1 CORINTHIANS 1:26-31 - God Only Wise

Introduction

Back in 2019 the rap world was taken by storm when Kanye West’s new album, Jesus Is King, dropped. West was (and is) one of the biggest names in rap/hip-hop music, and had just before this album made a very clear and convincing profession of faith in Christ. West had heard the Gospel from a pastor named Adam Tyson, a graduate of The Master’s Seminary in California (the seminary started by John MacArthur). West reportedly had Tyson listen to every lyric in every song on the album to make sure that the Gospel was clearly presented in every track. West said in an interview that one of his favorite things about the album was that any time someone talked about it (whether to praise it or critique it), they had to say the words “Jesus is King”. The album’s release was accompanied by live “Sunday Services” all over the country where West would have Tyson preach an evangelistic sermon along with a live choir singing praise music.

For a lot of Christians watching this whole phenomenon there was a sense of excitement over what God can do with someone who had the kind of fame, wealth and influence of Kanye West. This is how God was going to bring revival to the world—all He had to do was call a well-connected and wealthy entertainer let him do the rest!

Well, when you put it like that, you see the the fallacy, don’t you? But it is so easy to see someone with power and influence with the world —whether through celebrity or skill or wealth—and think, “Wow—if only they became a Christian, just imagine what God could do with them...”

This isn’t a new attitude; Paul was dealing with this exact same tendency within the church in Corinth. They had split themselves into factions over their favorite celebrity pastors (1:12), they were trying desperately to impress the world around them and were trying to “spin” the offensive message of the Cross of Christ into the world’s idea of wisdom (1:23). And here in our text this morning Paul is challenging their wrong-headed assumption that if the Gospel is going to go forward in this world it will have to be through someone well-connected, someone highly educated, someone with a great deal of authority who will be listened to by the world.

But what Paul will show them here in these verses (what I want to help you see) is that God is not interested in building His Kingdom through subcontractors. God is not going to share the glory of Kingdom-building with anyone. This is the burden of this passage, beloved, to show you that

Whether in STRENGTH or in WEAKNESS, God ALONE receives the GLORY

Look with me at Verses 26-27:

1 Corinthians 1:26–27 LSB

For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,

Paul is laying out his argument here that culminates in Verse 29 that

I. NO FLESH can BOAST before God (1 Corinthians 1:26-29)

1 Corinthians 1:29 LSB

so that no flesh may boast before God.

No mortal man will ever be able to put his name next to Almighty God as co-author of the Story of Redemption; no human being will be able to say at the end of human history, “God couldn’t have done it without me!” Paul points his readers back to their own conversions to make the point that

God does not NEED CELEBRITIES (v. 26)

1 Corinthians 1:26 LSB

For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.

The adjectival phrase here “according to the flesh” is meant to apply to all three of these qualities— wise according to the flesh, mighty according to the flesh, noble according to the flesh. For our brothers and sisters in Christ in Corinth in that day, nothing got done in your life unless you had connections to someone who had wealth or power; a member of the nobility or a Roman senator or city official, for instance. So naturally, their belief was that they just needed more influential people to join the church—but Paul had just finished telling them that the wise and powerful of the world are turned off by the scandalous nature of the Gospel. So what were they to do?

Paul tells them here that God doesn’t need the wealthy or powerful or well-connected in order to build His church and advance His Kingdom, because He sure didn’t save many of them!

One of the problems with the mindset of “We sure could grow our church if more high-powered intellectual, wealthy people with influence joined!” is that (as we have already seen) we are tempted to water down the offense of the Gospel in order to sort of wheedle them into “buying in” (“Come on—the Gospel isn’t really as offensive as you think!!”)

But the other problem is that your motives for sharing the Gospel start to slip more towards recruiting a great prospect for the church, and less about the salvation of a precious, never-dying soul! Paul reminds the Corinthians here (and us as well) that God never calls men and women to salvation as a means of “recruiting talent”; His Kingdom is never in a “rebuilding year” that needs to come up with more starters to replace John MacArthur and R. C. Sproul and Voddie Baucham—He never needed them in the first place! Everyone is wondering where the next Billy Graham is going to come from, as if God’s purposes in the world have stalled out until the next superstar ascends, but God does not need celebrities in order to achieve His purposes.

In the same way, Paul goes on to show in the next few verses that

God is not LIMITED by NOBODIES (vv. 27-29)

1 Corinthians 1:27–29 LSB

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, so that no flesh may boast before God.

The word “base” in Verse 28 (or “low” in the ESV) comes from a Greek word that literally means “no-name” or “no family”. It’s a word used to refer to someone who has no “family connections”; someone who does not have a noble title—a “nobody”, you might say. The Greek word translated “despised” in that verse carries the idea of “disregarded” or “irrelevant”; as in something that doesn’t enter into your calculations, something that has no bearing on your concerns.

Paul says, in essence, that all the things the Corinthian church was worried about—that they had no standing in the city to be listened to, that they needed more members of noble birth so they could get things done—that low and disregarded status is who God chooses to use! God is not looking at His roster, frustrated that He’s been stuck with a bunch of second-string players and needs to figure out how to make the best of it: This is the team that He specifically picked out!

Because He is making sure that at the end of the day no one will be able to say, “I carried the team to the championship!” No one will be able to say, “God couldn’t have done it without me!”

If God wants to use a celebrity to advance His Kingdom, He can certainly do so—the text doesn’t say He didn’t call any wise or powerful, just not many! But when He calls them, He doesn’t do it because of some great skill or advantage they can bring to His Kingdom; He does it out of His good pleasure alone. He isn’t limited by nobodies; they are the ones He has chosen to humiliate the wisdom of the wise with their “foolishness”, to shame the strength of the powerful with their “weakness”; to tear down the well-connected and highly-visible with a bunch of “nobodies.”

Why do you think Goliath was so incensed in 1 Samuel 17 when he demanded Israel’s champion come out to face him and they sent out a teenaged shepherd boy??

1 Samuel 17:43 LSB

And the Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

But God’s aim in that moment was to use the weak and despised—a nobody with no name or influence or fame—to overthrow the mighty and powerful enemy of His glory:

1 Samuel 17:45–46 LSB

Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the battle lines of Israel, whom you have reproached. “This day Yahweh will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the camp of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel...

God’s aim is that no flesh will be able to boast before Him—whether in strength or in weakness, God alone receives the glory.

Paul goes on in Verses 30 and 31 to write that there is boasting to be done, that

II. OUR only BOAST is IN God (1 Corinthians 1:30-31)

1 Corinthians 1:30–31 LSB

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Here is what is at the heart of the world’s inability to understand the Gospel—this is what bends intellectuals’ brains into pretzels and makes it impossible for the powerful to grasp—that we are utterly at the mercy of God in salvation. He gives us Himself, and He alone gives us everything we need. By God’s doing—by His effectual call that brought us to Him—by His doing we are in Christ Jesus, and so everything that we need comes from Him.

This understanding of our union with Christ is a central teaching of the New Testament; that when we have come by faith to salvation and have received that New Birth by which we are able to please Him and delight in Him, part of that union means that everything that Jesus has done and everything that He is now is counted to us!

Our entire IDENTITY is now in Him (v. 30)

Verse 30 is one of the central verses to help us understand what union with Christ means in our lives:

1 Corinthians 1:30 LSB

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,

See the contrasts that Paul is making between our status in the world as foolish, weak, base and despised and who we are in Christ.

In a world that prides itself on its sophisticated and impressive intellectualism, you are nothing but foolishness and weakness; but in Christ you have been given the wisdom of God that the world outside of Him cannot comprehend. The beginning of all true wisdom is found in fearing and obeying Him (Proverbs 9:10). In Christ, you have wisdom that this world cannot understand—and yet it is a wisdom that makes sense of this world.

In a world that runs on guilt, a world that will use accusation and shaming to manipulate you and make you fall into line, you have real righteousness in Christ. You are free from the guilt and shame that the world uses to steer you; on that Cross, your Savior traded your shame for His righteousness:

2 Corinthians 5:21 LSB

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

In a world that has made perversion and moral rot into virtues—a world that tells you not to feel guilty about your sin but to celebrate it—you have the promise of real holiness in Christ. In Him you have been not only set free from the penalty of sin, but as you live in Him day by day you are increasingly free from the power of sin over you! You can be holier than you ever thought possible in Christ!

In a world that lands hard on how worthless you are; that tells you how insignificant your life is, that you don’t matter and nothing you do will ever matter, that you are a nobody whose existence is totally insignificant—you have been purchased at an immense price by your Savior!

1 Peter 1:18–19 LSB

knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your futile conduct inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

In a world where you are considered foolish, weak, base and despised, you are united with Christ—and that means that in Him you are wise, you are righteous, you are holy, you are redeemed. Your entire identity is now in Him.

And so you have a reason to boast—you boast in Him!

1 Corinthians 1:31 LSB

so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Our only boast is in God—our entire identity is now in Him, and

Our life’s CALLING is from Him

You’ll notice that the end of Verse 31 may be set off by different formatting in your Bible, an indication that this is another Old Testament quotation—this time from Jeremiah 9:23-24

Jeremiah 9:23–24 LSB

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

Christian, if all of this is true—if we really are considered despised and low by the world for our proclamation of the Cross, and if the Cross really is the source of all of our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption—then how ought we to live in this world?

There are far too many Christians who are all too content to let the world define them as losers—that somehow “the way of Jesus” means to exist out on the margins, as exiles who don’t really belong here. They misapply what Paul is saying here to mean that we ought to expect to just be doormats; that somehow we are most Christlike when we are despised and kicked around and stepped on by the world. That if we just let the bully take our lunch money and pull our sweater over our head every single day that eventually he’ll come around because of how powerful and wise we are being!

But Paul is not saying here that being considered weak and foolish is in and of itself spiritual—he is saying that when we are considered weak and foolish by the world around us it is a sign of their cluelessness, not a sign of our helplessness! Paul was not telling the church in Corinth to roll over and let the world around them disregard the message of the Cross—he was giving them the perspective to fortify them to stand against the opposition they were facing!

Christian, God’s Word tells you here that the world will despise you for your commitment to the Cross of Christ—and it is showing you that their scorn is entirely untrue! They think you are weak and despised, but the truth is you are complete in Christ—you have wisdom that they don’t have, you have righteousness that they cannot find, you have holiness and redemption that they don’t even realize they need!

And the way that you show the world the salvation it needs isn’t by matching the world’s ideas of power and wisdom; God doesn’t need a celebrity to make the Gospel more entertaining or less offensive—He doesn’t need to transform a “nobody” into a “somebody” before His power can rest on them.

That’s always the underlying assumption that we have to fight against in our minds, isn’t it? Even when we grasp that God is not limited by “nobodies”, we still have it in the back of our minds that He has to somehow make them powerful before His power can work through them.

But what does God’s Word say here? That the foolish and weak things in the eyes of the world will shame the powerful and wise while still in their weakness! If it is God’s power and wisdom at work, then the weakness or foolishness of His instrument doesn’t matter!

Christian, God can use big expensive DeWalt tools, and He can use cheap Harbor Freight tools exactly the same way. He can use the big powerful platformed Christian ministries and little country churches on the corner of Main and Fugate in exactly the same way. And more often than not, it’s the weak and small and unnoticed tools that He loves to use most.

The Day is coming when every ministry and every church and every great Christian evangelist and pastor and teacher will stand before Christ to be rewarded for what they have done and receive their “well-done, good and faithful servant” from Him. And I don’t know how that Day will play out, but in my mind I imagine a procession of mighty men and women of faith all standing before Christ to receive honor and glory and reward from Him—Athanasius, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, on and on—but the one who receives the greatest glory and the greatest reward and the highest accolades on that Day will be someone no one has ever heard of! A Christian who never had any platform, never had their name known by anyone, lived their whole life in obscurity and out of sight from the world but was used incredibly mightily by God!

1 Corinthians 1:27–29 LSB

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, so that no flesh may boast before God.

No one can boast before God—but Christian, you can boast in God. In Christ you have wisdom and righteousness and holiness and redemption—you have His power and His wisdom to go out with confidence and joy into a world that doesn’t take you seriously; a world that doesn’t know how much it needs the message that you are bringing. So let them have that foolish, weak message with both barrels—boast in what God has done for you in Christ, tell that old story again and again, and call this world to come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Jude 24–25 LSB

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________