hearts are like fortresses. With Him we know the truth and the truth is setting us free. This is why simply providing information, logic, and evidence is not enough. We cannot convince someone of God’s truth by force alone. We can talk until we are blue in the face. They will continue thinking it is ridiculous. That will remain the case unless God changes their hearts and calls them.

AS we continue on, we come to some very important questions:

Who is verse 26 talking about when it says, “there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble”?

Verse 27: why?

What does it mean “the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are”?

Explain the use of the word “so” in verse 31?

What major lessons can we learn from this?

How can we boast in the Lord?

The idea is for the Corinthian church to look around. They should see how many in the church were highly educated, very rich, held a high position in the world, or were very wise. There weren’t many in the Corinthian church. How about other churches?

It is the same anywhere. In general there are few rich, powerful, and geniuses who trust in God. In Jesus’ ministry most of His disciples were peasants. The powerful Sanhedrin only had 1-2 silent believers in the whole group. Paul was one of the most high up people to believe. He is not saying it never happens, but that it rarely happens. Why?

Verse 27 answers why. God planned it this way (21). This was the wisdom of God. Again, it does not make a lot of sense to many of us. We sometimes like to work from the top-down. Save the leaders and powerful people and then the common people will follow. But that is not how God did it. God has chosen the base and despised things of the world. In the gospels Jesus said that He came to the sick, not the healthy. The Jews themselves were not chosen for their greatness in number or other great character qualities. So why does God generally choose the lowly?

²⁹ so that no one may boast in his presence. ³⁰ It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption— ³¹ in order that, as it is written: Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

1 Corinthians 1:29-31

The reason is that God does not want boasters. God has chosen the lowly. It is not by our own wisdom or understanding that we come to Him. Therefore, no man may boast before God. If it was mostly the educated people being saved they would think they were smarter and that is why. But now no one has a reason to boast before God. It is clearly God’s work in our hearts, not our own. It is by His doing! Praise the Lord for His work in our lives!

What is Paul’s conclusion about the response that we should have to this?

The answer is to boast in the Lord.

But the one who boasts should boast in this:
that he understands and knows me—
that I am the Lord, showing faithful love,
justice, and righteousness on the earth,
for I delight in these things.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Jeremiah 9:24

Boasting means to lift something up, to praise something, to draw attention to something. Normally it has a negative connotation and is applied to oneself. Here it is different. It is applied to God. Our boasting should praise God, draw attention to God, and lift Him up. For Him it is deserved, earned, and proper. We should give Him all the glory and all the honor. We should regularly praise Him privately and publicly. We should be humble because of what He has done for us. We should be motivated to spread the news about God’s greatness to others.

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