Sometimes when I am reading the letters of the apostle Paul, it seems like he has ADHD. I mean, as one with ADHD myself, I can easily identify. Currently, I’m reading through first Corinthians in my Bible reading year plan. There are times when Paul seems to distract himself to go off on some tangent to explore a different subject before eventually coming back to his original line of thought. For example, when reading 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 you could wonder if Paul, having started discussing the gospel, is now off on some tangent about divisions in the Corinthian church, and is now pursuing those issues. But when I read closely, no, he is actually launching his criticisms and concerns by pointing out that the party spirit in the Corinthian church has been caused by false wisdom, human pride and misplaced loyalty in human leaders. And that is not the gospel that he preached to them when he planted that congregation years before.
The gospel Paul preached brings unity - not division.
The message of the Cross that Paul had preached was the source of true wisdom and unity. Therefore, the divisions the church was experiencing at the time surely must be coming from worldly wisdom which cannot accept the preaching of the Cross. In this particular passage Paul uses the word "wisdom" in several ways. In verse 21 he refers to human wisdom, while the same word in verse 24 refers to God's plan of salvation.
In this brief passage Paul reminds the church – then and now - that while his gospel does not measure up to worldly standards of wisdom it is the only word of salvation to those who believe. This is the only wisdom that is reliable and perfect. The church in every century has had to resist (and not always successfully) the temptation to try to make the gospel “relevant” or to augment it in some way so as to make it more palatable to the world. Wrong! The gospel is what it is. It is uncompromising and powerful for all time – and has to be – it needs no improvement, modification or sanitisation. No adjustment is necessary, at all. To the first-century Jew, dying on a Roman cross signified the ultimate shame and humiliation and stated that one was under God's curse. The Old Testament idea was that God showed His happiness with an individual by pouring out material blessings and His unhappiness by sending judgment in the form of illness, loss, trouble, or some other piece of ill-fortune. The ultimate form of loss was death, and only criminals of the worst sort were crucified.
So, along comes Paul and starts preaching that the Cross was not a curse but God's special revelation of His love and grace. What?! No wonder the Jews baulked and stumbled over this. It was anathema to them. The Greeks and other Gentile minds of Paul’s day reacted differently. They had been born into a world of thought and reason that entertained no idea of faith in a God who was at work in their history, as He had been at work in the history of the Jews. The Greeks were thinkers and philosophers who enthusiastically studied and speculated on ideas and who needed hard, rational evidence before they believed in anything, or changed their minds. The influence of Greek (or Hellenistic) philosophy has had such enormous influence down through the centuries and still permeates so much of our western scientific methodologies and thought processes. Now here we are in the 21st-century with our religious heritage derived from the Jewish people, and our intellectual rationalisation of the workings of the universe derived from the Greek world of Paul’s day.
So, what does this have to do with anything you may ask? Well, the cross is a stumbling block for the Jews and cannot possibly be wisdom for them because of the insurmountable shame factor. Where is God’s so-called wisdom in such a grotesque and evil statement? The very same cross is unintelligible to the Greeks because it is completely irrational and cannot sit easily within their wisdom frameworks. It just does not compute, so to speak.
And so, here’s the thing as I was reading verse 21 of 1 Corinthians chapter 1- a fresh thought I share with you.
1 Corinthians 1:21 (NLT)
[Paul] “Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never know Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.”
What does this mean? It means this: God’s wisdom will never conform to human wisdom of any kind, Jewish, Greek, scientific or any other. God’s wisdom in the cross of Christ cannot be accessed purely by any kind of human wisdom. God’s wisdom in the cross of Christ defies all human wisdom. God determined, says Paul, that the world would never know Him according to some human baseline or framework of understanding. Why? Human wisdom is simply unable to apprehend the divine and holy. Human wisdom cannot in all integrity expect God’s wisdom to bow, or stoop down to its limited methodologies. God reveals His wisdom to those who believe in Jesus Christ. And when that occurs the believer receives by faith the breathtaking experience of God’s wisdom – especially, the wisdom of His love. If God acquiesced to human demands to prove His existence – He would cease to be God. And so, He reveals Himself, and He reveals His wisdom as God – but only to the truly penitent and believing. To all others, they will be constantly seeing and hearing the information and data, but never understanding God’s wisdom.
Matthew 13:12-16 (NLT)
[Jesus] To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them. 13 That is why I use these parables, For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand. 14 This fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah that says, ‘When you hear what I say, you will not understand. When you see what I do, you will not comprehend. 15 For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes—so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’ 16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.
God’s wisdom is not acquired by reason and evaluation, or by making demands of Him. He reveals Himself, and His wisdom, on His terms – no one else’s. Or He would not be God. His wisdom is given to the humble believer as astonishing, divine revelation that defies and renders inferior all other wisdom. This was the experience of the centurion who crucified Jesus. On that day on Calvary’s hill, he saw what the Jewish leaders could not. What Jesus was doing with the cross was revealed to him, not others who demanded Jesus prove himself.
Mark 15:39 (NLT)
When the Roman officer who stood facing Him saw how He had died, he exclaimed, “This man truly was the Son of God!”
God’s wisdom, the wisdom of the cross, is revealed so powerfully to this non-Jew amid all the blood, gore, horror, shame and death, that he is shocked to the core. He is stunned, and sees who Jesus really is. The Saviour of the world. This whole notion given to us by the apostle Paul here in 1 Corinthians is actually what the power of the Gospel really is – and exactly why it cannot be improved upon. It is what it is. Praise the only wise God.
Romans 1:16 (NLT)
“For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile.”
Amen!
Ps Milton