1 Corinthians 1:18-31 Commentary

If I were to preach on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, I might entitle my message, “Good News For Ordinary People.” In this text, after all, Paul doesn’t primarily address the “100 Most Influential Christians.” He doesn’t even speak to that roster of preachers that seem to get invited to present at nearly every preaching conference.

The apostle, instead, largely addresses the ordinary Josephines and Josephs of God’s adopted family, as well as the regular pastor Steves and Stephanies of the Church. He, in other words, speaks to most of the preachers who proclaim the gospel and the people who are dying to hear it.

Paul, of course, begins this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with last Sunday’s ending. In verse 18 he notes, “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.” It’s an admission that God’s rescue of us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ seems like utter nonsense to many people. However, the apostle also professes the Spirit graciously helps people God is rescuing to see that God’s plan of salvation makes all the sense in the world.

To whom, Paul goes on to ask in verse 20, does the idea of salvation through Jesus Christ seem so utterly nonsensical? “Where is the wise person [sophos*]? he rhetorically ask there, “Where is the teacher of the law [grammateus]? Where is the philosopher of this age [syzetetes tou aionos]?”

The apostle implies that such people who trust in conventional or their own wisdom are nowhere to be found in God’s kingdom. Those who assume things like “might makes right,” “God only helps those who help themselves,” and “smart people keep the world going round” have followed such foolishness right out of God’s grace.

Paul goes on to describe other conventional salvific wisdom in verse 22. “Jews demand [aitousin] signs [semeia],” he notes there, and “Greeks look for [zetousin] wisdom [sophia].” In other words, both Jews and Gentiles look for conventional evidence for conventional wisdom. Jews, insists Paul, naturally look for miraculous demonstrations and gentiles look for human intelligence.

While such searches seem reasonable and logical to so many, the apostle suggests they’re actually sheer moria (“foolishness”). Yet, he goes on to add, God responds to such foolishness with God’s own form of moria. The world that thinks of itself as having “wisdom” [sophia] doesn’t recognize God’s “wisdom” (21).

Paul expresses the heart of that wisdom in verse 23: “We preach [keryssomen] Christ crucified [estauromenon].” God met our natural foolishness with what naturally seems an even greater absurdity: the rescue of the world through the life, death on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Of course, Jesus’ saving death certainly didn’t look very impressive. That’s a reason why Paul calls it a “stumbling block [skandalon] to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (23). Quite simply Jesus’ willing submission to capital punishment as a means of salvation was scandalous to Jews and absurd to gentiles.

Yet according to verses 24-25, to “both Jews and Greeks” whom God graciously calls, “Christ [is] the power [dynamin] and the wisdom [sophian] of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser [sophoteron] than human wisdom, and the weakness [asthenes] of God is stronger [ischyteron] than human strength.”

Here Paul notes the stark contrast not just between God and people, but also between God and people’s wisdom and strength. They’re, quite simply, no match. In fact, it’s almost as if the apostle asserts God’s “foolishness” is far wiser than people’s wisdom, and that God’s “weakness” is far mightier than people’s might.

So Jesus’ friends probably shouldn’t be especially surprised by the kinds of people God graciously includes in God’s kingdom and recruits for service to God and our neighbor. In verses 26 Paul invites his readers to “Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise [sophoi] by human standards [kata sarka]; not many were influential [dynatoi]; not many were of noble birth [eugeneis].”

In other words, while the Corinthians God called were God’s image-bearers, they weren’t unusually smart image-bearers. While God loves all those God calls, few of Jesus’ friends are especially influential. While God graciously adopted us into God’s family, most people didn’t think of us as among what The Message paraphrases as the “brightest and the best.” Most of the people to whom God extends God’s amazing grace seem, quite simply, very ordinary.

In fact, at least some of Christians’ contemporaries view Jesus’ followers not as especially smart but as gullible for faithfully receiving God’s wisdom. Many of our neighbors assume that only morally and emotionally weak people commit ourselves and our lives to drawing our strength from God.

Yet Paul insists that’s precisely the way God “rolls.” God, in fact, the apostle celebrates in verses 27-28, “chose [exelexato] the foolish things of the world to shame [kataischynei] the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly [agene] things of this world and the despised [exouthenemena] things – and the things that are not – to nullify [katargese] the things that are.”

The refrain is like a drumbeat: God chose apparently worthless people to shame people others assumed were worthy. God graciously chose to rescue and put to work in God’s kingdom precisely the people “the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses” (The Message).

Of course, Paul’s primary reference here seems to be to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. His contemporaries, after all, thought of him as foolish, weak, lowly and despised. Yet God graciously chose to use Jesus to shame those who looked down on and past him. God also, however, graciously chose to work in a similar way through Jesus’ adopted siblings. While our culture may look down or past us, God graciously works through us to glorify God, advance God’s kingdom and love the unlovable.

Yet our hearers’ eyebrows may rise a bit at the suggestion that God does all of this in order to kataischynei (“shame” or “disgrace”) the high and mighty. Preachers can admit it’s not easy to understand this. But we might note a couple of things about it. This “shaming” may involve an element of confusion. Applied to verse 26 the apostle is perhaps suggesting God used weak to people to get powerful people to reconsider their assumptions about God and God’s ways.

What’s more, preachers might note The Message paraphrases Paul as saying in verse 26 God chose people other people overlook to “expose the hollow prestensions of the ‘somebodies’.” The apostle may, in other words, be insisting God chose to use “nobodies” to reveal to the world’s “somebodies” the true emptiness of the world’s vision of strength and wisdom.

But no matter what Paul exactly means by this, God’s purpose for using “nobodies” is clear. God did all of this apparent “nonsense” through what some think of as absurd means “so that,” according to verse 29, “no one may boast [kauchesetai] before him.” God, in other words, did mighty things through decidedly less-than-mighty people so that those “weak” people would have no reason to, in The Message’s words, “blow” our “own horn before God” – or other people. If God’s adopted children are going to boast about anything in regard to God’s rescue of us, it must be “in the Lord” (31).

Jesus’ naturally weak followers are deeply humble about our utterly passive role in obtaining our salvation. We can’t take any credit for our rescue from sin. Christians can only receive that rescue with our faith in Jesus Christ. As Paul continues in verse 30, “It is because of [God] that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” As The Message paraphrases this profession, as well as summarizes both this Epistolary Lesson and the gospel: “Everything we have – right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start – comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Robert Caro’s marvelous series of biographies of Lyndon Johnson are an almost endless source of insight into human character, as well as sermon illustrations. His book The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate chronicles Johnson’s “reign” as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate during the 1950’s. While it may not have been Caro’s intent, it, among other things, highlights the difference between politicians and other powerful people and Gods’ use of power.

Caro notes, “LBJ had his ways of sending signals to the senators who didn’t vote as he wished them to. He would assign them small offices. He wouldn’t return their calls for days, or not at all. He would turn his back on a Senator walking into the cloakroom, and others standing with him, following his cue, would too.

“He would avert his eyes when meeting a disfavored Senator in the hall. He would, moderately ostentatiously, leave the Senate floor when a disfavored Senator rose to speak, and his aide Bobby Baker, would suggest to Senators in the cloak room that they not go out onto the floor when a persona non grata was talking: ‘Why don’t you stay in the cloakroom for a while,’ he’d suggest.

“LBJ would also go over to Senator Paul Douglas’s desk while the Illinois senator was sitting with one of his assistants. LBJ would talk to the assistant and ignore the Senator. He would have a number of powerful senators in for a drink after the session, arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing and joking as they entered. Douglas and other disfavored senators would never be invited.”