1 Corinthians 1
McGeeCHAPTER 1THEME: Centrality of Christ crucified; correction of divisions
1 Corinthians 1:1
SALUTATION AND THANKSGIVINGWill you notice in your Bible that the little verb “to be” is in italics, which means it is not in the original. It should read, “Paul, called an apostle.” This declares what kind of an apostle he is. He is a called apostle. God called him; the Lord Jesus Christ waylaid him on the Damascus road. Then the Spirit of God taught him yonder in the desert of Arabia. He is a called apostle. He is an apostle of Jesus Christ “through the will of God.” It is the will of God that made him an apostle. This is so important. It is wonderful today to be able to say, “I am where I am and I am doing what I am doing because of the will of God.” Is that your situation? If you can say that, then I do not need to add that you are a very happy, joyful Christian. You are not only a happy, joyful Christian, but you are one who is well-oriented into life. You have no frustrations. Of course you may have disturbing experiences occasionally, but deep down underneath there is that tremendous satisfaction. Paul had that when he could say that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God. “Sosthenes our brother"apparently Sosthenes had brought the message from the church at Corinth, and now he is going to carry this epistle back to them. He is the one who is joining Paul in these greetings.
1 Corinthians 1:2
Notice it is “unto the church of God which is at Corinth.” It is called the church of God because He is the One who is the Architect of the church. The letter is directed to the “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The church is at Corinth, but it is in Christ Jesus. The address of the church is not important, but the person of Christ is all-important. What does it mean to be a Christian? It means to be in Christ! Whether you are at Corinth or at Los Angeles, at Ephesus or at New York City is incidental. The important question is: Are you in Christ Jesus? Paul calls them “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The term sanctification is used in several different ways, as we have already seen in Romans. Here it is positional sanctification, which is the position we have in Christ. When sanctification is joined to God the Father or God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, then it is generally positional. When sanctification is connected with the Holy Spirit, then that is practical sanctification. We will learn in verse 1Co_1:30 that Christ has been made unto us sanctificationalong with wisdom and righteousness and redemption. He is our sanctification. You see, friend, you are not going to heaven until you are perfectI am not either. And I am not perfect, not even near it. The fact of the matter is that if you knew me like I know myself, you wouldn’t listen to me. But wait a minute! Don’t tune me out because, if I knew you like you know yourself, I wouldn’t speak to you. So let’s just stay connected here, if you don’t mind. Sanctification is a position we have in Christ. If you have trusted Him, He has been made over to you your sanctification. You are as saved right now as you will be a million years from now because you are saved in Christ. You cannot add anything to that. There is also a practical sanctification, which is something that varies. These Corinthians don’t sound like sanctified saints. The work of the Holy Spirit was not very much in evidence in their lives. But they were positionally sanctified in Christ Jesus. They were “called to be saints"again, note that “to be” is in italics, which means it is not in the original. Just as Paul was a called apostle, they were called saints. We are also called saints. We do not become saints by what we do; we become saints because of our position in Christ. The word saint actually means “set aside to God.” Every Christian should be set aside to God. For example, the pans and vessels that were used in the tabernacle and later in the temple were called holy vessels.
Holy? Yes, because they were for the use of God. On what basis is a child of God a saint or holy? On the basis that he is for the use of God. This is the position that we have. I repeat again, one is not a saint on the basis of what one does.
All of mankind is divided between the “saints” and the “ain’ts.” If you “ain’t” in Christ, then you are an “ain’t.” If you are in Christ, then you are a “saint.” The Corinthians are called saints together “with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Possibly it would be more correct to say, “with all that in every place, both theirs and ours, who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.” This also indicates that the teaching of this epistle is addressed to the church at large, which is composed of all who call upon the Lord Jesus, whether it be in Corinth or elsewhere. Now Paul uses his usual introduction: “grace and peace.”
1 Corinthians 1:3
Grace and peace are always in that sequence. Grace (charis) was the word of greeting in the Greek world. Peace is the Hebrew shalom, a form of greeting in the religious world. Paul combined these two words and lifted them to the highest level. You and I are saved by the grace of God; it is love in action. When we have been saved by the grace of God, then we can have the peace of God in our hearts. Have you received Christ as your Savior? Are your sins on Christ? If they are, you will have peace in your heart because He bore your sins. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom_5:1). Grace and peace are two great words.
1 Corinthians 1:4
“By Jesus Christ” would be better translated “in Jesus Christ” because it is in Christ that we have all of these blessings. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (see Eph_1:3). This is the place of blessing. “Jesus Christ” should be Christ JesusChrist is His title, while Jesus is His human name. Christ is literally anointed, which is the official appellation of the long-promised Savior. Is it important to say Christ Jesus instead of Jesus Christ? It was to Paul. Paul tells us that he never knew Him after the flesh. That is, he didn’t know the Jesus who walked this earth in the days of His flesh. He may have seen Him; I think he was present at the Crucifixion. But his first personal contact was with the resurrected Christ, and to Paul He was always the Lord of glory. In most of Paul’s epistles it should read Christ Jesus rather than Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:5
This is what Paul is talking about in Col_3:16 when he says: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Since I can’t sing it, I can say it; that is, I can talk about the Word of God. In some churches the Psalms are sung. I think the whole Bible could be put to music. But I couldn’t sing it. The important thing is to have the Word of Christ in our hearts. That does not necessarily mean to memorize it.
It means to obey it. If Christ is in your heart, you are obeying Him, and you are thinking upon Him. He occupies your mind and your heart. Some of the meanest little brats that I have ever met have memorized over a hundred verses of Scripture. That doesn’t mean no one should memorize Scripture just because some mean brats have memorized it. It does mean that simply memorizing Scripture is not what is meant by hiding it in your heart.
You hide it in your heart, my friend, when you obey Him, think about Him, are enriched in [not by] him.” When He becomes the Lord in your life, it will solve many of your problems. That is what Paul is going to talk about in this epistle.
1 Corinthians 1:6
Here he intimates one of the problems that this church was having. They were carnal. They were occupied with only one gift. Paul says at the very beginning that he doesn’t want them to come behind in any gift. There are many gifts. Paul wants all these gifts to be manifested in the church. “Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” means that they are to be occupied with Him.
1 Corinthians 1:8
He says “blameless”; he does not say they will be faultless. There will always be someone who will find fault with you. But you are not to be worthy of blame. “That ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And the “day of our Lord Jesus Christ” is not only referring to the present day, but to the day He will come and take His church out of the world. Paul will talk about that in this epistle also. Now we come to the last verse of Paul’s introduction, the salutation and thanksgiving. This verse could easily be passed over with the feeling that you hadn’t missed very much. Yet I feel that verse 1Co_1:9 is probably the key to the epistle. It emphasizes that the Lord Jesus Christ is the solution to the problems that they had in the church and also to the personal problems that were present among the believers in Corinth. It is startling to note the similarities between the problems in the Corinthian church and the problems today. The solution is the same now as it was then.
1 Corinthians 1:9
Have you noticed that the Lord Jesus Christ is mentioned in this section in practically every verse? Actually, it isn’t practically every verse; it is every verse. This is the ninth reference to Him in nine verses. It is obvious that Paul is putting an emphasis upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is an extended name given to our Lord here"called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” This gives four points of identification for Him. So there is no way of misunderstanding. He makes two tremendous statements: God is faithful, and we are called unto the fellowship of His Son. “God is faithful.” Men are not always faithful. Even believers are not always faithful. But God is faithful. “By whom ye were called” is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We are called “unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” The word that is important here in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ is fellowship. The word is the Greek koinonia, and it is used by Paul again and again. Actually, the word can have several different meanings. It can mean fellowship as we understand it today. It can be used to mean a contribution. In Rom_15:26 he says they made a certain koinonia for the poor saints which were at Jerusalem, and there it means a contribution.
In 1Co_10:16 the word koinonia is used in connection with Communion. He is speaking of the Lord’s Supper and writes: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the [koinonia] communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the [koinonia] communion of the body of Christ?” Koinonia can also mean a partnership, and I believe that is the way it is used here in this ninth verse. “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the [partnership] fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Now this is without doubt one of the greatest privileges that is given to us. If you are in Christ, if you have come to Him and accepted Him as your Savior, then you are in partnership with Christ. He is willing to be our partner. Therefore this means an intimate relationship to Christ. There are different kinds of partnerships. There can be a partnership in business. I know two men who are in partnership. These fellows were friends in the military service, and when they came out of the service years ago, they formed a partnership in business. One of them was converted to Christ; the other was not. It has been an unhappy partnership ever since then. They have a big business with a lot of investments and the partnership cannot be broken. It is a partnership, but it is not a happy one. Then there is marriage with a partnership in a love relationship. This should be a very close, intimate relationship. There is a passage in the Old Testament that makes me smile because I know God had man and wife in mind when He wrote it. He said among other things that they were not to hitch an ox and an ass together for plowing. They were not to plow together. Well, in marriage I have seen many an ox and an ass hitched up together! That ought not to be because marriage is a partnership. What does it mean, then, to be in partnership with the Lord Jesus? For one thing, it means that in business you own things together with Him. Everything that I own belongs to Jesus Christ. It belongs to Him as much as it does to me. Therefore, He is interested in what I own. Now I must confess that there was a time when I owned a few things that I don’t think He cared about.
There was a time when I very selfishly thought only of myself in connection with what I owned. But now, although I don’t own too muchwhen He is in partnership with me, He is not in what you would call big businesswhat I have is His. I have a nice Chevrolet car because a wonderful dealer helped me get it. When I drove out with it, it was mine, but I told the Lord Jesus that it was His too. He has taken many a ride in it with me, by the way. Whatever I have is His also.
I thank Him for my house, and I thank Him for taking care of it because it is His, too, you see. Whatever I have is His. The marriage partnership means different things. It means having mutual interests. I’m in that kind of partnership with the Lord Jesus too. That means that Christ is interested in me and I am interested in Him. That carries it to a pretty high plane, you see. Also, we have a mutual devotion.
His resources are mine, and mine are His. He doesn’t get very much, but He owns me. I have presented my body to Him. Now that answers quite a few questions for me about where I can go and what I can do. For example, I used to smoke quite a bit. Now I have metastatic cancer in the lungs, and it would be pretty foolish for me to smoke now.
However, long ago when I made the discovery, not just that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but also that Christ belongs to me and I belong to Christ, I wanted to give Him the best body that I could. That is when I gave up smoking. That decided the question for me. Do you see that our decisions are made on a higher plane than simply “Dare I do this?” or “Ought I do that?” We belong to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ belongs to us. Also in the love partnership there is a mutual service. God accommodates Himself to our weakness. I need His gentleness, and I accept His power. A verse of Scripture which deals with this is a verse that I believe has been mistranslated. This was called to my attention by G. Campbell Morgan.
The verse is Isa_63:9: “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.” It sounds as if in our weakness He becomes weak. The better translation puts it in the negative: “In all affliction he was not afflicted.” That is a lot more meaningful to me. It means that when I stumble and fall, He does not stumble and fall. He accommodates Himself to my stumbling, my blindness, my ignorance, my weakness. Although He accommodates Himself to that, He does not become weak at all. I heard a preacher make the statement that if you get into trouble ignorantly without realizing it, or you are caught by circumstances, He will help you out of it.
But if you go into sin deliberately and foolishly, He will let you alone rather than help you work it out. I am here to say that this has not been my experience. I have made many blunders, and I have stumbled, and I have fallen. Many times I have done it deliberately. Yet my Lord never let me down. He was always there.
He accommodated Himself to my weakness. How wonderful that is, friend! The partnership of Jesus Christ is the solution to the problems of life. Verse 1Co_1:9 concludes Paul’s salutation. Actually, all the rest of the epistle is a big parenthesis until we come to 1Co_15:58: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” “Therefore” gathers up all this marvelous epistle and goes way back here to verse 1Co_1:9. I can depend on the faithfulness of God “by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” It has taken me a long time to learn this. In fact, I have had to retire to learn this. I am just going ahead with Him as my partner. I face all of today’s problems with Him as my partner. I can count on Him. I can look to Him. He is part and parcel of all of it. This is the solution to the problems and the frustrations of life, my beloved. This concludes the introduction, which is a salutation and thanksgiving. The body of the epistle concerns conditions in the Corinthian church, and there were real problems, as we shall see.
1 Corinthians 1:10
DIVISIONS AND PARTY SPIRITVerse 1Co_1:10 begins a new section in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian believers. He is addressing himself now to the primary problem in the Corinthian church. It is surprising to see that their problems have a very familiar ring. I don’t know of a church today that does not have problems, and many of them are the same as those that the Corinthian believers faced. CENTRALITY OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED CORRECTS DIVISIONSNotice that the Lord Jesus Christ is again mentioned in this verse. This epistle emphasizes the lordship of Christ. We hear a great deal about His lordship, but we see very little of it today. For this reason the church and individual Christians have serious problems. It is not enough to talk about the lordship of Christ. Is He your Lord? Have you made Him your Lord and your Master? “That ye all speak the same thing” doesn’t mean that everyone must say the identical words. It means believers shouldn’t be clawing one another to death, fighting with each other, hating each other. The word for “divisions” is schisma. It means there should be no open break, no fracturing of the church, which is done by fighting, by gossip, criticism, hatred, or bitterness. Believe me, friend, I see that in many contemporary churches. These things cannot be in your life if Jesus Christ is your partner. Let “there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” What is “the same mind”? Well, it is the mind of Christ (see Php_2:5-8).
1 Corinthians 1:11
The word for “contentions” here is eris. Now Eris was the goddess of strife and wrangling. There was strife, quarreling, schisms, and wranglings in the church at Corinth. Paul got his information firsthandhe named his sourcehe said he got his information from Chloe. My friend, if you are going to make a charge, back it up with your name like Chloe did. When I first became pastor in downtown Los Angeles, a man came to me and said, “I want to tell you about a certain situation.” He told me about a certain man and, believe me, it wasn’t very nice.
He wanted me to do something about it. He said, “You ought to bring this up before the board, and if they can’t handle it, then it should be brought before the church.” I answered, “Fine, that is the way it should be done. What night can you come?” “Oh!” he said, “I don’t intend to come. You’re the pastor, you are the one to handle it.” I answered, “You are right. I am the one to handle it. I am the pastor now.
However, you will need to be present to make the charge.” “Oh,” he said, “I won’t do that.” So I told him, “If you are not willing to sign your name to the charge, we will forget it.” And we forgot it because he refused to back up the charge with his name. One must admire Chloe there in Corinth. Chloe told it as it was, brought it out into the open, and said, “There is trouble in our church, bad trouble, and it needs to be dealt with.” My friend, when there is sin in the church, it is like a cancer. It needs to be dealt with. When I had cancer, I went to my doctor for help. Imagine him saying, “Now we don’t want to get excited; we don’t want to get disturbed; we don’t want to become emotional; we don’t want to cause any trouble. We want you to have a nice, peaceful mind; so I will sprinkle a little talcum powder on this place and everything will be all right.” Well, friend, I would have smelled good, but I would have died of the cancer. You’ve got to deal with a cancer, and you’ve got to deal with trouble in the church. Woe to the man who exposes it, but if that is not done, the church is going to suffer. Of course it will! The trouble with the church in Corinth was that they had a bunch of baby Christians. Babies generally do a lot of howling, you know. When I was a pastor in Pasadena, we had a nursery room for babies, and we called it The Bawl Room. I have learned that in some churches the entire church is a bawl room because of the bawling baby Christians.
1 Corinthians 1:12
Divisions were being caused by believers following different leaders of the church. They formed cliques around certain men. In one group were the proud pupils of Paul; in another the adoring admirers of Apollos, and there were some who liked Simon Peter, or Cephas, and they formed the chummy cult of Cephas. We know quite a lot about Paul. He was intellectual, he was brilliant, and he was courageousbut apparently not attractive physically. Simon Peter was fiery. He had been weak at first, but he became a rugged preacher of the gospel. He had a great heart and was very emotional. Apollos was one of the great preachers of the apostolic church. He was not an apostle and has not been given much recognition, but he was a great preacher. I think he was the Billy Graham of that day. All three of these men had strong personalities, but they did not cause the divisions. They all contended together for the faith. They maintained the unity of the Spirit, and they all exalted Jesus Christ. It was the members of the church in Corinth who were guilty of making the divisions. One little group said, “Oh, we love brother Paul because he’s so spiritual.” Another group said, “We like Simon Peter because he pounds the pulpit and is so evangelistic.” Another said, “We love this man Apollos. He soars to the heights, and he reaches the multitudes.” They were not taking into account the fact that all three of them were God’s men. Paul is going to write to them about this. He is going to show them that the centrality of Christ is the answer to the factions and fractures in the church. My friend, there will be no solution until men and women are willing to come to the person of Christ. In addition to the three groups, a fourth group was saying, “We are of Christ.” They were not actually putting Christ first, but they were the super-duper spiritual group. It is my private opinion that this was the worst group of all. They made a little cult of Christ. They had their little clique in the church, and they excluded other believers. They were the spiritual snobs. Do you realize that you and I are living in a day when the church has been destroyed from the inside? The problems are not on the outside today. Innumerable churches have long since been destroyed by liberals in the pulpit. Go around on Sunday night or at midweek service and see what the attendance is. Many churches are destroyed by the man in the pulpit. If the man in the pulpit is sound in the faith, you’ll find troublemakers in the pew. That is where strife is stirred up. This does more damage to the cause of Christ than alcohol or atheism or worldliness. In many churches they are doing what they did in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee; they’re feudin’ and fussin’ like the Martins and the Coys. Oh, the Martins and the Coys, They was reckless mountain boys, And they took up fam’ly feudin’ when they’d meet. They would shoot each other quicker Than it took your eye to flicker. They could knock a squirrel’s eye at ninety feet. Oh, the Martins and the Coys, They was reckless mountain boys, But old Abel Martin was the next to go. Though he saw the Coys a-comin' He had hardly started runnin' ‘Fore a volley shook the hills and laid him low. After that they started out to fight in earnest And they scarred the mountains up with shot and shell. There was uncles, brothers, cousins, They say they bumped them off by dozens, Just how many bit the dust is hard to tell. Oh, the Martins and the Coys, They was reckless mountain boys, At the art of killin’ they became quite deft. They all knowed they shouldn’t do it, But before they hardly knew it, On each side they only had one person left. “The Martins and the Coys” Ted Weems and Al Cameron This may sound corny and very silly, but unfortunately feudin’ and fussin’ go on inside churches. This is what they were doing in the Corinthian church. Now Paul tackles this problem. He asks,
1 Corinthians 1:13
The answer is obvious. Of course, Christ is not divided. Anything that breaks up the unity in Christ has something wrong with itregardless of what it is. The crucifixion of Christ is the bedrock of Christian unity, and it is absurd to contemplate establishing a unity on any other basis. “Were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” In this instance I do not believe Paul is referring to water baptism, which was always in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, he is referring to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. His question is: “Were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” They would have to say, “Of course not! We weren’t baptized in your name. The baptism that placed us in the body of Christ was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. No man could do that for us.” You see, Paul is attempting to direct their thinking away from man and back to Christ. They needed to be occupied with the person of Christ. Very candidly, I have always been able to fellowship with any man, regardless of his label, if he can meet with me around the person of Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:14
Here he is talking about water baptism. He is saying that he didn’t specialize even in that because of the danger of folk thinking that he was baptizing in his own name. You see, he is focusing on the centrality of Christ. There are folk even in our day who think that water baptism saves them or that it actually has some mystical power that cannot be gotten otherwise.
1 Corinthians 1:16
Paul attached so little importance to baptism that he couldn’t really remember whether he had baptized anyone else or not.
1 Corinthians 1:17
It is important for us to see today that there are a great many people who are dividing and separating over many secondary issues. This causes schisms and strife in the church. The church in Corinth was fractured by that kind of party spirit. Three men, Apollos, Paul, and Cephas, had brought to Corinth a message that had a unifying quality and power. The gospel they preached emphasized fusion and not faction. However, because these people were baby Christians, they began to put the emphasis on individuals. Now Paul is drawing their attention away from their factions and their party spirit and turning them to the centrality of Christ. In the city of Corinth, as well as in many other cities of that day, the emphasis was on philosophy. We shall see this as we move into the chapter.
1 Corinthians 1:18
The cross divides men. The cross divides the saved from the unsaved, but it doesn’t divide the saved people. It should unite them, you see. A Dutch artist painted a picture called “The Last Judgment.” It depicts the throne of God, and away from that throne the lost are falling into space. And as they fall, they cling together. This is an accurate picture of the one world that men are working for today.
The lost want to come together in one great unity, and they are going to accomplish a great union in the last days. But cutting across the grain of the ecumenical environment and the contemporary thought is the gospel of Christ. The Lord Jesus called Himself a divider of men, and the dividing line is His cross. The preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto the saved person it is the power of God. Paul makes it very clear that his method was not in the wisdom of the words of the world, not in the method of dialectics of divisions or differences or opinions or theories, but he just presented the cross of Christ. That brought about a unity of those who were saved. To those who perish, the Cross of Christ is foolishness; but to the saved man it becomes the power of God. The Cross of Christ divides the world, but it does not divide the church.
1 Corinthians 1:19
Notice that it is not foolish preaching but the foolishness of preaching.
1 Corinthians 1:22
Notice that Paul divides mankind into two great ethnic groups: the Jews and the Greeks (meaning Gentiles). He recognizes this twofold division. The Jew represented religion. He had a God-given religion. The Jews felt that they had the truth, and they didas far as the Old Testament was concerned. The problem was that it had become just a ritual to them.
They had departed from the Scriptures and followed tradition, which was their interpretation of the Scriptures. The power was gone. Therefore, when Christ appeared, they asked for a sign. Rather than turning to their Scriptures, they asked for a sign. “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: 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” (Mat_12:38-40). The Lord Jesus gave to them the sign of resurrection. The Greeks were the Gentiles. They represented philosophy. They were the lovers of wisdom. They said they were seeking the truth; they were searching and scanning the universe for truth. They were the rationalists. While the Jews ended up in ritual, the Gentiles ended up as rationalists and had to conform to a pattern of reason. About four hundred years before Christ came, the Greek nation constructed on the horizon of history a brilliance of mind and artistic accomplishment of such dimensions that it still dazzles and startles mankind. It continued for about three centuries. By the time of Christ, the glory of Greece was gone. It just fizzled out. There were men like Pericles, Anaxagoras, Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who left certain schools such as the Epicurean school, the Stoic school of philosophy, and the Peripatetic school. Then they all disappeared. There followed two thousand years of philosophical sterility and stagnation in the world. Then there appeared men like Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes, and there was a rebirth of great thinkers for a brief period of brilliance. This was again followed by decadence, and we are still in it todayeven though some of our boys think they are very smart. “What is truth?” asked the fatalistic Pilate. Bacon asked the same question, and philosophy is still asking that question. Philosophy still has no answers to the problems of life. “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?” Someone has defined philosophy as a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. The Greeks sought after wisdom. Today man is still searching for some theory or formula, and he thinks that it is through science that he will get the answers to some of the questions of life. Do you think that man today has the answers to the questions of life? I was interested in a statement which I found in a periodical: “The truth is that modern man is overimpressed by his own achievements. To put a rocket into an orbit that is more than a hundred miles from the surface of the earth takes a great deal of joint thought and effort, but we tend to overstate the case.
Though men who ride a few miles above the earth are called astronauts, this is clearly a misnomer. Men will not be astronauts until they ride among the stars, and it is important to remember that most of the stars are thousands of light-years away. The Russians are even more unrestrained in their overstatements, calling their men cosmonauts. Someone needs to say, ‘Little man, don’t take yourself quite so seriously.’” Man today thinks he has a few answers. Where are the wise today? It is a good question to ask. You see, God has 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.” This is a tremendous statement. “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” The Jews found the Cross to be a stumblingblock, a skandalon. They wanted a sign. They wanted someone to show the way. They wanted a pointer, a highway marker. They would have accepted a deliverer on a white charger who was putting down the power of Rome. But a crucified Christ was an insult to them.
That meant defeatnot victory. They didn’t want to accept that at all. “As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Rom_9:33). And Peter wrote this: “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed” (1Pe_2:7-8). A crucified Christ was a stumblingblock to the Jew. To the Greeks (or Gentiles) the Cross was foolishness, an absurdity. They considered it utterly preposterous and ridiculous and contrary to any rational, worldly system. In Rome there has been found a caricature of Christianity, a figure on the cross with an ass’ head. Also in our day our Savior is being ridiculed. Now Paul bears down on philosophy. While he was in the city of Corinth, he was preaching Christ. “And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles” (Act_18:6). Can philosophy lift man out of the cesspool of this life? It never has. Notice that men will be saved, not by foolish preaching, but by the preaching of “foolishness,” that is, by the preaching of the Cross. It is not the method but the message that the natural man considers foolish.
Men still reject it. Today the wisdom of the world is to have an antipoverty program or some other kind of program. Or the wisdom of the world is to save man from his problems by education. May I say that what man needs today is the gospel. The wisdom of the world has never considered that. Now Paul introduces another class of mankind. “Unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks"these are the called, the elect. They have not only heard the invitation, they have responded to it. And they have found in the Cross of Christ the wisdom and power of God which has transformed their lives, made them new men. The Lord Jesus molded eleven men, then called Saul of Tarsus, and sent them out. They took the gospel to Corinth with its sin, to Ephesus with its religion. For over nineteen hundred years the gospel has been going around the world, and it is the only help and the only hope of mankind.
1 Corinthians 1:24
Some folk like to give emphasis to the prominent folk who have accepted Christthe entertainment greats, the leaders in industry, and the prominent in government. But God majors in average people. He is calling simple folk like you and me.
1 Corinthians 1:27
This does not mean these men are foolish. It means they seem foolish to the world. They are not weak; they are weak in the estimation of the world. This is God’s method. He even chooses the base.
1 Corinthians 1:28
We do not have a thing to glory about.
1 Corinthians 1:30
Oh, my friend, He is everything that we need. I wish I could get that over to you. He has been made to us wisdom. He is our righteousness. He is our sanctification and our redemption. Whatever it is that you need today, you will find it in Him.
1 Corinthians 1:31
Our glory should be in the Lord. We should glory in the Lord Jesus Christ today. Let me ask you, what do you glory in? What are you boasting of today? Are you boasting of your degrees? Of your wisdom? Of your wealth? Of your power? Are you boasting today of your position and your character? My friend, you don’t have a thing of which you can boastand I know I haven’t. But we can boast of Christ. He is everything. He is everything that we need.