THE ‘FOOLISH’ WISDOM OF THE CROSS – 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 29, 2018 under 2018 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; April 29, 2018 from 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Theme: The wisdom of God in the message of the cross cannot be judged rightly by the ‘wisdom’ of fallen humanity.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

This morning, we come to a passage of Scripture that tells us of a great conflict that is going on in this world. And we might say that it’s a story of the conflict between two kinds of ‘wisdom’.

The first wisdom is the wisdom of God—demonstrated most especially in the salvation that He has provided for fallen humanity in the cross of His Son Jesus Christ.

Because His relationship with mankind was broken in the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden, God sent forth His Son—the second Person of the Trinity—to take full human nature to Himself, to be born into the human family as one of us, to take all of the guilt of our sin upon His own Person, and to pay our debt by dying the shameful death of the cross in our place. And then, to show that the Father was satisfied with that sacrifice, He raised His Son Jesus from the dead three days later. Jesus presently sits at the right hand of God the Father in victory and glory—awaiting the command from His Father to return to this earth, take the church to Himself as His bride, and to reign on earth as King of kings and Lord of lords. And now, all who place their faith in what Jesus has done for us on the cross are declared righteous in the sight of God the Father and are saved—reconciled to a holy God.

That is the ‘wisdom’ of God. It is put on display through the cross. What astonishing wisdom it is! By it, God solved the greatest problem there is—the problem of our salvation.

But that is the first kind of wisdom in the passage I am about to read to you. The second kind is that of fallen humanity. We should set this second kind of ‘wisdom’ off in quote-marks; because it’s not the wisdom of true knowledge or true reason. It’s not the wisdom that correctly ascertains things or that shows itself in faithfully understanding the truth that God displays in this world. Rather, it’s a false ‘wisdom’—a form of wisdom that is ‘wisdom’ in name only—a system of values and priorities that sets itself up in rebellion against God’s truth.

It first showed itself in the Garden of Eden when the serpent tempted Eve to question the commandment of God—when he put doubts in her mind by asking in Genesis 3:1, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”—and then by daring to tell her in verses 4-5, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” This ‘wisdom’, then, is a form of wisdom in which the creature believes he or she can know truth apart from the Creator—a ‘wisdom’ that proposes to be wiser than what God has said. It is a form of wisdom that cannot—and indeed, will not—rightly understand and appraise the true wisdom of God. It is a ‘wisdom’ that considers the wisdom of God to be foolishness.

It is these two kinds of wisdom—and the conflict that exists between them—that is the subject of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.

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We began considering the larger context of this passage last week. It has to do with the first of the problems that Paul sought to address in his letter to the Corinthian believers.

These Christians—truly redeemed and set apart by God as His own people—were nevertheless falling prey to the false ‘wisdom’ of this world. They were elevating the teachers and apostolic leaders within the church—aligning themselves under them—on the basis of their speaking abilities and impressive powers of rhetoric. They were treating these spiritual leaders in the same way that the Greek culture around them celebrated their Greek philosophers. Christians were even going so far as to declare themselves to be “followers of Paul” or “followers of Apollos” or “followers of Peter”; and as a result, they were dividing themselves from one another, and speaking against each other.

Some of them were even saying that they were identified with their favorite teacher by the fact that they had been ‘baptized’ by that teacher. Paul (if you’ll pardon me for saying so) was ‘appalled’ by all of this. He condemned such division; and said that he was glad that he had only baptized a very few of the Corinthians; so that they couldn’t say, “I was baptized by Paul”. In verse 17, he declared;

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect (1 Corinthians 1:17).

Now; please consider carefully what Paul said. He said that he didn’t come to them “with wisdom of words”—that is, in the outwardly impressive, merely human manner of the Greek ‘wisdom’ speakers that they were so accustomed to admiring. He feared that an adherence to the false ‘wisdom’ of fallen humanity would harm the impact that the message of the cross was supposed to have on them.

And that brings us to our passage this morning. Paul went on to explain why it is that the wisdom of God in the cross of Jesus cannot be rightly judged by the ‘wisdom’ of fallen humanity. It’s the tale of two ‘wisdoms’—and of the conflict between them. He wrote to them in verses 18-25;

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

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (vv. 18-25).

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Earlier this week, I read from an article featured in the April 2018 edition of GQ Magazine. GQ is a very popular magazine on fashion and style and culture for men. It’s about the outwardly ‘impressive’ things of this world. The article I read was titled “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read”; and in it, the author gives its fashion-savvy readers the permission to NOT read the ‘boring’ books from classical literature that we’ve all been told we ‘ought’ to read—even suggesting some ‘better’ and ‘far more interesting’ books to read instead. One of the books that the author gives permission to not read is the Bible. He described it as “repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned”.

And it struck me that that’s how the supposedly ‘wise’ person of this world views the great theme of redemption to God our Creator that is unfolded to us in the Bible. It’s boring. It’s repetitive. It’s self-contradictory. It makes no sense. It’s foolish. And in fact, that’s precisely how the apostle Paul—some two-thousand years before GQ Magazine—said that the ‘wisdom’ of this age would evaluate the wisdom of God shown at the cross.

Now; I believe it’s very important to rightly understand what Paul is speaking of when he talks about the ‘wisdom’ of this age. I don’t believe that Paul is speaking of the kind of wisdom that is shown in true knowledge, or true understanding, or true intelligence, or in true reason, or in true science. The wisdom of God is—in no respect—in conflict with any of those things. In fact, it is my strong conviction that the more someone is rightly oriented to the wisdom of God as revealed in the Scriptures, the better equipped and the better oriented she or he will be to rightly receive and assess the true knowledge of God’s created world. As Solomon—wisest man who ever lived—once put it; “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge …” (Proverbs 1:7).

Rather, the wisdom that Paul was speaking against in this passage—the ‘wisdom’ of this age—is the kind of thing that he described in 1 Timothy 6:20-21;

O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge—by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith (1 Timothy 6:20-12).

The wisdom Paul speaks of is ‘what is falsely called knowledge’. It is, in fact, nothing else but the kind of rebellion against our Creator that the serpent tempted Eve in the garden to embrace; a kind of ‘wisdom’ that seeks to be wise apart from God—or even in opposition to Him. It’s the kind of ‘wisdom’ that Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:5 is characterized by “arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God”.

And all of this helps us to appreciate why Paul wrote these words to his Corinthian brothers and sisters. They were dividing themselves against one another on the basis of matters of ‘outward appearance’ with respect to worldly matters. They were looking to the stylish and impressive characteristics of their favorite teachers in the church through the eyes of ‘worldly wisdom’; and were, as a result, looking down their noses at those who didn’t join their ‘far wiser’ group.

Paul is warning us—by the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures—that embracing such an attitude will nullify the power of the message of the cross of Jesus in our lives. It will—as Paul warned—make the preaching of the cross of Christ “of no effect”. This is because the wisdom of God put on display in the message of the cross simply cannot be rightly evaluated on the basis of fallen human wisdom. It’s an irreconcilable conflict between two ‘wisdoms’. And if we find ourselves aligned with the wrong side of that conflict, we must repent—and actively submit to the true wisdom of God.

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Notice how Paul unfolded this to us. In verses 18-19, he showed us that the message of the cross cannot be rightly evaluated by human ‘wisdom’; because …

1. IT COMES AS FOOLISHNESS TO THE PERISHING.

He wrote, “For the message [or literally, 'the word'] of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing …” You’ll notice that Paul speaks of those who count the message of the cross foolish as those “who are perishing”. He speaks of their dreadful condition as if in the present tense. He doesn’t say that they are ‘in danger of possibly perishing one day’; but rather that their state of being is that of ‘perishing right now’. In other words, it’s not that they will perish one day because they consider the message of the cross foolish; but rather, they consider the message of the cross foolish because they are already in a state of perishing right now.

But then, you’ll also notice that he went on to say, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” And again, notice that he does not say that we will ‘one day be saved’; but rather that we are—in the present tense—’being saved right now’. In other words, we will not one day be saved because the message of the cross has been received as ‘the power of God’ by us; but rather, it is received by us as ‘the power of God’, because we are—right now—being saved.

And what this teaches us is that we do not merely become something because of how we receive the message of the cross. That is, of course, true; but Paul is saying much more than that. He is saying that the proclamation of the message of the cross—that message that is foolish to this world—shows each one of us for what we really are. Does it come to us as foolish nonsense? Then the proclamation of it reveals the truth about us that we are “those who are perishing”. Does it come to us as the power of God? Then the proclamation of it demonstrates that we are “those who are being saved”.

What Paul says here reminds me of what the Lord Jesus once taught His disciples. They asked Him why He taught the crowds that listened to Him in parables—stories that left them confused. He said;

“Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. or whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:

‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them’” (Matthew 13:11-15).

I also think it is very interesting to notice that Paul didn’t say that the ‘perishing’ receive the message of the cross as ‘foolishness’ and the ‘being saved’ receive it as ‘wisdom’—as if the contrast was between ‘foolishness’ and ‘wisdom’. Rather, he says the ‘being saved’ ones receive it as ‘power’—active, life-transforming power—“the power of God to salvation”, as Paul called it in Romans 1:16. You can argue and debate about ‘abstract philosophy’ all you want; but the message of the cross really shows what it is by the fact that it is powerful to change lives!

The proof, in other words, is in the power. Who can argue with the power of the gospel to actually change the lives of those who believe it? And thus, Paul quotes Isaiah 29:14 and says, “For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent’” (v. 19). The vaunted ‘wisdom’ of this age falls flat before life-changing power!

So then; in the awesome wisdom of God, the message of the cross ends up showing who people really are. To those who are captivated by the devil’s deceitful wisdom of this age, it comes across as foolishness—and those, by their rejection of it, reveal the truth about themselves. But to those of us who are being saved, it proves itself abundantly by the power it has to transform our lives.

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Paul also went on to show that the message of the cross cannot be rightly evaluated by the wisdom of this age; because …

2. IT EXPOSES THE FOLLY OF UNBELIEF.

In verse 20, Paul asked—in a rhetorically ‘mocking’ kind of way; “Where is the wise?” (that is to say, Where is the person who is now able to boast that their own worldly wisdom has led them to a saving knowledge of God?) “Where is the scribe?” (that is to say, Where is the scholar of this world who can boast that they studied and researched and arrived at a knowledge of God on the basis of their own powers of intellect?) “Where is the disputer of this age?” (that is to say, Where is the skilled orator who has all the great powers of human rhetoric—with their irresistible logic—has argued their way into righteousness and into a relationship with Almighty God?)

Have you read the biographies of the great unbelieving philosophers and unbelieving thinkers of this world? If you have, I ask this in all humility: have you ever read of a single one who led anything like the kind of reverent, God-fearing, moral life of a Billy Graham or a Charles Spurgeon or a George Whitefield … or a Paul? Often, when you examine the lives of those who mocked at the cross of Jesus Christ, and who gave themselves over to the wisdom of this world, you find—I’m very sorry to say—the opposite kind of life. They often end up living lives of sorrow and regret; and frequently were said to have come to the death-bed with horror.

It’s a powerful point to his argument, then, when Paul asks in verse 21, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” The sobering answer is, Yes He has. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (v. 21).

This reminds me of a story that was once told by a great Bible teacher from a few generations ago—Dr. Harry Ironside. He told about how he was doing street preaching for the Salvation Army in a major city. One day as he spoke, a man from the crowd drew near and handed him a card. The man was a well-known agnostic who was in town on the lecture circuit; and the card said, “Sir, I challenge you to debate with me the question, ‘Agnosticism verses Christianity’ in the Academy of Science Hall next Sunday afternoon at four o’clock. I will pay all expenses—.”

Dr. Ironside read the card to the crowd, and said something like this: “I am very much interested in this challenge … therefore I will be glad to agree to this debate on the following conditions …” And what he asked was that the agnostic gentleman bring to the lecture hall that Sunday two people whose transformed lives proved that agnosticism has real value in changing people for the better and in building true character. He asked him to bring one man and one woman whose lives had been previously destroyed by sin and drunkenness and debauchery; but who had heard this speaker’s lectures against the Bible and Christianity, and who—as a result of embracing the agnosticism he advocated—had left their lives of sin and were now brand new people, freed from the destructive habits of the past and were now living happy and productive lives to that very day.

“Now”, Dr. Ironside went on to say, “I will promise to meet you at the Hall at the hour appointed next Sunday, and I will bring with me at the very least one hundred men and women who for years lived in just such sinful degradation as I have tried to depict, but who have been gloriously saved through believing the message of the gospel which you ridicule. I will have these men and women with me on the platform as witnesses to the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ, and as present-day proof of the truth of the Bible.” He asked the Salvation Army captain if there were any who could go with him to the meeting; and she said, “We can give you forty at least, just from this one corps, and we will give you a brass band to lead the procession!”

Dr. Ironside said he could get the remaining sixty very easily. And if the agnostic would bring two people such as he had described, he would come marching at the head as the band plays “Onward, Christian Soldiers”—and then the debate can begin.

And the agnostic backed away; waving his hand as if to say, “Nothing doing!”1

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

* * * * * * * * * *

Paul goes on to show that the message of the cross cannot rightly be judged by the fallen wisdom of man; because …

3. IT SEEMS POINTLESS TO THE SELF-EXALTING.

In verse 22. Paul spoke of two groups of people who represent two expressions of human ‘wisdom’. He wrote, “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom …” Do you remember how the Jewish leaders said such things to Jesus? They saw His works and heard His teaching, and then demanded, “What sign do you show us?” They would not believe Him, unless they had visible proof from Him that satisfied their demands for evidence. “Show me!” “Prove it to me!” And then, do you remember how the people of Athens would listen to Paul only in the halls of philosophy? They spent their time in listening to new things, and measuring them according to accepted standards of human wisdom—testing whether or not he satisfied and flattered their intellects.

It is these kinds of things that people use to follow a self-defined path toward human ‘wisdom’. They demand a sign. They seek after wisdom. But as Paul says, “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness …” The Jewish way of thinking is scandalized by the cross. In the minds of such people, the name “Christ” was synonymous with the ideals of majesty and power that they believed to be embodied in the Messiah—the royal son of David. But the cross was synonymous with shame and dishonor and disgrace—an embarrassing thing that respectable people didn’t even like to talk about. As one Bible teacher puts it, “Christ crucified” was as incongruent and impossible an idea to the Jewish mind as “fried ice”. And to the Greek, ‘Christ crucified’ was an utterly foolish and silly idea. “How could an obscure man, executed as a criminal in an obscure place of the world many years ago, have anything to do with me?” Don’t we hear the same kinds of things today?

The message of the cross—Christ crucified—is to those who demand a sign a scandalous and offensive thing; and to those who demand ‘wisdom’ and ‘logic’, it is silly nonsense. But, as Paul goes on to say in verse 24, “to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” If the path to wisdom one wishes to follow is a ‘self-defined’ one—one that exalts and flatters the pride of the one who follows it—then the message of the cross will seem pointless. But for those who are sinners and need a Savior, it is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.

* * * * * * * * * *

And finally, note that human ‘wisdom’ cannot rightly assess the message of the cross—not because it is weak and frail and unsatisfying in and of itself, but rather because …

4. IT PROVES SUPERIOR TO ALL HUMAN EFFORT.

As Paul puts it in verse 25, “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Just as we put false human ‘wisdom’ in quote-marks, so also let’s put the ‘foolishness’ of God in quote-marks. Fallen people may receive it as foolishness; but in the end, the so-called ‘foolishness’ of God proves immeasurably wiser than men; and the so-called ‘weakness’ of God—shown in the death of His Son on the cross—proves immeasurably stronger than men. No wonder, then, that frail human ‘wisdom’ cannot grasp it!

The true proof of real wisdom and strength will be on the day when the redeemed stand before God in holiness and glory—palm branches in hand—clothed in white robes of righteousness—praising God and saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Then, the wisdom and strength of God will have proven itself upon those who were transformed by the message of the cross.

* * * * * * * * * *

The world will laugh at the message of the cross. It will count it as foolishness. And that’s because of the kind of ‘wisdom’ it embraces. It can do no other.

But let’s make sure you and I do not embrace that false ‘wisdom’. Let’s not allow ourselves to be conformed to it. Let’s make sure we follow the counsel Paul gave to the Corinthians later on in this letter—in 1 Corinthians 3:18-23, where he said;

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (1 Corinthians 3:18-23).

When it comes to the message of the cross, dear brothers and sisters—and our unity in it—may we each one become ‘fools’ in the sight of this world; in order that we may fully embrace the wisdom of God.

And more—may we, in a spirit of true wisdom—keep on praying for those who have not yet done so.

1H.A. Ironside, Random Reminiscences from Fifty Years of Ministry (NY: Loizeauz Bros. Bible Truth Depot, 1932), pp. 99-107.