Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Corinthians 1:18
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
18 31. God’s Message not intended to flatter the pride of man
18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God ] Literally, to them that are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the (or a) power of God. The connection of this verse with the preceding is not quite clear. It may, however, be thus explained: The doctrine of the Cross is folly to those who are perishing, because they conceive of some inherent excellence in humanity, whereas the Cross proclaims and justifies God’s sentence of death against the human race. The same doctrine is the power of God to those who are in the way of salvation, because it is through faith in Christ’s Blood alone that man can be justified from sin, crucified to the old man, and united to the new man which is created in righteousness and true holiness. To preach the Gospel, then, with wisdom of words, to exalt, that is, the human element, is to take away the power of the Gospel, and to make it in reality the folly which it is deemed to be by unspiritual men. Cf. Rom 1:16; Rom 3:22; Eph 4:22-23; Col 3:9-10.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For the preaching of the cross – Greek, the word ( ho logos) of the cross; that is, the doctrine of the cross; or the doctrine which proclaims salvation only through the atonement which the Lord Jesus Christ made on the cross, This cannot mean that the statement that Christ died as a martyr on a cross, appears to be foolishness to people; because, if that was all, there would be nothing that would appear contemptible, or that would excite their opposition more than in the death of any other martyr. The statement that Polycarp, and Ignatius, and Paul, and Cranmer died as martyrs, does not appear to people to be foolishness, for it is a statement of an historical truth, and their death excites the high admiration of all people. And if, in the death of Jesus on the cross, there had been nothing more than a mere martyrs death, it would have been equally the object of admiration to all people. But; the preaching of the cross must denote more than that; and must mean:
(1) That Christ died as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of people, and that; it was this which gave its speciality to his sufferings on the cross.
(2) That people can be reconciled to God, pardoned, and saved only by the merits and influence of this atoning sacrifice.
To them that perish – tois men apollumenois. To those who are about to perish, or to those who have a character fitting them for destruction; that is, to the wicked. The expression stands in contrast with those who are saved, that is, those who have seen the beauty of the cross of Christ, and who have fled to it for salvation.
Foolishness – Folly. That is, it appears to them to be contemptible and foolish, or unworthy of belief. To the great mass of the Jews, and to the pagan philosophers, and indeed, to the majority of the people of this world, it has ever appeared foolishness, for the following reasons:
(1) The humble origin of the Lord Jesus. They despise him that lived in Nazareth; that was poor; that had no home, and few friends, and no wealth, and little honor among his own countrymen.
(2) They despise him who was put to death, as an impostor, at the instigation of his own countrymen, in an ignominious manner on the cross – the usual punishment of slaves.
(3) They see not why there should be any particular efficacy in his death. They deem it incredible that he who could not save himself should be able to save them; and that glory should come from the ignominy of the cross.
(4) They are blind to the true beauty of his personal character; to the true dignity of his nature; to his power over the sick, the lame, the dying, and the dead; they see not the bearing of the work of atonement on the law and government of God; they believe not in his resurrection, and his present state of exalted glory. The world looks only at the fact, that the despised man of Nazareth was put to death on a cross, and smiles at the idea that such a death could have any important influence on the salvation of man – It is worthy of remark, also, that to the ancient philosophers this doctrine would appear still more contemptible than it does to the people of these times. Everything that came from Judea, they looked upon with contempt and scorn; and they would spurn above all things else the doctrine that they were to expect salvation only by the crucifixion of a Jew. Besides, the account of the crucifixion has now lost to us no small part of its reputation of ignominy. Even around the cross there is conceived to be no small amount of honor and glory. There is now a sacredness about it from religious associations; and a reverence which people in Christian lands can scarcely help feeling when they think of it. But to the ancients it was connected with every idea of ignominy. It was the punishment of slaves, impostors, and vagabonds; and had even a greater degree of disgrace attached to it than the gallows has with us. With them, therefore, the death on the cross was associated with the idea of all that is shameful and dishonorable; and to speak of salvation only by the sufferings and death of a crucified man, was suited to excite in their bosoms only unmingled scorn.
But unto us which are saved – This stands opposed to them that perish. It refers, doubtless, to Christians, as being saved from the power and condemnation of sin; and as having a prospect of eternal salvation in the world to come.
It is the power of God – See the note at Rom 1:16. This may either mean that the gospel is called the power of God, because it is the medium through which God exerts his power in the salvation of sinners; or, the gospel is adapted to the condition of man, and is efficacious in renewing him and sanctifying him. It is not an inert, inactive letter, but is so suited to the understanding, the heart, the hopes, the fears of people, and all their great constitutional principles of action, that it actually overcomes their sin, and diffuses peace through the soul. This efficacy is not unfrequently attributed to the gospel. Joh 17:17; Heb 4:12; Jam 1:18; 1Pe 1:22-23. When the gospel, however, or the preaching of the cross, is spoken of as effectual or powerful, it must be understood of all the agencies which are connected with it; and does not refer to simple, abstract propositions, but to the truth as it comes attended with the influences which God sends down to accompany it.
It includes, therefore, the promised agency of the Holy Spirit, without which it would not be effectual. But the agency of the Spirit is designed to give efficacy to that which is really adapted to produce the effects, and not to act in an arbitrary manner. All the effects of the gospel on the soul – in regeneration, repentance, faith, sanctification – in hope, love, joy, peace, patience, temperance, purity, and devotedness to God, are only such as the gospel is suited to produce. It has a set of truths and promises just adapted to each of these effects; just suited to the soul by him who knows it; and adapted to produce just these results. The Holy Spirit secures their influence on the mind: and is the grand living agent of accomplishing just what the truth of God is suited originally to produce. Thus, the preaching of the cross is the power of God; and every minister may present it with the assurance that he is presenting, not a cunningly devised fable, but a system really suited to save people; and yet, that its reception by the human mind depends on the promised presence of the Holy Spirit.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Co 1:18
For the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
The preaching of the Cross
I. Its character.
1. Simple in its facts.
2. Humiliating in its doctrines.
3. Startling in its announcements.
II. The result.
1. Foolishness to them that perish.
2. The power of God unto them that are saved. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The word of the Cross
In 1Co 1:17 Paul had renounced the wisdom of words. It is clear, therefore, that there is an eloquence which would deprive the gospel of its due effect. This wisdom of words–
1. Veils the truth which ought to be set forth in the clearest possible manner.
2. Explains the gospel away. It is possible to refine a doctrine till the very soul of it is gone. Under pretence of winning the cultured intellects of the age, it has gradually landed us in a denial of those first principles for which the martyrs died.
3. Is frequently used with the intent of making the gospel appear more beautiful. They would paint the rose and enamel the lily, add whiteness to the snow and brightness to the sun. With their wretched candles they would help us to see the stars. To adorn the Cross is to dishonour it, One of the old masters found that certain vases which he had depicted upon the sacramental table attracted more notice than the Lord Himself, and therefore he struck them out at once: let us do the same whenever anything of ours withdraws the mind from Jesus.
4. Is employed to augment the power of the gospel. Paul says it makes it of none effect (see 1Co 2:4-5). Having cleared our way of the wisdom of words, we now come to the word of wisdom.
I. The word of the cross (R. V.).
This is exactly what the gospel is. From which I gather that the Cross–
1. Has one uniform teaching. There are not two gospels any more than there are two Gods: there are not two atonements any more than there are two Saviours (1Co 3:11; Gal 1:8-9).
2. Is one word in contradistinction from many other words which are constantly being uttered. Christs voice from the Cross is, Look unto Me and be ye saved; but another voice cries aloud, This do and thou shalt live. The doctrine of salvation by works, or feelings, is not the word of the Cross. Much less is the word of ceremonialism and priestcraft.
3. Should be allowed to speak for itself. It cries, let us hear this word of the Cross, for in effect my text says, Let the Cross speak for itself.
(1) God must be just. The Cross thunders more terribly than Sinai against sin. If God smites the perfect One who bears our sin, how will He smite the guilty one who rejects His love?
(2) God loves men, and delights in mercy. God commendeth His love to us, &c.
(3) The one sacrifice is accepted and the atonement is complete. God was in Christ, &c.
(4) Come and welcome! Whosoever will, &c.
II. The word of its despisers.
1. They call the doctrine of the atonement foolishness.
(1) Because, say they, see how the common people take it up. Why, the very children are able to believe it. But are the well-known facts of nature foolishness because they are open to all? Is it quite certain that all the wisdom in the world dwells with the superfine gentlemen who sneer at everything and take in a Review? I wish that their culture had taught them modesty.
(2) Because this doctrine of the Cross is not the offspring of reason, but the gift of revelation. All the thinkers of the ages continued to think, but they never invented a plan of salvation. As a thought it originated with the Infinite Mind, and could have originated nowhere else. It is God telling men something which they could not else have known, and this suits not the profound thinkers, who must needs excogitare everything.
(3) Because anything which proves a man to be a fool will at once strike men as being very foolish. Our conscience is dull, and therefore we retaliate upon those who tell us unpleasant truth.
(4) Because it treats on subjects for which we have no care. If I were able to show how to make unlimited profit, all the world would listen; but when the sermon is only about the Word of God, and eternity, and the soul, and the blood of Jesus–most people turn on their heel. They call the gospel foolishness because they look after the main chance, and care more for the body than for the soul.
(5) Because they regard all the truths with which it deals as insignificant trifles.
2. These gentlemen–
(1) Are not qualified to form a judgment upon the subject. A blind man is no judge of colours, a deaf man of sound, and a man who has never been quickened into spiritual life of spiritual things.
(2) Are proofs of their own folly and of the sad results of unbelief. Paul says that such men are perishing. What a calamity! Men who are not living to God are missing the end of their being, and like deserted houses are falling into ruin. Yonder is a tree: around its trunk the ivy has twisted itself, grasping it like a huge python, and crushing it in its folds. Multitudes have about them sins and errors that are eating out their life–they are perishing. Those that believe not in Jesus are drifting towards an immortality of misery; and yet while they perish, they condemn the means of rescue. Fancy drowning mariners mocking at the life boat! Imagine a diseased man ridiculing the only remedy!
III. The word of those who believe. What do they say of the Cross? They call it power, the power of God.
1. The phenomenon of conversion is a fact. Men and women are totally changed, and the whole manner of their life is altered. The word of the Cross has delivered us from–
(1) The love of sin: no sin is now our master. We fall into sin, but we mourn over it, and hate the sin, and hate ourselves for committing it.
(2) From the dread which once held us in bondage, and made us tremble before our Father and our Friend. But now we love Him and delight in Him.
(3) From the power of Satan.
(4) From self and from the world, and from all things that would enthral us. We are saved. We feel that heaven is born within us–born by the word of the Cross through the Spirit.
2. The power with which God created and sustains the world is no greater than the power with which He made us new men in Christ, and by which He sustains His people under trial; and even the raising of the dead will be no greater display of it than the raising of dead souls out of their spiritual graves. Conclusion: Believe in the power of the Cross for the conversion of those around you. Do not say of any man that he cannot be saved. The blood of Jesus is omnipotent. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Two classes of gospel hearers
I. The one is perishing, the other is being saved. The perishing and the saving are gradual.
1. There is a class gradually losing sensibility–contracting fresh guilt, &c. They are not damned at once.
2. There is a class gradually being saved. Salvation in its fullest extent is not an instantaneous thing, as some suppose.
II. To the one class the gospel is foolishness, to the other the power of God.
1. It is foolishness to them that are perishing, because it has no meaning, no reality.
2. It is a Divine power to them that are being saved. Enlightening, renovating, purifying, ennobling. The power of God stands in contrust with mere human philosophy and eloquence. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The dispensation of the gospel and its effects
I. Its theme–the Cross.
II. Its dispensation by preaching.
III. Its reception–
1. To them that believe not, both the subject and the means are foolishness, because they humble human pride, discountenance merit, oppose the wisdom of this world.
2. To them that believe it is the power of God in the conscience, the heart, the life.
IV. The issue–those perish–these are saved. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The gospel the power of God
I. By the preaching of the Cross we understand the preaching of the gospel. There are two circumstances which may have led to the use of this name.
1. The apostle did not so preach the gospel as to conceal the Cross. This has sometimes been done. The Roman Catholic missionaries that went out to the East held back the fact that the great Saviour had died in ignominy upon the Cross, and told their hearers only of those facts concerning Him which had a glorious appearance, such as His resurrection and ascension. And the first disciples may have sympathised in such a feeling. The Cross tended to attach dishonour to Christ and to His gospel. But the apostles did not do so; they told the whole story.
2. The crucifixion supplied, and was the whole origin of, the great topics which their preaching of the gospel contained. It would have been nothing for Paul to have preached the resurrection, &c., if he had not preached His death. These facts have no evangelical glory or meaning if you separate them from the Cross. Take away the Cross, and you take away the very life and soul of the gospel itself.
II. This gospel is perverted.
1. By those who say that it derives its power not so much from the death of Christ, but mainly from His life. Now I do not mean to depreciate the life of Christ, which was superlatively grand and striking in all respects. But the presenting to the world of a life of virtue will not in any degree be influential in its regeneration, and as for presenting an aspect of the benignity of God this is infinitely exceeded in the death of Christ. What Paul preached was not Christs life, but Christs death.
2. By those who say that the death of Christ has an influence, but that it is not an atonement. What is it then? It is a way of speaking! To this I would say–
(1) If God tells us about an atonement, and there really is none, that is not truth.
(2) Unless the Atonement be a fact it cannot be a power.
III. The gospel is a power in that it presents a set of topics and considerations intended to work upon mens hearts and consciences. If the atoning death of Christ be a fact–
1. What a fact must sin itself be! He is God making a vast provision by the humiliating death of His own Son for the expiation of the sin of the world. What a proof it is of the lost state of man!
2. What a fact is Gods justice! The sinner says, Well, I have sinned, but God is merciful. Well, now, come again with me to the Cross. See a dying Saviour; there is Gods vengeance against mans representative.
3. How great the love of God to a rebellious world. See to what an expense He has gone to save you.
4. What a fact is the foundation of a sinners hope. None need despair; whosoever believeth in Him shall be saved.
5. What a fact is a believers obligation to devotedness and love. If we have been bought at such a price, we are no more our own, but our Purchasers.
6. What a fact is the guarantee of a believers faith! He that spared not His own Son, &c.
Conclusion:
1. How wonderful it is that God should be pleased thus to deal with men!
2. What a thought it is for ungodly men that there is a Divine power in the gospel, and that in it God puts forth all His powers of persuasion.
3. And it is for us to remember that the gospel is a power for all the exigencies of the Christian life. (J. H. Hinton, M. A.)
Salvation and destruction continuous processes
A slight variation of rendering, which will be found in the Revised Version, brings out the true meaning of these words. Instead of reading them that perish and us which are saved, we ought to read them that are perishing, and us which are being saved. That is to say, the apostle represents the two contrasted conditions, not so much as fixed states, either present or future, but rather as processes which are going on, and are manifestly, in the present, incomplete. That opens some very solemn and practical considerations. Then I may further note that this antithesis includes the whole of the persons to whom the gospel is preached. In one or other of these two classes they all stand. Further, we have to observe that the consideration which determines the class to which men belong is the attitude which they respectively take to the preaching of the Cross.
I. I desire, first, to look at the two contrasted conditions, perishing and being saved. We shall best understand the force of the darker of these two terms if we first ask what is the force of the brighter and more radiant. If we understand what the apostle means by saving and salvation, we shall understand, also, what he means by perishing. If, then, we turn for a moment to Scripture analogy and teaching, we find that well-worn word salvation starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It is used for both being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the gospel narratives of our Lords miracles. It involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and his deliverance and security. The sickness of soul and the perils that threaten life flow from the central fact of sin. And salvation consists, negatively, in the sweeping away of all these, whether the sin itself, or the fatal facility with which we yield to it, or the desolation and perversion which it brings into all the faculties and susceptibilities or the perversion of relation to God, and the consequent evils, here and hereafter, which throng around the evil-doer. The sick man is healed, and the man in peril is set in safety. But, besides that, there is a great deal more. The cure is incomplete till the full tide of health follows convalescence. When God saves He does not only bar up the iron gate through which the hosts of evil rush out upon the defenceless soul, but He flings wide the golden gate through which the glad troops of blessings and of graces flock around the delivered spirit, and enrich it with all joys and with all beauties. So the positive side of salvation is the investiture of the saved man with throbbing health through all his veins, and the strength that comes from a Divine life. It is the bestowal upon the delivered man of everything that he needs for blessedness and for duty. This, then, being the one side, what about the other? If salvation be the cure of the sickness, perishing is the fatal end of the unchecked disease. If salvation be the deliverance from the outstretched claws of the harpy evils that crowd about the trembling soul, then perishing is the fixing of their poisoned talons into their prey, and their rending of it into fragments.
II. Now note, secondly, the progressiveness of both members of the alternative. All states of heart or mind tend to increase, by the very fact of continuance. Look, then, at this thought of the process by which these two conditions become more and more confirmed and complete. Salvation is a progressive thing. In the New Testament we have that great idea looked at from three points of view. Sometimes it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past in the case of every believing soul–Ye have been saved is said more than once. Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplished in the present–Ye are saved is said more than once. And sometimes it is relegated to the future–Now is your salvation nearer than when ye believed, and the like. But there are a number of New Testament passages which coincide with this text in regarding salvation as, not the work of any one moment, but as a continuous operation running through life. As, for instance, The Lord added to the Church daily those that were being saved. By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are being sanctified. So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christian man lives in this world. Ah I that notion of a progressive salvation, at work in all true Christians, has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call yourselves Christs followers, and are not a bit further on than you were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions (perhaps less, for relapses are dangerous) than you were then. Growing Christians–may I venture to say?–are not the majority of professing Christians. And, on the other side, as certainly, there is progressive deterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin. I am sure that there are people in this place this morning who were far better, and far happier, when they were poor and young, and could still thrill with generous emotion and tremble at the Word of God, than they are to-day. Now, notice, the apostle treats these two classes as covering the whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives. If not in the one class, we are in the other. If you are not more saved, you arc less saved. Further, note what a light such considerations as these, that salvation and perishing are vital processes–going on all the time–throw upon the future. Clearly the two processes are incomplete here. You get the direction of the line, but not its natural termination. And thus a heaven and a hell are demanded by the phenomena of growing goodness and of growing badness which we see round about us.
III. And now, lastly, notice the determining attitude to the Cross which settles the class to which we belong. So there are two thoughts suggested which sound as if they were illogically combined, but which yet are both true. It is true that men perish, or are saved, because the Cross is to them respectively foolishness, or the power of God. And the other thing is true, that the Cross is to them foolishness, or the power of God, because respectively they are perishing or being saved. That is not putting the cart before the horse, but both aspects of the truth are true. If you see nothing in Jesus Christ, and His death for us all, except foolishness, something unfit to do you any good, and unnecessary to be taken into account in your lives, that is the condemnation of your eyes, and not of the thing you look at. It a man, gazing on the sun at twelve oclock on a June day, says to me, It is not bright, the only thing I have to say to him is, Friend, you had better go to an oculist. And if to us the Cross is foolishness, it is because already a process of perishing has gone so far that it has attacked our capacity of recognising the wisdom and love of God when we see it. But, on the other hand, if we clasp that Cross in simple trust, we find that it is the power which saves us out of all sins, sorrows, and dangers, and shall save us, at last, into His heavenly kingdom. That message leaves no man exactly as it found him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The gospel not a wisdom
This the apostle demonstrates–
1. By the irrational character of the central fact of the gospel (1Co 1:18-25).
2. By the mode of gaining members to, and the composition of the Church (1Co 1:26-31).
3. By the attitude taken in the midst of them by the preacher of the gospel. (Prof. Godet, D. D.)
The triumph of the gospel over the wisdom of this world
Look at–
I. The means–the simple preaching of the Cross–which–
1. Is foolishness to the wise.
2. Yet triumphs over human wisdom.
3. Effects what the wisdom of this world has failed to do.
4. And in spite of the opposition of the Jew and the philosophy of the Greek demonstrates Christ the wisdom and the power of God.
II. The agents–not many wise, not many noble are called.
1. God has chosen the most unlikely instrumentalities.
2. And made them successful through Christ.
3. That no flesh might glory in His presence. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The divinity of the gospel is demonstrated–
I. In them that perish–they deem it foolish–yet it confounds their wisdom–succeeds where it has failed.
II. In them that are saved–because it conquers their opposition–and becomes in them the power of God and the wisdom of God. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. For the preaching of the cross] , The doctrine of the cross; or the doctrine that is of or concerning the cross; that is, the doctrine that proclaims salvation to a lost world through the crucifixion of Christ.
Is to them that perish foolishness] There are, properly speaking, but two classes of men known where the Gospel is preached: , the unbelievers and gainsayers, who are perishing; and , the obedient believers, who are in a state of salvation. To those who will continue in the first state, the preaching of salvation through the merit of a crucified Saviour is folly. To those who believe this doctrine of Christ crucified is the power of God to their salvation; it is divinely efficacious to deliver them from all the power, guilt, and pollution of sin.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness: I know (saith the apostle) that plain discourses about a Christ crucified are to some persons foolish things, and accounted canting; but to whom are they so? To those who, if they be not some that shall perish eternally, yet are some of those who at present are in a perishing estate; these indeed count sermons of Christ silly, foolish things.
But unto us which are saved it is the power of God; but to those who shall be eternally saved, and are at present in the true road to eternal life and salvation, it is, that is, the preaching of the gospel is, that institution of God by which he showeth his power in the salvation of those who shall be saved. The apostle saith the same, Rom 1:16.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
18. preaching, c.literally,”the word,” or speech as to the cross in contrast to the”wisdom of words” (so called), 1Co1:17.
them that perishrather,”them that are perishing,” namely, by preferring human”wisdom of words” to the doctrine of the “cross ofChrist.” It is not the final state that is referred to; but,”them that are in the way of perishing.” So also in 2Co 2:15;2Co 2:16.
us which are savedInthe Greek the collocation is more modest, “to them thatare being saved (that are in the way of salvation) as,” that is,to which class we belong.
power of Godwhichincludes in it that it is the wisdom of God” (1Co1:24). God’s powerful instrument of salvation; the highestexhibition of God’s power (Ro1:16). What seems to the world “weakness” in God’s planof salvation (1Co 1:25), and inits mode of delivery by His apostle (1Co2:3) is really His mighty “power.” What seems”foolishness” because wanting man’s “wisdom of words”(1Co 1:17), is really thehighest “wisdom of God” (1Co1:24).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For the preaching of the cross,…. Not of the Christian’s cross, which he is to take up and bear for the sake of Christ; though this is a doctrine taught by Christ, and his apostles, and found to be true by the saints in all ages; and is what is had in great aversion and contempt, being very disagreeable to the natural man: but of the cross of Christ, the doctrine of salvation by a crucified Christ; or the doctrine of peace and reconciliation by the blood of his cross, and of righteousness, pardon, atonement, and satisfaction by the offering up of himself upon it as a sacrifice for sin, is here intended; and which
is foolishness in the esteem of many; and that because man’s wisdom has no hand either in forming the scheme of it, or in the discovery of it to the sons of men; and besides, being revealed, it is very disagreeable to the carnal reason of man. This way of preaching is very impolite and unfashionable, and therefore despised; it is a doctrine which is not received by the wise and learned, but has been in all ages loaded with reproach, stigmatized either as a novel or licentious doctrine, and attended with persecution; though the only doctrine God owns for conversion, which administers comfort to distressed souls, and is food for the faith of believers; yea, it is a display of the highest wisdom; is what angels approve of, and desire to look into; is wiser than the wisdom of men; it has made foolish the wisdom of this world, and is what is only able to make a man wise unto salvation; and yet this doctrine is accounted foolish, yea foolishness itself; but to whom is it so?
to them that perish. All mankind are in a lost and perishing condition, by reason of sin, and want of righteousness. There are some who shall not perish; the Father has chose them unto salvation, the Son has redeemed them, and the Spirit sanctifies them; but there are others who do perish in their sins; wicked and ungodly men, Carried away with their own lusts and blinded by Satan, the god of this world: these are they that are lost, to whom the Gospel is hid, and who judge it foolishness; but their judgment of it is not to be regarded, being no more capable to judge of the glory and wisdom of the Gospel, than a blind man is of colours: but unto us which are saved; who are chosen in Christ unto salvation; whose persons and grace are secured in Christ, and in the everlasting covenant; for whom Christ has wrought out salvation; and to whom it is applied by the Spirit of God; and who are kept unto the full enjoyment of it by divine grace: to these
it is the power of God; organically or instrumentally; it being the means of quickening them when dead in sin, of enlightening their dark minds, of unstopping their deaf ears, of softening their hard hearts, and of enemies making them friends to God, Christ, and his people: and it is likewise so declaratively, there being a wonderful display of the power of God in the ministration of it; as may be seen when observed who were the first preachers of it, men of no figure in life, of no education, illiterate mechanics, very mean and abject; into these earthen vessels were put the treasure of the Gospel, that the excellency of the power might appear to be of God, and not man; as also the doctrine they preached, a crucified Christ, disagreeable to the wisdom of men; the manner in which they spread it, not by force of arms, by carnal weapons, but spiritual ones; moreover, the opposition they met with from rabbins, philosophers, princes, kings, and emperors, and all the states and powers of the world; and yet in how short a time, maugre all opposition, did they carry the Gospel throughout the whole world, to the conversion of millions of souls, and the planting of churches everywhere; and which Gospel has continued and increased, notwithstanding the efforts of persecutors and false teachers, and all the power and artifice of men and devils; all which can be attributed to nothing else but the mighty power of God: add to this, that the Gospel is the power of God in the esteem of the saints, who know it to be so by inward experience; they have felt the power of it on their hearts; it has wrought effectually in them, and therefore they are the best judges, and are capable of giving the best account of it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
For the word of the cross ( ). Literally, “for the preaching (with which I am concerned as the opposite of
wisdom of word in verse 17) that (repeated article , almost demonstrative) of the cross.” “Through this incidental allusion to preaching St. Paul passes to a new subject. The discussions in the Corinthian Church are for a time forgotten, and he takes the opportunity of correcting his converts for their undue exaltation of human eloquence and wisdom” (Lightfoot).
To them that are perishing ( ). Dative of disadvantage (personal interest). Present middle participle is here timeless, those in the path to destruction (not annihilation. See 2Th 2:10). Cf. 2Co 4:3.
Foolishness (). Folly. Old word from , foolish. In N.T. only in 1Cor 1:18; 1Cor 1:21; 1Cor 1:23; 1Cor 2:14; 1Cor 3:19.
But unto us which are being saved ( ). Sharp contrast to those that are perishing and same construction with the articular participle. No reason for the change of pronouns in English. This present passive participle is again timeless. Salvation is described by Paul as a thing done in the past, “we were saved” (Ro 8:24), as a present state, “ye have been saved” (Ep 2:5), as a process, “ye are being saved” (1Co 15:2), as a future result, “thou shalt be saved” (Ro 10:9).
The power of God ( ). So in Ro 1:16. No other message has this dynamite of God (1Co 4:20). God’s power is shown in the preaching of the Cross of Christ through all the ages, now as always. No other preaching wins men and women from sin to holiness or can save them. The judgment of Paul here is the verdict of every soul winner through all time.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
The word of the cross [ ] . Lit., the word, that, namely, of the cross. The second article is definitive and emphatic. The word of which the substance and purport is the cross.
To them that perish [ ] . Lit., that are perishing. So Rev. The present participle denotes process : they who are on the way to destruction. Compare 2Co 2:15.
Foolishness [] . Only in this epistle. See on have lost his savor, Mt 5:13.
Which are saved [ ] . Rev., being saved : in process of salvation.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
OFFENSE OF GLOATING IN HUMAN WISDOM
1) “For the preaching of the cross.” (Greek ho gar ho tou staurou) “For the (word or testimony) of the cross.” The term “Preaching” in the King James Version is translated from “logos” which literally means the Word, story, testimony, or witness of the cross and its implication Gal 6:14.
2) “Is to them that perish foolishness.” To those (Greek men apolumenois) “on the one hand perishing.” It (the cross) is (Greek moria) “moronity, folly, or stupidity,” The lost, the unsaved apart from the Holy Spirit, can not comprehend it, Joh 1:5; 1Co 2:14.
3) “But unto us which are saved.” On the other hand, to those (now) (Greek sozomenois) being saved, – to us, Paul asserts, it is (exists as) (Greek dunamis theou) the energetic, dynamic power of God. In the cross of Christ Christians glory, Gal 3:13; Eph 2:16; Col 1:20.
4) “It is the power of God.” The cross symbolizes blood redemption, wrought for all men, by Jesus Christ, through his accursed death. Deu 21:23. It is the story (logos) testimony or witness of the Christ of Calvary through which all men may be saved and of which none should be ashamed, Rom 1:14-16; Rom 10:8-11.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
18. For the preaching of the cross, etc. In this first clause a concession is made. For as it might very readily be objected, that the gospel is commonly held in contempt, if it be presented in so bare and abject a form, Paul of his own accord concedes this, but when he adds, that it is so in the estimation of them that perish, he intimates that no regard must be paid to their judgment. For who would choose to despise the gospel at the expense of perishing? This statement, therefore, must be understood in this way: “However the preaching of the cross, as having nothing of human wisdom to recommend it to esteem, is reckoned foolishness by them that perish; in our view, notwithstanding, the wisdom of God clearly shines forth in it.” He indirectly reproves, however, the perverted judgment of the Corinthians, who, while they were, through seduction of words, too easily allured by ambitious teachers, regarded with disdain an Apostle who was endowed with the power of God for their salvation, and that simply because he devoted himself to the preaching of Christ. In what way the preaching of the cross is the power of God unto salvation, we have explained in commenting upon Rom 1:16
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
SOVIETIZING THE STATE THROUGH ITS SCHOOLS
1Co 1:18-24
I AM to speak to you today on what I regard as the most important subject now before the world for consideration. I realize the apparent extravagance of thus describing any single subject, but you may be my judge as I unfold this themeSovietizing the State through its Schools.
Nellermoes Bill presented to the Minnesota House of Representatives in February, 1923, was a deliberate, and even open attempt to sovietize the University of Minnesota, knowing full well the final social and political effect of poisoning this educational fountain; and it is not forgotten that that bill died on general orders by the narrow margin of a single vote, 61 to 62, and but for the intellectual ability and moral convictions of one man, it might be the law of that commonwealth at this moment.
This, however, is but a straw in the wind, for while I am primarily interested in the State of Minnesota, I am also pleading the cause and presenting a subject that concerns every state in the Union; in fact, that involves every government of earth.
If any one cares to question my motive in what I say on this special theme, let me remind him that I have no historical background that should produce in me the least prejudice upon this subject. I am the son of a farmer whose fortune was not far removed from poverty. Manual labor was the most important school of my life, and hardship was, in youth, my daily instructor. The years have not removed me far enough from either to create in me the spirit of the aristocrat or tempt to the sins of special privileges. By birth and breeding, I am a friend not alone of the manual laborer, but more especially of the poor and oppressed.
And yet this unbreakable tie does not bind me to silence about the threat that now hangs over every nation of the earth, and in spite of all opinions to the contrary, endangers beyond description. I speak of
THE MENACE OF THE SOVIET
It is well, I am sure, to pause in this discussion long enough to explain some terms that are oft upon our tongues, yet employed by many without understanding. The Soviet government is supposed to be a government by the people, but it is executed through most remote representatives. The community elects its representatives; the county chooses again from these community representatives; the State or Province from these county representatives, and the Government from these State or Province representatives, so that something like five elections must occur before the leaders are reached, producing a system of government that makes practically impossible a recall or reversal of an endless order. The term Bolshevism means, A rule by the majority, but strange to say, it has absolutely lost its significance as a word, because it now represents the rulership of the minority in Russia; and out of that country, in its practical and potential expression, and out of Germany in its theoretical and even its theological aspects, this threat of the nations, the menace of the Soviet, is come.
The movement was conceived in class hatred. It cannot be justly said that this hatred had no occasion. On the contrary, czarism in Russia and the conscienceless oppression by the rich and privileged classes in other countries, clearly accounts for the rise and progress of the whole product known as bolshevism. It is impossible to take lands of inexhaustible resources and set over them unjust rulers, enact oppressive laws, execute the will of the higher classes by a ruthless military system without producing the exact result that has ruined Russia, where in twenty provinces, in 1911 and 1912, twenty million peasants were without bread and eight million of them were receiving government rations, without finally effecting a political state unendurable and a rebellion indescribable, if not unthinkable.
Popular opinion is wont to lay Russias present wretched condition to the rise of the Red, and only thoughtful men clearly apprehend that the crimson flag is the fruit of foolhardiness on the part of the Rich. When the working day in Russian factories was from twelve to fourteen hours, and the compensation not sufficient to sustain the lives of the toilers and their families, they produced and often rendered a song:
Damned be the lives of miners,Just as prisoners in prison;Day and night the candle smoulders,And we carry death on shoulders.
The axioms of Scripture are more stable than any assertions of science, and all history is replete with illustrations of the Biblical truth that they that have sown the wind * * shall reap the whirlwind. Solomon wrote, The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender, but He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity.
The fact remains, however, that any movement born of class hatred is, by its very nature, nondesirable, even dangerous. The attempt of ignorant masses to throw off the yoke of potentate and conscienceless oppressor is seldom or never accomplished without the accompanying danger of coming under the hand of a new potentate whose oppressions will far exceed that of the old. That is exactly what has taken place in Russian rule. Lenine, notwithstanding all his professions of the rule of the people, in an address to the All-Russian Soviet Congress, said, How can we secure a strict unity of will? By subjecting the will of thousands to the will of one! Today the revolution in the interest of socialism demands the absolute submission of the masses to the single will of those to direct the labor process.
That sentence shows how society comes again to autocracy, but to an autocracy of an unbelievable, brutal typeto an autocracy of ignorance; and from the oppressive rule of the rich to the more oppressive rule of the politically ambitious; from the brutality of the man who has some conscience to the greater brutality of men who have neither conscience nor God.
This movement has been characterized by inhuman cruelties. Twenty-five years ago George Kennan stirred the civilized world by his eloquent portraiture of Czar oppression, while Tolstois books wrought an intellectual revolt against the same, reaching every continent and profoundly moving every civilized country. The deportation of political offenders to Siberia, the chain gang system that reproduced in a thousand facts the experience of Tabert in Florida, brought the very name of Russia into contempt, and made her ruling classes the subjects of universal spite; and yet, bigoted and bloody as was that reign, it was tame beside the slaughterhouse of Sovietism. A friend of mine, a great Lutheran preacher, was telling me a few days since of how eleven of their Lutheran ministers had been martyred in Finland; how forty-one of them had been murdered in the Baltic Province; how one of these was tortured beyond description, his tongue torn out, his body mutilated and nailed to a tree, swords driven in under his arms, and an inscription tacked over his head, Now, damn you; preach your Gospel if you can! And yet even such brutality and butchery fades when one finds that under this same rule the land has been confiscated; banks, mills, factories taken over; public debt repudiated; murder legalized; arson, public and private pillage unparalleled in historyadvocated; industry paralyzed; commerce ruined; assassination reaching into the thousands, either by starvation, death or chaos, and throughout the length and breadth of the land the fundamental principles of liberty and civilization abolished. One writer says, In sentiment, Bolshevism is an appeal that Lazarus shall be fed at the rich mans table, but in practice it is a brutal savagery which, like a wild beast, tortures and kills to vent its bestiality.
The New York Times says, The French Reign of Terror was a mild and moderate exercise of authority by a government leaning culpably to the side of mercy, when contrasted with what is going on in Russia. The same paper writes of Lenin, When his brief hour ends, he will have the satisfaction of knowing that he did more harm to the human race than was ever done by one man in any such short time since history began to be recorded in the tombs along the Nile.
But enough of its brutalities! Let me remark, however, before I finish discussing the menace of the Soviet, that it is the sworn foe of the Christian faith. Bebel, whose writings have had as much to do with the origin and growth of that particular form of socialism which finds expression in the Soviet, as any other, says, The idea of God must be destroyed. Atheism is the true route to liberty, equality and fraternity. Its known repudiation of the Holy Scriptures, its organized endeavor to destroy religion from the minds of men, its adoption of social codes that are antipodes of the Decalogthese are facts that have been flared in the face of the world. The Literary Digest recently remarked, There seems to be no question outside of Soviet circles that the vicar general of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia was butchered to make a Bolshevik holiday, and the murder was not an affront to the Catholic faith only, but it was an expression of Soviet atheism and of the determination to drive every thought of religion from the minds of men, and supplant the spirit of worship by a scornful skepticism, and an acknowledgment of God by an atheism that derides His very existence. There isnt a single one of the civilities of the Christian civilization that this rule cares to retain. They have deliberately attempted to destroy the family, to governmentize all women, and compel every babe that is born to be a bastard.
This is the move that has
AMERICA AS ITS OBJECTIVE
The Soviet ardently covets the worlds controlling continent. However much of his philosophy he brought from the evolutionary hypothesis of Germany, he chose Russia as the stage on which to enact his Darwinian drama, The survival of the fittest. Into his choice entered the consciousness that Russia was a great world continent; that its natural resources were not only untried, but largely unknown, and when pilfering time came, it would prove itself a prize worthy the pirates pains.
Having come into the possession of that country at a time when it was exhausted by war, and in a way that paralyzed its every industry, it was natural enough that Lenine, Trotsky, and all other ambitious leaders, should lift their eyes to America, to fields already white to the harvest, to covet them.
There are those among us who do not believe that this propaganda is marking progress in our midst. Such men are either ignorant of modern movements, or wilfully indifferent to the evidences about us. Lenine himself, speaking in Moscow, said, The power that has crushed Germany is also the power that will in the end crush England and the United States. And that power is planting its dynamite at many American points, and placing its largest charges at our educational centers, and calmly waiting the time when it can light the Darwin fuse and witness the demolition. Henry Campbell Black, in his notable address on The Menace without Our Gates, or Bolshevisms Assault upon American Government, reminded us of how this movement has made its power felt in every part of the world; in Roumania, and all the Baltic Provinces; in Switzerland, where it created a high breed of intrigue; in Portugal, where recent outbreaks were the consequence; in Scandinavia, where kings found it difficult to cling to their thrones; in Finland, where it has fruited in the foulest way; in Denmark, where though less successful, it is both aggressive and confident; not to mention its ravages in Germany, its rise in France, its recent successes in England, and finally, its increasing powers in America.
The I. W. W. has long represented this sentiment here, and new organizations under varied names are now giving more concrete form to it. The State Socialist Convention in Illinois a while ago demanded that the American Government should recognize the Bolsheviki of Russia. The State Socialist Convention in Minnesota adopted resolutions endorsing the policies of the Bolsheviki in Russia, and the State Socialistic Convention in New York greeted with joy and confidence the Russian Soviet Republic. The Pennsylvania State Socialist Convention cabled to Lenine and his cabinet, Your achievement is our inspiration. There are hundreds of papers being published in America today that have one objective, and one only, and that is Sovietism, and there are thousands of professors in the universities of this country whose writings and teachings alike are a deliberate attempt to put over this same Soviet program in the states. Some of these were brought to the surface during the war and divorced from positions; more of them have surreptitiously retained those positions, and in the name of Evolution are so carefully laying their socialistic explosives as to do what Bouck White said he learned from his Seminary, how to blow the Government to bits.
In America these Soviet emissaries are a multitude. The majority of the leaders have had either their entire course, or their post-graduate work in German Universities. They have brought back from these infidel centers a materialistic philosophy that knows no other god than Nature. Pantheism is their only theism, and by that they do not mean a personal God, manifesting Himself in facts and forms, but an unconscious and blind force at work, not only in the world but in the universe, the general direction of which follows the law of Darwins suggestion, and knows neither Divine control nor Deity existence. The Attorney General of New York affirms that the secret agents of Lenine are found in that State, and back of them is a fund of $500,000.00 to be used for propaganda purposes. The statement was made that these agents had been circularizing in shops and factories, and that many secret meetings were held, culminating in an open session of three days in the Lyceum Building. The chief purpose of this convention was said to be to absorb into the Bolshevik Movement members of the Industrial Workers of the World, all anarchists and radical socialists. At the Department of Justice at Washington, it was admitted that a code index of more than two thousand red agitators existed in Chicago, Philadelphia and other large centers. There were over 500,000 followers of this revolutionary program found in New York alone; while they have dared, even under the eaves of the Washington Capitol, to hold their open meeting and ardently affirm their plan to overthrow the present democracy and bring in the Russian regime, leading Senator Thomas to declare, Our Democracy is found in greater danger today from the forces let loose in Russia than it was when Germany took up arms against Great Britain and France, and Senator Weeks to insist that the American people do not understand that the real purpose behind this propaganda is the overthrow of this Government, and that until they do understand, it cannot be stamped out.
The method of the Soviet is as surreptitious as his object is sinful. In Russia, having captured control, he fights in the open, and brazenly demands of the worlds nations recognition. In all countries where a strong central government exists, his methods are secret, his approach surreptitious, his purpose red revolution. A witness called before the Senate committee testified, I have information given me in Petrograd that already the agents of Trotsky and Lenine have been sent to this country, and that they have in operation a central bureau of propaganda. This propaganda is as insidious as false, and I am amazed that our people have not taken it seriously. When the war was over and our boys were returned to the States by the millions, many of them failed to find immediate occupation, and these secret agents stealthily attempted in a thousand instances to render them dissatisfied, critical and rebellious. The American Legion was the Rooseveltian answer to that secret sowing of discontent.
This all leads me to the main point of this discussion, the place where emphasis must be put if we are either to appreciate the meaning, or mark progress in our opposition to the same, namely,
THE SCHOOL IS ITS MEDIUM
The Soviet recognizes the controlling power of education. When I was pastor in Chicago, my intimate friend and co-laborer was Dr. Carl S. Martin. He rendered a good service to both history and literature by his Life of Wendell Phillips, the man whose ministry has had much to do with the framing of American ideals, and whose indomitable courage cut away the foundations of a slavery system, and let that slimy institution crumble in one colossal heap. Phillips stands in the front rank of American orators. His lecture on The Lost Art, his oration on Daniel OConnel, are masterpieces, both; but the one speech that passed his lips, that lives and throbs because it struck a note so true as to be eternal, was, The Scholar in a Republic. With a genius peculiarly his own, a literary style that lacked in nothing, Phillips swept the gamut of human interest, and stirred in the slumbering spirits of all talented lads a sure consciousness that education ended in control. Quite eloquently did he say, There is something more valuable than wealth, more sacred than peace, as Humboldt says, The finest fruit earth holds up to his Maker is a man. To ripen, lift, and educate a man is the first duty. Trade, law, learning, science and religion, are only the scaffolding wherewith to build a man. Despotism looks down into the poor mans cradle and knows it can crush resistance and curb ill will. Democracy sees the ballot in that baby hand, and selfishness bids her put integrity on one side of those baby footsteps and intelligence on the other, lest her own hearth be in peril.
If any man imagines that Sovietism has no intelligent representatives, he knows not whereof he thinks or speaks. Her outstanding leaders today are those professors in our modern universities who are naturally materialistic in their conception of the universe, and who in their devotion to the Darwinian theory dare to dethrone God in the presence of His worshippers. Raymond Robins is an outspoken socialist, and he is a thousandfold more acceptable in the average university circle than is the most eloquent of conservative Christian orators.
Professor Nearing was born in America, bred in our schools, and became a leading university professor; yet The Times names Mr. Nearing a Bolshevist. You know perfectly well what men have led this movement in Germany, and how from the position of Professor Liebknecht and his confreres, have accomplished not only an overthrow of the German Government, but influenced all Russian thought. I have purchased lately five books, four of them employed as text-books in the State University of Minnesota, and one in North High School, Minneapolis: (1) Criminology, by Parmelee; (2) Sociology and Modern Social Problems, by Ellwood; (3) Social Psychology, by Ross; (4) Social Evolution, by Chapin; (5) American Social Problem, by Burch and Patterson. Every one of them denies the Christian faith, feeling that the defense of Darwinism is not sufficient without so doing, and some of their sentences are the most sacrilegious and scornful that I have ever seen in print. Chapin says, The brute mind was gradually converted into the intelligence (p. 108); Morals are nothing but the conviction implanted by the social group in the minds of its members of the propriety of the manner of life imposed by it upon them (p. 118); So in the individual and in the social mind was born at last the idea of self, or personality, as a conscious life, soul or spirit, dwelling in the body, but distinct and separable from it. This quotation he follows with a discussion that shows he has no confidence whatever that the soul is immortal, and likens the Christian faith to the Indians conception of dreams, the Algonquins shadow or the Salus ghost (ps. 265-266). Burch and Patterson, in their volume, American Social Problems, used in High School, make morality and religion mere animal evolution, talk of the time when man was incapable of determining what was moral and immoral, thereby sweeping out the Decalog and all the other claims of Divine Law. (Let me say that the North High School has one professor who refuses to hold recitations on certain chapters in this book.) Charles A. Ellwood, professor of Sociology in the University of Missouri, whose book is also used as a text-book in Minnesota University, teaches that religion is not a revelation, but grew out of ancestral worship (p. 117), and that the family is being created by the very conditions of life itself, failing to recognize the Divine authority for the same, and that nature has developed in man intelligence (p. 69), refusing to give God the glory.
But to mark progress in infidelity, one needs to read Ross on Social Psychology. He holds the experience of conversion to scorn; he accounts for it on hypnotic grounds (p. 16); explains Divine healing on the ground of mental suggestion (p. 27); also insists that this may explain the miraculous element claimed for the life of Christ; says that in saintly visions and revelations one is influenced by auto-suggestion (p. 28). On the same ground he explains the apostles and evangelists, and the expression of prophecy, the creation of powers and persons (166-7). The gift of tongues is held to some scorn, inspiration to an equal amount, as is also the guidance of the Holy Spirit (p. 167-8), and he thinks the two main sources of all these phenomena are the subconscious and the social environment (p. 68). The great awakening in colonial days, the great revivals of 1800, 1830 and 1858, were only the result of social suggestion (p. 70). The extensive prayer meetings of 1873 were a mental contagion (p. 71), on a level with the Dutch mania for tulips that took place in 1643, the Ho, for Texas movement, the California gold fever, the negro exodus, the Klondike rush, all-of-a-piece products of the mob mind. He expresses his fear of going fishing with a prayer meeting Christian lest he take a fit and turn the boat over. He holds the holy communion of the Christian to scorn and sees in it an ancient rite, and, by a sacrilege unthinkable, where primitive man eats his god. He says, The archaic spirit of religion is attested in the settlement of disputed points by appeal to the Bible (p. 272). It is little wonder that in the debate between Harvard and Yale, the defender of Sovietism proudly quotes from Professor Ross in the following words, The current notion of the second or Bolshevist revolution is that it was the work of a handful of extremists who captivated the Russian masses with their idea. Under the pitiless pelting of facts, I have been driven to the conclusion that this is untrue; the robbed and oppressed masses moved toward the goal of their unfulfilled desires like a flow of molten lava that no human force could calm or turn aside.
Professor Ross reduces the teachings of the Bible to a level with wizardry; speaks of a chosen people, evidently meaning Israel, as a legend of an ethics basing its norm on human nature and the nature of the social organization, and as superseding the alleged commands of Deity (mark the adjective, alleged commands of Deity), the precepts of ancient sages, the customs of the fathers, and edicts of Mrs. Grundy. In other words, Mrs. Grundy and Gods commands are on a common level with Professor Ross (p. 293). On page 298 he reduces the Divine right of kings, the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and the Ptolemaic system to a level of the same absurdity. On page 305 he says, Put together all the effects of all the atheists who have ever lived and they have not done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by the narrow-minded conscientious men who persecuted Roger Bacon. On page 336 he says, The piling up of innumerable points about the text of the Pentateuch impeaches eventually their Mosaic authorship.
But I bring you the climax when I quote from Parmelee on Criminology. To him spirits are hypothetical beings only (p. 16), alleged beings (p. 17). He says of Jesus Christ cursing the fruitless fig tree, This is like the child or savage who trips over a stone and then strikes it in anger because it hurt him. He says of the Christian religion, It was derived from Judaism; the magical notion of the uncleanness of sex has been combined with and has reenforced the ascetic ideal of propitiating the Deity by expiation and purification through chastity (p. 23). He believes that certain serious mistakes have been made in the introduction and execution of penal laws, due to the mistaken conception of Christians that sin is transgression of the Divine Law (p. 33). He doubts if irreligion is a potent force for crime (p. 107). He speaks of the Hebrew Yahweh, our God, as a stern and vengeful God. He writes, The Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sins possesses this evil influence because it disseminates the grossly erroneous notion that repentance absolves a persons responsibility for the immorality of his past conduct. It would be difficult to find a more anti-social and immoral religious doctrine (p. 109). He declares, The dogma of the forgiveness of sin still gives currency to the effect of an act that it can be wiped out by repentance and remorse alone, or by the absolution which follows penitential acts, despite the fact that the biological and psychological sciences have taught us that the effects of any act, whether sinful or otherwise, upon the organism and personality, are indelible (p. 114). He affirms, Religion and science are irreconcilable (p. 113). He declares that nothing in human culture is more archaic than religion, because it professes to teach absolute truth, and to inculcate immutable rules of conduct; consequently religion has always been a powerful force for repressive legislation, and therefore a prolific cause of evolutive criminality. He raves against the circumstance that the Christian religion has been officially recognized in America as the national religion (p. 471 f). He declares that it is a piece of affrontery and a violation of the constitution when the courts declare this to be a Christian nation, of constitutional rights or religious freedom which it is their special duty to uphold. To quote his exact language, he says, Disrespectful mention of God, Jesus, and other alleged supernatural beings, is prohibited in various parts of this country, in spite of the fact that these beings are reputed to be strong enough to defend and avenge themselves. In this fashion is violated and the fundamental and inalienable human right of free speech, and the courts are furnished the power to interfere, if they so desire, with the spread of liberal ideas and the refutation of archaic beliefs (p. 476).
February 15, 1923 edition of the Manufacturers Record says sanely enough: We cannot maintain government and discipline in human affairs by statutes or by police power. What keeps mankind in order is the conviction of a hereafter and a belief in the principles of right and wrong taught at the mothers knee. Once a great body of the citizenship acts on the assumption that there is neither Divine purpose in the universe nor Divine Laws that must be followed; life resolves itself into a mere brutal struggle for existence. Evolution has well-nigh wrecked every land that has adopted it.
Civilization can stand, in a measure, economic breakdowns and financial debacles, but when you break down and destroy mans temple of reverence, his regard for holy things, his belief in religion and his hope of eternity, you simply rend asunder the very foundation on which society rests.
If your children are to be taught, from four to eight consecutive years, such God-denying, Christ-repudiating, Bible-scorning theories as are in these text-books, let us approve these text-books and insist that they be retained in the teaching curriculum of University, Normal, High schools, and even grades. If we are ready for that, let us applaud the atheistic teacher who tells our children that it is foolish to believe in God, a mental dereliction to believe in the Deity of Christ. Let us cite to them Van Loon with his villainous infidelity and parade H. G. Wells as a great authority and quote from him these words: The Socialist no more regards the institution of marriage as a permanent thing than he regards a state of industrial competition as permanent, and assign his reason, Socialism repudiates private ownership of the head of the family as completely as it repudiates any sort of private ownership. Socialism in fact is the state family; the old family of the private individual must banish before it, just as the old waterworks of private enterprise, or the old gas company.
When the family is gone, and God is dethroned and the moral codes of the Bible are held to be no more binding than a deliverance of East Indian dervishes, our own loved country will come into the present Russian experience; infidelity, mental and moral; rapine, plunder, robberythese will be universal, and as we look back to the days when our fathers lived and loved, wrought and rejoiced, because they believed God, we will have a comparison that will involve a contrast as deep and strange as the contrast between hell and Heaven.
The Literary Digest of March 22, 1919, carried an article entitled, Bolshevisms Heaven on Earth. It reminded its readers of the fact that the Soviet Government commissioned futurist artists to paint sky blue the entire Theater Square in Moscow, and to suspend snow-white lanterns from the trees in imitation of clouds, a symbol of the heaven on earth, employed to celebrate its advent to power; but once that advent was working, the same magazine declares that Russian fugitives laid before the Overton investigating committee, facts that made life look like a nightmare in a lunatic asylum. Poverty, sickness, distress, starvation, churches converted into theatres where harlots and profligates held nightly revel, homes into houses of death where a battalion of Chinese executed the will of the Soviet Government in the destruction of lives out of number; the invention of cruelties such as have not existed since the days of Nero; and yet this is what some men are preaching, and some professors are teaching. God forbid that we should be silent while America is thus being menaced and the immortal souls of all men are being thus imperiled.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co. 1:19-20.Isa. 29:14 (nearly as LXX.), and a free imitation of Isa. 30:18. For.Sustains the general drift of 1Co. 1:17-18, not any particular clause. The cessation of Rabbinical wisdom was to be one of the signs of Messiahs coming; and that this was foretold in Isa. 33:18 was believed among the Rabbis. (So Stanley.) Also, The heathen oracles are dumb, silenced since Christ came. Remark, age and world used together here (in the Greek).
1Co. 1:21.Difficult; but probably, In Gods wise ordering of the history of the world and of human thought, the result of all their experiment and inquiry is this: An unknown God. Paul came fresh from his address at Athens (Act. 17:23) to Corinth. Still, worth considering this reading: By means of and from the wisdom of God displayed in the things that are made (Rom. 1:20) the world did not arrive at knowledge of Him; He now therefore will propose what the world thinks the folly of His Gospel of the Cross. Will they know Him through that? They who believe will, and do, and the knowledge is salvation.
1Co. 1:22.Notice, Jews, Greeks, q.d. men of the Jew-type of mind and heart, and of the Greek-type. There are such in all races, religions, ages. Signs (from heaven) suit the Oriental, the childlike, emotional type; wisdom the Western, harder, manlike, logical type. The Jew wanted to see the finger of God; the Greek wanted to explain all by philosophic theory.
1Co. 1:24Power for the Roman; wisdom for the Greek. Power and wisdom, meeting the moral weakness and moral darkness of the fallen humanity. The age-long experiment of the Jew ended in the knowledge of mans moral helplessness; that of the Greek race, his moral ignorance.
1Co. 1:26. Your calling.Choose between, (a) they who called you, and (b) those who are called. Probably the latter. But both are true, and both are included, as particular embodiments of it, in the great fundamental rule which God has followed in His manner of calling you, viz. not many, etc. Not many.Always a few, as Crispus. Can almost count, however, the exceptions in the New Testament on ones fingers, and hardly any of them counting for much in the worlds estimation.
1Co. 1:28. Base.Of no special honour of birth. Are not are.Nonentities, entities (Evans).
1Co. 1:30. Are ye.Q.d. Now were, and still are, nothing and nobody, in the eyes of the world. But before God, and in Christ, you are indeed something and somebody, with a life of important, eternal reality. (See Homily).
1Co. 1:31.Jer. 9:23.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.1Co. 1:18-31
Grouping the topics of the paragraph around 1Co. 1:29, we have:
I. A great principle of Gods government consistently carried out. God alone must be exalted.
1. In threefold reiteration here. That no flesh should glory,or literally, that all flesh should not glory,in His presence (before God, better reading, 1Co. 1:29); He that glorieth in the Lord (1Co. 1:31); and the triumphant laugh in the face of the worlds wisest ones, Where is the wise? etc. (1Co. 1:20). Paul stands by the cross of the Lord of Glory, and casts his exultant glance around. The Cross of Christ has been planted, like Gods Royal Standard, in the midst of the battle-field. Now the field is clear. Beaten, discomfited, discredited, by Gods foolish method, the competing wisdoms of the world have vanished, or are vanishing, leaving the cross of Christ in possession! [So in the Day of Questions, the last day of the Lords public ministry, every typical worlds-wise-man assailed Him. But He held His own, and one after another slunk away beaten, until at last He Himself completed the rout by turning questioner, and finally silencing every opponent with His problem about Davids Lord and Davids Son (Matthew , 22).]
2. The Old Testament origin of Pauls quotation, here and in 2Co. 10:17 (from Jer. 9:23-24), carries back the principle into the earlier dispensation, and shows that the Spirit guided him with a sure and right instinct to lay his hand upon a great and perennially valid principle of all Gods rule and administration of His government; one that must obtain wherever there are creatures capable of knowing Him. In no world can it be conceived that this great law should not be in force. He is the One and Only Being who can make Himself the centre and object of all intention and activity, and who can claim that all other life than His own should converge upon Him as its Object and End and Goal. In us such self-centering is of the very essence of Sin; it is our root-rebellion against our God. It is a prime and simple necessity of His position and character and very Being. To ask less, to permit less, to man or to any other creature, were to abdicate His position as God. The Bible sets Him forth abundantly full, full to the overflow, of love; His mercy is eagerly ready and forward to bless; the first advance to union between Himself and sinners has always come from His side. His ear is always open to the cry of the feeblest, bowing Himself to the man of contrite and trembling heart; indeed, loving to dwell with such a man (Isa. 57:15; Isa. 66:2). Yet the condescension is never exhibited at the expense of the majesty. He is God and none else. His honour will He not give to another. To compare great and small, and with all reverence: men hear from time to time of our Queen performing acts of kindly condescension and of simple womanly kindness, to the sick and poor and aged. But if any presumed upon this to exercise undue familiarity as to an equal, she would be the first to draw back. To allow another on some state occasion to occupy the throne in her presence, would not be condescension, but abdication. The Creator and the creature can never with His consent even seem to change places. The worlds wisdom is rooted in the pride of human nature in itself and its powers of discovery. No field can be supposed beyond its exploration; no height, or depth, or vastest extension of truth, but it can take in all. If God hide Himself, then there is no God; this wisdom can find none. If His ways pass its systematisation, or do not commend themselves to the worlds judgment or moral sense, they are evil or folly. Over all that pride of intellect He must win a victory. To men the perpetually attractive temptation is, Ye shall be as God, knowing. Human intellect must lower its high-borne pennon in the presence of the Royal Standard of Gods wisdom. The proud intellect which will acknowledge neither limitation nor error, the proud heart which will own no weakness or sin, must alike bow in the presence of God. It is true of the whole arrangements for the spread of the Gospel; it is true of the provisions in the Gospel for the salvation of the individual sinner.
II. Seen in the arrangements for the spread of the Gospel.
1. Hardly necessary to point out the once current, customary misconception of Pauls words, the foolishness of preaching. Even an English reader of the R.V., with its margin, may now see that the folly lay in the matter of the preachers message, and not at all in that particular method of delivering it (1Co. 1:21). Viv voce instruction and appeal is one of the aptest methods of winning attention and securing conviction. For appeal, whose aim is to secure immediate results, whether of conviction or action, the living voice of the man speaking face to face with his fellow has better prospect than the writer, whose written or printed page lies cold and silent before, perhaps, a listless eye. Every true preacher is, first of all, a public speaker; the natural basis upon which is superinduced his special grace, is the same as that of the speaker upon any secular theme, the lecturer, the parliamentary orator, the very demagogue. He will cultivate it, as part of its consecration, and will learn his very art in order that he may the better win the ear of his listeners, and thus find for his Master a way to their hearts. God has often glorified Himself by using very poor speakers to deliver His message. Wisdom of words, if made by preacher or hearers a thing aimed at for its own sake, or for the applause it may bring and the pleasure it may give, may make the Cross of none effect (1Co. 1:17). Yet foolish preaching is no thing to praise or value, or (as it were) to cultivate. The speaker will seek to be at his best, for God. But all this is quite away from any thought of Paul here. Any supposed poor preaching is not, in itself, one of the illustrations of Gods method which he adduces.
2. The message itself seemed foolish.Jews and Greeks (1Co. 1:22) are not only historical names, but generic and typical. There are always Jews and Greeks amongst the men to whom any Paul addresses himself, in every age, in any country. They are two variants of the natural mind, under the influence of the natural heart. And we who are called (1Co. 1:24), and have made the call a reality [see the tense, as compared with that in 1Co. 1:2], both from our memory of the old days in our own life, and from the very nature of the case, can see how foolish the preaching of the Cross must seem to such. Here is proposed for mans acceptance a system of truth whose Teacher is a man hanged publicly on a gibbet, on a thing whose whole associations were those of our gallows, but aggravated in their painfulness and shame. We are being saved by it (1Co. 1:18), and know its wisdom and its power. To us they are worthy of God; they carry their own credentials. But to those who are perishing such a story may well seem foolishness. Apart from the power of the Holy Ghost in it (1Co. 2:4), it would be a message with which to send men only on a fools errand. To tell the Roman masters that the hope of the world was in a Jew, rejected by His own people, hanged publicly on a gallows by a Roman quaternion and their centurion, at the instigation of Jewish religious authorities,Gallio well reflected the temper with which the best of them would receive such a tale. He cared nothing indeed for the rioting; he could afford to ignore a petty Jewish squabble, though under his very eyes. But the same lofty, gentlemanly, if not supercilious, contempt would have been his answera Roman answerif the preaching of the Cross had been fairly submitted to him for his judgment. The Jew was stung to the quick when Pilates title seemed to offer to the nation a crucified peasant of Galilee as its King and Messiah. The Jew of all ages who wants signs, who demands, in order to belief, unmistakeable self-disclosures of the Unseen, Supernatural, Order, who wants to see his God, will hardly bear to be pointed to Jesus of Nazareth crucified. Such foolishness! The Greek, looking for his Ideal Man, feeling after God, requiring of everything proposed to him for acceptance that it shall fit into some beautifully ordered, symmetrical, closely articulated scheme of philosophic thought, was hardly to be won to attention by this story of a Divine Man dying on a gallows. That the supreme revelation of God? That the supreme form of the Beautiful, the True, the Good? On Mars Hill attention ended in an explosion of mocking laughter (Act. 17:32). Foolishness! Sensible men, not to say philosophers, to give serious attention to such a story! Not even the learning of Paul, or the eloquence of an Apollos, could make such a story anything else but a folly and a stumbling-block. If it kept the field, then, and drove out all competitors, there must be something in it not of man. The most successful preacher may not glory in His presence. This is the finger of God.
3. Look at the men who bore it.(For they are fairly included in the unfinished sentence of 1Co. 1:26. R.V. margin is not too broadly comprehensive. What was true of the first converts was true also of the first preachers.) They were not reclaimed reprobates, indeed; nor by any means wanting in native common sense or shrewdness. Their baseness (1Co. 1:25) only means that they had no advantage from what with men gives prestige. Yet manifestly they were not the men whom human wisdom would have chosen to confront the scribe of the Jew, or the disputer of the Greek market-place (Act. 17:18). Men would not have chosen the equivalent of a little company of Whitby or Peterhead fishermen, with a farm labourer or two, and a subordinate collector of Customs, even though joined afterwards by a graduate of the theological school of a small and uninfluential sect, to be the men to clear away religions deeply rooted in the popular life, or consecrated by hoar antiquity. Paul was the best educated of them all, yet his strictly Hebrew home (Php. 3:5), though in the Greek city of Tarsus, would not permit to him much acquaintance with any ordinary secular literary knowledge, and his learning was mainly in that Rabbinic lore which seems to us, as it would to his Gentile contemporaries, so largely trivial, and indeed often contemptible. Humanly speaking, he was by no means the man to put forward as the best representative of the new faith, to discuss it on Mars Hill, or in the Agora of Athens, with the heirs of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. From the standpoint of human prudence, it would have seemed to be the very best method of handicapping the message and lessening its chances of reception, to commit it to such men as its apostles and promulgators. Precisely. But Gods foolishness was Gods way. Such weak and base things put the worlds wisdom and strength and prestige to shame. The success justified the method, and justified the use of such messengers of the cross. And the method obviously secured this end, that no fleshcertainly not the successful messengers themselvesshould glory before God.
4. Look at the first converts.In Corinth even the chief ruler of the synagogue, the Crispus whom Paul had the joy of receiving as a Christian, soon after he had transferred his labours to the house of Titus Justus, was a man of no account except amongst the Jewish community. The Gentile mob dragged before Gallio his successor in office, Sosthenes, with very scant respect. A few converts may have been won from the descendants of the Roman colonists with whom the city had been repeopled. But, as usual, the artisan and the slave, the small trader and the sailor, would form the bulk of the Corinthian Church. It is just one of the touches of foolishness in Gods plan that, though the noble, the mighty, the wise after the flesh need the Gospel of the Cross as much as do the foolish, and weak, and base, its reception has seemed to be made distinctly more difficult for them than for others. The exceptions in the New Testament to Pauls statement are few. In Philippi the first to be won for Christ were a purple-seller and a gaoler, not the magistrates. Jerome boasted in after years (on Gal. 3:3), Ecclesia Christi non de Academia, et Lyco, sed de vili plebecula congregata est (Farrar L. of Chr., i. 197). But it was long a standing matter of scorn that the adherents of the new faith were almost exclusively from lower grades of society. Not that the Gospel has any republican prejudice against, or dislike for, the rich or the aristocratic. [Not many, but always some. How I thank God, Lady Huntingdon used to say, for the letter m! If it had been not any!] The exceptions to Pauls statement in the New Testament can almost be counted upon ones ten fingers. But the exceptions are there. [And possibly the percentage of the wise and noble has been as great as that of the far more numerous lower classes.] The Gospel met the case of Nicodemus; of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus; of Dionysius, a judge of the sacred court on Areopagus; of Erastus, the city-treasurer of Corinth itself (Rom. 16:23); and these were but the precursors of a noble few, who are nobler because position or wealth or learning were consecrated to the service of the Gospel of a crucified Jesus. But these were not saved because of their social standing; as it was no prejudice to them, so it gave no advantage; and they joined a company of people, humble and often rude, who could impart no social consideration, and in company with whom they lost that which they already had.
5. And yet these arrangements of Gods plan have been crowned with success.The foolishness of God is wiser than men; the weakness of God is stronger than men. Here is plain matter of historical fact. Such preachers, bearing such a message, winning mainly such converts, have turned the world upside down. Such messengers have evidently no ground to glory in their success, as if it arose out of their own qualifications or abilities. To win such converts brought no glory in the eye of the world. The converts themselves could not suppose that anything in themselves drew out any special mercy of God towards them. To join the sect everywhere spoken against brought no credit. Looked at on any side, the arrangements for the spread of the Gospel were such as to debar all pretence of flesh glorying in the presence of God.
5. All this not only historically, but generally, true.All Christian workersand by no means preachers aloneneed to remember that God proceeds on the same lines still. The wise and the scribe are not extinct. Their judgment is that of the natural heart always. They would say: Convert the men of influence among the Roman masters of Corinth. Catch Gallio, and the whole city will go with him. [It was a bad day for the world when, not of Christ, but of Constantine, it could be said: The world is gone after him! (They who said this so bitterly of Christ, knew not of the glorious fulfilment of their words symbolised in the very next verse, when the Greeksthe first ears of the harvest of the Gentilescame to see Jesus, Joh. 12:19-20).] Convert a philosopher or two, or a rhetorician, amongst the Greeks; these will carry their disciples with them. The critic will dishearten the Christian Church as he points out that, in the mission-fields of the world, or, indeed, in the Churches at home, the bulk of the converts and membership belong to the middle or the working and lower classes. The divorce between Culture and Christianity is distressing, but it is not novel. It is nothing new or surprising if a Church reaps a more abundant harvest amongst the pariahs or the aborigines of India than amongst the Brahmins. God always has lighted His fire from the bottom, [and first ignites the slight material!] He began with the fisherman, and the fallen woman, and the publican, and the slave. Often does He begin with the servant maid or the child to-day, when He saves a family. The poor have the Gospel preached to them, whilst it does reach and save culture and birth and wealth. These need to become fools that they may be wise (1Co. 3:18). That no flesh should glory.
6. No man may be a successful winner of souls who disregards this rule of Gods procedure.If God have given the tongue of the learned, that he may know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary (Isa. 50:4); if to natural gifts have been added opportunities of culture; if the ready tongue and warm heart are used to win many to the story of the Cross; if the Spirit of God make his gifts nobly auxiliary to the work of pulling down strongholds, and bringing hearts to the obedience of Christ; then he needs to remember that these are gifts, and that he is only an instrument. The axe may not complacently dwell upon its temper or edge, nor count up proudly the stout trees it has been used to fell. Every victory must be laid simply at the feet of the Lord of the battle. In the day that Gods labourers begin to glory in His presence, in that day will they be laid aside. Things that are not, they will revert to their original nothingness.
7. The humble may hear hereof and be glad.The weak and the foolish are the very instruments God can best employ. He will have no joint saviours of them that are perishing. He wants men and women who will be content to offer themselves, and all the glory of any success, to Him.
8. So also the message must not be tampered with. The Gospel is significantly summarised as the preaching (the word) of the Cross (1Co. 1:18).To conciliate the pride of unsanctified intellect, the Sufferer on the cross must not be hidden behind the Babe in the manger, and still less behind the gentle, tender Healer of disease, and of the Teacher whoaccount for it, and for Him, as we canspake as never man spake. [Calvary, and not even Bethlehem, is the true Kiblah of the Mecca of the pilgrimage of a sinful world, in search of rest to heart and conscience. Even on Christmas morning, the Christian preacher will also say, Let us go even unto Calvary.] The message must be characteristically, whatever else it includes, the word of Christ, and Him, too, (as) crucified. As a simple matter of often verified experiment, foolishness though this be, it has satisfied the needs of human hearts better than any other Gospel (Gal. 1:9). All great revivals of the life and vigour and progress of the kingdom of God in the world, have been in the closest association with this specific type of teaching; they have demanded it, and have produced it. It may be a stumbling-block (also in Gal. 5:11); but it may not be dispensed with. As matter of experiment it has been the foundation stone, of Gods own power and wisdom, on which effectual teaching and practical holiness of life have age after age been securely built. Try anything else, whether upon the worlds wisdom, or upon its sin and misery; the result will only be another verification of 1Co. 1:20; if the Church will confront the worlds wisdom with the like worldly wisdom, God will make even His own peoples effort to end in manifest foolishness The argument of the Cross [so Evans, bringing into close connection with the same word in 1Co. 1:17] best secures that no flesh should glory before God, and it therefore best succeeds.]
III. Seen in the provisions of the Gospel for the salvation of the individual sinner (1Co. 1:30-31).(See also Separate Homily.)
1. For the overthrow and shaming of the imposing entities of the world, God has chosen to take and use non-entities, things that are not, have no existence [making His new creation out of nothings]. And, as truly, for their own salvation He has taken care that, if they now are at all, and are anything, or have anythingwisdom, righteousness, holiness, redemption, every man shall glory only in the Lord. Only in Christ Jesus have they, or are they, anything. He is made all these things to them. Apart from Him they are foolish, guilty, unholy, lostnothing!
2. In this fact, that the Gospel does nothing to conciliate either the intellect or the proud heart of man, does it stand very sharply distinguished from all other religions. In varying form, but with substantial unity, these exalt human nature, not abase it; if in any degree it needs elevation or recovery, the sufficient force is said to be within the man himself. In Stoicism man could be his own saviour; he must be self-reliant, and independent of all men and all things in his struggle after good; pride was indulged on principle. And in this it was but a special and philosophic formulating of the thought and feeling of human nature, even at its best, everywhere. That Gospel can hardly be of human origin, which even conceives of attaining success in a totally different direction. It tells a man that of himself he has nothing to recommend him to God; that he can do nothing to win His favour; that, whether by wisdom (1Co. 1:21), or by works, he can attain to no knowledge of God; that all he gets is of God, purely and simply, and for the sake of Christ; that even in the faith which lays hold of all, there is no meritit is exercised in the strength of grace. As the Gospel has been seen above to be a stumbling-block to the natural understanding, so it is also an offence to the natural heart. All is of grace. Men, even the Jew, the Greek, the wise, the scribe, the mighty, are perishing together. There is now only one fundamental classification: them that are perishing, us who are being saved. No matter how high may rise the edifice of a Christians life and holiness, at the foundation of all, lies the fact that the grace of God in Christ has in the first instance made him who was not into a saint. After long ages of heavens perfected redemption, it will still remain true that Christ Jesus is made redemption to him. He is in that world only as a man redeemed of God in Christ.
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1Co. 1:18. The Preaching [the Word] of the Cross.Observe the connection between this and the preceding verse. Paul is jealous over himself as a preacher, and over his hearers, lest he should lay himself out to use, and they should desire to hear, the wisdom of words; he is jealous lest The Cross should be made void. For the Cross is the summary, and the very heart, of another word which God has spoken; the very strength of it, and the secret of its effectiveness, are there. It is Gods argument, set over against mans arguments. [So Evans.] Its whole force lies in the fact that it is not a theory, or a philosophy, but a fact; and that fact a Cross. Christianity, the Gospel, Gods latest revelation of Himself, alt gather themselves up around this startling sight, a Cross and a Crucified One. The effectiveness of this Word must be guarded at all costs; therefore the wisdom of words must be watched or banished altogether. Observe then
I. A wonderful fact about Christianity: the prominent place given in it to the cross of Christ.
1. The Russian painter Verestchagin a few years ago in his exhibition of paintings hung side by side three pictures: A Russian Nihilist being executed by hanging, in a thick-falling snowstorm; Several wretched sepoys of the Mutiny of 1857, writhing helplessly, and in terror, as they stood bound to the muzzle of the guns whose discharge was to execute the sentence upon their revolt or treachery; The crucifixion of Christ. Three executions! The realism of this last was exceedingly great. No doubt it was very true to what was to be seen outside the walls of Jerusalem on a certain Friday morning of April, in the year 30, by one of the visitors come from foreign lands to keep the Passover. No doubt an execution, the execution of a strange man of Nazareth, of whom there had been a good deal of talk in the country for some three years past, was what was discussed at the gatherings for the Supper in upper rooms in Jerusalem that evening. If there were, as an early Christian apologist asserts, an official report from Pilate to Rome, it would be the matter-of-fact report of an execution. How comes an execution to be the central argument of Gods message to mankind? Why is this crucifixion of the Author of the new religion so vital to it? One of the preachers of the new faith, Peter, was himself crucified, like the Master whom he served. But the cross of Peter has never affected the worlds religion and civilisation and history like the cross of Christ. Why not? Of the hundreds and hundreds of Jews who were crucified by Roman hands outside and upon the walls of the city in the day of its capture and destruction, not one has left his name, or by his death made any such perceptible mark on the worlds life and thought, as this other crucified Jew has done. Nobody would die for Peter because Peter was crucified. Thousands of spectators are year by year profoundly stirred by the pathos of the Oberammergau dramatisation of the scenes of Calvary; yet the emotion stirred by the intense realism of the death of Josef Meyer is of another older altogether to the stirring of hearts all over the world caused by even the mental contemplation of the dying of Jesus upon His cross. Why? If any heart is really blessed at Oberammergau, if by chance any life is changed by a real conversion in consequence of what is seen and felt there, manifestly it is not the crucifixion of the man Meyer which has effected the change, but the cross and death of Christ, which perhaps then was made for the first time to have any reality, and so any power of appeal, to the spectators heart.
2. The relation of the death of Christ to His Gospel is close, and uniquely close.The death of Peter might have been, like Pauls, by decapitation, for all that it would have mattered to the substance of his teaching and to the issue of his lifes work. It is an accident of history merely that Socrates died by the poison-cup, rather than by any other method of execution. Neither the fact nor the mode of the death of Buddha or Confucius is of any importance to their system of doctrine. Pascal lays his satirical finger upon the fact that, whereas the plan and the success of Mahomet meant the death of others, to the plan and success of Christ His own death was essential. [So Talleyrands well-known reply to Le Reveillire Lepeaux, who had read before the Institute in 1797 an essay upon the re-establishment of Theophilanthropy. I have but one observation to make. In order to found His religion, Jesus Christ was crucified and rose again. You ought to attempt as much (Guizot, Meditations, pp. 1, 2).] It would be impossible to exhibit Christianity, except in a mutilated form whose identity had become doubtful, if no stress were laid upon the fact that Christ was crucified, or, above all, if that fact were left out altogether. As Christ identifies Himself with His Gospel, and with Truth, so here Paul brings into solitary prominence this one fact, the Cross, as practically the sum and substance of Christianity. Without the story of the crucifixion of Christ, or with it, if that be only an accidental fact of the history; if that death were only an unfortunate, unintended, premature conclusion of the ministry of Christof Jesus; then His work and His works would perhaps long ago have faded into indistinct history or myth. At any rate, His teaching would at the utmost have been a beautiful code of ethics, the most beautiful the world possesses, but hanging, as it were, in mid-air, and weak, just as all the noblest systems of morals are all weak, in having no adequately efficacious working power. He would have been just one among the worlds greatest and choicest names; the best loved of them all, perhaps, but not the present-day personal power He is, not only to a few cultured people who can realise the past and be influenced by it, but to the masses who must live, and must be raised, and must be saved, in the present.
3. The guilty conscience and the burdened heart feel and know why Christianity meets them with a unique helpfulness and sufficiency.Whatever be the reason, the fact is certain that it is the Cross which makes Christianity the religion of every heart. John Bunyan was not merely casting Puritan or any temporary phase of theology into the form of a story; he was not merely generalising from his own experience; he was summarising universal experience; when he takes his Christian to the Cross, and there, and not till then, makes his burden fall off, and the man set forth with a new freedom and lightness of heart. The sight of the Cross made the burden fall. So say all guilty souls. They push on past the manger of Bethlehem; they have no ear for the name Immanuel until they have been to Calvary. When their heart has there been disburdened of its load, then first is that heart at leisure to come back to Bethlehem and learn the lesson of the holy manger. But the profundities and mysteries of condescension and love in the Incarnate Babe need a heart to understand them which has first seen the Crucified One made sin for us. No New Testament writer, not even John, contributes more than does Paul to what light we have on the Incarnate Son; but the centre of gravity of Pauls scheme of the Gospel, my Gospel, as he calls it often, will be shifted, if the Incarnation and the Birth become, more than the Death and its Atonement, the objects of attention, the subjects of preaching. It is a glorious Gospel, truly, which lies in the very name Immanuel, God with, instead of against, us; it has in it all the possibilities of life (Rom. 8:31). The race now is made up of men of Gods goodwill. But how? Why? How is the individual, conscious of guilt in the past record, and more deeply conscious still of an inward, deep-seated heart aversion from God and from god, to enter into the Name Immanuel? Has the word reached him too late, since he has sinned, and is a sinner? The answer is at the Cross, or it is nowhere. It would not be fair to make the Incarnation merely one step in a chain of arrangements leading up to the Cross, and existing for its sake. Really each is in some points for the sake of the other. It is plain that if the Incarnate Babe exhibits and proclaims the reconciliation, the Cross makes it. He hath reconciled us by the death of His Son (Rom. 5:10). We can date the death on Calvary within narrow limits. We cannot date the true Reconciliation; we read mysterious things of a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world (1Pe. 1:20). But when God would make plain His heart to guilty, lost man, He chooses to emphasise the word of the Cross, not the word of the Manger. Reconciliation is the first step back to peace. Christian speculation on the meaning of the Incarnation, and its possible relations to the whole creaturely universe, has been fruitful in noble thinking. But Christian preaching which is to touch even the base things, in the most unworthy sense of base, has always, as matter of experiment, found in the Cross a better help for souls, and the best appeal for the use of the winner of souls. At the Cross he has found his , from which to lift the world.
II. The Cross is a summary of Gospel preaching.Of course the interpretation of this phrase of Paul will depend on our whole reading of the entire New Testament. It is one of those single words into which is condensed, and in which is assumed, all the customary belief and teaching of a mans lifetime. How much do you mean by the Cross, Paul? How much? Ask them which hear me constantly, ask them who read me most closely; behold, they know what I mean! But at least it is manifest that Christ Himself made it central to His Gospel. The Gospel lies within an ellipse, of which these are the two foci (and the two are fundamentally one, the central Truth of a circle):
1. A cross for the Master;
2. A cross for each of His disciples. Midway, or thereabout, in the course of His three years ministry, in the few days of retirement to the neighbourhood of Csarea Philippi (Mar. 8:27-38), for the first time did Christ speak definitely to His disciples about death as the issue of His ministry, though not as yet precisely specifying that this should be by crucifixion. The news, so startling to a Jew, that this should be at the hands of the revered and representative men of his nation, and so saddening to a loving disciple, Peter was for hushing back, and, indeed, would have had His Master entertain no such gloomy thoughts: Be propitious to Thyself, Lord (Mat. 16:22, literally); be kinder to Thyself than that! Quick and sharp the cry broke forth from Jesus, Behind Me, Satan! Had the Adversary himself retained Peter on his side, the disciple could have said nothing more thoroughly according to his mind. Such a suggestionto delete the cross from the programme of the Saviours earthly sojourn and its workwas the very desire of the Devil. [It had been his proposition long before that the King should make a short cut to His kingdom, avoiding the cross, Mat. 4:8-10]. The voice was Peters voice; the thought was the thought of Satan. There must be a cross for the Master, or His work would go undone; there would be no Gospel of redemption. A few days after, as the little company, Jesus leading the way, the twelve coming after Him, were slowly moving through some village of the neighbourhood, the villagers stood gazing at the little company of strangers, and Jesus stopped, and calling them to Him, said unto them all (Mar. 8:24; Luk. 9:23), what Peter was not for hearing even for his Master, Every man must take up his own crossas I do Mine; dailyas from the first I have done Mine. What Peter would not hear of for his Master, he and every disciple must hear of for himself, else there can be no discipleship. The whole Christian host, the Captain and the rank and file, all carry their cross. There is no Christian who does not. To himself and to his Lord the Gospel is the word of the Cross.
1Co. 1:21. Seeking and finding God.
Introduction.Some striking and suggestive turns of phraseology here:
1. The world is seeking to know God. Of the believers who are brought to the goal which the world misses, it is not said that they know God, but, what at first seems a very much smaller thing, that they are saved. Is that all? Yes; and a very glorious attainment too. It is, in fact, the reward and goal of the worlds search. To know God and to be saved were long before closely linked (Joh. 17:3). In knowledge of whom standeth [consisteth] our eternal life. (I.e. as in the ancient collect, Quem nosse vivere est.)
2. The world seeks for God by the way of wisdom. They who find this salvation which is the knowledge of God, find Him by the path of believing; another path altogether, which nevertheless justifies itself as the highest wisdom (1Co. 2:6) to those who are brought by it to the goal.
3. Are we to press the distinction between in the wisdom of God [taking the customarily accepted turn of thought as that of Paul] and it pleased God? Perhaps not too strongly or too far. Yet it is true that it is no good pleasure of God to see His world groping after the knowledge of Himself in vain. [Act. 17:26-28 is very explicit: He hath made that they should seek if haply they might find Him.] It may be His wisdom that they should not by wisdom find Him out; but He loves to be found and known and loved. We have, then,
I. The worlds inquiry.
II. Gods answer.
I.
1. The heart and the intellect of man do inquire after the knowledge of God.Mans mind and heart will not be forbidden to inquire after God. Of no avail to throw doors openinvitingly openand to solicit exploration, in directions to which admittance is given by gates inscribed To Science, To Music, To Philanthropy, To Truth and Right, and to shut up Religion-gate, or to build up the door leading out towards the road To God. This fact in itself goes some way towards, and has someworth as, an answer to the question, Is God knowable? It were strange if the instinctive, or at least the ever-recurrent, inquiry of mind and heart, O that I knew where I might find Him! were a mere lying, deluding impulse, driving men to search endlessly after what could not be found, or after One who did not choose to be found; or if the idea of a God were only an ignis fatuus leading into mere bottomless bog and darkness. There can be no demonstration of Him, as there can be no demonstration that there is no God. But if the very constitution of mans mind be not a contradiction and a lie, then the unceasing quest after God witnesses to a possibility of a real knowledge of Him. Not a complete onethat is out of the question, by universal consent; but a real, if incomplete, knowledge, sufficient, moreover, for regulative [though not merely regulative] purposes. [The child knows the father, even though the mans life, and the particular character of its own parent, be in their whole round far beyond its present comprehension.
2. Man is morally a strange contradiction in this matter.The natural heart is averse from God, and desires not the knowledge of His ways (Job. 21:14); yet the famous sentence of Augustine is the summary of the universal human experience: Tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet; quia fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. (Conf., I. i. 1.) The fool says in his heart No God, but, as Bacon quaintly puts it: It is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart, so as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, and be persuaded of it; for none deny that there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there were no God (Essays, Atheism). It is a lesson which the fool must say over and over to himself, to be quite sure: No God, No God, No God. David never heard of an atheist by professed creed. [Another David, David Hume, avowed at the table of Baron dHolbach, that he had never met with an atheist. Allow me, said his host, to introduce you to thirteen, indicating his guests.] Long ago Cicero pointed out that no nation of atheists had ever been found (De Nat. Deor., i. 16). It is another thing, and capable of ready explanation, that now and again peoples have been found, few in number and low down in the scale of civilisation, in whom the very idea of worship seemed almost or quite extinct, and their life and thinking reduced to the narrowness of the animal existence. Yet the vague sense of a supernatural is hardly ever absent, and the idea of a God can always be called out again in even the most imbruted and degraded. Every man is capable of it, as no noblest animal is. As matter of history, belief has ever been before disbelief; belief has seemed natural, disbelief and denial have been induced, and matters of education. Man cries out after God, after the living God (Psa. 74:2). This inquiry and search after God is the origin of all religion, and the truth even of heathenism (Luthardt). And yet man is a prodigal who goeth into a far country, where his Father may be out of sight and out of mind. It is the dislocation of Gods order seen everywhere in His creation; man, like the rest, is out of joint, as the result of a moral confusion in Gods very good world and its order.
3. The intellect starts on its quest on some four great lines of argument, four great highways, as it hopes, to the assurance that there is a God and to some knowledge of Him. A few, capable of such thinking, have argued that, because man can have the conception of a Perfect Being, there must be somewhere a reality corresponding to the conception; that there must be an Infinite Substance, of whom [or which] Time and Space must be accidents; that the ideas of the Infinite, the Absolute, the Eternal, must have their root and basis somewhere; the thought of God implies the existence of God. Often discredited, argued out of court, criticised or refined away, dismissed, buried, but with a wonderful resurrection power about it, the No effect without a cause argument has been a path along which a far larger class of mindspractical peoplehas set out to find God. Wider still in the field of its appeal, a broad way at which manymosthave gone in in their search, is the argument from Design, which is not really affected even if modern evolutionary science makes good all its claims, and turns every hypothesis into certainty; it would only be a revolutionising of our knowledge of the method, by which the Creator had effectuated and carried out His design; however the result has been brought about, He is still there, directing the processes, guiding the whole, from inception to conclusion. [Said Newton: Hcce compages solis, planetarum, et cometarum et stellarum, non nisi Consilio et dominio entis cujusdam potentis et intelligentis oriri potuit.] Every science without exception shows that the order and [concurrent] adaptation and harmonies of nature are such as to make the chances no less than infinite against the supposition of Chaos, or the absence of the designing intelligence. Said Bonaparte in Egypt, after listening to the atheistic talk of a group of officers and savans, gathered at his tent door under the lustrous stars of a sub-tropical night, All very well, gentlemen; but who made all these? [There is even in the Sublime and the Beautiful in Nature, secured as so much of it is by the very same properties of mattermechanical, chemical, or otherand their combinations, as secure the more utilitarian results of Design, a concurrent design argument, which leads many minds towards the Mind, towards God. (See this popularly accessible in Pres. Day Tracts, No. 20, R.T.S.] The common agreement of the vast majority of the race, account for it how men may, has always been to some a promising line of quest after God. Where all the world have turned their steps, surely in that direction He is to be found. So men have said, nor without justification.
4. The heart and the moral nature have contributed to all the inquiry. The heart, as well as the intellect, has had its own wisdom by which it has sought to know God. And its wisdom has been the wisest. It has, indeed, affected the search after Him, in every line of quest. Very much according as their heart and moral condition have been, so have the inquirers valued or disparaged the paths by which the reason sought after Him; so have they hoped or feared that the path might lead them to His throne; so have they been urged onward by desire or dragged forward with reluctance, towards the place where perchance He might reveal Himself to the searchers. But the moral nature of man reaches out groping hands after Him. The sense of wrong and right has looked eagerly if it might see a Supreme Lawgiver somewhere behind Right and Wrong. Conscience has intimated a moral world and its Ruler. The personal manhood has given supreme testimony to a Person with whom it may have fellowship, and the sense of dependence has reinforced the argument. The same heart in man which trembles before an Authority above him yearns to be able to trust in Him. And the inquiry of the heart after God is the more earnest when the sense of guilt, so strange, so unreasonable, so inexplicable, and yet so completely justifying itself to the man who passes through its experiences, presses home the question: How may I find God? If I find Him, what kind of God shall I meet? Will there be any pity, any mercy, any pardon, any love? Can there be? Can He show any? Man can give no satisfying peace. The sinner has no authority to speak peace to himself. Nature is not without analogies which may suggest forgiveness; she has healing herbs for wounds and diseases, occasioned by violations of her own laws. But the guilty heart wants to know the Lawgiver, and His mind towards itself and its sin.
5. Abundantly clear from the history of human thought, philosophical or theological, that by any of these roads, or by all combined, the race has never come to any satisfying certainty about God. His eternal power and Godhead have not always been understood by the things that are made (Rom. 1:20). All these arguments have always been open to all, to study and use. They none of them depend upon Revelation. The wisest wisdom of this world has exercised itself upon them. Yet there is not one of them which is so demonstrative in its force as to compel assent or to give certainty. [There is not one which may not be frittered away by over-subtle criticism; not one from which the intellect cannot find a way of escape, if sore pressed by it in controversy.] There is not one which brings absolutely and infallibly to God. Phenomena and the Finite have not necessarily suggested an Infinite Subsistence. The unity of design is as consistent with the operation of one of two, or of one of many, workers left to do as he wills, as with the operation of One Only Worker. He must be very and sufficiently wise and powerful, but not of logical necessity all-wise, all-powerful. Is number finite or infinite? asked a believing French savant of some atheistic men of science. Finite. Then the universe had a beginning. But the argument does not of necessity shut men up to a Creator. Men of wisdom have, in fact, held an Eternal Matter, or a self-originated Universe. Endless have been the ancient and modern, Oriental and Western, variations upon the Pantheistic theory of God and the world. A personal God, who is Creator, has not always been a God of providential rule over, and care for, His creation. Polytheism has been the belief of large sections of the race in all ages. The inquiry of mere wisdom has always, in point of fact, left men without just views or settled convictions. The various apprehensions of wise men, said Cicero long ago, justify the doubtings of sceptics, and it will be time enough to blame these when others agree, or any one has found the truth (De Nat. Deor., i. 10, 11. See Note at end of Homily). (The wisdom of this world) does not deny Divine existence, though a good many persons are coldly doubtful and agnostic on the subject. But as in the first century any effective conception of God was wearing out of thoughtful minds [Emperors, not only like Augustus, but like Tiberius and Nero, were deified. On the other hand, all the vilest, meanest, Oriental or African gods and cults were being welcomed at Rome], so now there are mere vague and high-sounding phrases about the Almighty current among the worldly-wise. He is a forcepersonal or impersonal, no one knows; where seated, why operative, how directed, none can tell. Or, He is a dream of Ineffable Beauty, and a fountain of Ineffable Pity; but how to reconcile this with the more severe aspects of nature and life baffles all the wisdom of the world. The sages are puzzled; the multitude know not what to think; and so the world by wisdom knows not God (Dr. Donald Fraser). Anima naturaliter Christiana, cried the old apologist; but his word is both true and untrue. The anima Christiana truly finds reason enough to believe that in the design of its Maker it would naturally have known God. But there has been a blinding of the eye that looks for His traces; it cannot read aright the teachings of (say) nature. [It is the pure in heart now that alone see God. The Sir Galahads, not the Lancelots, see the Holy Grail.] In some lines of argument the evidence also has got confused; it cannot be read with absolute confidence; [the pieces of the puzzle have got jostled, and some perhaps are lost; it is not easy to discover the design which would lead to a Designer]. The altar to an unknown God in Athens is confessedly a symbolical fact in a representative city; mans wisdom with all possible advantages avowing a result so incomplete as to be a defeat of any search by wisdom only. The wisest minds need Gods pilotage if they are to reach Himself. Science does not find man in mans body, nor God in Gods world. The most modern thing is to take the confession of failure and wear it as the badge of superiority: Agnostic, we!
6. And this was in the wisdom of God.The whole moral history of earth and mankind may probably be a great object-lesson in sin, its meaning, its mischief, its misery, and in grace, its manifold wisdom, and infinite fulness, for the teaching of other worlds and other races. The failure of mere fallen, darkened reason, even in its wisest, mightiest, most industrious examples, to come at God, though He be not far from any one of us, may not be the least instructive detail in this great Didactic of the story of our race. However that may be, with regard to principalities and powers in heavenly places, and however the question may be decided whether, if sin had not darkened mans reason and perverted his heart, and confused and blurred some of the clearest evidence for a God, man might then by wisdom have known God, [if, indeed, he would then have had any need to search; man is seeking now a lost vision and knowledge]; as things are, this world-wide, age-long result all falls in with the great principle of 1Co. 1:29; 1Co. 1:31, that all pride of human intellect should be utterly excluded, made impossible by its utter failure to find out God (Job. 11:7). The knowledge, when it comes, is to be through a Salvation, and salvation is for those who believe.
II. Gods answer.
1. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the midst of Israel, so God has lifted up His Son upon a cross in the midst of mankind, groping with blind eyes, and outstretched hands, and yearning heart after Himself. The central Figure of history is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. The central Fact of the history of the Christ is the Cross. [The wise men from the East asked, Where is He that is born King of the Jews? Thirty years after Pilate gave the answer, putting upon the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.] The world for ages had been asking, How, where, may we find and know God? Is there a God to know and find? The answer given by the preaching of Paul and his fellows and their successors is, Look at Jesus Christ, and above all at Him crucified, and see and know God.
2. All we need to know, perhaps all we can be made to know, about God, we hear from Jesus of Nazareth; indeed, more truly still, we see it in Jesus of Nazareth. He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father. [As we say of a boy whose father is unknown to an inquirer who, nevertheless, is acquainted with the lad, Well, he is his father over again.] What He said and did, and above all, the reasons, the principles of judgment and action, which underlie all He said and did,we may transfer them all to God, and say, Thus and thus does He act and judge. His relation, e.g. to prayer and to sin, is exhibited in Christ. His requirement of faith in Himself in order to sight and health and blessing, is a revelation of God in this respect. We have a record, attested by historical evidence, sufficient when the nature of the case is taken into full account, of a Person and His character and teaching, starting with which we gain, at the least, a crucial and probative instance that there is a supernatural Order, which in that one case at least has broken in upon, and manifested itself in the midst of, the natural. The world of God and of things spiritual disclosed itself in Him, His life and work. It is an ascertained fact, and level to the apprehension of the simplest. And when, moreover, it is understood that the whole Written Word is the word of Christ the Revealer, then all its teachings about God become those of Christ. And, as matter of fact, the only certain and satisfying knowledge of God has been that which is given in the Word of God; the Written and the Incarnate are for this purpose one.
3. But Paul singles out again and again the Cross as the central point of the revelation. A knowledge of God is, in his view, given there which does not even come through the three years ministry. [When Moses pleaded, Show me Thy glory, and God made His goodness to pass before His servant, it was not even a partial refusal of his request. His goodness, pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin, is His glory to sinners hearts (Exo. 33:18 to Exo. 34:7).] It is interesting in the last degree to hear the confession of even secular students of history that the cross of Christ is the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the modern; that all ancient history, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, all led up to it and converged upon it, whilst all the life of the modern world radiates from it; interesting to see how typical was the simple fact that in the very inscription on the cross were gathered up all the best history of preceding ages,Hebrew, Greek, LatinReligion, Wisdom, LawWorship, Speculation, Government; profoundly interesting to see how Christianity meets the Jew-type, requiring a sign of the nearness of the Supernatural [for outward, visible wonders], and of the Greek-type, asking for the True and Beautiful and Good [for inward completeness of system]; meeting the one in the failure of his moral quest, and the other in the failure of his intellectual inquiry. But the base and despised and guilty want first and most urgently an answer for the conscience. And, once more it may be said, that the Cross has, age after age, given a satisfaction on this point found nowhere else. Theories of the Atonement have not always been consistent or wise, or duly considerate of all the facts; the analysis of the way in which the holy Justice of God was displayed at Calvary, as well as the Mercy, may sometimes have been mechanical and overdone. Much of all this has, moreover, been beyond the mass of seeking souls. And, apart from it all, by believing they have at the Cross come into a salvation which has meant knowledge of God. Their faith in Christ has been crowned by a gift of the Spirit, whose indwelling has restored more and more perfectly spiritual vision and judgment and power. They have been put by Him en rapport with spiritual things. There has come a demonstration of the Spirit, which has given evidence and proof and certainty. God reveals Himself to their spirit. They understand the reason of the failure of the search by way of wisdom. Wise or foolish after the mere intellectual standard of the world, the saved know, and they are saved at the Cross by believing.
NOTE.Plato complains how hard it is to discover the Father of the universe. Socrates held it to be the greatest possible happiness to know the will of the gods, but did not believe this discoverable by principles of reason, and recommended divination [Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Chr. Belief, pp. 78, 79. He, with others, says further:] Men never found God as personal, as holy, as Creator. Platos God oscillates between Nature and a Divine Idea. Aristotle made Him personal, but limited by primordial matter, and only a Demiourgos. The utmost attained to by the race was an intermittently shining, half-obscure presentiment, but not that God is and can only be One.
1Co. 1:30. Christ our Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption.
I. Wisdom.In two senses. Not even in Pauls, or in Gods, could we be wise if there were no Christ to know, and unless He helped us to know Himself. He is the great Fact to know which is Wisdom. He gives the faculty for knowing, and the Spirit who exhibits Him to our awakened perception. He is Himself the Revealer, the Sum of all Revelation, and the giver of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph. 1:12). Like the world at Corinth, the world to-day makes no account of such wisdom. But knowledge and ignorance, wisdom and folly, are all relative terms. Measured by one standard, placed in one set of circumstances, judged by one purpose, a man may be wise. With no change in himself, but with another set of conditions, in other circumstances, for another purpose, he may be a fool. To be really wise he must have the knowledge just then required and must know how to apply it. On a certain voyage, for example, so long as all went well, the ships surgeon was the wise man of the company. Besides his medical skill, he knew everything which could make the tedium of life on shipboard pass agreeably away. He easily carried the palm for popularity, and for being the universally clever man. The ship was wrecked on a desolate island. It became a question of finding shelter, of finding and cooking food, and here the many-sided man was utterly at fault. The common sailors, with their experimental knowledge of a thousand-and-one odds and ends of practical convenience, despised the doctor as a helpless hindrance. There was a curious reversal of the position. He had been a hero, a little god, on board; now he was a fool who wanted feeding and could find no food. The only wisdom known to the Book of God is Divine knowledge, and that is all bound up in Christ. No Christian will wisely undervalue mere natural wisdom or culture. The wide knowledge of the facts of the universe and their lawsScience; the wide mastery of the facts of the past and the great principles underlying themHistory; the full-stored knowledge of the human mind, and of its lawsPhilosophy; literary lore; the accumulations of the linguist; all these are noble and ennobling possessions, elevating, widening, as well as furnishing the mind which is enriched by them. All due honour even to the wise man after the flesh. All highest honour to such Wisdom when she becomes the handmaid of Divine truth. But all this is only fair-weather knowledge. The storm is coming, the wreck of the present order of things; the day of peril and of judgment, when the great question will be Eternal Life or Eternal Death. Even now all mere human knowledge is of things that vanish away. Knowledge and the objects of knowledge both are in ceaseless flux; a shifting, ever-changing knowledge of a shifting, ever-changing world, a partial knowledge perpetually under revision, correction, or enlargement. The one unchanging Fact is God in Christ. When, in the new heavens and the new earth, our science, history, literature, language, art, shall have been made obsolete, or shall have become mere curious memories, the knowledge of God will abide, true as ever, important as ever. Can you tell me about God? is a question which somehow the human mind cannot let alone. Tell me about man, about myself. What is the meaning of the strange conflict always going on within me, between a higher and a lower self? What is the voice I sometimes seem to hear within me? and why is it so often a voice of self-reproach? And then, when sin is understood, come the great questions: Tell me whether there is any way of peace with myself and with God? Is He good? But that only makes me the more sadly wrong. Do not tell me what you hope, or think. Has He spoken? What are His terms of restoration? Up to Pauls day the wisest man of this world never answered such questions with any finality of satisfaction. The worlds wisdom has no final answer to-day. The very simplest Christian has an answeran answer which, in ten thousand instances, has worked well in practical life. He believes he has reached certainty, where the wisest thinkers who disdain the help of Revelation go, groping and guessing, over the same wearisome ground of human ignorance; he certainly has learned to solve moral questions in practical living, as they are never solved elsewhere. He has learned a wisdom on these topics which will have abiding value in the dissolution and vanishing of all other knowledge besides, and will avail even at the bar of God. The Christian mans theory of life and morals, his doctrine of God and of creaturely existence, are in fact a complete philosophy, which centres for him in Christ. All we can know, certainly all that we need to know, of God, for regulative ends, is exhibited in Christ. We hear from His lips a revelation of God; but we do not only listen, we look and see what God is, in His own holiness. Every great principle of His dealing with petitioners and with sin may be traced out in, and often lies upon the very surface of, the works of Christ. Said Augustine: The works of Christ are themselves words of The Word. The Bible is through the Spirit the revelation of Jesus Christ; and thus again He is made to us wisdom on the great topics of the inward moral schism, its meaning and origin and remedy. At His cross is the only definite word anywhere found about the pardon of guilt. And all the wisdom is one into which they have lived their way. It is verified knowledge; it is the knowledge of Life. God and Conscience and Sinthey understand these by the teaching of the Spirit of Christ. The way of peace with God, they know it, they have availed themselves of itit is Christs work. Peace within themselves instead of the old moral discordthey have learned the secret of that also. And everything which is really wisdom, before God, and in the presence of eternity, they are being taught by the Spirit of Christ. The Revealer is Christ, the great Prophet of God.
II. This passes over into Righteousness and Sanctification.We should once more have expected power to be linked with wisdom. But no, something betterrighteousness.
1. These to be taken together.They go together, in fact, as closely as in the grammar of the text. To a heart which learns Pauls dialect they become almost a familiar two-worded unit of his customary thinking, as they are used in the vocabulary of Paul. Righteousness and Sanctification cover the whole career of the Christian life from pardon to glory. They are one work; one salvation; one glorious life. [Rom. 8:30, them He glorified, began to be true from the moment of them He justified.] Not the same thing: the one the first step; the other the whole subsequent course. [In the illustrative language of Psa. 40:2, the Righteousness is located at the point where the foot is first set firmly upon the rocky brink of the horrible pit; Sanctification is the progressive departure farther and farther from the pit, with goings which are more and more established.] The one the work of pardoning, the other of the purifying, grace of God; in modern phraseology, blessings respectively objective and subjective; in old theological language, relative and real; imputed, imparted. The one restores His favour, the other His image. Apart from all technical phraseology, the fashion of which may change from teacher to teacher, from Church to Church, from century to century, the distinction is a real one and an inevitable one. The righteousness is the result of an act of pardon; the sanctification is the result of a process. It is one thing, and a simple one, to justify a man from his past debts; it is another and a longer, greater matter to cure him of thriftless or extravagant habits; yet both combine, and are needed, for complete help for the debtor. Something must be done for men, very much in men, if the work of redemption is to be accomplished. [The Jews were not only delivered from their captivity in Babylon; they were cured by it of the love of idolatry which had brought the captivity upon them. In the unvarying symbolism of Scripture the blood deals with guilt, the water with impurity. The water and the blood are the credentials of a complete Saviour (1Jn. 5:8).] A man who is safe in regard to the guilt of the past is saved, but in a very elementary sense only. That does but clear the way for a salvation which is larger, and complete: Sanctification. The man who is forgiven must go on to be holy.
2. Christ is our sanctification.Not at all as though there were in the Gospel any vicarious holiness belonging to His work, such as will excuse the man who believes in Christ from seeking and working out a very real personal holiness. There was truth in the out-of-fashion and discredited phrase Imputed Righteousness (meaning imputed holiness). But it was only true to those who are aiming at realising their holiest in practice and attainment. Imperfection will cling where it brings no guilt. In Christ they are judged holy by a law which for His sake is interpreted in evangelical grace, and is reckoned as fulfilled by love. But God desires to have His righteous ones really sanctified. And the grace which sanctifies is secured for them, as pardon was, by the work of Christ. With Him was freely given the Spirit who makes them holyChrist is the model and the means of their sanctification. It is the work of the Great Priest of the Gospel order.
III. Redemption is the crown of the work of Christ.The word is here used in its highest and noblest sense. In a lower, narrower use it is the foundation of salvation; men could not be saved, if they had not been first redeemed. The redemption of the race is the basis and background of the salvation of the individual. But, looking forward, we see salvation fulfilled, culminating in redemption. Man is not only soul and spirit, but body, soul, and spirit. The body was redeemed by Christ [not Eph. 5:23; but 1Co. 6:20]; and as it has shared in the ruin and curse wrought by sin, so it will share in the deliverance wrought by Christ. [It is part of the creature, Rom. 8:21-22.] It must wait longest for, and must receive latest of all, its part in the redemption of our complete manhood by Christ; but He wore it Himself, and still wears it, in a glory which is an earnest and pledge to the very body that He will not reckon His redemption complete until His people stand by His side before His Father [Behold, I and children which God hath given Me Isa. 8:18; Heb. 2:13], the last trace of the fell work of sin gone from every part, even the humblest, of their nature. The body will rise because He has risen, body and all. It will appear in glory, as, and because, He appears in glory. The vista of New Testament revelation leads up to a House in whose courts there move about, as if to the manner born [they have been new-born to it], a glorious Family, every one of whom is conformed to the image of Gods Son, the firstborn amongst many brethren (Rom. 8:29). He is the pattern whose reproduction in them accounts for the strong family-likeness in them all. This is their good (Rom. 8:28), up to which all things have been working togetherGrace, Providence, even History in its worldwide, age-long course. The redemption of the body (Rom. 8:23) will be the latest element in a redemptive process which at last puts every man who is in the new Race, whose Head is the Second Adam, beyond the reach of sin or death. As an Idea in the mind and heart of Godto speak humanlythe beginning of this whole Redemption is dateless, before the world was. Historically, its unfolding anticipated Calvary. But in a true sense the initial moment was when He cried in death, It is finished! And its completion will date from the moment when the Divine-human Redeemer looks for the first time upon the gathered, completed company of His own, and sees His own victory over Sin and its work, Death, realised in His people. The King and Deliverer will then cry once more, Finished! His people will say, Thou art made unto us Redemption!
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
1Co. 1:20-21. Human Wisdom.
I. Challenged,
II. Confounded,
III. Superseded, by the Gospel.[J. L.]
1Co. 1:20. Where, indeed!
I. What have they not attempted?
II. What have they not promised?
III. What have they achieved?
IV. How are they brought to nought?[J. L.]
1Co. 1:30. Christ is made [cf. Joh. 1:14 (another tense of same verb), the great primal wonder, of which this is one purpose and outcome. See Appended Note] Wisdom to us.
The true culture is the conforming of our manhood to the ideal in Christ. Is it not a fact that a certain superficial refinement of manners, some acquaintance with the forms of good society, a little stock of ordinary phrases, and the fact of having seen or heard something of the best known products of literature, together with a fashionable style of dress, is, in the opinion of most, a sufficient claim to the possession of culture. Only look at the simple-minded man, not possessing much outward culture, but animated by the Spirit of Christ, and by sound piety; what a sense of moral fitness, what correct tact, what sound judgment, especially as to the ethical value of any person or action, do we find gradually produced in him. In such a case the educating influence of Christianity is frequently shown in a most surprising way. (Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, pp. 40, 43.)
1Co. 1:30. Christ is made unto us Redemption.
I. By an atoning sacrifice (Gal. 3:13).
II. By infusing the spirit of a new life.
III. By abolishing death as the penalty of sin. There was evidently death, violent death, in the pre-Adamic geological ages. But the violent death may have been painless, for aught we know. If not, it may have been that there would have been no death for the crown of creation, man. Or if there had been death for him, it would have been only dissolution, natural, happy. Sin, indeed, turned dying into Death. It is Death because it is not only the penalty of sin, but it is the physical anticipation and adumbration of the true Deathdeath that is death indeedthe abandonment of the soul by God Who is its Life. Sin links fear with the thought of death, for to an innocent moral nature, one might as reasonably hope as fear, before the presence of the unknown future. Now in Christ death is once more only dying; decease, departure, falling asleep. The one thing which now the dying of a Christian is never called is death. He hath abolished death; it practically counts for nothing to His people. He has abolished its bondage of fear (Heb. 2:15).
1Co. 1:30. Christ made to us Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption.
Stanley brings out three pairs of correlatives.
I. Subjective.
1. Righteousness.
2. Holiness.
3. Freedom.
II. Objective.
1. Acquittal.
2. Consecration.
3. Deliverance.
APPENDED NOTES
1Co. 1:21. Seeking God.To be blessed by God, to know Him, and what He is, that is the battle of Jacobs soul from sunset till the dawn of day. And this is our strugglethe struggle. Let any true man go down into the deeps of his own being, and answer us, what is the cry that comes from the most real part of his nature? Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob asked for that in his first communion with Godpreservation, safety. Is it even this, to be forgiven our sins? Jacob bad a sin to be forgiven, and in that most solemn moment of his existence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it this, Hallowed be Thy name? No! Out of our frail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in the earthlier hours of our religion may be this, Save my soul; but in the most unearthly moments it is this, Tell me Thy Name. We move through a world of mystery; and the deepest question is, What is the being that is ever near, sometimes felt, never seen? That which has haunted us from childhood, with a dream of something surpassingly fair, which has never yet been realised? That which sweeps through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness? That which has touched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain? That which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness, and conceptions of superhuman excellence. Shall we say It or He? What is It? Who is He? Those anticipations of Immortality and God, what are they? Are they the mere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a living something beside me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, echoing through the vast void of Nothingness? Or shall I still call them God, Father, Spirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside me? Tell me Thy Name, thou awful mystery of Loveliness! This is the struggle of all earnest life.F. W. Robertson, Sermons, i. 45, 46, Jacobs Wrestling. Cf. In Memoriam, cxxiv., The hearts refusal of Atheism.
1Co. 1:21. The Foolishness of the Preaching.If Christianity had been an idyll or a pastoral, the product of the simple peasant life and of the bright sky of Galilee, there is no reason why it should not have attracted a momentary interest in literary circles, although it certainly would have escaped from any more serious trial at the hands of statesmen than an unaffected indifference to its popularity. But what was the Gospel, as it met the eye and fell upon the ear of Roman Paganism? 1Co. 1:23; 1Co. 2:2. Here was a truth inextricably linked with other truths equally foolish in the apprehension of Pagan intellect, equally condemnatory of the moral degradation of Pagan life. In the preaching of the Apostles, Jesus Crucified confronted the intellectual cynicism, the social selfishness, and the sensualist degradation of the Pagan world. To its intellect He said, I am the Truth; He bade its proud self-confidence bow before His intellectual Royalty. To its selfish, heartless society, careful only for bread and amusement, careless of the agonies which gave interest to the amphitheatre, He said, A new commandment, etc. (Joh. 13:34). Disinterested love of slaves, of barbarians, of political enemies, of social rivals, love of man as man, was to be a test of true discipleship. And to the sensuality, so gross, and yet often so polished, which was the very law of individual Pagan life, He said, If any man will come after Me, etc. (Mat. 16:24); If thine eye offend thee, etc. (Mat. 18:9). Sensuality was to be dethroned, not by the negative action of a prudential abstinence from indulgence, but by the strong positive force of self-mortification. Was such a doctrine likely, of its own weight and without any assistance from on high, to win its way to acceptance? Is it not certain that debased souls are so far from aspiring naturally toward that which is holy, elevated, and pure, that they feel toward it only hatred and repulsion? Certainly, Rome was unsatisfied with her old national idolatries; but if she turned her eyes toward the East, it was not to welcome the religion of Jesus, but the impure rites of Isis and Serapis, of Mithra and Astarte. The Gospel came to her unbidden, in obedience to no assignable attraction in Roman society, but simply in virtue of its own expansive, world-entrancing force. Certainly, Christianity answered to the moral wants of the world, as it really answers at this moment to the true moral wants of all human beings, however unbelieving or immoral they may be. The question is, whether the world so clearly recognised its real wants as forthwith to embrace Christianity? The Physician was there; but did the patient know the nature of his own malady sufficiently well not to view the presence of the Physician as an intrusion? Was it likely that the old Roman society, with its intellectual pride, its social heartlessness, and its unbounded personal self-indulgence, should be enthusiastically in love with a religion which made intellectual submission, social unselfishness, and personal mortification, its very fundamental laws? The history of the three first centuries is the answer to that question. The kingdom of God was no sooner set up than it found itself surrounded by all that combines to make the progress of a doctrine or of a system impossible. The thinkers were opposed to it; they denounced it as a dream of folly. [He quotes Tacit., Ann., XV. 44, Exitiabilis superstitio; Suetonius, Nero, xvi., Superstitio nova et malefica; Celsus comparison of the worship of Christ with the Egyptian worship of cats, crocodiles, etc.] The habits and passions of the people were opposed to it; it threatened somewhat rudely to interfere with them. There were venerable institutions, coming down from a distant antiquity, and gathering round them the stable and thoughtful elements of society; these were opposed to it, as to an audacious innovation, as well as from an instinctive perception that it might modify or destroy themselves. National feeling was opposed to it; it flattered no national self-love; it was to be the home of human kind; it was to embrace the world; and as yet the nation was the highest conception of associated life to which humanity had reached. Nay, religious feeling itself was opposed to it; for religious feeling had been enslaved by ancient falsehoods. There were worships, priesthoods, beliefs, in long-established possession; and they were not likely to yield without a struggle It was a time when the whole administrative power of the empire was steadily concentrated upon the extinction of the Name of Christ What were then, to a human eye, the prospects of the Kingdom of God? It had no allies, like the sword of the Mohammedan, or like the congenial mysticism which welcomed the Buddhist, or like the politicians who strove to uphold the falling Paganism of Rome. It found no countenance even in the Stoic moralists; they were indeed amongst its fiercest enemies. [In foot-note he adds, Who can marvel at its instinctive hatred of a religion, which proclaimed a higher code of Ethics than its own, and which, moreover, possessed the secret of teaching that code practically to all classes of mankind? (See next Appended Note, a.)] If it ever was identified by Pagan opinion with the ctus illioiti, the collegia illicita, with the moral clubs of the imperial epoch, this would only have rendered it more than ever an object of suspicion to the government. Between the new doctrine and the old Paganism there was a deadly feud.Liddon, Bampton Lectures, III. iii. 3 ().
a. Appended Note to above: Most men, being incapable of understanding logical arguments concerning truth, need instruction through parables; thus those who are called Christians derive their faith from the parables of their Master. They sometimes act, however, like those who follow true philosophy. There are some among them who, in their zeal to control themselves, and to live honourably, have succeeded in becoming in nothing inferior to true philosophers.Galen (the physician); from a lost work on Plato. Quoted in Luthardt.
1Co. 1:23. The Cross and its Victory.To the ancient world the cross was the symbol of shame; to us it is our joy, our comfort, and our boast. There is nothing which can possibly be more opposed to all our natural ideas than the cross. We can understand a God of majesty; we can comprehend a manifestation of God in the great interests of humanity; but nothing could be more directly opposed to our every notion than that the death on the cross should be His supreme manifestation. To the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness (1Co. 1:23). And so it is still. And yet it was just the preaching of the Cross that conquered the world. In proportion as concessions are made to the repugnance of the natural reason to the cross is Christianity weakened and its efficacy lessened. It is only the Christianity of the cross which is the victory over the world. And it has conquered. A few years since a drawing representing the Crucified was found upon the walls of the ancient palace of the Csars in Rome. The rude sketch speaks to us from the midst of the times of the struggle between Christianity and heathenism, and is a memorial of the manner in which the minds of men were then stirred. Some heathen servant of the emperor is taunting his Christian fellow-servant with this contemptuous sign. The relic belongs to about the year 200, and is by far the most ancient crucifix we know of. But this is an ironical one. It is a caricature of Christ, before which a Christian stands worshipping, and it bears the inscription, Alexamenosthe name of the derided Christianworshipping his God. We see that the Crucified Saviour and the preaching of the cross were the scorn of the world; and yet this conquered the world. In the great struggle between heathenism and Christianity the cross was the sign of victory. Whether the story is true or not that Constantine, before his decisive battle with Maxentius, saw in the clouds of heaven the appearance of a cross, with the inscription, By this shalt thou conquer, even if it is a fiction, it is yet truth in the form of fiction, for the cross was the victorious power, and such it will remain. If Christianity is to conquer the world, it will only do so as the preaching of the Cross, and not by concessions to the natural reason. It is contrary to all natural logic that God should humble Himself to such an extremity. That death upon the tree of shame should be His supreme revelation is contrary to all the logic of the natural reason. But it is the logic of love; and love can hold its own against the logic of the mere understanding, for it has on its side the higher logic of truth.Luthardt, Saving Truths, 1368.
[The caricature referred to, known as the Graffito, was on the plaster of the wall of one of the guard-rooms of the Pretorians, the body-guard, the household troops, of the Emperor, in the ruins of the Imperial Palace on the Palatine. The head of the Crucified One is probably that of an ass. (It was a common popular slander that the Christians worshipped an ass.) The worshipper is most likely a Pretorian, like the draughtsman of the caricature. A readily accessible engraving and description of the Graffito may be found in Italian Pictures (p. 55), Religious Tract Society, Pen-and-Pencil Series.]
1Co. 1:23. The Victory of the Cross.Everything seemed to conspire to render its victory utterly impossible. Its origin was against it; it seemed but a Jewish sect. Its advocates and followers had nothing attractive about them, and belonged for the most part to the lower and uneducated classes. Its doctrine was a stumbling block; it appeared a most vexatious foolishness. Its reverence for God, too, was suspected, for the Christians, using no images of the gods, were taken for atheists. The worst and most immoral things were said of its mysterious rites. Public opinion was prejudiced against them, philosophy assailed Christianity with intellectual weapons, whilst the authorities opposed it with brute force. And yet it triumphed. So early as the reign of Nero it was, as Tacitus indignantly asserts, very widely diffused. (Multitudo ingens, Ann., xv. 44.) Nor did it avail to arrest its progress, that Nero, in order to divert from himself the guilt of the great conflagration of Rome, executed vast numbers of Christians; not so much, as Tacitus says, because they were guilty of this crime, as because they were hated by the whole human race. (Tac., ut supra.) Nevertheless, Christianity continued to spread. An interesting letter of the younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia, to his friend the Emperor Trajan, written about seventy years after the death of Christ, is still extant, distinctly pourtraying the state of the Christian cause at that time in the places which had been the scenes of St. Pauls and St. Johns ministries. This superstition, writes Pliny (Epp. v. 97), has spread on all sides, in towns, in villages, and in the country; the temples of our gods stand deserted, and sacrifices have now for a long time ceased to be offered. I arrested a few girls called deaconesses, and put them to the torture, but discovered nothing besides excessive and pernicious superstition. And a century later, Tertullian, in his Apology (c. 37), could say to the heathen, We are but of yesterday, and yet we have taken possession of your whole countrytowns, islands, the camp, the palace, the senate, the forum; we have left you only the temples! Nor could the great persecutionsof which ten may be enumeratedever hanging over the Christians arrest the triumphs of Christianity. No age, no sex, was spared; all the strength of the empire was put into requisition; certain of the most energetic of the emperors, such as Decius and Diocletian, considered it their special duty to root out Christianity from the world, because the very existence of the Roman Empire depended upon its extirpation. But the arm of the executioner failed before the fidelity of the Christians. Diocletian was obliged to give up his work; he retired from the stage, but Christianity remained, and in the person of Constantine ascended the imperial throne, and has since governed, even externally, the Roman world.Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, 2679.
1Co. 1:23. The Victory of the Cross over Heathenism.As Heine puts it, while the gods of Greece were assembled at the feast of the immortals, and Hebe tripped round with her goblets of pleasantest nectar, and infinite laughter rang round the happy banqueting board, and the feast was at its fullest, the music at its sweetest, suddenly there came gasping towards them a pale Jew, dripping with blood; a crown of thorns on His head, bearing a great cross of wood on His shoulder; and He cast the cross on the high table of the gods, so that the golden goblets trembled and fell, and the gods grew dumb and pale, and ever paler, till they melted in utter mist.From A Lay Sermon by Gerald Massey.
1Co. 1:30. Christ Wisdom to us.Verse 30, viewed apart from its connection, is a great text, and great in the greatness of its mystery. Became, not was made. This verb denotes a transition from one state or mode of subsistence to another, e.g. the Word became flesh, i.e. being God, the Word passed into a mode of subsistence in which He was man as well as God. Similarly we are said (2Co. 5:21) to become the righteousness of God in Christ, i.e. to pass from our low estate of sinful humiliation to the high level of Gods perfect righteousness. Thus, according to 1Co. 1:30, the Son of God, when He entered into human nature, entered also into the Divine scheme of wisdom, and translated it into life. For unquestionably the substance of that scheme of wisdom was the union of the two natures in the Person of Gods Son, together with the manifold benefits flowing from that union. Of this hidden counsel of redemption, which was willed and planned before Creation itself, Jesus Christ was in His Person the embodiment, and in all that He wrought and suffered, the historical manifestation and pleroma. Thus He became wisdom from God; not became from God; the order of the Greek is against that view. Again, as the Father in heaven was the first cause or fountain of this wisdom, so Christ on earth may be regarded in His work as a cistern gradually filling with this wisdom, and after His ascension overflowing with it from heaven into the larger cistern of His Church below. This overflow commenced on the Day of Pentecost. Thus He became wisdom to us from God, i.e. wisdom from God for us to receive. But this abstract counsel or wisdom of the Father, which was planned by Him before the ages were made, and which in the sphere of time became concrete in the Incarnate Son, what was it? What it more precisely was, both in its embodiment in Christ and in its relation to us men, is further defined in three heads. The eternal purpose is drawn out of its secret depths, so to speak, like a telescope of three lenses, in three evolutions, each in its own place:
1. Righteousness;
2. Sanctification;
3. Redemption.
1. Righteousness of God the Father imputed, not the righteousness of Christ, for that is nowhere in the New Testament said to be imputed. It is the proper fruit of Christs obedience unto death, and the imputatation of it to believers on earth approaches by degrees to assimilation precisely as progress is made in the inner life of sanctification. Indeed, the both and indicates this mutual correlation. Of the absolute Righteousness God is the giver because of Christs meritorious Passion, and in it the saints, after the Resurrection, are set indefectible. The last link in this threefold chain of wisdom is redemption, i.e. of the body together with the soul and spirit in the resurrection of the saints at the Parousia. In brief, the whole means this: GodHe alone is the first and efficient cause of your union and fellowship with Him who became flesh and translated into life and made actual in time the ideal plan of eternity, mediating for us the threefold benefit of that Divine counsel, righteousness imputed, holiness imparted, redemption consummated.Evans, Speaker.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Butlers Comments
Unity Operates Through the Instrumentality of the Gospel (1Co. 1:18-25)
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise,
and the cleverness of the clever I
will thwart.
20Where 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? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1Co. 1:18-20 Because the Gospel is Revelational: Unification of men and women from all different strata of humankind in one brotherhood of peace and love is operative only by the instrumentality of the gospel of Christ. That is so because only the gospel of Christ is the final, complete and perfect revelation from God. It alone is the divinely-sanctioned, perfectly-delivered, and supernaturally-functional instrument for mans redemption, Paul says the word (Gr. logos, teaching, doctrine) of the cross is foolishness (Gr. moria, moronic, stupidity) to those who are continuing to perish. However, Gods declaration and demonstration that in the cross (and the resurrection) of Jesus Christ he atoned for all the sins of all the world is the dynamic (Gr. dunamis, power, dynamic) of God to those who are continuing to be saved through it. The Greek prepositions apollumenois (perishing) and sozomenois (being saved) are present tense, denoting a continuing action. Those who continue willfully to perish, reject the fact and doctrine of the cross as moronic. It does not make sense, from a strictly human perspective, that someone else should suffer (or could suffer) for my sins. It does not seem reasonable; it does not seem fair. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, former head of the World Council of Churches, wrote the following:
We hear much of the substitutionary theory of the atonement. This theory to me is immoral. If Jesus paid it all, or if He is the substitute for me, or if He is the sacrifice for all the sin of the world, then why discuss forgiveness? The books are closed. Another has paid the debt, borne the penalty. I owe nothing. I am absolved. I cannot see forgiveness as predicated upon the act of some one else. It is my sin. I must atone. (A Testament of the Faith, 1958, pg. 144)
That is precisely why the doctrine of the substitutionary, vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary must be established on the basis of the historically-verified resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a doctrine that is unacceptable to human pride. It is a doctrine that must be accepted on the basis of faith (a faith based on verification). It is a doctrine revealed. Jesus teaches that mans willingness to accept revelation from God is primary in the matter of kingdom citizenship (see comments on Mat. 11:1-30, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. II, pp. 426594, by Harold Fowler, College Press). So long as there are those claiming citizenship in the kingdom of God unwilling to let God give arbitrary, indisputable, seemingly-irrational revelations, there will be division. No nation can have a dependable, unified army if it has no final authoritythe commander-in-chief.
1Co. 1:19 is a quotation of Isa. 29:14 as Gods prophecy that he would, in the messianic era, deliver a divine revelation which would destroy dependence upon human pride and wisdom for salvation. The student should study both Isaiah chapters 28 and 29 in their entirety. Isaiah is predicting the messianic kingdom to come as one in which men would humble themselves and let God teach them by revelation rather than presumptuously thinking they knew all they needed to know through their own wisdom. Isaiah has a great deal to say (and so do all the prophets) about the fact that God is aiming to build in the messianic age (the church) a kingdom filled with people willingly surrendered to total guidance, in every area of life, under the revealed word of his Messiah. That is a fundamental issue of the prophets; they shall all be taught by God (see Isa. 54:13; Joh. 6:45). Through thousands of years of history God allowed one human philosophy, religion, and political system after another to come and go. They each repeated themselves, so that even in Solomons day he could say, There is nothing new under the sun.
God is onehe is not divided. His mind, will and purpose are all united. The unity of Gods revealed will (the Bible) may be thoroughly demonstrated by simply comparing it with the pronouncements and writings of the scribes and debaters of the ages. Philosophers, theologians, scientists, teachers and sages have contradicted and negated one another consistently since the world began. Their inability to find unity in human tenets has been the cause of men dividing themselves from one another and from God. But the Bible, because it is a divine revelation of the One Unified Being, God, produces unity when every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God is destroyed by the gospel and every human thought is taken captive to obey Christ (cf. 2Co. 10:3-5). The power of the gospel to change wicked, idolatrous pagans into loving, believing, hoping people demonstrated the utter foolishness of the alleged wisdom of the ancient philosophies and philosophers. Claiming to be wise, the ancient philosophers exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and became fools (see Rom. 1:18-32). That was not simply theoreticalthat was demonstrated in life! It still is today! Human unity operates through the instrumentality of the gospel, or it doesnt operate at all!
1Co. 1:21-23 Because The Gospel is Reportable: The gospel is real. It is history. It is not theoretical or ephemeral. Human beings make theories. God does things in history and in reality. God was wise enough to give men the freedom to theorize if they choose. In this freedom God is able to demonstrate vividly the finitude of man. Since man without God is able only to theorize he should acknowledge his limitations. Man should welcome an Absolute Being with absolute wisdomespecially since such a Being has revealed Himself in history. When God decided that mans inability to redeem himself had been sufficiently established in the demonstration of the foolishness of human theories, the Son of God was sent to the world to establish historically and experientially the absolute wisdom of God.
The KJV translation of 1Co. 1:21 is unfortunate. Paul is not saying that preaching is foolishness, or that the world will be saved by the foolishness of preaching. Many people preach. Politicians preach; philosophers and moralists preach; terrorists and anarchists preach, so it is not the methodology of preaching that the world calls foolish. The RSV is much clearer when it translates, . . . through the folly of what we preach to save. . . . The world calls the Christian message, the gospel of the cross, foolish. But, clearly, it is the message of the gospel that saves human beings from lawlessness and wickedness, The Greek phrase, tou kerugmatos clearly intends the reader to understand that it is the thing preached (the message) which the world calls foolish. But that message is of the accomplished redemption of Christ and God has chosen to save through it. This redemption was wrought upon the cross and verified by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Its proclamation and acceptance saves men unto the glorious destiny for which God created them. T. R. Applebury wrote: While the basic facts of the gospel are the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the gospel is not limited to these facts, for it takes the whole Bible to tell the whole story of the whole counsel of God about salvation through His Son. In the Old Testament it is seen in prophecy, promise, and type. In the New Testament it is seen in the facts of the life of Christ; in the history of conversion to Christ; in the explanation of the essentials of righteousness; in the application of the gospel to daily life; and, finally, in the prophecy of the victory of Christ and of those who accept His gospel. (Studies in First and Second Corinthians, by T. R. Applebury, p. 23, College Press, 1963). If the Christian message (kerugmatos) was only of a crucified, dead Messiah, it would be foolishness. Any claim to atone for the sins of the whole world by someone who had no power to conquer death would be an absurd, abortive claim. But the Christian message, authenticated by eyewitnesses, friends and enemies alike, is of a Messiah who conquered death. Therefore his claims of atonement are trustworthy and will transform or regenerate those who continue to believe him. God transforms the minds and personalities of sinners through the word of his Sons redemptive program, the gospel. But man must believe that. God created man with the capability to believe and respond to Gods promises and commands. So Paul says, God was pleased to save men through the agency and instrumentality of his word. Paul uses the Greek present tense when he writes the word believe (Gr. pisteuontas) indicating that those who are being saved (see comments, 1Co. 1:18) are those who are continuing to believe.
While those continuing to believe the facts of the gospel are being saved, those continuing to demand signs and continuing to seek wisdom from some source other than the gospel are being lost! The Jews continually demanded signs. Paul uses the present tense Greek verb here, aitousi, indicating that the Jews were not satisfied with the signs Jesus gave of his Messiahship, but continued demanding them. Jesus called these Jews, an evil and adulterous generation for continually demanding signs (Mat. 12:38 ff.) when sufficient signs were already promised (Jesus miracles and his resurrection from the dead). God is not pleased with people who continually put him to the test, asking for signs, when sufficient signs have been given (cf. Exo. 17:1-7; Num. 14:22; Deu. 18:18-19; Luk. 16:30-31). Elevating spiritual (miraculous) gifts above teaching and preaching the word line upon line and precept upon precept is a clear indication of spiritual immaturity (cf. Isa. 28:7-13; 1Co. 14:20 ff.). The Jews were even demanding a sign from Jesus when he was hanging on the cross (Mat. 27:41-44). Jesus pronounced condemnation on whole cities (cf. Mat. 11:20-24; Luk. 10:1-20) for demanding signs and then not repenting when many signs were done. It is not ones proximity to supernatural demonstrations or even persons which saves, but faith in the deity and divine work of Jesus. Jesus said some at the judgment would claim proximity to his fleshly presence as merit for salvation (cf. Luk. 13:22-30) but to no avail. It is not the possession of supernatural gifts which signified the salvation of the Christians at Corinth (for they came behind no other in such gifts). That which saves is faith in the reportable, reliable redemptive work of Christ on the cross and at the empty tomb. Without the word being preached there can be no faith (Rom. 10:17); without the seed (Word) being sown, there can be no fruit produced (Luk. 8:11 ff.).
1Co. 1:24-25 Because the Gospel is Reliable: Unity operates through the instrumentality of the Gospel because the Gospel is the only source of power available to man to break down barriers of racial, cultural, and religious divisions. It is reliable first, of course, because it is authenticated by miracles and signs and fulfilled prophecies (Heb. 2:3-4). But the world should now acknowledge its reliability because it has been demonstrated through 2000 years as the only workable instrument of true spiritual unity for the human race. Producing human spiritual unity in love and peace through universal human philosophy, culture and government was tried for 700 years by four successive world empires (Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome). That did not produce! In fact, it produced the oppositeslavery, hatred, war and wickedness. Only the righteousness of God in the redemptive work of Christ (which the world calls foolishness) is powerful enough to effect the unity of the human race under the constraints of love, peace, justice and righteousness. That is what is taking place in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ because that is where redemption is made available. The church, dwelling place of the living word of God, is the living organism in the world, kept alive by Gods Spirit, where men may be redeemed. The church is the only place where men do not lift up sword against one another and where they learn war against one another no more. In the world are the lawless. For them only a superficial form of unity and temporary restraint against wickedness is maintained by enforcement of law (cf. 1Ti. 1:8-11; Rom. 13:1-7). But for the citizen of Gods kingdom, all arbitration is done peaceably and with love by the power of the Spirit of Christ in their minds and hearts (cf. Col. 3:1-24).
The Gospel is the only reliable dynamic for bringing about spiritual oneness between man and God and man and man. Christ proved it by the supernatural verification of his redemptive plan; history had proven it by experience. It is imperative that all those who profess to be followers of Christ focus all their energies to the proclamation of that message.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
Appleburys Comments
The Word of the Cross and the Wisdom of the World (1831)
Text
1Co. 1:18-31. For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought.
20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was Gods good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. 22 Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom: 23 but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block, and unto Gentiles foolishness; 24 but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: 27 but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong; 28 and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are: 29 that no flesh should glory before God. 30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: 31 that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
Commentary
the word of the cross.The divisions in the church at Corinth were being perpetuated by those who were putting the wisdom of the world above the gospel of Christ. By contrasting the two, Paul condemns the party spirit. The contrast is plain: it is between them thai perish and those who are saved; it is between foolishness and the power of God.
For it is written.The quotation is from Isa. 29:14. It is freely applied by the apostle to the situation at hand. In the time of Isaiah, the wisdom of the worldly statesmen failed to protect Judah against the invasion of the Assyrians. The quotation is thus applied to the situation in Corinth: the wisdom of the world could not possibly save men from destruction in the spiritual realm. That can only be done through the word of the cross.
the power of God.It is through the gospel that the power of God is channeled into the mind of those who hear the message. The force of the facts of the gospel (the life, death, and resurrection of Christ) changes unbelief into faith. The force of the motives of the gospel (the goodness of God, Rom. 2:4, godly sorrow for sin, 2Co. 7:10, and, among others, the consideration of the impending judgment, Act. 17:30-31) changes the will, and that change of the will is repentance. Submission to the command of the gospel to be baptized into Christ brings the penitent believer to the blood of Christ which washes away sin (Mar. 16:15-16; Rom. 6:4; Act. 22:16; Heb. 9:14; Heb. 10:22).
This power of God to save the believer was demonstrated in the resurrection of Christ (Eph. 1:19-20). It is the same power that raises the one dead in trespasses and sin to the new life in Christ (Eph. 2:4-6). It is the power that worketh in us (Eph. 3:20), that is, the power of the gospel to save and to equip the believer to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one (Eph. 6:16).
the wise, the scribe, the disputer of this world.Paul calls upon the wise (the Greek) and the scribe (the Jew) and the debater of the world (both Greek and Jew) in such a manner as to show that none of them could offer anything to save man from his sin. The reason is clear: the world in its wisdom did not know God.
the foolishness of preaching.The word of the cross, although looked upon by those who were perishing as foolishness, was the power of God to save the believer. Foolishness does not refer to the act of preaching, but to the message that is proclaimed, that is, the word of the cross. While the basic facts of the gospel are the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the gospel is not limited to these facts, for it takes the whole Bible to tell the whole story of the whole counsel of God about salvation through His Son. In the O. T. it is seen in prophecy, promise, and type. In the N. T. it is seen in the facts of the life of Christ; in the history of conversion to Christ; in the explanation of the essentials of righteousness; in the application of the gospel to daily life; and, finally, in the prophecy of the victory of Christ and of those who accept His gospel.
to save them that believe.God reaches the mind of the unconverted sinner through the message of the cross. When God created man, He created him with the capacity to respond to His commands. It requires no miracle of illumination to enable man to understand what God says in the Bible. That is why the word of the cross can save the believer. Followers of Christ are to proclaim it; sinners are to believe it; and God will save those who believe it. These three issues should be carefully noted: (1) God made foolish the wisdom of the world; (2) the world through its wisdom didnt know God; (3) in the wisdom of God, God was pleased to save the believer through the foolishness of the message that was preached.
Jews ask for signs.See Mat. 12:38-40; Joh. 2:18; Joh. 6:30; Mat. 27:42.
Greeks seek after wisdom.See Act. 17:21; 1Co. 2:6-9.
unto Jews a stumbling block.The Greek word which is translated stumblingblock referred to the trigger of a trap, and then to the trap or some means of causing one to stumble. The crucified Messiah was like this to the Jew. The Jewish concept of Messiah led them to think of an earthly kingdom such as existed in the days of David and Solomon. How could Christ crucified be their expected leader? They failed to understand that His kingdom was not of this world. They would have been glad to make Him their king in opposition to Caesar, but He refused the temporal crown. They turned against Him, and in the end they cried out, We have no king but Caesar. See Joh. 6:14-15; Joh. 19:15; Mat. 21:42-44.
unto Gentiles foolishness.When Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection in Athens, the philosophers called him a babblerone who had no real system of philosophy like theirs, but who was like the little birds seen in the marketplace picking up bits of food here and there. Compared to their systems of wisdom, this seemed like foolishness. (Act. 17:18).
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.In contrast to the Jews and Greeks who rejected the message of the cross, Paul points out thoseboth Jews and Greekswho accept Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God. Those who are called are the ones who respond to Gods call through the gospel (1Th. 2:13-14). Christ is the power of God, that is, He is the one who exercises Gods power to save the believer. The gospel has a logical force, the force of the facts of the gospel to produce faith; it has an emotional force, the force of the motives of the gospel to produce repentance; it has a redemptive force, the force of the blood of Christ to cleanse from sin. Christ is the wisdom of God, that is, He is the one who has revealed the divine wisdom that has to do with salvation; in other words, what to do to be saved and how to live the Christian life. He is the personal revelation of God, and through His office as prophet, He caused the written revelation of God, the Bible, to be written.
foolishness of God.As the context indicates, this expresses mans attitude toward the things of God. But, as Paul indicates, what man deems foolish and weak in Gods plan to save the sinner is wiser and stronger than man. Davids conquest of Goliath illustrates the point.
behold your calling.The words that follow explain Pauls reference to the foolishness and weakness of God. A glance at their own station in life was enough to show the Corinthians that the word of the cross had made its greatest appeal to those of the lower class, While it is true that the early church was made up largely of those from the lower classes, it does not follow that others were excluded. Crispus and Sosthenes were rulers of synagogues, and Dionysius, a convert at Athens, was known as the Areopagite, a member of the high court of Athens. It was not, however, until the fourth century that the world was to see a professed Christianat least, one who favored Christianityon the throne of the Roman Empire.
things that are not.God chose the things that are spiritualrighteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17)rather than eating and drinking. He chose the Christian virtues rather than the Jewish practices. He chose righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1Co. 1:31) rather than wickedness, uncleanness, and slavery to sincharacteristics of Gentile conduct.
no flesh should glory before God.No human being can boast of his accomplishments before God. Man cannot save himself; he can be saved only by Gods grace through faith expressed in obedience. The Christian belongs to God because of his relation to Christ Jesus. By using what man calls weak and foolish, God has made it impossible for any man to boast that he could have performed Christs redemptive work on the cross. Christ alone made that sacrifice.
wisdom from God.Christ is the personal revelation of God; He is the word made flesh. Through His office as prophet, He is the author of the written revelation. See 1Co. 2:6 for further comment on this wisdom.
righteousness.This word is used in three ways in the N. T. It refers to the fact that God is right; to the standard of conduct that God demands of man; and to the status of one whom God considers right in His sight because his sins have been forgiven.
Christ is the righteousness of God in relation to all three connotations. He was without sin (Joh. 8:46; Heb. 4:15; Heb. 7:26; 2Co. 5:21); in His conduct He always did the will of His Father (Joh. 5:19); righteousness (remission of sins) is made possible through the blood of Christ (Rom. 3:21-25).
redemption.Christ is our redemption, that is, He is the one who has provided our release from slavery to sin (Rom. 6:16-18). He is all that is needed. He alone by His Spirit through the apostles revealed the wisdom that is proclaimed in the message of the cross.
Summary
The interesting account of the beginning of the church in Corinth is given in Act. 18:1-17. Luke states in simplest terms that Paul left Athens and came to Corinth. There he found Aquilla and Priscilla who had recently come from Rome. The work began in the synagogue of the Jews, but Paul was soon forced to move to the house next door which belonged to a man by the named Titus Justus. Luke also records the conversion of Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue. Encouraged by the vision from the Lord. Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and six months teaching the Word of God. Persecuting Jews brought Paul into the court of Gallio. His indifference to the quarrels of the Jews probably saved Paul from the beating which was given to another, Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue.
Paul visited Corinth a second time, during his third missionary tour (Act. 19:21; Act. 20:2-3).
The problems that were faced in starting the work in Corinth set the pattern for its subsequent history. Corinth was destined to become a problem church. First Corinthians was written to straighten out their problems. There were problems of division and derelictions; there were problems of marriage and meats used in idolatrous worship; there were problems that related to womens costume in public and abuses of the Lords supper; there were problems about spiritual gifts; there were problems connected with the doctrine of the resurrection. The problems at Corinth were very similar to the problems of the church today. First Corinthians, therefore, becomes an important book for those who seek to adjust present problems in the light of divine revelation.
Paul appropriately begins the epistle with a reference to his apostleship. He is an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God. He writes with the authority of one sent By Christ and upheld by the will of God. This assures his readers that they will find in this letter the divine solution to their problems. Paul lifts the solution of the problems of the church out of the hands of wrangling men and puts it where it belongs, within the limits of the authority of Jesus Christ as expressed in the writing of His inspired apostle.
Sosthenes, who must have been well known to the church at Corinth, is associated with Paul in the greeting to his fellow-Christians at Corinth.
Although they were guilty of conduct so unbecoming to a Christian, Paul addresses them as those who were sanctified and called saints. Thus, he upholds the ideals to which he attempts to lift them through his inspired instruction. The Corinthians were not the only ones who were sanctified and called saints, for with them Paul includes all those who, because they recognized their utter dependence on Christ for their salvation, called upon the name of Jesus Christ.
Pauls customary salutation of grace and peace sounds the deep spiritual tone of the letter.
Before taking up the problems that are to be discussed in the epistle, the apostle pauses to thank God for the spiritual enrichment of the Corinthians. God had supplied them with the information they needed as brethren in Christ and the ability to use this information when they spoke. They had received the established testimony about Christ so that they lacked nothing; they, therefore, did not need to turn to worldly wisdom for help as they awaited the day when Christ would be revealed. Such testimony would establish them to the very end as unreprovable followers of Christ. This assurance was furnished them by the faithful God who had called them through the gospel into close association with His Son.
As Paul takes up the problems which are to be discussed in the epistle, he mentions first the matters which had been reported to him by the household of Chloe. From this source he had learned of their divided state and their consequent derelictions in such matters as immorality, litigation and abuse of the body.
Paul approaches the problem of division with a view to securing his readers acceptance of the inspired solution which he presents: he exhorts them as brethrens. He urges all of them to say the same thing, instead of saying, I am of Paul or I am of Apollos. He urges them to settle their differences which had caused splits in the church. It was possible for all to say the same thing by adopting the same mental attitude and expressing the same opinion on such questions as these: Is Christ divided? Paul wasnt crucified for you, was he? You were not baptized into his name, were you? It was to avoid possible claim of being baptized into the name of Paul that he refrained from personally baptizing any of the Corinthians except Crispus, Gaius, and the household of Stephenas. Paul determined that the cross of Christ should not become an empty thing.
Having thus indicated the folly of their divisions, he continues to rebuke the sin of division as he contrasts the word of the cross with the wisdom of the world. Worldly wisdom was a contributing cause of their wrangling disputes, but Paul reminds them that the issue is salvation or destruction, as the Scriptures clearly stated. The world that followed the wise ones of that day did not know God, but Gods plan was to save believers through the message of the cross. Both Jews and Greeks failed to see this. Those, however, who did see it discovered that Christ has revealed Gods wisdom and exercises Gods power to save.
This could easily be verified by looking at themselves. God had not called many of the wise of that day nor many of noble birth. He had chosen the humble and the weak that men might be taught not to boast in their own power, but to glory in Christ who exercises Gods power to save. Christ who revealed the wisdom from God is the source of their forgiveness, cleansing, and freedom.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(18) For the preaching.In the original the contrast comes out more strongly between this and the previous statement, the same phrase being repeated, thus, For the word of the cross, in contrast to the wisdom of more words above. This is the word of real power.
Them that perish.Better, those that are perishing, and us who are being saved, the former referring to those who have not received the gospel, and the latter to those who have (2Co. 2:15; 2Co. 4:3).
The power of God.The cross and all that it represents is the greatest display of the power of God (Act. 8:10).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. He abases all beneath the supremacy of the cross, 18-31.
18. That perish That are perishing.
Foolishness The precise opposite of sophia.
Are saved Are being saved. Note Act 2:47.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Centrality and Supreme Importance of The Word of the Cross, of the Word of Christ and Him Crucified, in Which God’s True Wisdom Is Revealed to Men In Power (1:18-2:8)
‘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 word of the cross.’ This contrasts with the ‘wisdom of word’. The latter signifies an emphasis on wisdom, revealed in many ways, in many forms, and made effective through the speaking of words, mere words. But the former has in mind only one word, a unique word, a powerful word, God’s word, in one sense spoken before the foundation of the world (Act 2:23), but finally spoken through God’s unique act in the crucifixion of His Christ. The emphasis is on God’s own word, made effective through the cross. Through it God Who had already spoken in eternity, had acted and was bringing about His final purpose. Wisdom has its usefulness and its value, but before wisdom was the word. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (Joh 1:1), when God spoke through His Word and it was done. It is only His word that has effective power. His word was spoken at the beginning of creation, and now God has spoken again to bring about His new creation through the most amazing word from God that the world has ever seen (2Co 5:17; 2Co 5:21).
By the word of the cross Paul means the word that God spoke in eternity and sent forth to bring about His saving purpose through the cross (see Isa 55:10-11 with Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12), the divine word which went forth to fulfil the divine purpose. It means the fulfilment of this in the due process and significance of His crucifixion, carried through as that word of God inexorably went forth in Him, making possible the salvation of a world. And it means the resulting proclamation of Jesus Christ as the One Who was crucified and rose again, bringing about for men through the shedding of His blood on the cross a means of reconciliation with God (Col 1:20) and forgiveness of sins (Eph 1:7), and of new life through His Spirit.
We can see why Paul was hesitant about how he proclaimed that word. It was a word of inconceivable power. For man to try to improve on it would be ridiculous, while for man to conceal it by his own rhetoric would be blasphemy. And yet God had planned that the issuing forth of his divine dictate, of His own eternal redemptive word, with all that it signified for the redemption and deliverance of mankind, would, as far as the world was aware, come through words spoken from the mouths of a seemingly pitiful group of men.
But while the men were weak and frail that word was God’s activity in offering hope to the world. And through their words all the divine power would be unleashed. As he says elsewhere, ‘All things are of God Who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning their trespasses unto them, and having committed to us the word of reconciliation’ (2Co 5:19). The word of the cross is the word of reconciliation with God, sent out by God and spoken by God, and brought about through what Christ has done in bearing our sin, and offered through the mouths of His people. That is why Paul will later say, ‘I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified’ (1Co 2:2).
In the remainder of the letter this is expressed in terms of Christ as the Passover Lamb sacrificed for us (1Co 5:7), foreshadowed so long before, and now covering us with His shed blood that we may partake of Him; in terms of ‘the Lord Jesus’ as the One Who has replaced the old covenant and has sealed the new covenant with His shed blood (1Co 11:25); in terms of Christ as the One Who died for our sins, was buried and was raised again on the third day (1Co 15:3), and we are reminded that we are ‘bought with a price’ and are thus His (1Co 6:20; 1Co 7:23), and that we are ‘washed, made holy and declared to be in the right’ in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (1Co 6:11). It is the word of salvation.
‘Foolishness to those who are perishing.’ The ‘word’ of the cross, in contrast to the ‘wisdom’ of words, is ‘foolishness’ to those who are perishing and are taken up with man’s philosophy. To them it is inexplicable. They hear the word outwardly, they visualise the dying man on a cross in writhing agony, clearly a commoner, a rebel or a slave, clearly not one approved of by the establishment, and they turn away in contempt. They are appalled. They could possibly accept it as a final revelation of man’s durability and ability to suffer, as an indication of the rejection of the flesh, but how could it possibly be of positive value? How could it bring man to his highest good? And to them this was what all preaching was meant to do. Thus they turned from it in contempt. They had failed to recognise the holiness of God which requires something totally superhuman, some unique propitiation offered wholly from the divine side of things (Rom 3:24-25; 1Jn 2:2), if man is to be able to approach the eternal God. Both idolatry and philosophy indicated that in one way or another the world and nature itself provided a way to God. The cross once and for all denies that claim and says that it is through God’s self-offering of Himself alone that salvation can be obtained, and thus it was rejected.
‘Those who are perishing.’ These are those who have not put their trust in the Son Whom God gave (Joh 3:16). They have not responded to the light of Christ. They are in process of perishing. They see the message of the cross and they ignore it, or laugh at it, or despise it. They see its message as foolish or unnecessary because they are not aware of their own utter sinfulness and inadequacy. Why do they need to be saved in such a way, they ask? They feel that it is not a necessity, indeed that it is unseemly, indeed impossible. They feel that all that is needed is a touch to human nature here and there, some resurgence of spirit, or a release of the spirit from the flesh, not a radical solution like that. A cross that saves? They look for deliverance anywhere else but that. They make all kinds of effort to achieve goodness, and they produce seemingly effective religious instruments to help them on the way, they seek to find solutions in nature and the occult, and in religious ceremonies, to make good the heart of man. But they fail. For all this cannot bring them to the true and living God, and for this reason, because reconciliation is achievable only through the word of the cross, God’s action through the cross and His consequent offering of salvation. Thus they ‘are perishing’. They are without hope. They have rejected the remedy.
‘But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ But those who are ‘being saved’ see things differently. How can God’s power and forgiveness be effectively channelled into the world towards sinful men, they ask? Only through the means that He has devised. And that means is the word of the cross, spoken initially by Him in its very outworking from the beginning (Act 2:23), and then carried through bringing about the means of eternal redemption, and then proclaimed under the power of the Spirit, and then responded to, whether preached, taught or read. That is the channel, and it is God Himself Who is the Channeler. Once it, and the powerful word of Him Whom it represents, is responded to, God’s power in salvation is released to the ones who respond and they enter into a process whereby they are ‘being saved (present tense indicating a process) by His power.’ For the word of the cross does not cease to exercise its power once a man has first trusted in Christ. It goes on exercising that power throughout his life. It is his only hope. It is his pacemaker. It is his daily glory and delight. For only through the crucified and risen Christ is God’s power and forgiveness available to him. He receives it because he is ‘in Christ’, and it works effectively throughout his life (see Gal 2:20). He glories in nothing else (Gal 6:14). In it is centred the whole of salvation. And that word will go on being effective throughout the whole of history until the end when its final purpose has been achieved.
As with sanctification (see on 1Co 1:2), salvation, man’s deliverance from the dire penalty and awful power of sin, is spoken of in three ways. Firstly as something that happens to a man the moment he puts his trust in Christ and is ‘saved’ once for all (aorist tense). Then as something that has happened to a Christian in the past whose effects carry on into the present (perfect tense). And finally as something that is a continual present process with future results (present and future tense).
Thus the New Testament speaks of different aspects of ‘salvation’. It speaks of ‘having been saved’ ( Tit 3:5; 2Ti 1:9 – aorist tense, something that has happened once for all, when through His Spirit the Saviour seized hold of us in order to carry out His saving work, reconciled us to God and cleansed us from our sins). And of ‘having been saved and therefore now are saved’ – Eph 2:5; Eph 2:8 (perfect tense, something that has happened in the past the benefit of which continues to the present time). These verses are what are in mind when we say a person has been ‘saved’.
But it also speaks of us as it does here, as those who “are being saved” – 1Co 1:18; 2Co 2:15; (present tense – a process going on), – and as those who “will be saved” – 1Co 3:15; 1Co 5:5 ; 2Co 7:10; 1Th 5:9; 2Th 2:13 (future tense – something yet to happen – and equivalents). In other words, when God ‘saves’ someone they are saved once and for all, and it is fully effective. But if it is genuine it means that it will then result in a process by which they are being ‘changed from glory into glory’ (2Co 3:18), with the final guarantee of a completed process when we are presented holy, blameless and unreproveable in His sight (Col 1:22-23). If the salvation is not progressing, even though slowly, then its genuineness must be questioned. The Saviour does not fail in His work.
Consider the situation of a man drowning at sea, in a fierce storm, clinging to a life raft with one hand, his other arm broken and trailing behind, and both his legs paralysed, having been many hours in the freezing water and suffering from hypothermia, more dead than alive, there because a rescuer has dragged him there, dying in the course of saving him. ‘I have been saved’, he cries. Then along comes the life boat and drags him out and he gasps, hardly able to speak because of the seriousness of his condition, “I am saved”.
Well, it is true. But he has a long way to go. He would not have much confidence in his salvation if they put him to one side in the bow of the boat, with the waves lashing over him, and said to him, “Well, you’re saved now”, and then went off and went to sleep and later practised turning the lifeboat over. His confidence and dependence lie in a fully trained and capable crew who are dedicated to warming him up, treating him and getting him to hospital so that he can be fully restored.
So as they get to work on him, wrapping him in a blanket and gently warming his frozen limbs, trying to set his broken arm and doing everything else necessary to restore him to some kind of normality, and make for the shore, he can begin to have hope and think gratefully to himself, “I am being saved”. But he may well still be aware of the winds howling round, and the boat heaving in the heavy seas, and water flowing in, and the pain and agony of his limbs as a result, and he may then look forward and think, “I will soon be saved”. If his rescuer, and those crewmen, and the ambulance waiting for him on shore on that terrible night, can be so dedicated, can we think that the One Who died on a cross for us on an even more terrible night, can be less dedicated? He does not just want us in the lifeboat. He wants us fully restored. And that is what He is determined to have. And if we want to be saved that is what we must want! We cannot say, ‘Lord, save me, but leave me as I am’.
This salvation is entered into by an act of faith and commitment. As we genuinely recognise our need to be saved (in every way) from sin we commit ourselves completely to the One Who Saves (the Saviour), and trust Him to carry out the work, knowing that once He has begun the good work He will carry it out to the end (Php 1:6). We are then, if our response is genuine, both ‘saved’, and have entered the process of ‘being saved’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Preaching of the Cross In 1Co 1:18-31 Paul explains how the preaching of the cross is seen as foolishness to the Greeks who sought wisdom and it was seen as weak to the Jews who sought a sign. Regarding the wisdom of the Greeks, Matthew Henry says, “Some of the ancients tell us that the city (of Corinth) abounded with rhetoricians and philosophers. These were men naturally vain, full of self-conceit, and apt to despise the plain doctrine of the gospel, because it did not feed the curiosity of an inquisitive and disputing temper, nor please the ear with artful speeches and a flow of fine words.” [94]
[94] Matthew Henry, 1 Corinthians, in Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, New Modern Edition, Electronic Database (Seattle, WA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1991), in P.C. Study Bible, v. 3.1 [CD-ROM] (Seattle, WA: Biblesoft Inc., 1993-2000), notes on 1 Corinthians 1:17-31.
1Co 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
1Co 1:18
“When we (Paul and his co-workers) served, being in ministry was the greatest sacrifice that one could make, and this reflected the message of the greatest sacrifice that was made the Cross. The Cross is the power of God, and it is the center of all that we are called to live by. You have so little power to transform the minds and hearts of the disciples now because you do not live, and do not preach, the Cross. Therefore, we have difficulty seeing much difference between the disciples and the heathen. That is not the Gospel or the salvation with which we were entrusted. You must return to the Cross.” [95]
[95] Rick Joyner, The Final Quest (Charlotte, North Carolina: Morning Star Publications, 1977), 136.
1Co 1:18 “it is the power of God” Comments Not other message on earth has been elevated to the level of power that has been given to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no scientific knowledge, not technology, no philosophy, no earthly or human knowledge, that has the power to transform a sinner and reconcile him back to God. The Gospel has a continuing effect in the life of those who submit to its message. It opens the door for the presence of God to dwell within us, for the anointing of God to work in our life. It has the power to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. It is God’s supernatural ability taking us beyond our natural ability. It is God at work for us making us more than conquerors, making us overcomers in every situation in life. It is God always causing us to triumph in Christ Jesus. It is God fulfilling His plan, purpose and will in our lives so that His divine purpose in His creation will come to pass. It is a heavenly Father ministering to His children in love. The message of the Cross will bring us into this place with God. It is a walk of faith in Christ Jesus, a life of faith and dependence upon Almighty God.
1Co 1:18 Illustration T. L. Osborn tells the story of his evangelistic crusade in Thailand, a nation where very few converts had been made by the missionaries after years of work. He preached the first night with no results. Returning back to the hotel, he began to pray and question the Lord on why his preaching was having no effect upon the people. The Lord spoke to him and told him that he was preaching about Jesus, but he was going to have to go preach Jesus. In other words, T. L. Osborn was going to have to preach boldly with an expectation of signs and wonders, praying for miracles in faith. He returned the next evening and preached with all of his might, praying for the sick, demonstrating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in power and signs and wonders. Many people responded and gave the lives to Jesus Christ, and churches began to grow at this point in Thailand. [96]
[96] T. L. Osborn, Good News Today (Osborn Ministries International, Tulsa, Oklahoma) , on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program, 1990-91.
1Co 1:19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
1Co 1:20 1Co 1:20
Illustration Today, we hear the many voices of the world. For example, bumper stickers on cars attract attention with trite sayings. Men display symbols as members of secular organizations and institutions that have no place for Christ Jesus. Talk shows on radio and television offer solutions to world problems. The small signpost was stuck in the ground near the road in Fort Worth, Texas, reading “Psychic Reader Solves all problems.”
1Co 1:21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
1Co 1:21
1Co 1:21 “to save them that believe” Word Study on “save” – Strong says the Greek word (G4982) means, “to save deliver, protect.”
Comments – This word is used in the New Testament in reference to the deliverance of man’s spirit (Mat 1:21, Act 16:30, 1Co 5:5), soul (Jas 1:21) and body (Mat 9:21-22). The power of the Gospel is able to deliver us from the bondages of sin and to bring us into fellowship with Almighty God, to heal our physical bodies, to restore our minds, to deliver us from poverty, to overcome every problem in life.
1Co 1:21 Comments – Although historical records confirm that there were preachers of God’s Word before Moses, the book of Deuteronomy offers us one of the first recorded sermons in human history. Prior to the time of Moses, the Scriptures tell us that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” (2Pe 2:5); and the preaching of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is believed to be recorded in the Book of Enoch (Jud 1:14-15). However, the sermons of Moses stand tallest in ancient Jewish history because Moses was a man who preached with mighty signs and wonders accompanying his ministry as his sermons shook nations and brought multitudes to their knees in repentance and faith in God (Deu 34:10-12). The powerful effects of such preaching throughout history are expressed by the Lord Jesus Christ when He was upbraiding those cities of Galilee that rejected His Gospel. He told them that the cities of Tyre and Sidon would have repented had someone stood and preached the Gospel to them. He added that the wicked city of Sodom would still be standing today had someone came a preached to those people with signs and wonders (Mat 11:20-24). Jesus then reminds the scribes and Pharisees that the people of Nineveh were delivered from destruction at the preaching of Jonah (Mat 12:41). Paul says, “Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” (1Co 1:20-21) Since the time of mankind’s human depravity, God chose preaching as a means of fulfilling His divine plan of redemption. Jesus tells us that God send prophets from the foundation of the world until His plan of redemption of fulfilled to preach to the nations (Luk 11:50). For example, God commissioned Jeremiah to go forth and speak what He commanded him to the nations (Jer 1:7; Jer 1:17). Jesus founded the New Testament Church when he chose twelve apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations (Mar 3:13-15). How we need someone to stand up and shout from the mountain tops the unspeakable grace and forgiveness of God coupled with His impending judgment.
2Pe 2:5, “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;”
Jud 1:14-15, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
Deu 34:10-12, “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, In all the signs and the wonders, which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.”
Mat 12:41, “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”
Luk 11:50, “That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; “
Jer 1:7, “But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.”
Mar 3:13-15, “And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils:”
1Co 1:22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
1Co 1:22
Mat 12:38-39, “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:”
Mat 16:1-4, “The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.”
Mar 8:11-12, “And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation.”
Luk 11:16, “And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.”
Joh 2:18-19, “Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
1Co 1:22 “and the Greeks seek after wisdom” – Comments The Greeks were philosophers, and thus sought wisdom. Luke refers to their passion for wisdom in Act 17:21, “(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)” We know from Acts that Paul spoke to and reasoned with them using wisdom rather than with the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit.
1Co 1:23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
1Co 1:24 1Co 1:24
1Co 1:24 “Christ the power of God” – Comments The Jews wanted a sign from God. Jesus has become a sign, by His resurrection from the dead.
Mat 12:39-40, “But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth .”
Joh 2:18-19, “Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up .”
1Co 1:24 “and the wisdom of God” – Comments The Greeks sought after wisdom. Jesus has become true wisdom.
1Co 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1Co 1:25
1Co 1:26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
1Co 1:26
Act 18:8, “And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized.”
Act 18:17, “Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. And Gallio cared for none of those things.”
Rom 16:23, “Gaius mine host, and of the whole church, saluteth you. Erastus the chamberlain of the city saluteth you, and Quartus a brother.”
1Co 1:1, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,”
1Co 1:14, “I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;”
In 1Co 1:26 Paul tells the believers at Corinth that there are not many wise men after the flesh who are called, not many noble ones (1Co 1:26). In Jas 2:5 we are told that God has chosen the poor to be rich in faith. Why is this so? Why are the poor and weak and oppressed more open to the things of God than the rich and noble? Perhaps we can find the answer in the book of Genesis by looking at God’s judgment upon Adam and Eve during the Fall. Man’s original role in taking dominion over the earth was to tend the Garden. The woman’s role in taking dominion over the earth was not in tilling the soil, but in bearing children. We then see how man was working the land while woman was tending to children. This was God’s original divine order and plan for mankind to prosper and fulfill their destinies. This is reflected in the way in which God judged Adam and Eve in the Fall. The woman had her pain and sorrow increased in the area of childbearing while the man had his sorrow and pain increased in tilling the earth. God added travail and sorrow to each of their earthly journeys so that they would learn to turn to Him for their daily peace and rest. Such daily travail brings humility, and humility leads us back to God. In fact Ecc 3:10 tells us, “I have seen the travail that God hath given to the sons of man to be humbled by it.” Thus, it is a state of travail and vanity that a person most easily turns to God. But those whose lives have been made easy by wealth and nobility tend to see no need for God because their flesh has been comforted.
1Co 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
1Co 1:27 Act 4:13-14
Act 17:18, “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say ? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.”
1Co 3:18, “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool , that he may be wise.”
1Co 4:10, “ We are fools for Christ’s sake , but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.”
1Co 1:27 “and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” – Illustration:
1Co 2:3
1Co 1:28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
1Co 1:27-28
1Co 1:29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.
1Co 1:25-29
Earthly wisdom finds its fulfillment in having a clear understanding, and not in being confounded. Earthly strength finds its fulfillment in prideful achievements and conquest, and not in being abased and coming to naught. God achieves His purpose and plan on earth through ways that appear foolish and weak in the eyes of the world. The reason God works this way is so that no man can glory in his own achievements, for God knows the weaknesses of mankind.
Scripture Reference – Note a similar verse:
Jas 2:5, “Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
1Co 1:30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
1Co 1:30
There is no wisdom greater or more God-pleasing that believing in the Cross and the cleansing blood of Jesus for salvation. There are no good works we can do to create our own righteousness in God’s eyes. It is only faith in Jesus Christ that brings righteousness. There is no other means of sanctification than abiding in the vine, which is Jesus Christ. Nothing can pay for our sins and set us free or redeem our souls except the precious blood of Jesus (Act 20:28).
Act 20:28, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood .”
We can gain wisdom by the experiences in this life. In contrast, we can look to God for this same supernatural insight and wisdom to guide us in this Christian walk without having to go through bad experiences. Note these words by Frances J. Roberts.
“The man of mature years has gained wisdom by experience. Ye may gain wisdom (if ye desire it) by, as it were, drawing on My experience. I am infinite and eternal, and though ye may be unable to grasp it, I have experienced both what is known to you as the past and what is referred to by you as the future. You live within the confines of time. I live outside all such bounds and limitations.” [97]
[97] Frances J. Roberts, Come Away My Beloved (Ojai, California: King’s Farspan, Inc., 1973), 53.
1Co 1:31 That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
1Co 1:18. For the preaching of the cross, &c. “The doctrine of the cross is a doctrine of such a nature as could not recommend itself by human eloquence to the imaginations of vicious and vain disputants, such as were most of the heathen philosophers; but to those who are saved,to serious and well-disposed persons, who embrace truth wherever they find evidence of it, and who are more pleased with what improves their minds, than with the vain eloquence of the heathen oratory; to such persons the Gospel, in its greatest plainness and original simplicity, is, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, the power of God,not to amuse men’s understandings with needless speculations, but to convert their wills to righteousness and true holiness.” See Calmet.
1Co 1:18 . Establishment of the foregoing . Were, namely, the doctrine of the cross, although folly to the unbelieving, not a power of God to believers, it would be impossible to speak of a of its substance, the cross of Christ, as the aim of the . . .
The with the dative expresses the actual relation in which the stands to both; it is for them in fact (not, as might be thought, simply in their judgment ) the one and the other.
.] to those who are incurring (eternal) . Comp 2Co 2:15 ; 2Co 4:3 ; 2Th 2:10 . The present participle [216] betokens either the certainty of the future destruction (Bernhardy, p. 371), or it brings the being lost before us as a development which is already taking place in them; just as ., those who are being saved unto Messianic bliss . From 1Co 15:2 , Rom 5:9-10 ; Rom 8:24 , al [217] , also Eph 2:5-8 , the former mode of conceiving it seems to be the correct one; comp 1Co 2:6 . Paul designates in this way the believers and unbelievers, , Theodoret. He has certainly (Rckert) conceived of both classes as predestinated (1Co 1:24 ; Rom 8:29 ; Rom 9:11 ; Rom 9:19 ; Rom 9:22 f.; Eph 1:4 f.; 2Th 2:13 , al [219] ); but this point remains here out of view.
] This doctrine is to them (to their conscious experience) an absurdity ( , Plat. Epin. p. 983 E; Dem. 397, pen.). Why? see 1Co 1:22 . Comp 2Co 4:3 . Billroth’s answer is un-Pauline.
] is not put last out of modesty (Billroth), but because the emphasis of the contrast lies on the idea of . Comp Eur. Phoeniss. 1738. Pors.: .
] Comp on Rom 1:16 . That doctrine is to them (to their conscious experience) God’s power , inasmuch, that is to say, as God works mightily in them through the saving tidings of the Crucified. The contrast is stronger than if it were , and is also logically correct; for necessarily presupposes the opposite of , because the power of God brings about enlightenment, repentance, sanctification, love, peace, hope, etc. Comp Ignat. a [224] Eph. 18, where it is said of the cross, that it is to us . .
[216] Bengel’s ingenious exposition: “qui evangelium audire coepit, nec ut perditus nec ut salvus habetur, sed est quasi in bivio , et nunc aut perit aut salvatur,” is wrecked on the word , which the audire coepit does not suit.
[217] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.
[219] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.
[224] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.
(18) For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (19) For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. (20) Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? (21) For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. (22) For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: (23) But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; (24) But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (25) Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (26) For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: (27) But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; (28) And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are: (29) That no flesh should glory in his presence.
Never, surely, could the Apostle have chosen a more happy form of words to describe the vast difference between the divine wisdom of the Lord, as manifested in the salvation of the Church in Christ, and what is called the wisdom of the world, which uniformly rejects and despiseth it. And we see it every day. If these words of Paul had been written but yesterday, they could not more strikingly set forth the different characters of the christless, despising salvation by the cross; and the precious souls, who taught of God, receive it with open arms, knowing it by heartfelt experience, to be the power of God, and the wisdom of God, for salvation to everyone that believeth.
Reader! this is one among the many of the believer’s evidences to the truth of the Gospel. Fond as some men are, that all the world should be believers; the child of God would lose a very striking testimony if it were so. There must be heresies among you, (said one that could not be mistaken,) that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. 1Co 11:19 . Never must, never can, the offence of the cross cease. The children of the bondwoman will always hate the doctrine of the cross. The pride of the human heart, the self-righteousness of corrupt, unhumbled nature, will always revolt at it. And, while the thing itself is the wisdom of God, the wonder of angels, and the everlasting joy of the redeemed, both in heaven and earth; to them that perish it appears foolishness, and they perish in their foolishness, And to all such, the word of God speaks: Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish! for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you! Act 13:41 .
Reader! what a distinguishing mercy it is to be made wise unto salvation, through the faith which is in Christ Jesus? And we may see, and indeed we do see every day, under every ordinance where Christ is faithfully and fully preached, in the glories of his Person, and the compleatness of his finished salvation, as the whole of Jehovah’s purpose of grace, for the recovery of his Church and people, and where those who have been taught to feel and know the plague of their own heart; Christ becomes the all in all, and their whole souls are melted into holy joy, adoration, love, and praise; we behold no less, the wise in their own eyes, and the prudent in their own conceit, turning with the most bitter looks of hatred against the doctrine of the cross, and rejecting the counsel of God against their own souls. Christ becomes a stumbling block and a rock of offence, as much now, as to the Jews of old. So the Lord declared by his servants the Prophets it should be; and the Lord be praised, that he hath not left himself without witness: Isa 29:14 and Isa 33:18 . Precious Jesus, I would say, how sweet thy words to my soul, Blessed is he whomsoever shall not be offended in me! Mat 11:6 .
By the expressions, the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men, we are not to understand, as if it implied either foolishness or weakness in God. But the sense is, that what the carnal and ungodly in their dim sighted view consider folly and weakness of Christ, and salvation by his cross, is higher in wisdom, and greater in power than all that human knowledge can conceive. So that what men call foolishness, is, in God’s esteem, a rich manifestation of his wisdom and power, in conquering sin, death, hell, and the grave, by the very means, which to human wisdom appears the most unlikely and improbable; by Christ’s death overcoming death, and by his rising to life again, opening a way to his people to everlasting life. And herein was demonstrated the highest wisdom and power of God. Wisdom, in contriving, and power in accomplishing, by such unheard of unthought of ways; the recovery of the Church from the Adam fall of nature; punishing sin, and yet pardoning the sinner; taking judgment on the surety, and liberating the principal; bringing praise to God from salvation, and overruling sin, which tends to dishonour the Lord; the very means of bringing forth a greater revenue of glory, in, and by, the Person, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and everlasting reign of grace here, and glory hereafter, of God’s dear Son. Surely, every heart which knows the blessedness of these precious things, will join the Apostle, and say, however, to them that perish all is foolishness; yet to us which are saved, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God!
I must not allow the Reader’s attention to pass away from this most interesting view, which God, by the Holy Ghost, hath given of the cross of Christ, as the power of God, and the wisdom of God; before that I have first called upon him to remark with me, what is also said of the Lord’s distinguishing grace in the holy calling. Every part of the Bible, indeed, is full to the same, for the whole is of electing love, from beginning to end. But here, the Lord the Spirit more especially calls upon the Church to notice it. The brethren, partaker’s of the heavenly calling, are directed to behold it. And, while they are commanded to observe, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; they are no less taught from their own circumstances, to consider, that in their call, it was grace manifested to the foolish, and to the weak, and to the base things of the world. And, Reader! I beseech you to pause, and pass not away for a moment from the consideration of the Church of Corinth in those days, in which Paul sent this Epistle, and take home the same doctrine now, for it equally holds good in all ages of the Church. We have reason to bless God, that while he saith, not many are called from among the great, and noble, and wise men of the earth, that the Lord did not, say, not any. For, though but few, yet there have been some. In the days of Christ himself, we find Joseph, an honorable counselor, and Nicodemus among the rulers of the Jews. But, indeed, for the most part, we find the Lord’s people gathered from among the humbler walks in life, poor in worldly circumstances, as well as poor in spirit, made rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom. But it should be observed also, that the expressions here used by the Apostle, when he saith, that not many wise men, and mighty, and noble, are called, he adds to the term, not many wise men after the flesh; and the same after the flesh, is to be subjoined to the mighty and the noble. For their worldly wisdom, and their might, and their nobility, are all earthly. Not that wisdom which maketh wise unto salvation, neither that might which is founded in divine strength, neither that nobleness of soul which distinguisheth the Church of God. So, it like manner, the foolish things of the world, and the weak, and the base, which are Chosen, they are in worldly wisdom foolish, and it human policy weak, and in all their own attainments base and despised; but they are in spiritual things, both wise, and strong, and dignified. The Holy Ghost by Peter, calls them, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people. And the Lord Jesus com mended John to write them to the Churches, as made kings and priests unto God and his Father: 1Pe 2:9 ; Rev 1:6 . Reader! may it be your happiness and mine; through grace, to be enabled to enter into the proper apprehension of those words by the Apostle, when he saith, For ye see your calling, brethren!
The Preaching of the Cross
1Co 1:18-31
What is termed a whole body of theology might be gathered from this first chapter. Here we find God, Christ, the Church, the mystery of the Cross, and the fact of redemption. Why does the Apostle gather all these great doctrines around him, so compendiously and so severally? What is his business? We have not seen him in this urgent mood before; usually he has taken time to his work, but he is in it before we imagine he has begun it. He is excited. The excitement of love is upon him, and that is the keenest excitement of all. His charity is offended, his excellence of heart is annoyed, his sense of right is assailed. He has heard that the people in the Church at Corinth are setting up parties, cultivating small bigotries, multiplying contemptible sects. This the Apostle will never consent to. He says, This is wrong, this is contrary to the spirit of the Cross; sectarianism and Christ cannot live together; party spirit and the Crucifixion are as opposed to one another as darkness is to light. So he gathers all his thunders and lightnings, all his majestic conceptions of God, humanity, truth, destiny; he will not attempt to overthrow this by some wind of contempt, he will come down upon it as from eternity and destroy it in the name of the Lord. There must somewhere be a point of rest There must be some fixed quantities in this stupendous universe, else what is to become of it? We are saved by the points of rest, by the centres of tranquillity. Foolish mariner he, who says he will take a ship over the Atlantic by the help of the moon. Yet the moon is a fair orb, the moon has been praised to her face by audacious yet reverent poetry; hardly a boy but has said something sweet to the moon and about the moon; the moon has been called a banner of silver hung out in the sky; classical names have been attached to her; yet no mariner ever took his course across the water by that banner of silver. Not that he has any objection to the orb itself; there is nothing objectionable in the moon. It is not aggressive, but it is changeable. That is the reason. Yonder in the north is a point of light you can always rely upon; the captain lays hold of it, and gets home. That is what men will not do. They will run after any moon; they call its changeableness variety: whereas when the soul is interested it is treachery. I suppose there will be moon-worshippers until the end of time. When the Apostle has any great argument to state and apply he stands upon a rock, he puts out his hands towards the north star, to the quiet eternal planets, and then things may swing around him as they like, but he will not swing in them, except in so far as he has hold of the things that abide. He has such a conception of Christ that he will not be disturbed by partisanship and party quarrels at Corinth or anywhere else. He will cling to Christ; he will say, “What does Christ mean? what is the meaning of the Cross? what is the purpose of God in the gift of his Son? and thus he will fix his attention upon things polar, immutable. Thus, unless we have a right conception of eternity we can never make a proper use of time. Time is nothing by itself; there is no sense or reason or rhythm in it: the whole value of it is in its relation to something greater than itself, and something which it dimly and feebly typifies. If we do not know eternity we do not know time. If we do not know astronomy we do not know geography, except as an invention in the painting of lines and sections and circles, and distributions of properties which may be changed tomorrow by some sudden battle. Dean Alford tells of a quaint old Cambridge preacher who said in his pulpit, his throne of power, “Eternity is like a great clock, the pendulum of which says ‘tick’ in one century, and ‘tack’ in another: now, said he,” erecting himself and facing the scholars of Cambridge, “go home and calculate the length of the pendulum.” What are our little calculations about if they do not come out of eternity and return to eternity, and if they do not bring to bear things abiding upon things transient? This is the wise philosophy of life: the one thing that abides amid all the party creations and controversies is the Cross of Christ. That will keep us all steady, solid, right.
The Apostle refers to certain people, with a little tone of sarcasm in his voice. Sometimes he could be very ruthless in criticism and crushing in condemnation. The old Saul would occasionally revive in him. Once he was writing so carefully and quietly, and suddenly the old Saul of Tarsus flamed up in him, and he said to his young correspondent, “There are certain people that are going about talking nonsense in the Church, whose mouths must be stopped.” That was Saul; that was an old plan of his! So now he says, “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?” Where are these men when you want them most. You do not know, and they do not know. They are of no use. Yet how the wise man can shake his head and look as if he knew a great deal! He will be of no service to you in the hour and article of death. He will be wise enough then to get out of the way. Yet some young minds are victimised by the “wise,” who live upon their own consciousness, who keep their manufactories of nonsense within themselves, and turn it out in endless rolls, men who never risked anything for the world’s bettering; men who never did anything but talk, so as to prove how little they had to talk about. They had no text. What is the sermon if it be not the text magnified, amplified, and in a sense illuminated? But these men have no text; therefore what they say has no authority; it issues from no throne, and returns to no tribunal; it is an empty noisy wind. “Where is the scribe?” the man of the inkhorn, the grammarian, the letter-monger, the man who will discourse vehemently, so vehemently at least as the infinite coldness of his little nature will permit him, about a semicolon. The poor little scribe loses his rest because he cannot settle whether the comma should be before the word or after the word, or whether there should not be an apostrophe before the s in some cases. How his mind is troubled about that! how grave he looks! how wrinkled he is! how he stoops about the shoulders! Why? Because he is a scribe, a grammarian, a man of syntax; a great parser, but nothing at poetry. “Where is the disputer of this world?” the man of controversy, the man who loves an argument, the man who is always looking round to see whom he can argue with: where is he, in view of the Cross, in view of the great necessities of life, in view of the solemn, impending, inevitable future? Where are they? Nowhere. These men are troublers of society. It is easy to ask questions, to suggest difficulties, to multiply the stumbling-blocks that lie in the way of honest progress. The mind, when it is most truly and Divinely excited, may easily be turned aside by some temptations, shot upon it so quickly that there is no time to reason with it; but the turning aside is but for a moment; because the excitement is Divine it will return, pursue its way, and complete its purpose. The Apostle had to deal, let us see carefully, with the wise, with the scribe, and with the disputer of this world. These classes still live. They will live to the end of time, and to the end of time they will be unblessed by men whose hunger they cannot feed and whose thirst they cannot assuage.
See how the Apostle describes the whole method and economy of God in regard to this matter. How will the Lord God proceed? First, “by the foolishness of preaching.” We all know this to be a misrepresentation of the Apostle’s meaning. The foolishness is not in the preaching as an art or practice; the foolishness is in the thing that is preached, by the foolishness of the preaching of Christ, by the foolish way of proceeding, by setting up a Cross as the answer to human sin: such stupendous folly was never seen by man before, that God should die, that God should make an atonement to himself, that God should through weakness find the way to power, and through distress and trouble infinite find the way to rest and peace. This is like the Lord’s way of proceeding in everything. Given a certain set of circumstances to know how God will act, and we have to draw up the course of his action. Now, when we have written with the patience and criticism of the scribe, compare what we have written with what we should see in Providence: what could be more different, more contrastive, more mutually annihilative? This is the way of the Lord. It is not seen only in the Cross of Christ, in the foolishness of the thing that is preached; it is seen everywhere, in all history, in all providence, in every day’s history. We should proceed straightly, we should proceed promptly: by our very littleness we have a trick of energy. We want everything settled before sundown. So does the Lord, only his sundown is a long way off. There is no sundown; what we call sundown is but a momentary expression of convenience; the sun goes on his beaming way even after we think the sun has set. God has a day to work in, and before the day ends his purpose will be completed in righteousness. Let us wait; let us learn that patience is often the best prayer, that longsuffering is often the only theology we want. Then God proceeds by the disappointment of prejudice; because the wise ought to have some little word in this matter; the scribe really ought to be asked to dip his pen if it were only once; the disputer ought to have a little space created for him that he might enter into his argument with some degree and show of pomp. And yet the Lord sweeps them aside, and will have none of them. This was the way with the Lord Jesus Christ. He never allowed a scribe to open his mouth, except that he might have an opportunity of rebuking him, and showing him how little title he had to be described as a writer of the mysteries of the kingdom of God. No Pharisee would Jesus Christ call so long as he remained a Pharisee; no disputer would he permit to enter into his ministry. Men who are in the ministry of Christ have simply to repeat their lesson; to tell what their Lord told them, but to tell it in the language of the day. The liberty is not to change the message, but to vary its delivery. God proceeds by way of rebuking vanity: “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.” Can God do without them? He can do without us all. The darkness and the light are both alike to him. He does not need any one of us.
The Apostle proceeds to a very suggestive climax: “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.” “Hath God chosen”; then we should omit the word “and,” and read “things which are not”: he does not introduce this as another element, but he sums up the whole policy of God in these words “things which are not”; base things, things which are despised, hath God chosen things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. His providence is a continual miracle. If we could see a battering-ram, and see the wall that was to be shaken down, we should begin a process of calculation for we are all scribes and say, The instrument is equal to the occasion; the wall is so high, so broad; the instrument is so large, and so energetic, and the momentum is calculable in mathematical terms: now proceed. This is not God’s way. We see the thing to be shattered, but we do not see the energy that shatters it; but down goes the wall, away goes the mighty rampart, the stubborn bastion all down! What did it? A breath from eternity. What saith the Apostle? “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.” Then there are some wise, mighty, noble. Circumstances do not always go against the aristocratic and the eminent; men should not necessarily condemn them because they are great, after the pattern of this world’s greatness. Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, one of the greatest workers in the Christian field in her day, said with characteristic sweetness, “I owe my salvation to the letter ‘m’; blessed be God,” said that sweet soul, “It does not say, ‘any’ mighty, ‘any’ noble; it says ‘many’ mighty, ‘many’ noble: I owe my salvation to the letter ‘m.'” If it had been “not any noble” where would the Countess have been? Yet how differently we act towards those who are wise and mighty and noble! How we fawn upon them; how we call upon them, even if we have to go to the side door! We have lost our Christian dignity. This spirit was well rebuked by one illustrious clergyman in his day. He was the son of a peer. He could not help that; do not blame him; his consent was not asked. But the lady parishioner upon whom he called would hear of his ancestry and pedigree and birth and advantages. Said the truly great man when the palaver was over, “Madam, I am surprised that you should talk about such frivolities: I have come to speak to you upon matters of eternity.” There he was wise, there he was mighty, there he was noble. There is a nobility which men cannot help having, nor are they to be condemned because they possess it; it may be only a nobility of name, or it may be a nobility of name justified by nobility of character, and if not so justified, then the nobility becomes, not a decoration, but a disgrace Let every man justify his nobility, and the world will not withhold from him the palm which is due to faithfulness, integrity, and industry. Thus Paul will drive off the wise, the scribe the disputer, the mighty, the noble, all nominal claimants, patrons and dividers, and he will have nothing seen but Christ; for, said he, as long as the Church looks at Christ it will be unable to see those distributions of rank or power, and take part in those mean controversies, which are characteristic of earth and time and sense. There is a beautiful scene. What you look upon is a silver lake, not a ripple on its smooth face, and the light that is in it is the sun; see how the sun lies in the depths of the lake as in an under sky: does the lake create the sun, or only reflect it? That is what the Church does: it does not create the Cross, it reflects it; it does not originate the Atonement, it accepts it; it does not invent Christ, it receives him and adores him. What a wondrous landscape is that on the canvas! what hill and dale, and wood and water, and light and shade! what painted music! what poetry! Did the artist create the landscape, or only paint it? He only painted it. That is what the Church does. All that is beautiful in the Church is but a transcript, a writing, a transference of something heavenly into an earthly image and symbol and visibility. Does the husbandman create the harvest, or only reap it? Does the seedman create the seed, or only sow it? What does the preacher make? The sermon, not the text. Why this suppression of human vanity? why this snubbing of the wise, the scribe, the disputer, the mighty, the noble? The reason is given in these words, “that no flesh should glory in his presence.” The moment we begin to glory we begin to weaken. Self-consciousness lives upon its disease, and eats up its own vitals. Let a man live in himself, for himself, upon himself, and he will consume himself. We were made truly for one another. Call upon the Eternal Father, the Eternal Christ, the Eternal Spirit. In God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost we find what alone can satisfy our appetences, if those appetences are allowed to express themselves in their natural destined aspiration. If we are living upon anything else, then we have ill-treated our organism. If aught but God can satisfy the human heart, the human heart has played traitor to God, and has abandoned the fountain and origin of life and grace. There is an argument in this distaste for God; there is a whole history in this aversion from the Holy One. Let men dispute as they may, whether Adam fell or did not fall, every man knows that he himself has fallen low enough. The self-fall can never be denied.
Paul says in one word you have everything you want in Christ “of him” that is, of God “are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”: word upon word to express the redundance of the provision which is made in Christ for the education, the progress, and the sanctification of the human heart. Do you want wisdom? It is in Christ. Righteousness? It is in Christ. Sanctification? It is in Christ Redemption full, complete, involving the overthrow of the last enemy and the inheritance of immortality? It is in Christ, “That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” We have no need to go to the wise, because we have wisdom in Christ; we have no need to go the scribe, because we have righteousness in the Cross; we have no need to go to the disputer of this world, because we have sanctification and redemption in the Cross. Everything we want is there. Why should men roam in quest of the true riches? Here they are, here at the Cross, here in the wounded Lamb of God. Let us abide here. Let us risk our all on Christ. Lord, abide with us!
18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
Ver. 18. To them that perish, foolishness ] As it is to the Jews to this day, who rail against Christ’s person, calling him the hanged God, the woof and the warp, Lev 13:52 , because these two make the figure of the cross. And being asked whether they believe to be saved by Christ’s righteousness, they answer, That every fox must pay his own skin to the flayer. The pagans also jeered at Christ and his people, as did Julian, Lucian, Porphyry, &c.
18. ] For (explanation of the foregoing clause, and that, assuming the mutual exclusiveness of the preaching of the Cross and wisdom of speech , and the identity of with the lovers of : q. d. ‘wisdom of speech would nullify the Cross of Christ: for the doctrine of the Cross is to the lovers of that wisdom, folly.’ The reasoning is elliptical and involved, and is further complicated by the emphatic position of . and .) the [ preaching ( speech , or] doctrine “there is a word, an eloquence, which is most powerful, the eloquence of the Cross: referring to .” Stanley) of the Cross is to the perishing (those who are through unbelief on the way to everlasting perdition) folly: but to us who are being saved (Billroth (in Olsh.) remarks that . . . is a gentler expression than . . would be: the latter would put the . into strong emphasis, and exclude the opponents in a more marked manner.
are those in the way of salvation : who by faith have laid hold on Christ and are by Him being saved , see reff.) it is the power (see ref. Rom. and note. Hardly, as Meyer, a medium of divine Power, etwas, wodurch Gott frastig wirft: rather, the perfection of God’s Power the Power itself, in its noblest manifestation) of God .
1Co 1:18 . What P. asserted in 1Co 1:17 as intrinsically true, he supports by experience (1Co 1:18 ) and by Scripture (1Co 1:19 ), combining their testimony in 1Co 1:20 . , , “For the word, namely that of the cross”. (distinguish from the anarthrous above) takes its sense from (1Co 1:17 ); it is “the tale” rather than “the doctrine of the cross,” synonymous with (1Co 1:6 ) and (1Co 1:21 ). , the two classes into which P. sees his hearers divide themselves (see parls.). The ptps. are strictly pr [197] not expressing certain expectation (Mr [198] ), nor fixed predestination (Bz [199] ); the rejectors and receivers of “the word” are in course of perishing and being saved respectively ( cf. 1Co 15:2 ; contrast the aor [200] of in Rom 8:24 , and the pf. in Eph 2:5 ). “In the language of the N.T. salvation is a thing of the past, a thing of the present, and a thing of the future. The divorce of morality and religion is fostered by failing to note this, and so laying the whole stress either on the past or on the future on the first call or on the final change” (Lt [201] ). Paul paints the situation before his eyes: one set of men deride the story of the cross these are manifestly perishing; to another set the same story is “God’s power unto salvation”. The appended pers [202] pron [203] ( . ) , “to the saved, viz., ourselves,” speaks from and to experience: “You and I know that the cross is God’s saving power”. Cf. with the whole expression Rom 1:16 , also Joh 3:14-17 . The antithesis to is not, in the first instance, , but a practical vindication against false theory; saved men are the Gospel’s apology. Yet because it is , the word of the cross is, after all, the truest (see 30, 1Co 2:6 ff.). The double emphasises the actuality of the contrasted results.
[197] present tense.
[198] Meyer’s Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).
[199] Beza’s Nov. Testamentum: Interpretatio et Annotationes (Cantab., 1642).
[200] aorist tense.
[201] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).
[202]ers. grammatical person, or personal.
[203]ron. pronoun.
1 Corinthians
PERISHING OR BEING SAVED
1Co 1:18 The starting-point of my remarks is the observation that a slight variation of rendering, which will be found in the Revised Version, brings out the true meaning of these words. Instead of reading ‘them that perish’ and ‘us which are saved,’ we ought to read ‘them that are perishing ,’ and ‘us which are being saved.’ That is to say, the Apostle represents the two contrasted conditions, not so much as fixed states, either present or future, but rather as processes which are going on, and are manifestly, in the present, incomplete. That opens some very solemn and intensely practical considerations.
Then I may further note that this antithesis includes the whole of the persons to whom the Gospel is preached. In one or other of these two classes they all stand. Further, we have to observe that the consideration which determines the class to which men belong, is the attitude which they respectively take to the preaching of the Cross. If it be, and because it is, ‘foolishness’ to some, they belong to the catalogue of the perishing. If it be, and because it is, ‘the power of God’ to others, they belong to the class of those who are in process of being saved.
So, then, we have the ground cleared for two or three very simple, but, as it seems to me, very important thoughts.
I. I desire, first, to look at the two contrasted conditions, ‘perishing’ and ‘being saved.’
If, then, we turn for a moment to Scripture analogy and teaching, we find that that threadbare word ‘salvation,’ which we all take it for granted that we understand, and which, like a well-worn coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcely remains legible-that well-worn word ‘salvation’ starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It means either-and is used for both-being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord’s miracles, and it involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and his deliverance and security. The negative side, then, of the Gospel idea of salvation is the making whole from a disease, and the making safe from a danger. Negatively, it is the removal from each of us of the one sickness, which is sin; and the one danger, which is the reaping of the fruits and consequences of sin, in their variety as guilt, remorse, habit, and slavery under it, perverted relation to God, a fearful apprehension of penal consequences here, and, if there be a hereafter, there, too. The sickness of soul and the perils that threaten life, flow from the central fact of sin, and salvation consists, negatively, in the sweeping away of all of these, whether the sin itself, or the fatal facility with which we yield to it, or the desolation and perversion which it brings into all the faculties and susceptibilities, or the perversion of relation to God, and the consequent evils, here and hereafter, which throng around the evil-doer. The sick man is healed, and the man in peril is set in safety.
But, besides that, there is a great deal more. The cure is incomplete till the full tide of health follows convalescence. When God saves, He does not only bar up the iron gate through which the hosts of evil rush out upon the defenceless soul, but He flings wide the golden gate through which the glad troops of blessings and of graces flock around the delivered spirit, and enrich it with all joys and with all beauties. So the positive side of salvation is the investiture of the saved man with throbbing health through all his veins, and the strength that comes from a divine life. It is the bestowal upon the delivered man of everything that he needs for blessedness and for duty. All good conferred, and every evil banned back into its dark den, such is the Christian conception of salvation. It is much that the negative should be accomplished, but it is little in comparison with the rich fulness of positive endowments, of happiness, and of holiness which make an integral part of the salvation of God.
This, then, being the one side, what about the other? If this be salvation, its precise opposite is the Scriptural idea of ‘perishing.’ Utter ruin lies in the word, the entire failure to be what God meant a man to be. That is in it, and no contortions of arbitrary interpretation can knock that solemn significance out of the dreadful expression. If salvation be the cure of the sickness, perishing is the fatal end of the unchecked disease. If salvation be the deliverance from the outstretched claws of the harpy evils that crowd about the trembling soul, then perishing is the fixing of their poisoned talons into their prey, and their rending of it into fragments.
Of course that is metaphor, but no metaphor can be half so dreadful as the plain, prosaic fact that the exact opposite of the salvation, which consists in the healing from sin and the deliverance from danger, and in the endowment with all gifts good and beautiful, is the Christian idea of the alternative ‘perishing.’ Then it means the disease running its course. It means the dangers laying hold of the man in peril. It means the withdrawal, or the non-bestowal, of all which is good, whether it be good of holiness or good of happiness. It does not mean, as it seems to me, the cessation of conscious existence, any more than salvation means the bestowal of conscious existence. But he who perishes knows that he has perished, even as he knows the process while he is in the process of perishing. Therefore, we have to think of the gradual fading away from consciousness, and dying out of a life, of many things beautiful and sweet and gracious, of the gradual increase of distance from Him, union with whom is the condition of true life, of the gradual sinking into the pit of utter ruin, of the gradual increase of that awful death in life and life in death in which living consciousness makes the conscious subject aware that he is lost; lost to God, lost to himself.
Brethren, it is no part of my business to enlarge upon such awful thoughts, but the brighter the light of salvation, the darker the eclipse of ruin which rings it round. This, then, is the first contrast.
II. Now note, secondly, the progressiveness of both members of the alternative.
Look, then, at this thought of the process by which these two conditions become more and more confirmed, consolidated, and complete. Salvation is a progressive fact. In the New Testament we have that great idea looked at from three points of view. Sometimes it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past in the case of every believing soul-’Ye have been saved’ is said more than once. Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplished in the present-’Ye are saved’ is said more than once. And sometimes it is relegated to the future-’Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,’ and the like. But there are a number of New Testament passages which coincide with this text in regarding salvation as, not the work of any one moment, but as a continuous operation running through life, not a point either in the past, present, or future, but a continued life. As, for instance, ‘The Lord added to the Church daily those that were being saved.’ By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are being sanctified. And in a passage in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which, in some respects, is an exact parallel to that of my text, we read of the preaching of the Gospel as being a ‘savour of Christ in them that are being saved, and in them that are perishing.’
So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christian man lives in this world; and every one who professes to be Christ’s follower ought, day by day, to be growing more and more saved, more fully filled with that Divine Spirit, more entirely the conqueror of his own lusts and passions and evil, more and more invested with all the gifts of holiness and of blessedness which Jesus Christ is ready to bestow upon him.
Ah, brethren! that notion of a progressive salvation at work in all true Christians has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call yourselves Christ’s followers, and are not a bit further on than you were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions perhaps less so, for relapses are dangerous than you were then-have not advanced any further into the depths of God than when you first got a glimpse of Him as loving, and your Father, in Jesus Christ-are contented to linger, like some weak band of invaders in a strange land, on the borders and coasts, instead of pressing inwards and making it all your own. Growing Christians-may I venture to say?-are not the majority of professing Christians.
And, on the other side, as certainly, there are progressive deterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin. How many men there are listening to me now who were far nearer being delivered from their sins when they were lads than they have ever been since! How many in whom the sensibility to the message of salvation has disappeared, in whom the world has ossified their consciences and their hearts, in whom there is a more entire and unstruggling submission to low things and selfish things and worldly things and wicked things, than there used to be! I am sure that there are not a few among us now who were far better, and far happier, when they were poor and young, and could still thrill with generous emotion and tremble at the Word of God, than they are to-day. Why! there are some of you that could no more bring back your former loftier impulses, and compunction of spirit and throbs of desire towards Christ and His salvation, than you could bring back the birds’ nests or the snows of your youthful years. You are perishing, in the very process of going down and down into the dark.
Now, notice, that the Apostle treats these two classes as covering the whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives. If not in the one class we are in the other. Ah, brethren! life is no level plane, but a steep incline, on which there is no standing still, and if you try to stand still, down you go. Either up or down must be the motion. If you are not more of a Christian than you were a year ago, you are less. If you are not more saved-for there is a degree of comparison-if you are not more saved, you are less saved.
Now, do not let that go over your head as pulpit thunder, meaning nothing. It means you , and, whether you feel or think it or not, one or other of these two solemn developments is at this moment going on in you. And that is not a thought to be put lightly on one side.
Further, note what a light such considerations as these, that salvation and perishing are vital processes-’going on all the time,’ as the Americans say-throw upon the future. Clearly the two processes are incomplete here. You get the direction of the line, but not its natural termination. And thus a heaven and a hell are demanded by the phenomena of growing goodness and of growing badness which we see round about us. The arc of the circle is partially swept. Are the compasses going to stop at the point where the grave comes in? By no means. Round they will go, and will complete the circle. But that is not all. The necessity for progress will persist after death; and all through the duration of immortal being, goodness, blessedness, holiness, Godlikeness, will, on the one hand, grow in brighter lustre; and on the other, alienation from God, loss of the noble elements of the nature, and all the other doleful darknesses which attend that conception of a lost man, will increase likewise. And so, two people, sitting side by side here now, may start from the same level, and by the operation of the one principle the one may rise, and rise, and rise, till he is lost in God, and so finds himself, and the other sink, and sink, and sink, into the obscurity of woe and evil that lies beneath every human life as a possibility.
III. And now, lastly, notice the determining attitude to the Cross which settles the class to which we belong.
So there are two thoughts suggested which sound as if they were illogically combined, but which yet are both true. It is true that men perish, or are saved, because the Cross is to them respectively ‘foolishness’ or ‘the power of God’; and the other thing is also true, that the Cross is to them ‘foolishness,’ or ‘the power of God’ because, respectively, they are perishing or being saved. That is not putting the cart before the horse, but both aspects of the truth are true.
If you see nothing in Jesus Christ, and His death for us all, except ‘foolishness,’ something unfit to do you any good, and unnecessary to be taken into account in your lives-oh, my friends! that is the condemnation of your eyes, and not of the thing you look at. If a man, gazing on the sun at twelve o’clock on a June day, says to me, ‘It is not bright,’ the only thing I have to say to him is, ‘Friend, you had better go to an oculist.’ And if to us the Cross is ‘foolishness,’ it is because already a process of ‘perishing’ has gone so far that it has attacked our capacity of recognising the wisdom and love of God when we see them.
But, on the other hand, if we clasp that Cross in simple trust, we find that it is the power which saves us out of all sins, sorrows, and dangers, and ‘shall save us’ at last ‘into His heavenly kingdom.’
Dear friends, that message leaves no man exactly as it found him. My words, I feel, in this sermon, have been very poor, set by the side of the greatness of the theme; but, poor as they have been, you will not be exactly the same man after them, if you have listened to them, as you were before. The difference may be very imperceptible, but it will be real. One more, almost invisible, film, over the eyeball; one more thin layer of wax in the ear; one more fold of insensibility round heart and conscience-or else some yielding to the love; some finger put out to take the salvation; some lightening of the pressure of the sickness; some removal of the peril and the danger. The same sun hurts diseased eyes, and gladdens sound ones. The same fire melts wax and hardens clay. ‘This Child is set for the rise and fall of many in Israel.’ ‘To the one He is the savour of life unto life; to the other He is the savour of death unto death.’ Which is He, for He is one of them, to you?
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 1Co 1:18-25
18For 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. 19For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” 20Where 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? 21For 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. 22For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 23but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1Co 1:18 “For the word of the cross” This “word” (i.e., logos) is related to the content of Paul’s preaching (cf. 1Co 1:17; 1Co 1:23). Usually in his preaching Paul emphasizes both the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. But in this context he focuses on the crucifixion (cf. Gen 3:15; Psalms 22; Isaiah 53; Zechariah 9-14) and its results (cf. 1Co 1:30).
NASB, NKJV,
NRSV”foolishness”
TEV”is nonsense”
NJB”folly”
This Greek word comes into English as “moron.” It is a key element in Paul’s description of fallen human wisdom (cf. 1Co 1:18; 1Co 1:21; 1Co 1:23; 1Co 1:25), also notice 1Co 2:14; 1Co 3:18-19; 1Co 4:10. The gospel is revelation (i.e., self disclosure) from God, not human discovery!
“to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” These are two present participles. The first is a present middle participle and the second a present passive participle. See SPECIAL TOPIC: SALVATION (GREEK VERB TENSES) at 1Co 3:15. There are only two kinds of people: those who are perishing and those who are being saved (cf. 2Co 2:15; 2Co 4:3). The term “perishing” does not mean physical annihilation, but permanent loss of fellowship with God, for which they were created. See Special Topic at 1Co 1:28. Modern interpreters have taken the Hebrew euphemisms and literalized them. Two examples are:
1. “sleep” = death, not unconsciousness until resurrection
2. “perish” = spiritual loss, not annihilation
Some say that annihilation (i.e., cessation of life) is more humane than a permanent hell (cf. Fudge, The Fire That consumes). The problem arises when the same word used to describe hell is used of heaven (i.e., “eternal,” cf. Mat 25:46) and the mention of a double resurrection as in Dan 12:2; Joh 5:28-30; and Act 24:15. Yet it is not God who sends people to hell, but their own rejection of (1) the light they have (i.e., Psa 19:1-6; Romans 1-2) or (2) the gospel (i.e., the unpardonable sin and the sin unto death are the sin of unbelief). Unbelief in this life affects eternity.
The NT describes salvation as a
1. past decisive volitional act (i.e., aorist tense, Act 15:11; Rom 8:24; 2Ti 1:9; Tit 3:5)
2. a process which continues through life (i.e., present tense, 1Co 1:18; 1Co 15:2; 2Co 2:15)
3. a past event which becomes a state of being (i.e., perfect tense, Eph 2:5; Eph 2:8)
4. a future consummation (i.e., future tense, Rom 5:9-10; Rom 10:9; Rom 13:11; 1Co 3:15; Php 1:28; 1Th 5:8-9; Heb 1:14; Heb 9:28)
The theological danger is to isolate any one of these as “the” essence of salvation. We must always be on guard against an easy believism which emphasizes the initial act only or perfectionism which emphasizes the product only. Salvation is an initial, volitional response to God’s free offer in Christ which issues in a daily Christlikeness. It is not only a person to welcome, but a message about that person to be received, and a life in emulation of that person to live. It is not a product, an insurance policy, a ticket to heaven, but a growing daily relationship with Jesus. The NT does not emphasize making a decision, but being a disciple (cf. Mat 28:19-20).
The real mystery is that when the gospel is presented, some say “yes” and are saved, but some say “no” and their rebellion is reaffirmed (cf. Luk 2:34; Joh 9:39; 1Pe 2:7). It does not surprise me that people say yes, but I am amazed that with
1. the desire of God for all to be saved
2. the finished work of Christ
3. the wooing of the Sprit
4. the felt guilt of humanity
5. the purposelessness of life without God
that people say “No”! This is the mystery of election (cf. 2Co 3:14; 2Co 4:4; 2Co 11:3).
“the power of God” The gospel is the power of God (cf. 1Co 1:24; Rom 1:16). The gospel reveals and channels the power of God. It produces faith. It produces repentance. It produces wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (cf. 1Co 1:30). The preaching of the cross does all of this. It is God’s power behind the written word (i.e., the Bible), the living word (i.e., Christ), the preached word (i.e., the gospel), and the established word (i.e., Christlikeness/the kingdom of God).
1Co 1:19 This is a quote of Isa 29:14. It is an example of OT synonymous parallelism. The emphasis is on the folly of human wisdom without God (cf. Isa 29:13; Ecc 1:12-18; Ecc 12:12).
“destroy” This is part of an OT quote (i.e., Isa 29:14). See Special Topic: Apollumi at 1Co 8:11.
1Co 1:20 This is a list of human rationalists (i.e., Jewish and Gentile). It may be an allusion to Isa 33:18 in the LXX (Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 257). Humans cannot discover the gospel. It is the mystery of God hidden from the ages (cf. Eph 2:11 to Eph 3:13). God’s plan and provisions seem foolish because they devalue human merit and wisdom.
“of this age. . .of the world” These two phrases reflect a similar concept in that this period of time is fallen. This is not the world that God intended, but the gospel will transform this fallen age into God’s intended creation (i.e., Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22).
The term “world” is used in two senses in the NT: (1) the physical planet (cf. Joh 3:16) and (2) fallen human society organized and functioning apart from God (cf. Jas 1:27; Jas 4:4; 1Jn 2:15-17). In Paul’s writings the Hebrew term ‘olam, translated into Greek as ain, and came to be synonymous with kosmos (cf. 1Co 1:20; 1Co 2:6; 1Co 3:19; Eph 2:2). For kosmos see Special Topic: Paul’s Use of Kosmos (world) at 1Co 3:21-22.
SPECIAL TOPIC: THIS AGE AND THE AGE TO COME
“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world” The grammar shows that Paul expects a “yes” answer.
1Co 1:21 “For since in the wisdom of God” This may be an allusion to Pro 8:22-31, as is Joh 1:1-5; Joh 1:9-14. It also refers to the plan of God to redeem fallen humanity. Redemption was planned in the heart of God before creation (cf. Mat 25:34; Act 2:23; Act 3:18; Act 4:28; Act 13:29; Eph 1:4; 1Pe 1:19-20; Rev 13:8). This plan involved
1. foreknowledge of mankind’s fall
2. mankind’s inability to perform the will of God (cf. Deu 31:27-29; Jos 24:19; Galatians 3)
3. God’s provision in Christ (i.e., the new covenant, cf. Jer 31:31-34)
4. the inviting of Jew and Gentile by faith in Christ (cf. 1Co 1:21; Eph 2:11 to Eph 3:13)
SPECIAL TOPIC: YHWH’s ETERNAL REDEMPTIVE PLAN
“did not come to know God” The Greeks did not believe that God was knowable. Their deities had human frailties and were uninvolved in this world. Fallen humanity cannot discover God, but God has chosen to reveal Himself through Christ, (i.e., the Living Word) and through the Bible (i.e., the written Word), as well as through redeemed humanity (i.e., the established word)!
“God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached” It is not the presentation, but the content of the gospel that is foolishness to the fallen mind (cf. 1Co 2:14).
“to save those who believe” This is an aorist active infinitive followed by a Present active participle. This is the essence of gospel proclamation! The term “save” was used in the OT for physical deliverance, but in the NT it came to be used for spiritual forgiveness and acceptance. Our acceptance by God through Christ is a completed fact, but on our part it is a continuing covenantal relationship. All dealings between God and humans are covenantal. God always initiates the covenant and sets its requirements, but He has chosen that we must personally respond and continue to respond. See Special Topic at 1Co 3:15.
SPECIAL TOPIC: THE NEED TO PERSEVERE
1Co 1:22 “Jews ask for signs” This reflects Paul’s knowledge of the life of Christ (cf. Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Mat 16:4; Mar 8:11-12; Joh 4:48; Joh 6:30).
“Greeks search for wisdom” “Greeks” (Hellnes) refers to all non-Jewish people. This is clearly seen in its use in Act 18:16-21, acts 18:32; Rom 1:13.
1Co 1:23 This verse should begin with the adversative “but.” Paul’s answer to both a desire for “signs” and “wisdom” was the gospel.
“crucified” This is a perfect passive participle. Jesus’ crucifixion, not logic nor miracles, is the heart of Paul’s gospel. The perfect tense asserts that Jesus remains the “crucified one.” When we see Jesus in heaven He will have retained the marks of His crucifixion (cf. Joh 20:25) because they have become His badges of honor and glory. Jesus is the only part of the Trinity that has a physical body.
It is surely possible that this perfect tense is a consummative perfect which focuses on the completion of an event or act, implying the result (cf. Daner and Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, pp. 202-203). Jesus crucified sealed our salvation. He was the fulfillment of Gen 3:15; Psalms 22; Isaiah 53; and Zec 12:10. A suffering Messiah was a theological shock to Jews!
Notice the Messianic titles used by the early proclaimers and confessors.
1. Jesus is the Christ (Messiah) – Act 5:42; Act 9:22; Act 17:3; Act 18:5; Act 18:28; 1Co 1:23
2. Jesus is the Son of God – Act 9:20; Rom 1:3-4
3. Jesus is Lord (reflecting Lord, YHWH) – Act 2:36; Act 10:36; Act 11:20; Rom 10:9; 2Co 4:5; Col 2:6
These are theological summaries used to affirm Christological affirmation (see James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the NT, pp. 34-63).
NASB, NKJV,
NRSV”stumbling block”
TEV”that is offensive”
NJB”an obstacle”
This Greek term (i.e., skandalon) was used for the trigger mechanism on an animal trap (cf. Gal 5:11). The Jews rejected Christ because of the crucifixion (cf. Deu 21:23). They were expecting the Messiah to be a conquering military leader (and He will be when He returns!). The Jews did not recognize a Suffering Messiah (cf. Gen 3:15; Psalms 22; Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12) and a two-stage coming (i.e., incarnation and glorious return).
SPECIAL TOPIC: MESSIAH
NASB, NJB”and to the Gentiles foolishness”
NKJV”to the Greeks foolishness”
NRSV”foolishness to Gentiles”
TEV”nonsense to the Gentiles”
The Greeks rejected Christ because the concept of resurrection (i.e., because to them the physical body was the origin of evil) did not fit their preconceived philosophical ideals. This statement of Paul also shows that the supposed “dying and rising redeemer” of the fertility cults and mystery religions was not a major tenet of Greek thought and surely not the source of Paul’s view of Jesus.
Be careful not to judge the gospel by your own culture or national categories! The NKJV, following the Textus Receptus, has “Greeks,” which follows the corrected Greek uncial manuscripts C3 and Dc. All other Greek manuscripts have “Gentiles” (ethnesiu). The term “Greeks” does occur in 1Co 1:22; 1Co 1:24. Probably ancient scribes changed 1Co 1:23 to make them all consistent.
For “foolishness” see note at 1Co 1:25.
1Co 1:24 “but to those who are the called” The opening of 1 Corinthians emphasizes God’s call (i.e., election) and God’s grace as the only grounds for the Corinthian church’s salvation (cf. 1Co 1:2; 1Co 1:9; 1Co 1:26-27; Ephesians 1-2). We learn from Joh 6:44; Joh 6:65 that no one comes to God unless the Spirit draws him/her. God’s call does not eliminate or minimize the need for human response, both initially and continually.
SPECIAL TOPIC: ELECTION/PREDESTINATION AND THE NEED FOR A THEOLOGICAL BALANCE
“both Jews and Greeks” This shows the purpose of the gospel is to unite all humans in Christ. This is the mystery of God hidden from the ages, but now clearly revealed (cf. Eph 2:11 to Eph 3:13).
“Christ the power of god and the wisdom of God” The first phrase may relate to the resurrection of Christ because of the use of “power of God” in Rom 1:4.
The second phrase uniquely relates to the problem of the Corinthian church’s emphasis on knowledge. However, it may surely be a reference to Pro 8:22-31 (i.e., the personified wisdom of creation, cf. 1Co 8:6; Col 1:15-17; Heb 1:2).
1Co 1:25 “the foolishness of God is wiser than man” This is an OT theme (cf. Isa 55:8-9). It is repeated in 1Co 1:18; 1Co 1:21; 1Co 1:23. This is the term mros. It and its other forms are used often by Paul in his Corinthian letters. See Special Topic at 1Co 15:36.
1. mros (foolish), 1Co 1:25; 1Co 1:27; 1Co 3:18; 1Co 4:10
2. mria (foolishnes), 1Co 1:18; 1Co 1:21; 1Co 1:23; 1Co 2:14; 1Co 3:19
3. mopain (made foolish), 1Co 1:20
“the weakness of God is stronger than men” This is basically asserting God’s incomparable greatness. He is even magnified through human weakness (cf. 1Co 12:5; 1Co 12:7-10). It may refer to the “apparent” failure of Jesus’ death from a purely human point of view (cf. 2Co 13:4), yet in reality it was a victory of eternal consequences!
The gospel, the victory, is all of God and not of mankind. See Special Topic: Weakness at 2Co 12:9.
preaching = word, or message. Greek. logos, as in 1Co 1:17.
them that perish = those that are perishing. Greek. apollumi. Compare 2Co 2:15; 2Co 4:3. 2Th 2:10. See Joh 17:12.
foolishness. Greek. moria. Only in this Epistle, verses: 1Co 1:21, 1Co 1:23; 1Co 2:14; 1Co 3:19.
us which are, &c. = those who are being saved, (even) us. This is the order in the Greek. Salvation has more than one aspect. See Rom 13:11. Php 1:2, Php 1:12. 1Th 5:8, 1Th 5:9; 2Ti 1:9; 2Ti 3:15; 2Ti 4:18. 1Pe 1:5.
power. App-172. Compare Rom 1:16.
18.] For (explanation of the foregoing clause,-and that, assuming the mutual exclusiveness of the preaching of the Cross and wisdom of speech, and the identity of with the lovers of : q. d. wisdom of speech would nullify the Cross of Christ: for the doctrine of the Cross is to the lovers of that wisdom, folly. The reasoning is elliptical and involved, and is further complicated by the emphatic position of . and .) the [preaching (speech, or] doctrine there is a word, an eloquence, which is most powerful, the eloquence of the Cross: referring to . Stanley) of the Cross is to the perishing (those who are through unbelief on the way to everlasting perdition) folly: but to us who are being saved (Billroth (in Olsh.) remarks that . . . is a gentler expression than . . would be: the latter would put the . into strong emphasis, and exclude the opponents in a more marked manner.
are those in the way of salvation:-who by faith have laid hold on Christ and are by Him being saved, see reff.) it is the power (see ref. Rom. and note. Hardly, as Meyer,-a medium of divine Power,-etwas, wodurch Gott frastig wirft: rather, the perfection of Gods Power-the Power itself, in its noblest manifestation) of God.
1Co 1:18. , folly) and offence. See, immediately after, its antithesis, power. There are two steps in salvation, Wisdom and Power. In the case of them that perish, when the first step is taken away, the second [also] is taken away; in the case of the blessed, the second presupposes the first.-, to them, that are being saved) The Present tense is used, as in the phrase, to them that perish. He, who has begun to hear the Gospel is considered neither as lost, nor as saved, but is at the point, where the two roads meet, and now he either is perishing, or is being saved.-, the power) and wisdom, so also, ch. 1Co 2:5.
1Co 1:18
1Co 1:18
For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness;-To those who reject the story of the cross, the death of Jesus for the deliverance of man from sin is all foolishness. They regard it so, treat it so, and it, standing to them as foolishness, has no influence or power to save.
but unto us who are saved it is the power of God.-The cross, which stands for the facts and truths of the gospel, is the power to save from sin. The idea that to humble himself as a servant, to suffer and die as a criminal, is the way to exert influence and power to overcome man and to lead him away from selfishness and sin is contrary to all feelings and propensities of human nature. While Christ reveals in his humanity a new power to men, and through thus humbling himself he can lead others away from sin, he also reveals to men a new and living way to happiness. The only sure way to happiness is to help others in the name of him who became a sin offering for the whole human family.
Lecture 4
The Simplicity Of Preaching
1Co 1:18-24
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. (vv. 18-24)
The apostle Pauls great business was proclaiming the cross. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. There is a challenge in almost every word in this verse. The preaching of the cross. The word translated preaching is not the ordinary word for announcing or proclaiming, which is so frequently used in the New Testament; it is the Logos, that which is used for Christ Himself in the gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word [the Logos] , and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Joh 1:1). It is the ordinary term for a spoken message, and the apostle here puts the word of the cross in contrast to the word of wisdom of verse 17. There he says that it is his aim to preach the cross not with wisdom of words, or it might be just reversed, to give the exact meaning of the original, not with the words of wisdom. When he presented the cross, the doctrine of the cross, he did not want to hide it by beautiful verbiage, he would not obscure the message by human eloquence, nor weaken or dilute it in any way by charming rhetoric. He did not desire people to listen to him with admiration and go away exclaiming, What a brilliant preacher, what a splendid orator! instead of saying, What guilty sinners we are and how amazing is the love of God that sent His Son to die and bear the shame of the cross for our redemption!
Some years ago a gentleman living in a country town in England went to London, and while there listened to some of the great preachers of that day. Writing home to his wife he said, Last Sunday I went in the morning to hear Dr. So-and-So (he named one of the most eloquent men occupying a London pulpit at that time), and in the evening I went to the Metropolitan Tabernacle to listen to Charles Spurgeon. I was greatly impressed by both of them. Dr. Blank is certainly a great preacher, but Mr. Spurgeon has a great Savior. Do you see the difference?
It is so sadly possible to spoil the message by dependence on that which simply appeals to the human mind, and so the apostle says, I try to preach Christ, not by words of wisdom, that is, this worlds wisdom, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. Even the most utterly godless man can appreciate eloquence, oratory or rhetoric, whether he believes the message being proclaimed or not, but it is not the will of God that His servants should tickle the ears of their hearers but that they should grapple with the consciences of those to whom they are speaking. If I am addressing any unsaved ones who are still in your sins, let me earnestly remind you that you are in a most precarious position. One moment may seal your doom forever. If the brittle thread of your life were snapped and you should be ushered out into a Christless eternity, how hopeless would be your condition! How foolish then, how wicked would it be of us, if we should simply entertain you when we know, as Archibald Brown once said, There is only the thickness of your ribs between your souls and hell. How guilty before God we should be if we sought the admiration and praise of our hearers instead of endeavoring to bring them face to face with their sins before God and seeking to get them to flee to the cross for refuge.
It was this that had gripped the apostle Paul. He knew that men were lost without Christ, that there was no hope for them save through the cross, and so he said, I do not want anything that will hide the cross. I do not want to decorate the cross with flowers and ribbons and tinsel, and make people lose sight of what it really is, the declaration of mans utter depravity and the manifestation of Gods infinite love. It is the preaching of the cross, the word of the cross, in opposition to the word of wisdom. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.
What do we mean when we speak of the cross? I wonder sometimes if we have any conception in our day of what the cross meant when Paul wrote these words. Cicero says, The cross, it speaks of that which is so shameful, so horrible, it should never be mentioned in polite society, and yet you find Paul exclaiming, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (Gal 6:14). The cross meant far worse than the gallows or the electric chair means today, because it declared that the one who was hanging there was guilty of the vilest, the most awful crimes, and was utterly unfit to live, that he was rejected of man and accursed of God. And this cross bore our Lord Jesus Christ! What does it mean? It means that mans heart was so wicked, so sinful, that there was no other way by which he could be saved than through the Eternal Son of God becoming Man and suffering the most ignominious death for his redemption. But it means too that in the most complete way mans heart has been fully exposed, for when God thus sent His Son, man cried, Away with him! Crucify him, crucify him! There at the cross man told out the very worst of his nature, but God told out the infinite love of His heart. Peter said to the men of his day, Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and with wicked hands have crucified and slain (Act 2:23). If you want to know how wicked you are by nature, if you want to get an understanding of the awfulness of the sins of which your heart is capable, stand in faith before that cross and contemplate again Gods holy, spotless Son hanging on that tree suffering unspeakable anguish, the very expression of mans attitude to God, the word of the cross.
It is not merely the physical suffering that men heaped upon Jesus that made atonement for sin, for we read, When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand (Isa 53:10). God made Him to be the great sin offering. And so the word of the cross is the story of Gods infinite love to guilty men. Righteousness demanded that sin be punished, and there upon the cross it was punished to the full in the Person of our blessed Substitute. And now the word of the cross goes out to all the world, and as man at last is going to be judged by his attitude toward that cross, the [word] of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.
I am sorry they translated that word, perish, for that may throw us off the track. Some may think that someday if you reject the cross and the One who died there, you are in danger of perishing, but that is not what he is saying. It is something far more solemn, something that ought to affect you very much more, if you are unsaved. What he really says is, The [word] of the cross is to them that are lost foolishness. Them that are lost! If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost (2Co 4:3). Do you get the solemnity of that? Not in danger of being lost by-and-by, not that you will be lost if you finally persist in rejecting Christ and die in your sins. That is terribly true, but this is more solemn than that. They are lost. If the Christ of that cross is not yet your Savior, you are lost. If you get up and walk out unsaved, you go out lost and go down the street lost; if you get into your car and drive off, you drive off a lost man or a lost woman, and if a crash comes and you are suddenly ushered into eternity, you go into eternity lost, to be lost forever. Men do not think of these things, they do not face these things as they are. If the cross as yet means nothing to you, you are lost. The preaching of the cross is to them that [are lost] foolishness. Oh, they say, I do not understand it at all. The very idea that a man, no matter how good he is, could be nailed to the cross and there make atonement for my sins, is foolish, is repugnant to me. Very well, if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. That is why you do not understand; it is because you are lost. What a terrible condition to be in!
Then look at the other side. But unto us which are saved it is the power of God. Us which are saved. Of whom is he speaking? He is speaking of a people who once were lost but are now saved. But someone says, I do not get that. You mean they are in process of salvation for, of course, nobody can be sure of his final salvation until the day of judgment, when at last he stands before God and the question is there definitely decided. That is not what the Book teaches, dear friend. It contemplates people already lost and people already saved. By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works lest any man should boast (Eph 2:8-9).
An old Scotch woman had been very religious, she had gone to church all her life and she always hoped that at last she would get dying grace and be fit for heaven. She went one time to a meeting where two earnest servants of God were preaching and when she came home, they said to her, Well, Grandma, how did you like the preachers? Well, she said, I could not make them out. The first man got up and talked to folk he said were saved already, to folk so good I did not know there were any in our town like them. And then another man got up and preached to folk so wicked that he said they were lost and going to hell. But there was not one word for me. She was not lost and she was not saved, according to her own estimation. But there are just the two classes, Them that [are lost] and us which are saved, those who have put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, those who have faced their sins in the presence of God and have seen in the cross, in the work of the cross, that which has satisfied God and that in which their hearts can rest. They are saved right here and now.
Am I addressing anybody who has been in doubt about that? Perhaps you are a church member, perhaps you profess to be a Christian, and yet have often had doubts as to whether you are really saved. Suppose that you have never been saved (you had better give yourself the benefit of the doubt), will you, right now, take your place before God as a poor, lost sinner and look up in faith to Him who died on yonder cross and tell Him you are the sinner for whom He suffered and that you are going to rest in Him?
Years ago my father had an old friend who was a familiar figure in our home when I was a boy. One day after he had been saved for many years someone said to him, Mr. Ross, do you ever doubt that you are saved? Has it ever come to your mind that you have made a mistake and that you are not really saved? He said, It is strange that you should ask me that question for, do you know, last night when I was on my way to the meeting where I was to preach the gospel, it just came to me as though a voice spoke, Donald Ross, what on old hypocrite you are! You have never been saved at all, and I could hardly tell whether it was the voice of the Devil or whether it might be the voice of the Lord. I said, Man, could that be true? After years of preaching Christ to others, could it be true that I have never been saved? And then I said, Well, Lord, if it is all true that I have just been thinking I am saved, I am so thankful that Jesus died for hypocrites, and I come to Him now just as I am.
Just as I am! without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou biddst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God! I come!
This dear old saint said that in a moment the cloud was lifted and he knew that he had been listening to the voice of the Devil and not that of God.
If you are not clear, let me beg of you, shut your eyes and ears to everything else just now and lift your heart to God and trust the One who died on the cross for you, trust Him as your Savior, Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins (Act 13:38).
Well, then, unto us which are saved the word of the cross is the power of God. That is, there is no human energy that converts people, we cannot convert them by any ability of our own. Somebody said to me a short time ago, You know Dr. So-and-So, well, he is a grand man of God. He converted me ten years ago. I know that he meant that this dear servant of God had presented the gospel which he had believed. But it is not servants of Christ who do the converting. We cannot save people, we cannot give men peace with God; it is the word of the cross that is the power of God. Here is a poor, troubled, anxious soul not knowing what to do or where to go; suddenly the Spirit of God presents the cross, the fact that Christ on the cross died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and faith leaps up in the heart, and the soul says, Thank God, He died for me! In a moment that soul passes from death to life. The word of the cross is the power of God. Sometimes we have to preach about a great many other things, but in a sense I begrudge the time that has to be given to other subjects when I think of men who might be sitting before me who have not seen the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. How all this writes folly over everything of the natural mind, for the apostle referring to Isaiah says, It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Men pride themselves in their philosophies, in their reasoning powers, but no philosophy in the world would ever have reasoned out the need of the cross nor have suggested that only through the death of Christ sinners could be saved. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? that is, the reasoners, for reasoning goes for naught in the light of the cross. Where is the disputer of this world? When he mentions the scribe, he is naturally referring to the Jews, the wise men in Israel, who tried to work out a way of salvation through systems and ritual, but the apostle brushes them to one side. What does he know of the word of the cross? And then the disputer, the Greek philosopher, proud of his learning, investigating all the various sciences and systems of thought of his day. But not one of them would ever have dreamed of Christ dying on a cross as the means of salvation for sinners. So he said, Where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Mere wisdom would never have delved into the mystery of the cross. It is a striking fact that our English word, world, is made to do duty for two Greek words here. It might be rendered,
Where is the disputer of this age? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? In the first instance it is aion, the age, and in the second instance it is kosmos, this ordered universe in which we live. The whole trend of the age is against the word of the cross. The wisdom of this age would never have thought that only by the death of the Son of God on the cross salvation could be wrought out, and so far as this ordered universe is concerned, the things that men pride themselves in are only foolishness in the sight of God. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision (Psa 2:4).
Well might the omnipotent God laugh (I do not say this irreverently) as He hears the ravings of these godless professors in our universities, trying to explain the mystery of the universe, as they measure everything by their own little foot-rules, delving into things utterly beyond human comprehension, deliberately turning away from the revelation that would make everything plain.
For after that in the wisdom of God-God has permitted man to grope and grope and do his best to find out these hidden mysteries, to come to an end of himself at last-the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. What is preaching? It is a simple proclamation, and it has pleased God by what looks to man like foolishness, the simplicity of making an announcement, to save them that believe. I stand up in the name of the God of heaven and declare that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures (1Co 15:3-4). The world says, Foolishness! You could not prove that if you had to. No, I could not; but I repeat the announcement: Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And whenever a man is humble enough and lowly enough to believe the announcement, he is saved. It pleased God by the [simplicity of an announcement] to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign. They say, Give us some evidence that this is true; work some miracle. Some say, If you could work miracles today, would it not be wonderful? I do not know that it would. If I had apostolic power and could go through an audience and lay my hands upon some poor cripple and he would leap to his feet well and whole, I fancy I could fill a building and we would have all kinds of cripples coming, but I have never heard of anything like that causing poor sinners to awake and turn to Christ. Even when the apostles could do these things, men turned on them and tried to kill them, as in the case of Paul at Lystra.
It is the preaching of the cross that saves. That is what guilty sinners need. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness. Someone says, But Paul, if you know it is a stumbling block and foolishness, why dont you serve it up to your audience in such a way as to get rid of those elements? And Paul would answer, Because if I make it attractive to the natural man, it will not be the means of salvation to sinners. We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness. This involves the work of the Spirit of God. He must prepare the heart. This is the effectual call.
There is a general call that goes to all men, there is an effectual call when the Spirit of God drives the truth home, and a man realizes that God is tugging at his heart to draw him to Christ. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. This was the apostolic message. In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3). That message still has the same power as of old. God give us to preach it in dependence on the Holy Spirit.
saved
(See Scofield “Rom 1:16”)
the preaching: 1Co 1:23, 1Co 1:24, 1Co 2:2, Gal 6:12-14
to: Act 13:41, 2Co 2:15, 2Co 2:16, 2Co 4:3, 2Th 2:10
foolishness: 1Co 1:21, 1Co 1:23, 1Co 1:25, 1Co 2:14, 1Co 3:19, Act 17:18, Act 17:32
unto: 1Co 1:24, 1Co 15:2, Psa 110:2, Psa 110:3, Rom 1:16, 2Co 10:4, 1Th 1:5, Heb 4:12
Reciprocal: Exo 15:25 – a tree 2Ki 2:21 – I have healed 2Ki 13:17 – The arrow Isa 28:20 – the bed Isa 53:1 – the Isa 55:11 – shall my Jer 8:9 – lo Zec 9:15 – subdue Mat 6:23 – If Mat 11:25 – because Joh 3:4 – How Joh 3:15 – not Act 17:20 – strange Rom 10:17 – faith 1Co 2:6 – not 1Co 3:18 – If 1Co 4:10 – are fools Gal 5:11 – the offence Phi 3:18 – enemies 2Ti 1:9 – hath Rev 14:3 – no
THE WORD OF THE CROSS
The word of the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness; but unto us which are being saved it is the power of God.
1Co 1:18 (R. V.)
Any view of Christianity which leaves out of consideration the necessity of a reconciliation between the soul and God, and the need of Divine power in daily lifewhether the omission be made in order that our religion may fit in with metaphysical speculation, or because there is no longer any room left in our philosophy of life for anything superhumanin effect robs Christianity of its essential characteristic, and reduces it, when any attempt is made to apply it practically, to foolishness. Your own experience in your own life, if you are honest with yourself, is sufficient to expose the inadequacy of any doctrine which does not give its true place to the Word of the Cross.
I. The Word of the Cross is the revelation of the reconciliation of God with man.It teaches that there is no need to live under the cloud, that we may walk in the light as He is the light, and that the Blood of His Son Jesus may cleanse us from all sin. The word of the Cross is the power of God unto those that are being saved. I do not pretend to be able to define exactly how the sacrifice which Christ offered upon the Cross is accepted on our behalf, or how His righteousness stands for ours. That is one of the secret things which belong unto the Lord our God. It is sufficient for me that the fact of the efficacy of His death is revealed in the Bible, and may be put to the test of experience. We learn it under many figures. It is an atonement, or setting at one of ourselves and God. It is a ransom, redemption, or buying back of our souls which were lost. It is a sacrifice in which the Victim was offered in our stead, bearing our sins on His own Head. These are all figures, each of which gives one side of the great truth which lies underneath. It little matters what theory we hold as to how Christs death wrought the salvation of man; but it is of immense moment whether we have laid hold of His salvation in our lives. I call you to witness, you who have opened your hearts freely for the Lord Jesus Christ to reign as your Master and your King, how the cloud rolled away between yourself and God, and how His peace took possession of your soul, when you found for the first time in your life that Jesus Christ was your Saviour. Christs reconciliation through the Cross is a matter of experience, and Christianity is still foolishness without it.
II. But reconciliation with God is not the full content of the Word of the Cross.It is also the power of God unto us that are being saved; that is, a continuous energising power in our daily lives, giving us victory over the sins which used to bind us. If it were nothing more than a reconciliation, and brought no power in its train, the deep blue depths of our spiritual sky would soon be flecked once more with clouds of sin, which, undispersed by any heavenly glow, would blend to form the leaden hue we know so well. But here again we may appeal to experience. Not to experience in moments of excitement, but in the humdrum routine of ordinary life. God does give power in the daily life. Look around youis there not proof of the power of the Cross in the lives of many whom you know well? Have you never seen a change in the very faces of some who speak little of it, but who are winning the victory over sins to which they once were slaves? Those who have watched the change in a human soul wrought by the grace of God, and seen human weakness turned into Divine strength, know that the power of God is given to men. We who have felt it in our own lives can testify that victory over sin is no delusion; it is a tremendous reality.
III. Thank God, the way to Him is still open to all of us.There is not one to whom life is not still bright with some promise if it leads pass the Cross of Christ. What He asks is the complete surrender of your whole being to Himself. There must be no reserve in any part. You must be ready to give up all for Him, to go where He sends you, to do what he bids youyou must be His entirely. What He offers is pardon for your sin; peace with God, that you may be able to look up into His face as a son to a father, with assurance of perfect communion. He offers you power in your life, both victory over yourself, and strength for your Master in the presence of ungodliness and wrong. The choice He leaves to you. God help you to choose aright.
Rev. E. C. Sherwood.
Illustration
Too often men do not put to the test the power of God because they are not willing to surrender their lives and wills to the work of Christ in their hearts. Too often the love of our own comfort, or of some sin from which we do not really want to be free, stands in our way, and we put off the matter till another day. Something whispers that the door of mercy is ever open. So it is, but practical experience teaches us that souls do not always want to enter there. The wonderful poem by Tennyson entitled The Vision of Sin illustrates what I mean. It opens with the description of a young man full of promise led away by an evil companion, who introduces him to sensuous indulgence symbolised by wine, and described under the figure of voluptuous music. Meanwhile God, in the awful solemnity of a rugged mountain height, revealed Himself unheeded, as the dawning of the day. And then the morning mist, heavy, hueless, cold, rolled down the mountain slope and engulfed the youth and the palace of sin, shutting out Gods heaven, and enveloping everything under its clammy pall. When he appears again the young man has been changed by the vapour from a bright and promising boy into a withered and cynical old man, embittered against God, and incapable of a single noble thought. Finally the scene changes back to the mountain height, towering now over a valley hideous with a seething mass of corruption below, and judgment is passed on the mans life. As you read the poem see in the bright youth who
Rode a horse with wings, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down,
your own soul with its boundless possibilities of soaring to heights of fellowship with God, if sin and passion do not bind you to earth. See in the withered old man, maudlin over his wine-cup, the soul of one who has deliberately followed the path of his own pleasure until all his power of enjoyment is gone and every spiritual faculty is deadthen ask yourself the question with which the poem closes, Is there any hope?
1Co 1:18. The Greek nation was devoted to the importance (as it was considered) of philosophy, or what we would term worldly wisdom. Its people estimated any theory proposed to them in proportion to whether it agreed or disagreed with this philosophy, and it was in view of this truth that Paul wrote as he did in this and several verses following. However, the relation between divine truth and philosophy is somewhat similar to that between it and “science.” When this last term is understood, it is found to be in harmony with divine truth. Likewise, when true philosophy is understood, it will be seen that it, too, is in harmony with divine truth. In support of this from the standpoint of history, I shall quote from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia:
“PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. Both philosophy and religion must first have had some historical development before their relations could appear -for investigation. In fact, they may be said to have proceeded apart until the Christian era, when they openly met as strangers whose mutual interests were yet to be perceived and adjusted. It was not until Christianity had emerged from the symbols of Judaism, that religion stood forth in a mature form, free from philosophic speculation; and it was not until Grecian wisdom had outgrown the myths of Heathenism, that philosophy appeared in a pure state, disengaged from religious superstition. Nor was it strange that the first meeting of the two great powers should have resulted in misunderstanding and conflict. The early Christians, claiming a revealed knowledge from Heaven, could only denounce philosophy as the foolishness of the world; and the philosophers, in their skeptical pride of intellect, were fain to despise Christianity as a mere vulgar superstition. The struggle had its practical issue in the bitter persecutions which prevailed until the triumph of Christianity under Constantine.” Corinth was in Greece and the church there was made up in most part of Greeks, hence the occasion of Paul’s teaching on the subject of worldly wisdom. The reader should note this paragraph and refer to it frequently as he reads the comments on the following verses. Perish and saved in this verse refer respectively to the philosophers and Christians described in the quotation from Herzog. Before this development, the philosophers were inclined to judge religion by the standard of their theories, and Paul was opposing that position.
1Co 1:18. For the word of the cross is to them that are perishingthat are pursuing a course whose end is destructionfoolishness. For if to bid them change their whole course of life would startle them, to expect them to do it by believing in one who died a malefactors death would seem nothing less than sheer absurdity.
But unto us who are being savedin the sense of Act 2:40; Act 2:44 (and see 2Co 2:15), it is the power of God-divinely efficacious. Yes, the Gospel attracts or repels, is embraced or rejected, according to the standard by which it is judged and the object in life of those who hear it. This is the great lesson of the parable of the Sower; and see Joh 5:44; Joh 7:17; Joh 12:42-43.
Observe here, 1. The character and description given of the preaching of the gospel: it is called the preaching of the cross, that is, of a crucified Saviour; it represents him who died upon the cross as the proper object of our faith and hope, of our affiance and trust.
Observe, 2. The low and mean esteem which the philosphers and wise men among the heathens had of the doctrine of the cross, and of the preaching of the gospel; they esteemed it foolishness: The preaching of the cross is, to them that perish, foolishness.
So esteemed, 1. In regard of the subject of it; it is the doctrine of the cross, that is, of a crucified and despised Saviour; it accquaints us, that the eternal God, in the fulness of time, became a mortal man; that life became subject to death, and blessing subject to a curse; all which are such appearing contradictions, that natural reason is very prone to scorn and deride them.
2. The wisdom of the world, or the wise men among the Gentiles, did esteem the preaching of the gospel foolishness, in regard of the manner of it; because the gospel doth nakedly and barely propound some doctrines of faith, and positively requires our assent to them from the evidence if the things themselves, and from the authority of the principal speaker, God himself.
The mysteries of the Christian religion, though not contrary to reason, yet are above our comprehension; notwithstanding which, they do not only require our assent, but also challenge the obedience and adoration of our faith.
Now the wisdom of the world is not satisfied with God’s autos efey, with God’s authority in asserting; but requires that every doctrine of faith, and every mystery of the gospel, be made so plain and obvious, so clear and perspicuous, that their shallow reason may be able fully to comprehend it; for these reasons is the preaching of the cross, to them that perish, foolishness.
Observe, 3. What efficacy and virtue the gospel is of unto believers: Unto us which are saved, says the apostle, it is the power of God; that is, a powerful instrument in God’s hand for men’s conversion and salvation; the word preached is the organ or instrument through which the vital power of the Spirit is conveyed unto the souls of sinners, how much soever it is contemned and despised in the world.
Observe, 4. How the apostle upbraids the pride and folly of the learned philosophers and reputed wise men among the heathens, who, though they excelled in natural wisdom, yet despised evangelical truth, making reason their supreme rule, and philosophy their highest principle: “Where,” says the apostle, is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? That is, where is the wisdom now of the wisest philosopher among the Gentiles? where is the wisdom of the scribe, or the interpreter of the law among the Jews? where is the disputer of this world, or the curious searcher into the depths and secrets of nature? Let them show so many brought, by all their wisdom, learning, and eloquence, to the knowledge of God, and to the practice of their duty, as the preaching of a crucified Christ hath done; yea, all their natural wisdom is mere folly, in comparison of the glorious effects which the preaching of the gospel has produced.
The Foolishness of Preaching
To those who are worldly minded, the preaching of the gospel is silly and absurd. To those who “are being saved” (footnote ASV) the gospel is mighty, like dynamite. The Greek word used here is dunamis as is also the case in Rom 1:16 . To further show man must learn to rely upon God for knowledge which is valuable, Paul quotes from Isa 29:14 . It simply is not within the scope of man’s ability to save himself ( 1Co 1:18-19 ; Jer 10:23 ).
While men became big headed over human knowledge, it was nothing compared with God’s wisdom. By his wisdom, man was unable to know God, that is, his mind and character. Though man used everything at his disposal, he was unable to discover God without divine revelation. As Paul said on Mars Hill, “So that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” ( Act 17:22-31 ; especially 27). Though it seemed silly to man, God revealed his will for him in the preaching of the gospel ( 1Co 1:20-21 ).
1Co 1:18-21. The preaching of the cross The doctrine of the crucifixion of the Son of God, to expiate the sins of mankind, and procure salvation for such as should believe in him; is to them that perish By obstinately rejecting the only name whereby they can be saved; foolishness Accounted an absurd, ridiculous, and impossible thing, and what no men of sense will believe; but unto us who are saved That is, believe in order to salvation; it is the power of God The great instrument whereby his power regenerates, sanctifies, and finally saves us. For, &c. As if he had said, It appears that this is the only means of salvation, because all other ways of mans own invention are ineffectual; it is written And the words are remarkably applicable to this great event, (see the note on Isa 29:14,) I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, &c. That carnal and worldly wisdom, which they so much confide in and boast of, as to despise the doctrine of the gospel, shall be of no advantage to them for their salvation. Where is the wise, &c. The deliverance of Judea from Sennacherib is what Isaiah refers to in these words, (see note on Isa 33:18;) in a bold and beautiful allusion to which, the apostle, in the clause that follows, triumphs over all the opposition of human wisdom, to the victorious gospel of Christ. What could the wise men of the Gentiles do against this? Or the Jewish scribes? Or the disputers of this world? Those among both, who, proud of their acuteness, were fond of controversy, and thought they could confute all opponents. Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world That is, shown it to be very foolishness? For after that Since it came to pass, that in the wisdom of God According to his wise disposals, leaving them to make the trial; the world Whether Jewish or Gentile, by all its boasted wisdom knew not God Though the whole creation declared its Creator, and though he declared himself by his servants the prophets, the heathen were not brought to the true saving knowledge of God, and the generality of the Jews did not attain that spiritual, experimental, and practical knowledge of him, which entitles to, and prepares for eternal life. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching By a way which those who perish count mere foolishness; to save them that believe From the guilt and power of sin here, and from its consequences hereafter.
Vv. 18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
The for announces the proof of the assertion (1Co 1:17): that to preach the gospel as a word of wisdom would be to destroy its very essence.
The antithesis of the words foolishness and power is regarded by Rckert and Meyer as inexact, because the opposite of foolishness is wisdom, not force. But these commentators have failed to see that the term wisdom would here have expressed too much or too little: too much for those who reject the gospel, and in whose eyes it can be nothing else than folly; too little for those who are disposed to receive it, and who need to find in it something better than a wisdom enlightening them. As sin is a fact, salvation must be laid hold of above all as a fact, not as a system. It is an act wrought by the arm of God, telling with power on the conscience and on the heart of the sinner: this alone can rescue from ruin a world which is perishing under the curse and in the corruption of sin. The two datives: , to them that perish, and , for those who are saved, have not an exactly similar meaning; the former indicating a simple subjective appreciation, the latter including besides an effective relation, the idea of an effect produced. The participles are in the present, not as anticipating a final, eternal result (Meyer), or as containing the idea of a Divine predestination (Rckert), but as expressing two acts which are passing into fulfilment at the very time when Paul mentions them. In fact, perdition and salvation gradually come to their consummation in man simultaneously with the knowledge which he receives of the gospel.
The addition of the pronoun , to us, is due to the fact that the letter is intended to be read to the believers in full assembly.
This way of treating human wisdom taken by God in the gospel is the fulfilment of threatenings already pronounced against it in the prophetic writings:
For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. [From this point Paul proceeds to contrast the “words,” or message of the cross, with the “wisdom of words,” or worldly wisdom, i. e., the philosophical messages or schemes of men, of which he has just spoken; having particularly in mind those of the two leading classes; viz.: Greeks and Jews. He first notes that the word of the cross is differently viewed by two different classes; those who, whether as disciples of Greek philosophers or of Jewish scribes, have dulled their moral perception by following worldly wisdom, and leading a worldly, perishing life, look upon it as foolishness; while those who have quickened their apprehension by leading a godly life, look upon it as God’s saving power.]
18. For the word of the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. So long as the wicked are in this world they are in a land of grace, and have a chance to be saved. Hence they have not utterly perished, but are only in a perishing condition. So long as the righteous are in this world they are not finally saved, but are exposed to temptation, still on probation, liable to forfeit all and make eternal shipwreck. Hence they are only in the process of salvation, i. e., being saved by the blessed Holy Spirit. Regeneration is primary salvation; sanctification, full salvation and glorification, final salvation.
1Co 1:18 to 1Co 2:5. The Cross, Folly to the World, is the Power and Wisdom of God.Paul now explains and justifies 1Co 1:17 b, which to Greek readers must have sounded strange, almost a defiant paradox. The story of the Cross is folly to those who are in the way of ruin, but it attests itself in our experience to us, who are in the way of salvation, as the power of God. And this is in harmony with Scripture. For Gods wise purpose ordained that the worlds wisdom should be unable to know Him. There is an effective contrast between Divine and human wisdom. The world seeks through its wisdom to know God, but Gods wisdom checkmates the worlds wisdom and thwarts its aspirations, since He has planned that man shall know Him through the Gospel, which seems arrant folly to human wisdom. It is here precisely as with the quest for righteousness. God shut up all unto disobedience that through the Cross He might have mercy on all (Rom 11:32). He shut up all to ignorance that through the Cross He might illuminate all. The intellectual was as signal as the moral defeat, Gods sovereign grace rescues mans bankrupt wisdom (Findlay). For it is a characteristic of Jews to seek after signs, of Greeks to seek after wisdom. Our preaching of Christ crucified, Paul says, is to Jews a stumbling-block for the Law pronounces a curse on him who is hanged (Deu 21:23), and thus the mode of death negatives for the Jew the claim of Jesus to Messiahship, while to Greeks it is just mad. But we know them to be wrong, we who are called of God; for our experience proves that this message embodies both the power and the wisdom of God. Folly and weakness, yes; but that folly of God which is wiser, that weakness of His which is stronger than men. Among the called are his readers, who form an excellent illustration, an illustration all the more welcome to Paul that it serves to abate their unwholesome conceit. They number very few wise according to the worlds estimate, or people with civic standing, or high birth. The folly of the Gospel is clear from this that God proclaimed it to fools, people of no account, belonging to the lower orders, such as most of themselves. He deliberately chose the foolish, the weak, the base, the contemptible, the things that count for nothing, to bring to nought the worlds substantial realities, so that no flesh should boast before Him. But from Him they derive their being in Christ, who became in His Incarnation Divine Wisdom for us, manifesting itself as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, so that He alone deserves the glory. And when he came to Corinth Paul acted on the same principle. It was with no eloquence or philosophy that he unfolded the mystery of redemption. He had decided not to know anything beyond Jesus Christ, and Him as crucified. And corresponding to the folly of the matter was the weakness of the manner, ineffective, timid, anxious, without persuasive power or philosophical presentation. Yet his preaching was endowed with convincing force, because God imparted His Divine Spirit and energy to it, with the intent that their faith should repose not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
1Co 1:19. The quotation is from Isa 29:14, where the politicians who are planning an Egyptian alliance are denounced; reject is substituted for conceal under the influence of Psa 32:10.
1Co 1:20. From Isa 33:18 and perhaps Isa 19:12.
1Co 1:23. Probably no doctrine of a suffering Messiah had been developed in Judaism so early as Pauls day; the doctrine of a crucified Messiah could not possibly have been. That such a doctrine was formulated, and such a fact as the crucifixion asserted, is a decisive proof of the historical existence and crucifixion of Jesus (p. 814.).
1Co 1:30. Read mg.
1Co 2:1. mystery: i.e. Gods eternal counsel of redemption, long concealed but now revealed. Many prefer mg. testimony, which is better attested, especially as mystery may have been suggested by 1Co 2:7. It is, however, neither clear nor very satisfactory in sense, and may have been suggested by 1Co 1:6.
Verse 18
The preaching of the cross; the preaching of the death of Christ upon the cross, as a sacrifice for sin.–Is to them that perish, foolishness; that is, it seems so to them.
1Co 1:18. Explains and justifies, in outline, the motive just given. Of this outline, 1Co 1:19-30 are a filling up.
Word of the cross: the announcement, as good news, that Christ has died.
To them that are perishing: same words in 2Co 2:15; 2Co 4:3; 2Th 2:10. See note under Rom 2:24. The destruction of those who reject Christ has already begun, and daily goes on. For, in them, spiritual forces are already at work which unless arrested by God, will inevitably bring them to eternal death. Since they are now beyond human help, they are said in Mat 10:6; Eph 2:1; Rom 7:9, to be lost and dead. But since they are still within reach of Christ’s salvation but daily going further from it, Paul prefers to speak of them here, not as lost, but as losing themselves or perishing.
Foolishness: unfit, from an intellectual point of view, to attain any good result. Such is the Gospel, to the thoughts of, and in its practical effect upon, those whose faces are turned towards eternal ruin.
Being saved: same contrast in 2Co 2:15 : experiencing day by day a present deliverance from spiritual evil, and thus daily approaching final salvation. See Rom 5:9.
Power of God: Rom 1:16. The announcement that Christ died for us is, to God’s people, the strong hand of God stretched out to save them, and daily saving them. Thus our own thoughts about the story of the cross will tell us to which of these classes we belong. Notice Paul’s love of contrast, as in Rom 8:12; Rom 8:15. etc.
1:18 For the {m} preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the {n} power of God.
(m) The preaching of Christ crucified, or the type of speech which we use.
(n) It is that in which he declares his marvellous power in saving his elect, which would not so evidently appear if it depended upon any help of man, for if it did man might attribute that to himself which is to be attributed only to the cross of Christ.
The folly of a crucified Messiah 1:18-25
"This paragraph is crucial not only to the present argument (1Co 1:10 to 1Co 4:21) but to the entire letter as well. Indeed, it is one of the truly great moments in the apostle Paul. Here he argues, with OT support, that what God had always intended and had foretold in the prophets, he has now accomplished through the crucifixion: He has brought an end to human self-sufficiency as it is evidenced through human wisdom and devices." [Note: Fee, The First . . ., p. 68.]
The message (logos) of the Cross, in contrast to the speech (logos) of human wisdom (1Co 1:17), has the Cross as its central theme. When people hear it, it produces opposite effects in those who are on the way to perdition and in those on the way to glory. Paul contrasted foolishness and weakness with wisdom and power (cf. Rom 1:16).
"What would you think if a woman came to work wearing earrings stamped with an image of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima?
"What would you think of a church building adorned with a fresco of the massed graves at Auschwitz? . . .
"The same sort of shocking horror was associated with cross and crucifixion in the first century." [Note: D. A. Carson, The Cross & Christian Ministry, p. 12.]
2. The gospel as a contradiction to human Wisdom 1:18-2:5
Paul set up a contrast between cleverness of speech (impressive oratory) and the Cross in 1Co 1:17. Next he developed this contrast with a series of arguments. Boasting in men impacts the nature of the gospel. He pointed out that the gospel is not a form of sophia (human wisdom). Its message of a crucified Messiah does not appeal to human wisdom (1Co 1:18-25). Second, its recipients are not especially wise in the eyes of humanity (1Co 1:26-31). Third, Paul’s preaching was not impressive in its human wisdom, but it bore powerful results (1Co 2:1-5).
"There are . . . three particularly important expository passages in 1 Corinthians. They may be regarded as the letter’s principal theological discourses and as such deserve special attention.
"These three key discourses deal, respectively, with the wisdom of the cross (1Co 1:18 to 1Co 2:16), the nature of Christian community (1Co 12:4 to 1Co 13:13), and the resurrection of the dead (chap. 15). In each instance Paul’s reflections on the topic are deliberate and focused, and lead him to develop a more or less extended and coherent argument. Moreover, each of these passages occurs at an important point within the overall structure of the letter. The discourse on wisdom, situated prominently at the beginning of the letter, supports the apostle’s urgent appeals for unity (1Co 1:10 to 1Co 4:21). It can be argued that the discourse on Christian community undergirds, directly or indirectly, all of the counsels and instructions in chaps. 8 through 14. And the discourse on resurrection, a response to those who claim that ’there is no resurrection of the dead’ (1Co 15:12), is located prominently at the end of the letter." [Note: Victor Paul Furnish, "Theology in 1 Corinthians," in Pauline Theology. Vol. II: 1 & 2 Corinthians, p. 63.]
"In this part of the [first] discourse [i.e., 1Co 1:18 to 1Co 2:5] the argument proceeds in three steps: Paul makes his main point in 1Co 1:18-25, confirms it in 1Co 1:26-31 with an appeal to the Corinthians’ own situation, and then further confirms it in 1Co 2:1-5 with reference to what and how he had preached in Corinth.
"The apostle’s thesis is registered first in 1Co 1:18 and then twice restated (in 1Co 1:21 and 1Co 1:23-24). [Note: Ibid., p. 65.]
Superficial displays of erudite oratory, which to the Corinthians appeared to be demonstrations of wisdom, impressed them too greatly. Paul pointed out that the wisdom of God, the gospel of Christ, had power that mere worldly wisdom lacked.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)