The Foolishness of Preaching – #2
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Preaching has long been used by God to motivate His human creation to respond to Him. As early as Enoch, the seventh from Adam, God sent prophets into the world (Jude 14). The apostles and early Christians toppled an empire, through preaching “there is another king, Jesus” (Acts 17:7). That is the point Paul emphasizes in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, the text we have to study before us.
THE WORD OF THE CROSS IS FOOLISHNESS – 1:18-25:
When man comes up with what one has to do to “please the gods,” he goes to one of two extremes and there is some truth in each extreme. On one extreme, he thinks he has to sacrifice something very precious to him or to his society (the famous sacrificial virgin) to appease the gods. He might also think that he has to flagellate himself, beating himself, torturing himself, abusing himself. That is, of course, really a form of self-righteousness, thinking that if you do something to yourself, then you can make some type of atonement for your sins. That same type of self-flagellation is evident when people think that they have to deny themselves all enjoyment in this physical world. They think that they are closer to God or more pleasing to him by denying themselves practically all enjoyable things, distractions or entertainment in this world.
The other extreme is to come up with all sorts of elaborate rituals and festivals and ceremonies that you have to do in order to appease your god and his expectations.
There is one thing both of those extremes have in common and it is fundamentally the idea that what you do (or not do) can earn or merit your way into heaven. They still come back to the idea that man can do something to earn salvation. That is man’s wisdom and Paul refutes that concept very thoroughly in this particular paragraph where he discusses the foolishness of preaching.
In verse 18, Paul argues that it is not cleverness of words (vs 17) that saves, but the word of the cross that saves. Why? Quoting Isaiah 29:14, Paul argues that through the word of the cross, God destroys the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever. There was absolutely no way that man would/could have come up with the idea of God becoming flesh and then dying for the sins of mankind. That whole process just blows man’s mind and Paul even argues in chapter 2 that it blew Satan’s mind. Man’s wisdom, when it comes to defining spirituality, when it comes to defining “greatness,” when it comes to defining what it takes to please God, is destroyed at the cross. Man’s wisdom is shattered to pieces at the foot of the cross because it is nothing like what man would come up with on his own.
Then Paul has a short paragraph (20-25), dense with the word wise/wisdom, Paul argues that God has made the wisdom of the world foolish. How?
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In God’s wisdom (vs 21), in contrast with the wisdom of the world that did not come to know God, God saved those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached. You simply cannot know God without knowing Jesus Christ. A modern Jew’s concept of God, even if he follows the Old Testament, is going to be short without Jesus Christ. The Muslim cannot have the proper view of God, even if Allah were the same as the God of the Bible, without knowing Jesus Christ. You can come to know something about God by studying nature but you will not have as complete an understanding of God as is possible, without knowing Jesus Christ. Believing, of course, involves more than just accepting Jesus as the Savior; it means to put your own trust in Him so that you will obey all that He commands you to do.
To emphasize his point (vss 22-23), Paul points out that Jews look for miraculous signs and the Greeks search for wisdom, what they call wisdom, but Christian preachers and teachers simply preach Christ crucified. The ultimate sin of idolatry, and of Americans, even Christians can be guilty of it, is forcing God to conform to our view of how He is to be, rather than accepting Him as He presents Himself in the Bible. It is always our view of Him that must change, not God Himself.
“Christ crucified” was a contradiction to the Jew and Greek in the first century. “Christ” was to be a person of power, splendor, victory. “Crucified” on the other hand, gave the image of weakness, humiliation, and defeat. To die on a cross was to die as a criminal.
In fact, the apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 1:13-14; 3:13 that this was the reason he had rejected the idea of being a Christian for so long. How could Jesus be the Savior when He was punished by God on the cross? He had to come to understand the roll of the cross in God’s plan to save man.
But to those who believe (vs 24), to those called, whether Jews or Greeks, “Christ crucified” is the “power of God” and the “wisdom of God.” He said back in vs 2 that they were “saints by calling, who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” How?
Well (vs 25), the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. If you want to consider the cross foolishness, that is your choice. But in the plan of God, it reveals itself to be the epitome of God’s wisdom. God became flesh and died for our sins. That’s how God is able to condemn sin but justify the sinner.
We will share a few more thoughts on this text tomorrow…
–Paul Holland
