The Power and Wisdom of God

1 Corinthians 1:18–31

Our passage contrasts human wisdom and strength with God's wisdom and power, emphasizing how God chooses what is low and despised to shame the wise and strong.

Application: This sermon can encourage Christians to rely on God's strength rather than their own wisdom or abilities. It reminds us to embrace our weaknesses, as they allow God's power to be made perfect in us.

Teaching: The sermon can teach that true wisdom and strength come from recognizing our need for God and trusting in His ways rather than our own understanding.

How this passage could point to Christ: In this passage, Christ is presented as the embodiment of God's wisdom and power. He fulfills God's plan for redemption through what seems foolish and weak to the world, showing that true strength lies in humility and reliance on God.

Big Idea: God's wisdom confounds the wise, showing that true strength is found in our dependence on Him through Christ, who is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

1. Perceiving God's Paradox

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

v. 18 - The word of the cross is referring to the preaching of the cross, and it is foolishness to the lost who are without Christ. The word “foolishness” is from a Greek word, the source of our English word “moron.” Why is the preaching of the cross considered by the world foolishness?

The preaching about the crucifixion of Christ and its saving benefits is considered ludicrous by the world’s standard. The very idea that one perfect man could die in the place of innumerable sinners — and be a sufficient payment to be applied freely to all who believe — was about as bizarre a message as anyone in the first century would have heard.

To those who are saved, the cross is crucial for every aspect of salvation — past, present, and future. Here the present participle, “are being saved,” suggests that Paul had in mind the present progress of salvation, that of being delivered from sin’s power through a life of cross-bearing, Luke 9:22-24

Luke 9:22–24 NASB95

saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.” And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.

In the first century, people who were sentenced to die by crucifixion had to carry a section of their cross through the city to the place of execution. This was a visible display of their final submission to the state — in death! What Jesus was trying to communicate to His disciples: “You must be willing — everyday — to put to death your stubborn will and personal desires; to readily accept the Father’s will — like I have — over your own will.”

v. 19 — Paul’s quotation of Isaiah 29:14 recalls the dilemma of the Northern Kingdom and whether they would follow the wisdom of God through His prophet or human wisdom, which believed that to fight the Assyrian threat, the and nation needed to align itself with Egypt. They chose human wisdom and the results were disastrous for Israel. God’s plans and methods will destroy the wisdom of the (humanly) wise as well as those who seek to be clever in their dealings.

v. 20 — Now Paul begins a probing of the congregation in Corinth.

None of the Gentile geniuses, Jewish scholars, or Greek eggheads contribute nothing beneficial to the message of the cross. In fact, their efforts to refine, intellectualize, or rationalize the message only undermines it.

v. 21 — God has chosen that which the world says is foolishness to display His great wisdom.

The world through its wisdom did not come to know God. From astronomers who are exploring the vast reaches of space to the microbiologists searching the subatomic, they still miss God. They see the order, complexity, and beauty of the physical universe but fail to find the all-powerful and all-wise God.

The only way we could come to know God as He truly is through the message of the cross preached. From a worldly perspective, that message is “foolish,” but from God’s perspective and from that of believers, the same same message is true and ultimate wisdom.

v. 22 — Jews seek for a validation of the message. and Greeks look for rationalistic explanations of it. These seem reasonable from a human perspective, yet they fail to lead a person to Christ.

v. 23 — Jewish expectation were for a victorious warrior Messiah who ushers in the kingdom by vanquishing the Roman Empire and restoring the glory of the Davidic Kingdom. But Jesus ministered to the disenfranchised. His message was one of repentance, righteousness, and peace. He called for self-sacrifice to the will of God, to follow in His footsteps. He refused to perform miracles on demand, and He alienated religious zealots. In their eyes, Jesus was a ‘let down.” He has become a stumbling block to the Jews.

The Greeks sought for a great philosopher-king or wise sage who would satisfy the human longing for a utopian society. They heard preached a divine ruler who humbled Himself, born as a Jew, with a childhood of obscurity who spent three years speaking in parables about a kingdom characterized by irrational, altruistic virtues. He was betrayed by His own people and abandoned by most of His disciples. This Jesus scandalized the Greek mind, and deemed “foolishness.”

v. 24-25 — to those who were called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ preached is the power of God and the wisdom of God personified.

2. Prioritizing God's Perspective

1 Corinthians 1:26-29

v. 26 — Paul continues his probing of the believers in Corinth by reminding them of their humble background which should have made evident the power of the gospel. According to human standards, the Corinthian believers could not boast in their worldly wisdom, riches, or pedigrees.

Paul reminds them that without God, all human beings, regardless of worldly standards, are in reality tramps living in the dumps of human depravity, unable to boast of any merit before God.

It is God who calls us by His own grace and mercy, not on the basis of our own worthiness. In our filthy condition. God mercifully reaches down, plucking us from the garbage heap, and begins His process of transforming us into masterpieces of His grace.

v. 27 - 28 — God chooses to build up His kingdom from among the despised and rejected — the political, social, cultural, religious, and intellectual “have-nots” of society. He shames the wise and powerful with His wisdom in choosing the weak and foolish things, the base and despised things. He humbles the arrogant that they might acknowledge their poverty, enabling them to receive His great riches through the game-changing message: Grace, Eph. 2:8-9

Ephesians 2:8–9 NASB95

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

v. 29 — The message of the cross has leveled the playing field. No man may boast before God because every man is spiritually deficient without Christ.

3. Proclaiming Christ's Provision

1 Corinthians 1:30-31

v. 30 — But solely by the wisdom and work of God, you are in Christ Jesus, Paul declares. We who were spiritually deficient now rely not on ourselves, but on the all-sufficiency of Christ. All that we lack in our depravity and finitude is now provided for us in Him.

The world seeks heroes, power, prestige, and wealth. God seeks the humble, those who turn their attention to Christ who has preeminence over all creations and promises us a place with Christ, Eph 2:6-7

Ephesians 2:6–7 NASB95

and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

In our self, we are nothing; in Christ, we are invaluable.

v. 31 — Our boasting can only be in the Lord, for He has done it all. this verse echoes Jeremiah 9:23-24

Jeremiah 9:23–24 NASB95

Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.

For these days, ask God to grant you boldness and confidence to live and proclaim the message of the cross.