1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-26 - Foolish Wisdom

Introduction

Years ago Isaac Asimov, the prolific author and self-proclaimed atheist, wrote about the difference between intelligence and education. He said “Intelligence is the diamond, and education are the facets.” And then he went on to say “And I have known many beautifully-faceted rhinestones!” In other words, just because someone has an advanced degree in some academic field does not necessarily mean that they are themselves very intelligent!

I like that quote because it captures a lot of what I see in the higher education sphere that I’ve worked in for the past twenty years. (I’m fond of saying that there are a lot of people at Penn State who got a piece of paper thirty years ago that proved they could think, and so they stopped doing it...)

It has been a fascinating journey to work at the University while pastoring here at Bethel, especially when people at work find out what I do—I tell them that I’m a pastor, and the academics all have the same kind of gently dismissive reaction; as if I told them about my giant vintage Care Bears collection: “OH… That’s pretty cool...”

Because, as we all know (or, more precisely, as we’ve all been told), Biblical Christianity is really not relevant to the real issues of the day; science and medicine and philosophy and law have all far outgrown the limited wisdom of that ancient Near Eastern text.

Our passage this morning shows us something important about that mindset—we tend to think that the world has moved on, and that the Gospel message we preach has become outdated or irrelevant. But notice that the “word of the Cross” has never been fashionable, has it? Paul was writing about this same dynamic two thousand years ago!

The Corinthian church was struggling with this same problem—the world around them thought that they were fools for believing in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ (the “word of the Cross” in v. 18, also called “preaching Christ crucified” in v. 23). And their response was to start chasing the respectability that they wanted from the world—Paul warns them not to proclaim the Gospel “in wisdom of word” in v. 17.

We talked about this last week—it is an enduring temptation for a church to try to get the world to respect them. Get invited on all the right podcasts, write the kind of articles that the mainstream publications will run, present the Gospel in such a way that people will realize that it’s not foolish after all! (We will see in a moment, Lord willing, why that’s a losing strategy...)

But then there is another reaction to the world’s dismissal of the Gospel that is unprofitable; this one is much harder to recognize in ourselves because we can use this very passage as cover. We will read in these verses that “God has made foolish the wisdom of this world” and use that fragment of Paul’s wider argument as a club to smack academics up against the side of their fifty-pound heads: “Well, everyone who goes to college is just stupid anyways—God says all their wisdom is foolish!!”

The problem with that first of all is that it’s not at all what Paul is saying here (as I hope to demonstrate). But the second problem with saying “People who get an education and spend all their time on book-learnin’ are wasting their time!!” is that it provides you with theological cover for your intellectual laziness. Sloth is sloth whether it shows up in a flabby body or in a flabby mind.

So how do we respond to the charge that the “foolish” preaching of the Cross is outdated and irrelevant for 21st Century America? What are we to take away from Paul’s teaching here about “the foolish wisdom of the world”? Is there power in the preaching of the Cross for today? And if so, where does it come from?

Here is the way I want to say it for us this morning—Paul is assuring the Corinthian church (and us as well) that

The power of our MESSAGE comes from the WORLD-TILTING WISDOM of God

As we read through these verses, we find that the wisdom of God flips the world’s ideas of wise and foolish on their heads—there is a division through this entire passage between those who see God’s wisdom as foolishness and those who see it truly as wisdom. We see this right off in Verse 18, where God’s world-tilting wisdom

I. Separates the DYING from the LIVING (1 Corinthians 1:18)

1 Corinthians 1:18 LSB

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

The first thing that we are told here—and this is something we really need to get a grip on—is that

To the DYING, the Cross MAKES no SENSE

Of course, when we share the message of the Gospel, that Jesus was crucified, buried and risen again for the forgiveness of our sins and receiving eternal life, we want to make sure that it is as clear as possible. But no matter how clear we make it and no matter how straightforward we are, it will never really make sense to anyone apart from God’s supernatural work in their lives.

When the message of Christ crucified is ignored or ridiculed or “debunked”, our tendency is to panic; that we have somehow messed up our explanation of it, or that we need to appeal to more secularist reasoning or adjust the way we are explaining it. But see here that—budgeting for our own efforts to make the Gospel clear—it will always be an object of ridicule by those who are on the road to perdition.

The Cross makes no sense to the dying, but the second half of the verse says that

To the LIVING, the Cross MAKES SENSE of everything

To us who are being saved, the message of the Cross “is the power of God!” For you, Christian, the Cross is the one solid piece of ground you can stand on in a world that does not make sense! Your entire world revolves around what He accomplished at Golgotha—that moment that the world considers a senseless death makes sense of everything! Commentator Matthew Henry writes:

Come and see the victories of the cross.… Christ’s wounds are thy healing, his agonies thy repose, his conflicts thy conquests, his groans thy songs, his pains thine ease, his shame thy glory, his death thy life, his sufferings thy salvation. (Communicant’s Companion, 130) Akin, D. L. (2023). The Power of the Cross (1 Corinthians 1:18–25). In D. Platt, D. L. Akin, & T. Merida (Eds.), Exalting Jesus in 1 Corinthians (p. 32). B&H Publishing Group.

The world-tilting wisdom of God separates the living from the dying—the cross makes no sense to the dying but makes sense of everything for the living. And in Verses 19-21, the world-tilting wisdom of God

II. Separates the WISE from the FOOLS (1 Corinthians 1:19-21)

Paul quotes the Old Testament prophet Isaiah in Verse 19 1 Cor 1:19

1 Corinthians 1:19 LSB

For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.”

The quotation comes from Isaiah 29:14, where YHWH is pronouncing judgment on Israel for their pride in disregarding Isaiah’s prophecy—they “draw near with their mouth” while they “remove their hearts far” from YHWH.

Paul uses this quotation to make the connection with the Corinthian church’s fascination with human wisdom that disregards God. He makes the point as forcefully as possible here that

Prideful WISDOM cannot REACH God (vv. 19-20)

Paul writes in Verse 20:

1 Corinthians 1:20 LSB

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

I think that we often read this verse and immediately think of the over-the-top expressions of hatred of the Gospel; like the cartoonish college professor character in God’s Not Dead, ranting and raving about how stoooopid Christians are. And of course that’s true; there are people like that out there. But more often than not the people I’ve met in higher education aren’t the vein-popping, spittle-flying lunatic you find in the old Chick tracts; they are people who really are well-read, highly competent and collegial members of their discipline who simply don’t get it.

A great example of this is someone like Dr. Jordan Peterson—he has all the education in the world on sociology and decades of clinical experience as a psychologist, and he is entirely sympathetic to Christianity, even making a widely-circulated video a couple years back pleading with churches to actively reach out to young men. Bu if you listen to that video it doesn’t take long to realize that when it comes to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

He’s not a raving atheist lunatic, he’s not a militant hater of all things religious; for the last several years he has bent his formidable intellect into the question of who Jesus Christ is and what He has done, and he can’t figure it out. He has all the intellectual firepower in the world, but he can’t hit the target.

The Gospel is not well-served by using 1 Corinthians 1:20 to scorn and ridicule anyone who has a college degree—what Paul is saying here is that no matter how much education, no matter how brilliant a scribe or wise man or debater is, as long as they cling to their wisdom in pride, they will never be able to understand the Gospel.

The power of our message doesn’t come from the intellectual firepower of human wisdom—God has seen to it that no one will come to a saving knowledge of Him by clinging in pride to their own impressive knowledge or understanding. Verse 21 goes on to say that this was in fact God’s design:

1 Corinthians 1:21 LSB

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased, through the foolishness of the message preached, to save those who believe.

Prideful human wisdom cannot reach God; but

God REACHES the HUMBLE in heart (v. 21)

Why does human wisdom not come to know God? Because God in His wisdom arranged it that way! The only way that a wise man can come to a knowledge of God is to lay aside his own wisdom; the scholar cannot understand the Cross of Christ unless he forsakes his scholarship.

The problem with most contemporary human wisdom in our day is that it starts from the assumption that there is no God, right? That all of existence is nothing more than time and chance acting on matter. But if you base your wisdom on the starting point that God doesn’t exist, then what is your wisdom?

Psalm 53:1 LSB

The wicked fool says in his heart, “There is no God...”

The only way to true wisdom starts with the humble acknowledgment that God is:

Hebrews 11:6 LSB

...he who draws near to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

In His wisdom, God has so ordained that human wisdom cannot reach Him. He is pleased instead to use the “foolishness” of the preaching of the Cross to save His people. And this gets to the heart of the struggle the church in Corinth was facing: Their message sounded so foolish to the world:

1 Corinthians 1:22–23 LSB

For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,

The message of the Cross goes exactly against the grain of what people wanted to hear; it is the opposite of what their audience was looking for! But in that foolish message, the world-tilting wisdom of God

III. Separates the CALLED from the CONDEMNED (1 Corinthians 1:23-25)

Throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry, His Jewish adversaries insisted on “a sign”—some supernatural miracle that would prove His claim to be the Messiah:

Matthew 12:38 LSB

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered and said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”

Jesus replied to them that the only “sign” they would get from Him would be His resurrection—that He would be three days in the grave as Jonah was three days in the belly of the sea monster.

In the same way, in Acts 17:21, the Apostle Paul encountered the Greek philosophy debaters in Athens who

Acts 17:21 LSB

(...used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something newer.)

Here in our text Paul says that the Jews want to see supernatural signs of power, and the Greeks want philosophy and clever debate—but what do they get?

1 Corinthians 1:23 LSB

but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,

The wisdom that saves is

Not by SIGNS or DEBATES (vv.22-23)

There are people today who refuse to believe unless they see miracles—that your version of Christianity can’t be true if there aren’t “signs and wonders”: Healings, words of prophecy, exhibitions of power. Heresies like the Word of Faith movement or NAR require that there be supernatural signs that accompany preaching or else it isn’t Christianity. But all they are given is the scandal of the Cross of a tortured and murdered Messiah.

There are those who refuse to believe in Christianity unless all of their questions are answered: From the silly sophistry of “Can God make a rock so big He can’t lift it” to the deeper and more profound questions of why a good God could allow such evil in the world. And they will continue to rattle off those questions to you that they insist must be answered to their satisfaction before they will ever entertain the notion that your God exists. But all they are given is the foolishness of a defeated and dying God nailed to a tree.

True knowledge of God will never come by human wisdom—the knowledge that saves does not come by signs and debates; it comes

By the CALLING of GRACE (vv. 24-25)

1 Corinthians 1:23–24 LSB

but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Two groups of people here—those who see the Cross as scandal and foolishness, and those who see the Cross as power and wisdom. What is the difference? The difference is the calling of God. The Scriptures teach that our natural state is to be enemies of God. Every one of us, when we were born, were born into a world that is in a state of war against God:

Ephesians 2:3 LSB

among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

In that condition, all we have is our own wisdom—all we want is our own wisdom and understanding and learning and education. But that human wisdom on its own cannot come to know the truth about God. The Bible speaks of our condition as being dead in our sin and rebellion against Him—no more able to hear or respond to Him than a corpse in a hospital morgue is able to know or understand anything.

But God, in His rich mercy and love for us, made us alive—He called us out of our spiritual death so that we can hear Him and know Him and love Him. And when He calls you, the Cross of Jesus Christ goes from being a silly fairy tale about a magic sky Jew to being the most powerful truth and wisdom in all existence! The message of the Bible goes from being an outdated collection of superstitions and myths to the greatest and most solid source of Truth ever known!

When you have been called to faith by God Himself, your eyes are opened to the truth that

1 Corinthians 1:25 LSB

...the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Paul wanted the church in Corinth to understand that the power of their message did not depend on the wisdom of man, but on the world-tilting wisdom of God. The Gospel’s power is not found in how cleverly it is presented or by how much it conforms to the sensibilities of the “wise” or “powerful” of this world.

Christian, let God’s Word be your guide and comfort in the midst of a world that calls you foolish for your allegiance to the Cross of Christ. The condescension and dismissal of the society around you is coming from a world that—for all its’ intellectual firepower—simply cannot fathom what you see in this Gospel. So don’t ever apologize for it—don’t chase respectability in this world’s eyes by trying to “spin” or “contextualize” the truth of Christ’s death on the Cross for the forgiveness of sin. Don’t mumble where the Gospel shouts, don’t stammer where it makes demands. It is this “foolish” word and this “weak” Name that represents wisdom and power that this world cannot possibly understand.

Learning to live with the ridicule of a world that thinks you’re a fool is one thing—but for those of you who live with the ridicule and dismissal of a family member bear a heavy burden. That child, that sibling, that parent that you love so dearly and want to see come to a saving knowledge of Christ that makes it a point to mock you as foolish and weak-minded is capable of breaking your heart in ways that no one else on this earth can.

You have tried to share this Gospel with them over and over until you don’t know what to do anymore; you have read books on how to share the Gospel with a loved one, you have tried so many different ways of explaining to them and trying to answer their arguments and show them their need for Christ. And you begin to wonder if this isn’t all your fault—if only you had a more consistent testimony, if only you had better answers, if only you knew your Bible better, then they would believe!

Beloved, see here the comfort that you have in these verses—of course you don’t have a perfect testimony, of course you can’t answer every question perfectly, of course you have times when you react sinfully to their goading. But for all of that, their unbelief is not your fault! As long as they are stubbornly clinging in pride to their own understanding and their own wisdom and their own demands on what they think God should be like, they are blind to the Gospel.

1 Corinthians 1:21 LSB

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased, through the foolishness of the message preached, to save those who believe.

Dear brother, dear sister, your hope for your loved one does not consist in your ability to make the Gospel “wise” enough for them! No one ever enters Heaven because they lost an argument—it is the sovereign power of God’s supernatural calling to open their hearts to see the wisdom and power of this “foolish” Gospel. And there is no heart so hard that God cannot break it open by His power—there is no spirit of unbelief so strong that the Holy Spirit cannot unmake it in an instant.

So speak this Gospel, don’t be ashamed of it, don’t try to make it “make sense”—and don’t back down. You serve a God Who can (and does) transform children of wrath into His beloved sons and daughters—He did it for you, after all!

And if you are here this morning and you have been listening to this sermon waiting to hear something that makes sense to you; if you have heard the word of the Cross preached and are still shaking your head inside saying that it is foolish and pointless, then understand this (if nothing else)—this Gospel will never make sense to you in your own mind and from your own wisdom. As long as you stubbornly insist on being able to understand it before you believe it, the wisdom and power of the Gospel will remain a mystery to you.

The word of the Cross—the preaching of Christ crucified—is not a matter of intellectual pursuit. Does a drowning man weigh the pros and cons of grabbing the life preserver thrown in his direction? Does the woman caught in a house fire debate as to whether she will look foolish if she bolts through the gap in the flames out of the house? As long as you treat the Gospel as a set of propositions to evaluate and not the only way to save your never-dying soul, you will never understand. But once you come in faith; once you step forward to embrace the promises of Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and deliverance from the eternal punishment your sins have earned you, you will discover that it is the wisest thing you have ever done. Lay aside your pride, lay aside all of your own wisdom and understanding and embrace the world-tilting wisdom of God revealed in the foolishness of the Cross of your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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