I Corinthians 1:18

First Corinthians 1:18

In First Corinthians 1:18-25 the Apostle Paul wrote a great and important description of the wisdom of the world. What is the wisdom of this world compared to the wisdom that comes from God, and what is the value of the wisdom of this world? The Apostle Paul knew something about the wisdom of this world because he was well educated and was a scholar in the letters of his day. Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul. He wrote, "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

In First Corinthians 1:18 Paul mentions a great difference between 2 kinds of people, and that difference is most obvious concerning their attitude towards the cross. One group of people thinks that the cross is foolish (they do not understand or value the cross), but the other group knows that the cross is the power of God. Another difference between the two groups is their destiny. The group that thinks the cross to be foolish has a destiny that leads to their destruction, but the group that honors and values the cross has a destiny that leads in the opposite direction and results in their salvation. That is why they love the cross: they know that because of what Jesus suffered on the cross, they have been saved. To them the cross is the power of God. The word "power" means “enabling”, and the Greek word “dunamis” that is translated power is the word from which we also get the word “dynamite.” The cross is the dynamite of God, the enabling of God. Without the cross of Jesus Christ, we would all perish; but because of the cross, we can look to Jesus and find an enabling and an empowerment that is so great it will last for eternity, and once a soul is touched by this power, that soul will live forever.

In First Corinthians 1:19 Paul quoted God from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament and said, "It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." Human beings were meant to live in fellowship with God, and thereby God would be their teacher and would help them to interpret the world around them. That is the way it is supposed to be. Therefore, when there are those who attempt to understand life without seeking assistance from God, such individuals may have the finest intellect and the best education and spend their life-time in scholarly pursuits, but their high-sounding words will ultimately become empty phrases, and their philosophies will take them to the grave, but no farther. It will be this way because true wisdom comes from God and from nowhere else. Respect for God is the beginning of wisdom.

In First Corinthians 1:20-21 Paul wrote, "Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." In verse 18 Paul used the word "preaching" and now he uses it again in verse 21. Actually, two different words were used in the Greek language that are here translated as "preaching." The word from verse 18 is the word “logos”, the “logos” of the cross, the preaching of the cross. It emphasizes the content of the message. Those who put their hope in the wisdom of this world, do not like the message of the cross because they do not value it or believe it. They think that the content of the message is foolish.

The word from verse 21 that is translated "preaching" comes from the Greek word “karusso” which refers to a public proclamation and to the manner in which the message is delivered to the world. The content of the message is considered to be foolish and so is the manner in which the message of the cross is declared to the world. That is the reason that sometimes there is pressure to keep quiet and to be quiet. That is one of the reasons that there is antagonism to the free and public proclamation about the death of Jesus on the cross. The preaching of the cross is foolishness to them that perish.

But the great, eternal God has turned the tables. The things that appear to be so, sometimes are not so. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that it was the meek who shall inherit the earth. Sometimes it seems as though the forceful and the violent will take the earth by storm, but that kind will appear for only a short while and then they will vanish away and when Christ returns the earth will truly be inherited by His children. Jesus also said that sometimes the important things about God are hid from the wise and prudent, but revealed unto babes. And here in First Corinthians it says that it pleases God that the foolishness of preaching is the means by which people become saved.

Notice that the Bible does not say that the preaching of foolishness pleases God. What pleases God is the fact that what the world considers to be foolishness, God has chosen to be the means of salvation and eternal life. Anyone who publicly declares the gospel should do so with the best effort possible at expressing themselves, and with the most attractive use of words and phrases that they can put together in explaining the value of the cross. Those who love the wisdom of the world will find enough excuses to think of the preaching of the cross as foolishness, and we should attempt to limit our own eccentricities that might give them additional excuses. If the world thinks of the preaching of the cross as foolishness, it should be because of their own spiritual poverty and not because of any improper way on our part of presenting the gospel.

In First Corinthians 1:22-23 the Bible says, "For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness." There are different ways of dividing up the human race and then looking at it from the standpoint of each one of the divisions. One way that is used often in the scriptures is to view the human race as Christian, Jew, or Gentile; and Greek is another term for Gentile in the New Testament. There is one message from God, but three different reactions depending upon which group you are in. The message is Jesus Christ crucified.

To the Jews that message is a stumbling block because the Jews knew something about the Messiah. They knew that the Messiah would deliver Israel from her enemies and re-establish the great Davidic Kingdom, but the Jews did not understand that the Messiah would have two appearances and that in the first He would die for the sins of the world, but that not until the second appearance would the Messiah set up the Davidic Kingdom. And so when you talk about Messiah crucified, the Jews stumble.

The non-Jews, the Greeks, do not have that stumbling block because they do not have any preconceived ideas about what any Messiah would or would not do. The problem of the Greeks is of a secular nature. They have gone into the excesses of humanism, and they see no need for a Savior to die for their sins because they think that they will solve their own problems through their own intellectual pursuits. To the Greeks it is foolishness to talk about the death on a cross of a poor carpenter and self-proclaimed teacher from the Middle East.

First Corinthians 1:24 says, "But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." Most Jews stumble at the message of Christ crucified, and most Greeks think that the message is foolishness; but there are some Jews and some Greeks who believe the message of Jesus Christ crucified. For those who believe the message, instead of stumbling they are empowered and uplifted by the message. They are transformed from sinners on their way to hell, to the children of God on their way to heaven. Instead of thinking the message to be foolishness, they now know that it is the source of true wisdom, and the moment that they believed, it was as though scales fell from their eyes, and they immediately wondered how they could have been so foolish, and they marvel how something that was so very true and so very obvious was so very far from their consciousness. The reason that it is like that is because First Corinthians 1:25 says, "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

In First Corinthians 1:26-28 Paul wrote, "For you see your calling, brothers, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are."

Paul refers to their calling. The believers are the called of God. Paul has used the word "calling" or "called" already several times in the first chapter of I Corinthians. The word "church" comes from the same word as "calling" or "called" and means "those that are called out." If you are called, then it is because someone has called you, and it is God who does the calling. You cannot come to Jesus unless He first speaks to your heart, and you do not become one of the called unless you respond in the right way to Him when He comes to you. That is the way it happened with the apostles. They were going about their daily business, and then one day Jesus passed by and said, "Follow me," and they left their nets and followed Him. They became part of the called, because when they were invited by God to join up with Him, they said, “Yes,” and they followed Him.

But some people do not say, “Yes,” when they are invited by God. The people who are the most likely to say “no” are listed here. "Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble are called," because they do not see their own need for God. They think that they are self-sufficient. They think that their money, or their power, or their position is all that they need. When things go wrong, they will rely upon their own intellect, or their bank account, or some influential person that they know. They have many resources to fall back upon, and it turns out that these privileges that they have, end up keeping them from coming to God. Their material wealth and their unique position in life was not a blessing after all, and in a way they were cursed by their privileges, because all of the privileges that they had was a key factor in them never coming to Christ. It would be better to be a slave than a free man, if in the horror and oppression of slavery you turned to God, but in the opportunity of freedom you went to hell. That is one reason some very wonderfully spiritual songs came out of slavery.

It is the common people who heard Jesus gladly, not the nobility, and it is still that way. When you get to heaven you will find that very few intelligent, very few rich, very few powerful people will be there. You will find that First Corinthians 1:27 will be proven to be true once and for all that "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty." When you think about the rich and the famous, you are thinking about those who are the most likely to be the citizens of hell. When Jesus died, He owned nothing but the clothes on His back, and the soldiers cast lots for those. Hopefully, you value spiritual things more than that which is material.

There is another side to the coin that not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called; and that is the fact that those of us who have been called by God have nothing to boast about or to be proud about from a human standpoint. We would be nothing if it were not for Jesus. If it were not for the grace of God, we would already be dead and judged and in hell, and we would deserve every moment of it.

The wise in the flesh, and the mighty, and the noble have nothing to glory about because of what their final destiny is going to be. And we who are called who are not wise in the flesh, or mighty, or noble; we have nothing to glory about because we owe everything to Jesus Christ. Paul wrote in First Corinthians 1:29-31, "That no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That according as it is written, He that glories, let him glory in the Lord."

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