The Power of Our Folly (1 Corinthians 1.18-25)

So you’re a Christian and you want to share the gospel with someone. But you’re afraid to do it.

Most Christians have had this sort of experience—it’s scary to share the gospel with just about anyone who isn’t a Christian. But why is that the case? What exactly are we afraid of?

Generally, we’re afraid of two things. We’re afraid the person in front of us will respond with anger, or we’re afraid the person will respond with laughter. We’re afraid of being the subject of confrontational rejection, and we’re afraid of feeling ridiculous.

There’s a reason why we’re afraid of these things, and in today’s text Paul gets right to the heart of why that is.

This is our third week in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. If you remember, the Corinthian church is a church with a lot of very serious, very deep problems. Paul began his letter in v. 1-9 by reminding them of their identity in Christ—they have been saved, they have been sanctified, they have been gifted and they will be preserved by God. Then once their identity is solidly established, he moves to the first problem of their church, which is division among the members. This division is based on human teachers to whom the Corinthians cling: “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”

And what Paul said in last week’s text is that the root of the problem is not the human teachers themselves, but rather that the center of the church’s focus has shifted. When the cross becomes sidelined, and anything else takes its place, then our idea of our own identity shifts, and divisions follow.

In today’s text, Paul is going to begin tightening the screws before returning to the problem of division. He’s going to go one step further and say that the cross doesn’t get sidelined accidentally; it doesn’t happen on its own. It’s very difficult, in fact, for the cross not to get sidelined, because the cross contradicts how humans instinctively think about what makes sense and what is admirable.

So here’s the big idea: the cross does not merely save sinners—it dismantles every competing system of wisdom, status, and self-reliance. Which means that if we keep the cross central in our focus, that will inevitably mean living a life the world finds foolish.

The Gospel in the World (1:18-25)

Here’s where Paul starts: the cross always divides humanity into two different ways of perceiving it. V. 18:

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.

We have here the same message—it’s “the word of the cross.”

Same message, two radically different perceptions of it. It is “folly” to some, and “the power of God” to others.

On both sides of this divide, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of disdaining those on the other side. We see it in politics all the time. People who fall on one side of a political divide get incredibly frustrated with their family members or friends who fall on the other side, because they just can’t fathom it—why can’t my family members see what I’m seeing?! It seems so obvious to us, and it makes those can’t see it seem…well, sort of stupid.

But when we’re talking about the gospel, the issue isn’t intelligence. It isn’t reason. It isn’t logic. The issue is spiritual orientation.

The word of the cross is folly for whom? Not for the unintelligent, but for those who are “perishing”—that is, those who aren’t Christians.

The word of the cross is the power of God for whom? Not for the enlightened, but for “those who are being saved.”

It has nothing to do with intelligence; it has to do with spiritual orientation.

Neutrality toward the cross does not exist. The cross necessarily divides, because it always produces two different perceptions. Either it’s perceived as folly, and rejected; or it completely redefines reality.

This wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t a sort of unfortunate side effect of the work of Christ. Paul quotes Isaiah 29 in v. 19:

19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

This was God’s plan all along: to show that the wisdom of the wise, the wisdom we humans naturally trust, isn’t really wisdom at all; the most discerning of men has no discernment compared to that of God himself.

This idea was a slap in the face for people who lived in a place like Corinth, because the people of Corinth prized philosophical wisdom. It’s not, in reality, all that different from what we see in Paris today. We put great philosophers and thinkers on a pedestal because of all they have contributed—and many of them did contribute a great deal. But where has all this elevated thinking brought us? It hasn’t brought us to God; it’s made us feel smart enough and resourceful enough to move away from him.

None of this was a surprise to God; he knew this would happen, and it’s been progressively happening for as long as human beings have walked the earth.

So God did the one thing no one would expect. He dismantled the “wisdom of the wise” by something we humans, with our “enlightened” reasoning, naturally find ridiculous.

V. 20:

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For 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. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

The world did not come to know God through its own wisdom, Paul says in v. 21. So God chose a means of salvation that looks absurd—and that is a crucified Savior.

When I was nineteen I broke my ankle while leaving my final exam in my college psychology class. The stairs were extra wide, I finished early, and as I was walking down the stairs, in front of two hundred students behind me, I missed the last step and broke my ankle. I was out in the lobby before I realized how bad it was; I started to feel light-headed and nauseous; my friend had to sit next to me and hold a trash can under my chin while we waited for my mom to come take me to the hospital.

The worst part of that whole experience wasn’t the broken ankle. It was sitting there and having the two hundred students that finished after me walk out and see me like that: pale, in pain, with a trash can under my chin. I felt so stupid.

All I did was break my ankle in public, and I was ashamed. And most of us feel that way; we don’t like being hurt or vulnerable in front of other people.

That’s what made crucifixion so effective. There were far simpler ways to execute criminals, but the goal wasn’t mainly death; it was shame. Those who were crucified were stripped naked, nailed to a cross in a public place, and forced to hang there in agonizing pain until they eventually died of asphyxiation. Crucifixion forced the condemned to carry their shame into death; it forced them into a state of complete weakness, complete vulnerability.

And Christianity states that our Savior, the Creator of the world, was condemned by the Jews as a blasphemer and crucified by Rome. This is the message that Paul preached, at a time when crucifixion was still widely practiced. So from the perspective of those outside, from the perspective of the world, the message of Christianity proclaims something shocking: our Savior lost. Our Savior was defeated by Rome. Our Savior was publicly shamed. That’s what people heard when they heard Paul speak of Christ crucified. This is not the kind of Savior that anyone would seek.

What do they seek?

Well, the Greeks—that is, non-Jews—sought “wisdom”, Paul says in v. 22. They sought extensive and persuasive discourses of philosophical insight. Even if the teachings of Christ were widely available at the time (and they weren’t, for most people), much of what Jesus said didn’t sound like philosophical wisdom. (“Those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” It’s tough to find the logic in that.) And to have him finish in such a shameful way… The message of the cross seemed like folly.

What about the Jews? They sought “signs”—they looked for displays of power. The Jews were waiting on their Savior, the Messiah, and their point of reference for what that Messiah would look like was someone like the great King David, who defeated Israel’s enemies and brought the kingdom to prosperity during his reign. A Messiah who commits blasphemy by saying he’s God and allows himself to be crucified… Such an idea wasn’t just folly to them, but outright offensive.

“The Jews seek signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.” The gospel takes all of our ideas of what is powerful and desirable and worthwhile, and turns them all on their heads; it flips the world upside-down.

And strangely, this is what many people who call themselves Christians today still stumble over. Many Christians come to the faith mainly for what they can experience—through what they think God can do for them. They want to solutions to their problems; they want to see signs of power; they want to experience something incredible. But Christianity has never been defined by the experience of visible power. It has always been defined by the cross.

That is why experience-based ministry can never produce saving faith. If someone has already been saved by the gospel of Christ, then a miracle can be a helpful encouragement, and thank God that he does still do these kinds of things. But they are not the center of our faith, because experiencing a miracle will never save a soul. Only those whom the gospel saves, and only those whom the gospel has saved, see the gospel’s power.

Which is what Paul says in v. 24:

to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God.

It’s not a question of intelligence—it’s not at all surprising that the Jews and Greeks outside the church rejected the gospel, because for them the gospel is folly, it’s offensive. But to those who are called, to those whom God has saved, the message of the cross—this ultimate display of weakness and vulnerability—is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

And the church itself is the first picture of that reality.

The Gospel in the Church (1:26–31)

Paul does not pull his punches. V. 26:

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

Let’s just be honest: none of us are as great as we’d like to be. And that’s fine—that’s actually intentional. Thank God, there are in the world some people in positions of power who are Christians. But in most churches, you won’t find presidents or prime ministers; you’ll find ordinary people. People who have ordinary jobs and who live ordinary lives, people whom the world may not see as wise or powerful or noble.

God does this on purpose: he populates churches with ordinary human beings whom the world will typically not think much of. The question is why? V. 27:

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

V. 27-28 are tricky, because they’re a little cryptic. What are the “foolish” things in the world that shame the wise? What are the “weak” things, the “low and despised things,” the “things that are not”?

The answer, I think, is two-layered. The first layer is Christ. We’ve already seen why the world would consider Christ weak, low and despised, of no account. Through the wisdom of Christ, God will shame the wise. Through the weakness of Christ, God will shame the strong. The message of the cross will ultimately show that all of the foundations on which we have built our ideas of our own greatness are in fact worthless.

The second layer, though, is the church. Of course, Paul’s not saying that the church will shame the wise, shame the strong, nullify the significant, in the course of our lives. He’s speaking eschatologically—he’s speaking about things that will happen at the end. When Christ returns to judge the world, the wise and the strong and the powerful, who depended on their own strength to save them, will be proven weak and foolish and low. Those who will not be brought low will be those who have placed their faith in Christ—the ordinary human beings in our churches, who have trusted in him alone for their salvation.

The point Paul’s trying to help the Corinthians to see here isn’t that the strong and the wise and the powerful will be put to shame. His point is that no one in the church in Corinth has anything in themselves to boast about. No human being can boast in the presence of God, because through the cross, God dismantles all of our ideas of what greatness really is. The cross shows us that the only thing we have to boast in before God is God himself. V. 30:

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

God has brought us into Christ by his own power. And he has shown to us that our crucified Savior, who paid the price for ur sin (that’s righteousness and redemption), who gave us his perfect life (that’s sanctification), who was raised from the dead and who now reigns in heaven (that’s power), is what true greatness looks like. He is our wisdom; he is our sanctification. He is our redemption.

The composition of the church proves the message of the cross.

And lastly, since the church itself displays the power of God in weakness, Paul wants to display the same principle through his ministry.

The Gospel in Ministry (2:1–5)

Chapter 2, verse 1:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

We saw this a little bit last week, but now Paul brings it up again. He did not come to Corinth with displays of rhetorical brilliance (even though he probably could have). He did not come proclaiming the gospel with “lofty speech or wisdom.” He preached a simple message in a simple way.

The center of his message was Christ crucified, and he proclaimed it in a way that didn’t seem convincing. His speech and message weren’t in “plausible words of wisdom,” but “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

In other words, the messenger matched the message. Paul let God do all the work. We’ll see this more in next week’s text, but the demonstration of the Spirit and power he speaks of are not mainly seen in miracles. They are mainly seen when someone hears this crazy message Paul is preaching—folly to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews—and instead of responding with rejection, they say, “Wait—this is true. The gospel is the truth! This is how I can be saved—through a crucified Savior!”

The only way any human being will come to that realization is through the power of the Holy Spirit. A crucified Savior will convince no one outside of God’s intervention. Paul preached one unified message, without rhetorical flourishes, in weakness and trembling… And the result was faith that rested not on human persuasion, but on the power of God.

Conclusion

The Corinthians wanted a Christianity that kept the cross but upgraded it with worldly wisdom. But the moment you try to upgrade the cross, you lose the cross.

If a ministry relies on the charisma of its leaders, the technique of its teachers, or some other sort of branding, it contradicts the message it claims to believe. Paul’s model goes the other way: he displays weakness in himself, while preaching the cross clearly and depending entirely on the Spirit to do the work of saving people.

Same thing in the church. Programs, activities and social engagement are not bad things in a church. But if a church needs these things to look impressive, then it has already drifted from the cross. A church shaped by the cross will look strange, because it will be filled with people who don’t seem all that exceptional. But because they are depending on the Spirit and keeping the cross the center of their lives, what will we see? We will see power; we will see people come to Christ through this crazy message we preach.

And it’s the same thing for each one of us. If we still feel the need to prove ourselves, then we betray the fact that the cross actually isn’t central in our lives. If our lives are shaped by the cross—if the cross defines us—then we no longer need to prove ourselves. We no longer need to be exceptional. We no longer need to seem wise. We no longer need to be convincing. All we need to do is trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and live lives that are shaped by that grace we have received.

That will radically change everything we do as individuals, as a church, and in ministry. Because none of it will be about us. Everything will be from him and through him and for him. And we will be overjoyed to let him take center stage.

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