When Nobodies Encounter Jesus

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

This is where the paradox emerges because there is a strong case that we are made in God’s image and therefore as image bearers we find our worth and value in belonging to God. But our image-bearing state is not enough to escape the judicial sentence against sin and therefore our worth and value to God is immense but being faithful to his character is greater to God than glancing over unappeased sin.

So we can say there is value in every human because God created him/her and yet God calls them enemies who do not deny themselves and follow the Son of God, the Lord Jesus. We can wade in the “I am made in God’s image pool” all we want if we equally acknowledge the stronger truth that image bearers have violated their relationship with God as image bearers by rejecting him. Therefore, their sin nature creates a void in the relationship with God and leads each individual to worship self instead of the creator.

In the worship of self, man seeks to imitate God in order to gain some resemblance of his glory. Take three stories in the OT for an example of the continual work of man seeking to steal God’s glory.

Garden:

Genesis 3:5–6 ESV

5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Babel:

Genesis 11:4 ESV

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Babylon:

Daniel 4:28–30 ESV

28 All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. 29 At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, 30 and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?”

Revelation 17:4–5 ESV

4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. 5 And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.”

All of these passages are progressive looks at how sin has infected the world and sin’s greatest longing in us to be God and to retain for ourselves his glory.

Paul wants to make this point to Corinthians because sinful pride and arrogance about humanity’s strength was a problem in the culture and creeping in the church.

Self-love is sin (26-29)

God rewrote your origin story (v. 26)

The Lord is not concerned with your accolades when you washed by the blood of the lamb. Your origin story is one of death, sin, defiance towards God. But Paul’s point in this passage in 1 Corinthians is that a person called to salvation in Christ has a rewritten origin story, one that begins with new birth in Christ with free standing before God, liberty from sin, and identity as one set apart for God.

Paul says, “consider your calling” to refer to the time that God saved the believers from death to life. Regardless if they were mayor of the town or a major stock holder in a fortune 500 company, when Christ calls a person from death to life, all about the heart of that person changes.

Paul references three scenarios as examples:

wisdom by worldly standards

powerful (possessed great authority)

noble birth (eugenes)-

Paul most likely is thinking of particular members in Corinth that make of the majority of its membership who came from humble beginnings versus those who might be rich, of good stock, or in leadership. Maybe some were not well educated (wise) or held great authority or wealth (power) or had some great family name and lineage to boast in. No doubt many slaves who know worshipped with their masters could be in attendance. Instead, many of these members were the modest of Corinth as Paul displays for us and their earthly orgins have no meaning when the Lord intervenes and rewrites their story.

Remember that Paul is making the case that the cross of Christ flips the script of reality as to what is truly wise and what is foolish. In the same way, the powerful of the world are actually weak and those of noble birth actually belong to a decaying family dynasty.

I remember a guy I went to high school with at Houston, who was filthy rich. He had an elevator in his house and he got a brand new dodge viper for his birthday. His dad owned a prestigious company with the last name plastered all over the city. This peer of mine and all his siblings, who carried that last name, had social and political capital because of their last name. I envied them for that and longed to belong to such a family thinking that would bring me happiness, popularity and identity. Now I understand differently.

What are those earthly treasures worth if you don’t belong to God through His Son Jesus. What do they afford to you? Temporary happiness, thrills, memories. But when it fades, when its lost, it makes the fall so much harder because a person’s identity is tied to such temporary things.

This is what Paul is trying to help the Corinthians is understand, to consider their true origin story, because no accomplishment, no birthright, or physical, social, or financial power has any meaning or formulates any true identity with God. Instead, it is the lowly of the earth, those who have nothing and claim nothing and who consider themselves deserving of nothing, that God actually elevates to greatness for the purpose of glorifying himself. Being a nobody is what God wants you to understand so that you and I find our purpose in Him and not ourselves.

God glorifies himself in saving the lost (vs. 27-28)

1 Corinthians 1:27–28 ESV

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,

With Paul’s use of the word “chose” which is elects, then we can understand he is specifically speaking about the “calling” of the believers to salvation in Christ and generally the overall plan of God whereby He chooses the lowly and meager to do unthinkable things.

The point they are trying to make is straight from Paul’s teaching that God exalts himself when he takes the low of this world, the meager, the unwanted and he exalts them when they believe in his Son. Similarly, as he exalts the humble who exalt His Son’s name, he shames we wise, he shames rich, he shames the popular.

Colin Brown, states, “through the cross, glory and shame have undergone an exchange of values.”

What the Romans thought as barbaric form of death, what the Jews consider as a curse of God, the Son of God hanging on the tree is an act of true love, grace and glory as the plan of redemption and the atoning work of the Son is carried out. That same cross shamed the wise and strong because it exposes the failure of their wisdom to find God reminds humanity that we have fallen short with God.

Romans 3:10–20 ESV

10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” 14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

“Even things that are not” in verse 28 speaks to God’s sovereign plan, to save and to carry out his purposes and people who are not yet, they don’t exist, they merely a pre-destined plan and purpose of God.

Imagine the Charles Spurgeons who are not yet believers in Christ yet, small children maybe. They probably are poor, uneducated early in life and yet God in his timing will rise them up to belief in Him, bless them and use them to draw many to his name.

Man-pride(self-love) is an offense against God

Paul’s conclusion is simply this…God does this because no man should boast before God. Everything in this section is addressing the previous section where man’s wisdom was being heralded and worshipped by the Corinthian people and that idolatry had leaked into the church. It was man-pride and self-love that was winning the day and Paul had to put a stop to it.

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 6: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel e. The Ultimate Good (9:23–24)

Men’s wisdom is not like God’s wisdom (cf. Ps 111:10; Prov 1:7; 9:10). Their might is not the moral strength of righteousness. Their wealth is not the spiritual riches immune to theft or corrosion. Then as now the scholar, athlete, warrior, and financier were highly esteemed. Such persons are prone to trusting in their own resources. Wisdom, strength, or riches cannot help the worldly. If these fall short in the time of need, what will avail? Our highest good is to know God (v.24), not just intellectually or philosophically, but in spirit and in his true character. p 445 This is the true and lasting wisdom.

We were created to know God and sin has corrupted our relationship to him. In Him we find our greatest worth and value and without him, although we are precious to him positionally as His creation, we are relationally separated and doomed to destruction. Humanity’s state in sin is a grave state of depravity that craves and covets any glory that belongs to God like a child looking over to another playing with their toy.

Isaiah 42:8 ESV

8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

Isaiah 48:11 ESV

11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

Psalm 115:1 ESV

1 Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!

Friend, understand that the Lord is sovereign over all and he purposes and plans the events of human history for one primary goal: his supreme glory! All moments of time are not butterflies flying about to this direction and then that, without any perceived course of direction. Instead, He directs all of history toward the goal of his glory in Christ Jesus. We know this because at the beginning of creation, he promised a redeemer would come in victory and at the end of this world, Jesus will come in victory as is promised.

Christ-love is wisdom(30-31)

1 Corinthians 1:30–31 ESV

30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Paul then concludes his thought against human pride with the counter argument that our greatest hope rests solely on Christ.

His work is our foundation

He starts with “because of Him you are in Christ.”

God work to save his enemies and bring them back from the pits of destruction to the heavenly abode of God’s presence is purely an act of God’s grace in his Son Jesus.

The motive: God’s glory

The motor: God’s son

Because of the Trinitarian plan of God to work in unison as Father, Son and Spirit to bring redemption to sinners, through the work of the Son, by the power of the Spirit according to the plan of the Father, sinners are given grace.

We are talk that He became wisdom to us. This is Paul’s way of saying that the work of Christ provides the following necessary acts of the salvation drama that unfolds, which is true wisdom of God. Those acts of the drama of salvation are components of the wisdom of God and they are as follows:

the judicial work(righteousness)

the ethical work(setting apart)

the liberating work (redemption)

Judicial

He became righteousness for us. As opposed to us earning some standard of right relationship with God, Jesus lived the life of perfection that we could not live and therefore He “became our righteousness.”

Becoming our righteousness means that judicially, although we are blatantly sinful still, because we are in Christ, and Christ is in right standing with God, then we have his righteousness imputed to us.

This is how we enter the throne room of grace with confidence, as the writer of Hebrews states. You can take your prayers before a holy and wrathful God because you know that His Son has appeased the anger against your sin and therefore you have access to make your requests known to God.

Ethical/Moral

In Christ, you do not only have the wrath of God appeased, but through Jesus, you are made holy. This inward work is the cleansing that is spoken of so that sin’s power is destroyed and sin’s effect in your life is also destroyed. One act of destruction happened on the cross when Jesus died, the resulting act of destruction is that sin is being destroyed in you day by day. This is the power of God in Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:16–17 ESV

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

Colossians 3:8–10 ESV

8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Spiritual

We are spiritually free men, where God has worked in us that we are no longer slaves to sin and instead we are recipients of the the freedom it provides. This is hlepful to a diversity of people in the church from different backgrounds financially and socially to understand. The grace of Christ unifies them under the work of Jesus so that no one person is more or less important than the other. Each has been called, atoned for and liberated in Christ Jesus.

Gordon Fee states,

“The ground is level at the foot of the cross”

This truth casts away any motive of factionalism or hierarchy that rises up in a society that is prideful and willing to crush their neighbor to get ahead. The church doesn’t look at social, ethnic or political status as holding any value. Instead, we are all freedmen experiencing a new life provided for us by our Redeemer. He paid the price for our release and therefore we are all equal in it and grateful for it.

He finally, concludes with a quote from the OT, which serves as the foundation of his argument. This quote is from Jeremiah 9:24-25

Jeremiah 9:24–26 (ESV)

24 but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

25 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh— 26 Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.”

Jeremiah is issuing a warning of judgment because the world rejects God. God’s people had rejected God and the nations had rejected him. Therefore, God sends the message that rings in the ears of all who find comfort in their own human strength, God will punish all who have not trusted in God alone.

Jeremiah’s quote is one simply summarized as those who trust in the Lord will be saved because they humbly rest in Him, but those who arrogantly reject him on account of their own arrogant pride, they will face his great and everlasting punishment.

Christ then is our wisdom because of his great work and therefore we would be wise to follow him. Simply then, let me ask you if you are wise or a fool? Do you follow Christ and rest in the finished work on the cross or do you rest in your own power, wisdom and family name?

**A Statement about the SBC

Concerns:

social justice movement has been a concern as it has created greater division among partnering churches and distracted from the work of disciple-making

concern over appointment of leadership who are guilty of sermon plagiarizing for a number of years

concern over the denial of the Baptist Faith and Message’s article on church leadership as being men only and the partnering churches who are allowed to remain in the SBC with women pastors

concern over the sexual abuse in the history of the SBC that was covered up and reluctance to address the issue in a godly way.

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