EXPOSITORY STUDIES IN I CORINTHIANS

Expository Studies in I Corinthians

Ray C. Stedman

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946 (renewed 1973), 1956 and © 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission.

Discovery Books are published by Word Books, Publisher, in cooperation with Discovery Foundation, Palo Alto, California.

ISBN 0-8499-2937-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 81-51005

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1 The Corinthian Crisis (1 Corinthians 1:1-17)

2 God's Nonsense (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)

3 God's Tools (1 Corinthians 1:26-2:10)

4 God's Teacher (1 Corinthians 2:10-16)

5 Carnal and Spiritual Christians (1 Corinthians 3:1-15)

6 How to Destroy a Church (1 Corinthians 3:16-23)

7 The True Minister (1 Corinthians 4:1-7)

8 A Father in Action (1 Corinthians 4:8-21)

9 Scandal in the Church (1 Corinthians 5:1-13)

10 Two Kinds of Lust (1 Corinthians 6:1-20)

11 Answers on Sex and Divorce (1 Corinthians 7:1-24)

12 Alone But Not Lonely (1 Corinthians 7:25-40)

13 Liberty and Limits (1 Corinthians 8:1-9:23)

14 Disqualified! (1 Corinthians 9:24-10:13)

15 The Focused Life (1 Corinthians 10:13-11:1)

16 Essential Traditions (1 Corinthians 11:2-33)

17 The Spirit's Point (1 Corinthians 12:1-6)

18 Gifts for the Body (1 Corinthians 12:7-31)

19 The Way of Love (1 Corinthians 13)

20 Speaking of Tongues (1 Corinthians 14)

21 The Foundation of Faith (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

22 What If…? (1 Corinthians 15:12-34)

23 The Victory of the Mystery (1 Corinthians 15:35-58)

24 Giving and Living (1 Corinthians 16)

Appendix: First Corinthians in a Condensed Outline

EXPOSITORY STUDIES IN I CORINTHIANS

1 Corinthians 1:1-17

1. The Corinthian Crisis

Some years ago on a Sunday morning I was preaching on a section from the sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians. I was commenting on verse 9 where the apostle says,

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor the idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.

I remember I was so struck by those words, "such were some of you," that I stopped and said to the congregation, "This was the makeup of the church at Corinth. These people had come out of this sordid background. Many of them, perhaps, still were struggling with much of the aftermath in their lives of these evil things. I am curious as to how many of you here have some of these things in your background." I then did a rather bold thing. I said, "If any of you have anything like this in your background I'd like to ask you to stand where you are quietly for a moment that we might know how much we're like the church at Corinth."

I did not know it, but a young man was present with us that morning who had never been in church before. He told me afterward that he had been converted at a recent Billy Graham Crusade, and he came to church with fear and trembling, not knowing what he was getting into. He said he heard me make that announcement, and he looked around to see if anyone would stand. At first no one did, but then a little old lady right on the aisle got up. Others then began to stand, and soon two-thirds of the congregation was standing. This young man said he looked around at that crowd and said to himself, "These are my kind of people!"

That story highlights a feeling I often have when reading these Corinthian letters. There is no church in the New Testament more like the churches of San Francisco, or New York, or Chicago than this Corinthian church. Corinth was a city of wealth and culture, at the crossroads of the Roman Empire, through which all the trade and commerce of the Empire passed. It was a city of beauty, a resort city, but it was also a city of prostitution and passion. It was devoted to trade and commerce, but also the worship of the goddess of sex.

On the little hill that rises behind the ancient city there was a temple to Aphrodite, and every evening the priests and priestesses--male and female prostitutes--would come down from the temple into the streets to ply their trade. Corinth was known throughout the length and breadth of the ancient world as a city of great and widespread immorality. It was in some ways, therefore, what we could call the San Francisco of the ancient world. The letter might well be titled, "First Californians." Here are the opening words:

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes…

(If you have read the Book of Acts lately you will know that Sosthenes was at one time the ruler of the synagogue in Corinth. He had been converted, evidently, after a difficult time in that city and now is with Paul in Ephesus.)

To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is writing this letter from Ephesus in about AD. 56 or 57. He had founded the church in Corinth about five years earlier when he had come alone, driven out of Macedonia by the persecution there. He had left Timothy and Luke behind and had come to Athens, and from there to Corinth. After the founding of the church (which took about two years) he left and went on other journeys. Now he is in Ephesus, and word has come to him that there is difficulty in the church at Corinth.

Troubles and Questions

Paul wrote a letter to the Corinthians (referred to in the ninth verse of the fifth chapter) which has been lost to us. All we know of it is what the apostle says there, that he wrote the letter to the Corinthians telling them that they should not keep company with those who had fallen into immorality. Subsequently, a group of men had come from Corinth to visit him in Ephesus (their names are given in the final chapter of this letter: Fortunatus, Stephanas, and Achaicus), and they had brought word, evidently, of further troubles there. With them they also brought a letter from this church asking the apostle to answer certain questions that they had. First Corinthians is his answer to that letter and the reports that he had received from the Corinthian church.

In some ways, most remarkably, this letter is different from the other letters the apostle wrote. His letters usually began with a rather lengthy doctrinal section and closed with a practical section in which he applied what he is teaching. But here, right from the very beginning, he plunges into the problems of the church, and intersperses a practicality of doctrine with revelations of truth throughout the letter.

This is certainly the most practical of all Paul's letters. Even in this opening greeting, his concern for the church in its various problems is clearly reflected. It begins with an emphasis upon his apostleship. "Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle." That affirmation was necessary because certain ones in Corinth were ready to challenge that fact on the grounds that Paul had not been one of the original twelve disciples. Some were wondering if he were not even a false apostle; therefore, he puts his apostleship first as he writes.

Then in verse 2 he describes the Corinthians as "sanctified in Christ Jesus." Now, in almost all the other letters, Paul's greeting to people is based not upon sanctification, but justification. But here he refers to this group as having been sanctified. These two words are theological terms. Justification is the description of the change God makes within an individual when he comes to Christ. It is what we also call being "born again," an experience that we are hearing much of today. It means an inward change of nature, and therefore a fundamental difference in outlook and attitude because of a deep change within. Now sanctification is the visible result of that in the behavior of individuals. It is all that inner change working out in terms of practice so that you see that someone is different. Paul refers to this with the Corinthians because their behavior was what was in question.

At the close of that same verse he stresses the Lordship of Jesus. He sends the letter to all those "who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," and that would surely include us. Then he adds, "both their Lord and ours." This was because in this Corinthian church there were people who were turning away from the authority of Jesus, and following after men. Divisions had come into the church, and early in the letter the apostle reflects his concern over their departure from the centrality of Christ.

Bad News and Good News

In verses 4 through 8 the apostle starts with the good news for these people. He has both bad news and good news for them in this letter, but as he always does, he starts with the good news: that which is true of them because they are Christians, regardless of how they are behaving. He lists some of the fullness of provision that they enjoyed because they were Christians.

I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge--even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you--so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul takes note of several things that were true of the Corinthians, and they form the foundation of his approach to them, Freely he admits there were blessings and possibilities and provisions God had given them that they fully and freely shared. First of all, notice that their entrance into the Christian faith was orthodox, i.e., they were saved by grace: "I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus." These people had been pagans, and now they are born again by having received the grace of God.

In this letter there is no problem or wrestling with the matter of legalism. These people were not caught up with wrong rituals (you have that in the letter to the Colossians); they were not involved with disputes over circumcision (you get that in Galatians); and there was no resting upon dead works (you get that in Philippians). Here in Corinthians the problem was license. They had accepted the grace of God in such a way that they did not think it made any difference how they behaved, and that is what was causing the problem.

Now, the apostle admits that they understood the grace of God. There are no questions raised in this letter on the deity of Christ or the virgin birth, or the substitutionary atonement, or the incarnation of Jesus. They all understood that they were set free from their sins by the gift of God through Jesus Christ. Their entrance, therefore, is clearly based upon God's grace.

Furthermore, Paul says, their equipment, having become Christians, is superb: "in every way you were enriched by him with all speech and all knowledge" (v. 5); "so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 7). "In every way," he says, "you were enriched."

The word for "enriched" is the word from which we get our word plutocrat. They were rendered plutocrats, spiritually. They had a wealth of enrichment, and Paul points out that it was in two particular areas, in the word and in knowledge. The word for "speech" here is really the word logos, the word of God. This is his admission to them that they were avid Bible students. They did not have the New Testament as we have it--it was not written yet--but they had among them New Testament prophets who were preaching and teaching the same truth that we have in the New Testament. Therefore, they had all the truth available to them that is available to us.

The Corinthians were theologians, very likely, and, as was often true in Greek cities, they loved to get together to discuss philosophies and doctrine and to probe various problems. They were, therefore, able to answer some of the deep and heavy questions with which we still wrestle today. I am sure they could have told you where Cain got his wife. They could have told you what happens to those in other lands who never hear the gospel. They could have told you when the Antichrist would appear. They were Bible students, and Paul recognizes that and commends them for it. They were theologians; they were Trinitarian, supralapsarian trichotomists! (You may not know what that means, but they did!)

Now, more than that, Paul says, they were not lacking in any spiritual gift. In my book, Body Life, I have listed at least 21 different spiritual gifts that are referred to, and, according to Paul, there in Corinth every one of them was manifested. They had gifts of miracles, healings, teachings, tongues and interpretation of tongues, knowledge, and leadership. There was not a single one of the gifts of the Spirit lacking in this church. Can you imagine what kind of fascinating meetings they must have had when they all got together? No one wanted to miss church in Corinth! They never knew whether somebody would be healed, or some miracle would be demonstrated, or some remarkable prophetic utterance would come forth, or somebody would speak in a language they had never learned and someone else would interpret.

But that is still not all. Not only was their entrance orthodox and their equipment superb, but their expectation was right. They were waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; they understood that when he appeared he would set things right on earth. They were not given to naïve and liberal delusions that they would, by their own efforts, handle all the problems of the world and correct all the evil in life and so bring in the kingdom. They were not propounding self-reliant schemes for earning status and a position of blessing with God. They understood that it was Christ who would sustain them to the end. It was he who would present them blameless before the Father. Paul acknowledges that all this is true of them.

Failure in the Church

But then in verse 9 the apostle seems suddenly to change the subject, and he introduces rather abruptly a description of the fellowship that they needed among them,

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the key verse of 1 Corinthians. God had called them to a very important relationship. By implication, here at the very beginning of this letter we learn the reason for all of the problems in the Corinthian church. They had not understood the implications of their calling, and the relationship they personally and individually had with Jesus Christ himself. Instead (as we see beginning with the very next verse), the apostle has to deal with divisions, scandals, lawsuits, immorality, drunkenness, quarreling, and with much misunderstanding of the truth about idols and demons and various other matters. It is clear that despite this full provision which they had received, they were experiencing a great failure in the church. They had the ability to do all these mighty things in the Spirit, but not much was happening out in the city. Instead of making an impact on Corinth, Corinth was making an impact on the church. All these ugly attitudes and actions going on every day and night out in the city were beginning to infiltrate the church. Despite all their mighty provision, there was little manifestation of the power of God. It reminds me of Peter Marshall's vivid description of contemporary Christians; "Christians are like deep-sea divers, encased in suits designed for many fathoms deep, marching bravely forth to pull plugs out of bathtubs!"

What was wrong? Well, what was wrong was the Corinthians' lack of understanding of what it meant to have Jesus Christ living within them. I have traveled widely in the course of my work, and almost everywhere I have gone I have found that the major struggle of churches is right at this point. They have lost the sense that Jesus is among them, that they have an individual relationship to the Lord of glory himself. They no longer live their lives in the awareness and the excitement that they are partners with Christ in everything they do. When that begins to fade from Christian consciousness all these troubles that the Corinthians were experiencing begin to crowd in upon us. Therefore, this letter is written to call these people back, as it is written to call us back as well, to an awareness of what it means to have fellowship with Christ.

Fellowship with Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is his task to take the things of Christ and make them known to us, to make the person of Jesus vivid and real in our daily experience. That is what Paul is talking about here--Christ made real to the heart, enabling him to satisfy the thirsts of the soul; Christ providing the power it takes to meet the demands of both the law and the love of God. Fellowship with Christ is not only direction in what to do, it is also dynamic--it is how to do it. Oftentimes churches fall into the habit of trying to draw direction from the Lord with no awareness of the great provision of the dynamic. It is not only guidance he gives us, but resource as well. It is not only an understanding of life, but an undergirding, in order that we might perform it. It is not only a program that he sets before the church, but the power to carry it out.

When any one of us forgets this, we drift into the terrible syndrome of recognizing the Lord on Sunday, and from Monday through Saturday living our life on our own without any recognition of his presence with us. He is no longer Lord of all our life, but only a part of it. If he is not Lord through our life all day long then he is Lord only of the margins, only of the left-overs, only of the weekends. The church is called to an understanding of the presence of Christ in the human heart to supply to it the dynamic, the sense of adventure, the innovative spirit that opens doors in unusual and unanticipated ways, tending adventure and color to life.

Now this was what was missing in Corinth, and as we open this letter and go on into it further, we will see how in every case the apostle calls them back to that. They were suffering divisions because they had lost sight of the Lordship of Jesus. They were immoral because they had forgotten that the members of their bodies were the members of Christ. They were in lawsuits with one another because they had failed to see that Jesus was judge of the innermost motives of the heart. They were quarreling because they had forgotten that others were members of Christ's body and, therefore, they were members one of another. All that the apostle does to heal the hurts at Corinth is to call them back to an awareness of fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Appeal for Unity

Now the apostle Paul begins dealing with incipient division in the church at Corinth, in a powerful appeal for unity, verse 10:

I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

Paul always expresses great concern about the possibility of a split in the church. You may be reminded by his words in verse 10 of the similar passage in his letter to the Philippians where, in chapter 2, he says to that church (vv. 1, 2),

So if there be any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord, and of one mind.

You may recall also that in writing to the church at Ephesus he exhorted the elders there to be careful to "maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3).

Church unity is a very important matter, and because of its significance Paul puts it first in the list of problems he has to deal with here at Corinth. Many of the other problems were flowing out of this division within the congregation. Here in verse 10 he briefly shows us the ground of unity, and the nature of unity in a church. The ground, of course, is the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. "I appeal to you," he says, "by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Their relationship to Christ was the only unifying factor of the church. There is no other name big enough, great enough, glorious enough and powerful enough to gather everybody together, despite the diversity of viewpoints and the differences of background or status in life, than the name of Jesus. That is why the apostle appeals to it. He recognizes that we share a common life if we have come to Christ; we are brothers and sisters because we have his life in us. He is the ground, always, of unity. And more than that, we have a responsibility to obey him, to follow his Lordship. Therefore, the only basis upon which you can get Christians to agree is by setting before them the Person of the Lord Jesus, and calling them back to that fundamental base. This is what Paul does here.

He describes the nature of unity in this way, "that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment." That does not mean that everybody has to think alike. With all the differences among people it is impossible to get them to think alike. But yet the apostle says they are to be "of the same mind." Now how could that be? I think the letter to the Philippians helps us here, because in the passage just quoted Paul goes on to say, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." He then describes for us the mind of Christ as a willingness to give up rights and personal privileges and take a lower place. Then comes that great Christological passage where he describes Jesus,

…who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).

That is the mind Paul is talking about. When everybody decides to put the things of Christ first, and is willing to suffer personal loss that the honor and glory of Christ might be advanced, this is what brings harmony to a congregation. That is always the unifying factor in a church, and that is the mind that is to be among us, the mind that does not consider itself the most important thing.

I remember a few years ago being at a Family Congress in St. Louis, Missouri. One of the evening speakers was Dr. Oswald Hoffman, the very capable and powerful preacher on the Lutheran Hour radio program. He was introduced in a rather extended and flowery way, but he came on and in his great booming voice said, "I'm not Dr. Oswald Hoffman, the great preacher of the Lutheran Hour. I'm a nobody--just like you!" I've not forgotten that incident because it seems to rue to capture the very attitude Paul is describing here. Who are we, that we should put our interests and our desires ahead of those of the Lord for his church? The church never belongs to anybody but the Lord. This is what Paul uses as the basis for unity in this church--not only the attitude of selflessness, which is the mind of Christ, but the responsibility to submit to his Lordship, the common responsibility that we have together.

Paul goes right on in verse 12 to describe the forms that these divisions were taking in the church of Corinth:

What I mean is that each one of you says, "I belong to Paul," "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," [another name for Peter] or "I belong to Christ."

There was the real trouble at Corinth. These were not full-blown schisms yet; they had not split off into other congregations, but there were four cliques, or factions, within the congregation. There were, first of all, the loyalists who said, "We are of Paul. He started this church. We came to life in Christ by Paul, and Paul is the one we're going to listen to above all others." Undoubtedly there was a big group that followed Paul. Then there were the stylists, those who were attracted by different styles of preaching, and they had especially been drawn to Apollos. From the Book of Acts we learn that Apollos was an outstanding orator in a world that loved and appreciated oratory. He was a rhetorician who was especially capable in the allegorical style of teaching of the Old Testament. I am sure there were many in Corinth who were saying, "Oh, I love to hear Apollos! He's a great preacher, a warm, capable, eloquent man, who can make Scripture come alive!"

Then there were the traditionalists (there always are), those who say, "Well, I don't know about Paul or Apollos. Let's get back to the beginnings. Let's go back to Jerusalem. We are of Peter." (Peter, evidently, had been through Corinth and had preached there.) So they said, "When Peter came, we really felt that we were on solid ground. After all, he was one of the first apostles that Jesus himself called." So they were quarreling over the relative merit and authority of these various teachers.

There was still a fourth group, and in some ways I think they were probably the worst. They were drawing themselves up and saying, "Well, you may be of Paul or of Peter or of Apollos, but we are of Christ! We go back to the Lord alone. What he says we'll listen to, not Paul or Peter or anyone else--it makes no difference to us." With that spirit of self-righteous smugness they were separating from the rest, dividing up the congregation and quarreling with one another over these things.

Now, you do not have to be very old to recognize that this is still a problem in the church. The same viewpoints are still dividing people. There are those who are emotionally attached to some great Christian leader who has helped them, and they will only listen to him. They read only his books or listen only to his tapes. And there are others who are drawn to some speaking style that has attracted them. They love to listen to someone because he turns them on emotionally. There are still others today who follow after some school of thought. It is the popular thing today to cry, "Back to the Reformation!" If someone comes along preaching the doctrines emphasized during the Reformation he will get a great following among the people who think that the Reformation was the whole sum and substance of all great Christian truth.

Some people will pick other matters of doctrine to affirm. There are the Calvinists and the Arminians and the Dispensationalists--these represent some of the things held up as the "summum bonum" (the highest good) in theology. If you survey the church scene all over America today you will find people dividing up this way. Some say, "I am of Gothard," and others say, "No, I am of Bright." Still others say, "We are of Schaeffer," and others, "We are of Graham," or, "We are of C. S. Lewis."

Clearly Paul is deeply troubled by this. It is a serious threat to the life of a church to find people choosing favorite preachers to the degree that they do not want to listen to anyone else. Now, we all have our favorite preacher, and up to a point that is not wrong. There are some people who minister to us better than others, and it is only natural that we should listen to them and follow them. But it is the exclusiveness that Paul is concerned about here--people who do not even want to come to a service if someone other than their favorite is preaching. That is what Paul speaks about.

Christ Parceled Out

In verse 13 Paul gives us three clues as to what is wrong with this kind of thing. To all of this he asks of Corinth, as he would ask of us,

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Here are our first clues as to what is wrong with this kind of cliquishness in a church. The first thing, Paul says, is that it tends to chop up Christ and parcel him out as though his person and his work came in various packages; thus you lose a true perspective of the whole of Christian theology. When you follow one man you are getting a view of Christ, but there is no teacher in the church who has ever come along--including the apostle Paul himself--who has ever set forth a totally complete view of Christ. That is why we have four gospels, because not even one of the disciples who was with the Lord was capable of giving us a complete enough view of Christ. It took four viewpoints to report his earthly life and ministry accurately enough to us. God, therefore, has designed that there be many teachers, many preachers, many viewpoints, in a church. In the Body of Christ at large there are many who can make a contribution to our understanding of Christ.

The second thing Paul says is, "Was Paul crucified for you?" There he indicates that the problem with cliquishness is that it tends to overemphasize the significance of the human leader. It builds him up too much; it makes him a rival, to some degree, of the Lord himself. People begin to think things about their favorite that are not true, and expect things from him which he is unable to deliver. I have had to do some degree of battle with this myself. I have had people say to me, "Oh, Mr. Stedman, when you speak I see things so clearly! I hang on every word you say. Whatever you say, I believe." (I have been trying for a long time to get my wife to accept that!) That is a very dangerous attitude, and yet we tend to think of individuals as being the channel by which deliverance can come to our heart.

But it cannot come that way. Paul is putting his finger right on the problem when he asks, "Was Paul crucified for you?" Not a single Christian teacher ever lived who can help us be forgiven one single sin, not one. Not a single teacher ever lived who can heal the hurt of a broken heart, or supply energy and adequacy to someone who feels worthless and unable to function in society, not one. Not a teacher among us today or at any other time is able to open the mind and the eyes of the heart and reveal to us the glory and majesty of God, not one. That is not the work of men; that is the work of God himself. He chooses various channels through which to work. We must allow him the privilege of doing that. They will not all be the same flavor; they will not all have the same characteristics. We reveal our immaturity when we insist that only those with certain characteristics are the ones we will listen to, or we feel can bless or strengthen our lives. No man is the Savior; no man can deliver us except Jesus. All are mere teachers; there is only one Lord. He said so himself. "One is your master; all of you are brothers."

Distorted Symbols

The third danger of groups is given in the latter part of verse 13, and on through the next few verses:

Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I am thankful that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius; lest any one should say that you were baptized in my name [Then he thinks of another group that he baptized.] (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any one else.)

Here the apostle makes clear that the tendency among groupies is to distort the meaning of symbols. They take an innocent teaching medium (in this case baptism), and make it into an identification badge. Many of us are familiar with this common phenomenon of human psychology; some symbolic thing of use to us is so important that we finally make it a badge of the group to which we belong.

As a young Christian during World War II, I was stationed in Hawaii, and I became acquainted with the work of the Navigators. At that time it was under the leadership of its founder, Dawson Trotman, and it was my privilege and delight to be a close friend of his, to have spent a good deal of time with him and to come under the influence of his teaching and his methods. The Navigators in those days did a great work in the navy throughout both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and hundreds of young men were led to Christ through their efforts during the war years. I used to attend a Navigator group which met in Honolulu on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes two or three hundred sailors, all of them Christians, would be there. We had some great meetings and great times together. It was a glorious work.

But you could always tell the Navigators because there were three things that marked them. First, each had a Scofield Reference Bible tucked under his arm; that was the only "Authorized Version." Then every Navigator who was anybody at all had to have an index drawn in on the pages of the Bible, a kind of a ladder that gave you a clue to where the books were so that with your thumb you could turn up any book in the Bible almost instantly.

The third thing every Navigator had was a little black notebook covered in rough-grained leather. On opening it you found a loose notebook with many of the small, half-page materials on which the Navigators printed their Bible helps. Now these things were good. There was nothing wrong with them; they were helpful, but it was not long before they became status symbols, and they were used, not always intentionally, to put down those who did not have them. They became symbols of prestige that resulted in divisions among the men.

Almost every group does this. Something shows up sooner or later as an identifying badge that marks them as "special." That is what they were doing with baptism here in Corinth. Some were saying, "Well, Paul baptized me." Others were saying, "Apollos himself baptized me." And there were some who said, "When Peter came through, he baptized me. And, after all, Peter even walked on water!" That was a mark of status with them, and Paul says it is all wrong. It would destroy the unity of the congregation and provide an inaccurate testimony to the Person of Christ before the watching world. So he says, "I didn't baptize many of you. I thank God that only a few of you can say that about me."

Now, in one verse he introduces the cure for these divisions (v. 17):

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom [i.e., literally, "wisdom of words"], lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

This introduces one of the greatest passages in the Bible, setting forth the difference between the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God. He says, in effect, "You don't cure divisions in a church by identification badges. Christ did not send me to take scalps or to cut notches on my gun handle as to how many converts I've won." (Now, he is not saying that it is wrong to baptize; he himself did it and acknowledges that he did, He does not say we should stop baptizing because of this problem.

He simply says, that is not why he was sent.) "I was not sent to emphasize symbols, but, positively, I was sent to preach a whole gospel, not even one emphasizing style (not in wisdom of words), but that which emphasizes content." The facts in the gospel are what will set us free, and particularly, he says, the word of the cross.

The cross of Christ is what will heal the fragmentation of Christians wherever they are. When you call them back to an understanding of the meaning of the cross, you will find all the divisions disappearing; they fade away like the morning mist When you get men's eyes off the status symbols and call them away from following men to the Person of Christ and his cross, all the divisions will disappear. There has been no other cure that I know of through the years. The cross of Christ cuts across all human value systems. It wipes out all the petty distinctions that people make among themselves. The cross strips away our illusions and brings our pride tumbling down from that high place where it exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Paul is going to go on to describe this radical force so different from anything else in the world. No man would ever have planned the cross. If it had been left up to us to plan the program by which God would change the world we would never have included a crass. This is a radical principle that we need to thoroughly understand, because when we understand the cross there will be no room left for divisions.

I Corinthians 1:18-25

2. God's Nonsense

We usually think of the gospel as something that non-Christians need to hear, but the New Testament makes very clear that it is also Christians who need to understand the gospel. Believing the gospel is not only the means by which you become a Christian; it is also the means by which you are delivered in your Christian life from all the causes of disagreements, factions, dissensions, pressures of lust, and so forth. The heart of the gospel, Paul says, is the cross of Jesus Christ, and he brings us to that in verse 17 of chapter 1:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

The theme of this next section is the power of the cross, and Paul is going to show us clearly, in a very profound passage, what the cross does in human thinking and in human affairs The cross, of course, has become the symbol of Christianity today. People wear it on chains around their necks; we use it as decorations in various places. We have become so familiar with the cross that we have forgotten much of the impact it had in the first century. For these early Christians, and for those among whom they lived, it was a horrible symbol. We would get much closer to its impact today if we substituted an electric chair for the cross. Wouldn't it seem strange, driving across this country, to see church steeples with electric chairs on top?

The cross is not the whole of the gospel. Some people have misunderstood that from this letter, because Paul said that when he came to Corinth he came determined not to preach anything among them "save Jesus Christ and him crucified." Before this letter is over, however, the apostle is going to write a great section on the resurrection of Christ. That is part of the gospel, too. But the cross was particularly needed in Corinth, as it is needed in our American churches, because the word of the cross is the cure for all human division.

The Fundamental Conflict

Paul now goes on to speak of this astonishing power of the cross (v. 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. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart"

The cross is significant in Christianity because it exposes the fundamental conflict of life. That is what these verses declare to us. The cross gets down below all our surface attempts at compromise and cuts down the basic difference behind all human disagreement. Once you confront the cross and its judgment of life, you are either committed to error or committed to truth.

We must understand very clearly what Paul means by "the word of the cross." First of all, it means the basic announcement of the crucifixion of Jesus. The cross is a fact of history. If you have come into contact with some of today's modern cults you know that what they present, basically, is philosophy: various ideas about human behavior and how to control it. A whole spectrum of religious groups is based upon various philosophical concepts.

But when you come to Christianity you do not start with philosophy. You start with facts--inescapable facts of history that cannot be thrown out or avoided. One of them is the incarnation of Jesus, the fact that he was born as a man and came among us through strange and marvelous circumstances Another of the great facts of our faith is the crucifixion Jesus died. He was nailed to a tree. It was done at a certain point of time in history and cannot be evaded. This fact is an essential part of the word of the cross, part of the gospel that we declare to people everywhere. Something strange happened to Jesus of Nazareth. He died a strange death. He did not deserve it, but by the judgment 0f the Romans and Jews alike he was put to death for a crime he did not commit. That is part, but of course not all, of the word of the cross.

This phrase primarily refers to the judgment that `the cross makes upon human life. Paul later calls it "the offense of the cross." When you say Jesus was crucified you are saying that when the man universally acknowledged to be the finest man who ever lived took the place of any one of us, or any person who has ever lived, he deserved nothing but the instant judgment of God: death at God's hand. That is therefore a judgment on all of us. That is what people do not like about the cross. It condemns our righteousness. It casts aspersions on all our good efforts, wipes them all out and says they are totally worthless before God. A single individual, yielding to the God who made him, and filled with the power of God designed for him, is worth far more than all the created universe. But a man without God is a totally worthless being whose only value lies in the possibility that that divine life can he reinstated in him. That is the word of the cross, and that is what Paul means when he speaks of the cross as the symbol of the Christian life.

He goes on in this verse to tell us that this word always produces two reactions. It did so in the first century and still does today--exactly the same two. First, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. The word folly here literally means "silly." It is silliness, absurdity, nonsense, to those who are perishing. If you have ever tried to witness to somebody who feels that he is a self-made man and worships his creator, you will have discovered the folly of the cross. To tell such a man that all his impressive record of achievement is worth nothing in God's sight, that it does not make him one degree more acceptable, that it is nothing but wasted effort, is to immediately run into the offense of the cross. He will call that doctrine silly, absurd: "You mean to tell me that all this impressive array of human knowledge and wisdom that has been accumulated for centuries, with all the great achievements of mankind to relieve human misery through the technological advances of our day, that all that is absolutely worthless? Nonsense!" That is what they said in the first century and that is what they say today. You may even be thinking yourself, "If that's what the Bible teaches, then I think it's ridiculous." That is the foolishness of the cross.

The other reaction is that the cross is "the power of God to those of us who are being saved." (Note that the perishing have not perished yet; they are on the way to perishing. Nor have the saved been fully saved yet; we are on the way to that final salvation yet to be realized.)

But to us who are being saved, the cross is the key to the release of all God's power in human life. It is the way to experience the healing of God in the heart, the deliverance from the reign of sin, and the entry into wholeness, peace and joy. The cross is an inescapable part of that process.

Those are the two reactions. To prove that this is not something merely for a moment in time but always God's way with man, Paul quotes the words of God from Isaiah 29:14:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart."

If you look it up in the Book of Isaiah you will find that it was uttered at a time when Judah was being confronted with an invasion. The northern borders of the land were being attacked by the Assyrian army, and all the statesmen and politicians of the day, including King Hezekiah, were trying to find a way out of this dilemma. (It reads very much like the present-day crisis in the Middle East) They were trying to find a way by human ingenuity and political scheming to either make a mutual defense treaty with Egypt, or somehow turn off the wrath of the Assyrian army and thus escape imminent invasion.

But God spoke through the prophet Isaiah and announced that he would deliver his people without any help from the politicians. The Book of Isaiah goes on to record how God did that very thing. The Assyrian army came right up to the gates of Jerusalem and surrounded the city. King Hezekiah could see the hordes of Assyrians, mocking and taunting the Israelites. Their leader, Sennacherib, sent a letter to the king ordering him to surrender, but the king spread it out before the Lord and prayed over it. And God answered. He sent an angel who in one night slew 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers. (History says that a plague broke out in the Assyrian camp, and overnight 185,000 died. The Authorized Version puts it in a rather remarkable way: "When they woke up in the morning, behold, they were all dead men.") God did exactly what he said he would do. He did not ask for any human help. He did it alone, and the land was delivered. Now, Paul picks this up and says it is the way God works, and especially, he works that way in the matter of human redemption.

Where Is the Wise Man?

That brings us then to Paul's analysis and examination of the wisdom of the age versus the wisdom of God. Now we are about to look at a very profound passage It is one of the most amazing examinations of a problem that every generation, without fail, has to face: How much should we trust our own wisdom? How much reliance should we put upon our ability to solve our own problems in whatever realm or dimension of life we care to investigate? (This is a particularly helpful passage to students at school.) Paul answers in verses 20 and 21:

Where 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? 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.

He begins with three questions, but essentially he is asking this one question: "What true standing does human wisdom give to you?" Here we come up against the matter of how much value are academic degrees. I am not setting aside degrees; they do represent something of value, but how much of the true value of a life can be detected by the degrees that a person has? The implication of these questions is: none!

Paul is referring to the two universal approaches to gathering knowledge and wisdom. The first is the scribal, or Jewish approach-the study of the wisdom and writings of the past. The Jewish scribes gave their whole attention to reading the Scriptures and ancient writings of wise men, trying to gather it all and reduce it to practical applications for their day. But Paul asks, "Where does that get you?" The answer is: nowhere! Not with God, anyway!

Well, what about the debater of this age? That was the Greek approach. The Greeks loved to get together to debate the philosophies of their day. We would call it the dialectic approach. Paul is raising the question, "Where does that get you?" Again, the implied answer is clearly: nowhere! What is it worth? Nothing! That is a harsh judgment, isn't it?

At this point we must make an important distinction. There is a difference between human knowledge and human wisdom. Knowledge is the discovery of truth, and God always encourages it; he gave us minds to use. God has set man on a search to unravel and discover the millions of secrets he has hidden in the universe--many of the greatest, I am sure, yet undiscovered. Man is given the gift of reason to search these out. To give yourself to a discovery of the laws of physics and what is behind matter is perfectly proper. To give yourself to investigation of the wonders of the human body, of medicine and pathology, is perfectly right. To set yourself to discover the secrets of the stars, or the secrets of the workings of the human mind and the psyche in psychology--these are all perfectly correct. But that is knowledge, the discovery of truth. Wisdom is something else. Wisdom is the proper use of truth. This is where scripture always throws down the gauntlet.

The Bible says there is something faulty about human wisdom--it does not know how to use truth. All truth discovered through human knowledge is misused, abused, twisted, and distorted. This needs especially to be emphasized today because so many Christians worship human wisdom and feel that secular writers know more about the use of knowledge than Christians do. There is no question that many secular writers do know a great deal more about truth than do many Christians. But what we must clearly understand, and what this great passage will help us understand, is that when it comes to the right application of truth, secular minds are for the most part juvenile. They are inept, they do not know what to do with their knowledge. And so are a lot of Christians who follow along these same paths, who have not approached the use of truth from the revelation and the wisdom of the Word of God.

Amazingly, even thoughtful secular writers will distinguish these differences. Recently I was reading an excerpt from Vance Packard's book, The People Shapers, in which he explores the possibility of molding the minds of men and altering human behavior by scientific process. He concludes with these worth:

A person can be high in learning ability and memory, and still remain a fool. The two do not add up to either brilliance or wisdom in thinking. Until someone comes along with a pill for wisdom, we might better aspire to become a more human society, rather than a more brainy one.

In verse 20 the apostle asks another question, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" He is asking in essence, "What is the true nature of human wisdom?" And his answer is, "Foolishness!" It is ridiculous; it always sounds impressive, it radiates optimism, and it even seems to work for awhile in a limited area of application. This is what confuses us so. But when it is all over it has succeeded in changing nothing That is what we need to face. That is the fact which history confirms. Every generation wrestles with the self-same problems, and that remains true as far back as you can go into the farthest reaches of human history. That is why one generation never seems to learn from another. The great German philosopher, Hegel, was quite right when he said, "History teaches us that history teaches nothing." That is why old age always points to youth and says Won't you listen? Won't you pay attention?" And youth invariably Points back and says, "Look what your philosophy made us! Look where you got us! We're not going to pay any attention to you." That is the story of history.

Winston Churchill once said these remarkable words:

Certain it is that while men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. Under sufficient stress, starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold, intellectual frenzy, the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.

The Stupidity of Ignoring God

Why is this true? In verse 21 the apostle puts his finger right on the problem:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom…

That is the problem. What is the major fault of the wisdom of man? Well, despite his pretentious claims to have penetrated the secrets of life, he has failed to discover or even to acknowledge the greatest fact of all--God himself. The great Being behind all that exists is God, and for man to ignore the most important fact of all is nothing but sheer stupidity. That is why, in our public school systems, there is a conspiracy of silence to keep God out. No one hardly dares to mention his name. Teachers are careful not to allow the investigation of natural phenomena to lead to the conclusion that behind these phenomena is a being of great wisdom, power and might. They use euphemisms instead: "Nature, karma, destiny, fate." Or, if they are driven into a corner, "Providence"--but not God. Now, that is another incredible fact. In all the reasoning of the mind of man he fails to discover the great Force behind all psychology, the great Reality behind all the appearances that Science investigates. With all our brilliance we end up like little children who fail to see a great giant towering in our midst because we are so happily engaged in swinging on his shoestrings. No wonder T. S. Eliot says in The Rock:

All our knowledge only brings us closer to our ignorance, and all our ignorance closer to death, but closeness to death, no nearer to God. [Then he asks the question that hangs over this whole generation.] Where is the life we have lost in living?

A Simple Story

Now what is God's answer to this? Well, Paul gives it to us in verses 21 through 25:

…it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Creeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Creeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

What a strange answer that is! God has chosen to set aside both the searchings and the demands of proud, stubborn people who demand miracles or else they will not believe, in order to confront them with what is basically a simple story of a crucified Messiah. We had a clear example of these demands in recent newspaper reports of the discovery of a shroud marked with the image of a man, supposedly the burial shroud of Jesus. It immediately evoked tremendous popular attention. Why? Because something about us wants God to perform a miracle or else we will not believe. We are right where the citizens of Nazareth were when Jesus came among them. They asked him to do a sign, but he would not do it "because of their unbelief."

To the proud skeptics who demand miracles and to the foolish intellectuals who insist on explanations or else they will not believe, God gives the same answer. The story of a crucified Messiah is held out to them as the only hope for deliverance. It is preached by simple men and women, not brilliant people, not great, trained minds, not deep-thinking philosophers, but common, ordinary Citizens--housewives, slaves, artisans, craftsmen, whoever, for anybody can tell the story of a crucified Messiah. And yet that story, believed in, effectively accomplishes what the wisdom of man and the power of man cannot do--salvation! People are actually delivered from themselves, and from their sins.

We all remember the mess of Watergate and the sickening discovery of a basic illness so deeply involved in our whole national life that it touched the highest office in the land. Associated with it was an arrogant, ruthless young lawyer named Charles Colson. We have heard the story of how the word of the cross reached that "hatchet man" of the Nixon administration, and how he is now devoting his life to the rescue of men in prison. He has been changed by the power of God.

I love to dwell on this because I think Christians have forgotten what it is God has put in their hands in the gospel. What a marvelous gospel this is! Paul seems, in verse 25, to bow before the wonder and majesty of this astonishing God who can devise such a simple but effective gospel.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God [the nonsense of God] is stronger than men.

What man cannot do, God accomplishes by a simple word about the crucifixion of Jesus and its judgment on the wisdom of man.

Here is what C. S. Lewis says about the nonsense of God in The Problem of Pain:

It is hardly complimentary to God that we should choose him as an alternative to hell. Yet even this he accepts. The creature's illusion of self-sufficiency must, for the creature's sake, be shattered. And by trouble, or fear of trouble on earth, by crude fear of the eternal flames, God shatters it, unmindful of his glory's diminution. I call this "divine humility," because it's a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down under us, a poor thing to come to him as a last resort, to offer up our own when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud, he would hardly have us on such terms. But he is not proud. He stoops to conquer. He would have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to him, and come to him because there is nothing better now to be had. [Macmillan, New York: 1943, p97].

Thus "the word of the cross" shatters the pride of man. When we learn in it the truth about human life we find we are dealing with a reality that strips off the illusions and delusions of a secular age and introduces us to bedrock reality--the true view of life as God sees it. That is the beginning of our deliverance from evil.

1 Corinthians 1:26-2:10

3. God's Tools

I have entitled this chapter "God's Tools" because it deals with those whom God uses to change the world. I could have entitled it "God's Fools;' because the startling truth Paul declares here is that God often prefers fools to use as tools when he wants to do a really great work in the world. Here are Paul's words (Chap. 1, v. 26):

For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; 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, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.

The apostle is dealing with the wisdom of the world versus the inscrutable, marvelous wisdom of God, which is often regarded by the world as foolishness or silliness. These Corinthians were exalting the wisdom of the world, and so dividing into various factions, following certain men, and glorying in men's ability, power, and wisdom.

To answer this the apostle shows us how God works, using a simple contrast; these Corinthians themselves are his "Exhibit A." He says, "Look at yourselves, consider your own call, look what has happened in your own life." He then points out two rather obvious but important facts they were evidently overlooking in their thinking. First, he says, "There are not many mighty among you, are there?" Fortunately, Paul did not say "any" mighty. Lady Hamilton, an evangelical believer among the English nobility in the early part of this century, used to say she was saved by an "m," because if it had said not "any" mighty or "any" noble, she would not have made it.

There in Corinth only a few had some standing in the community. Sosthenes (he is mentioned at the beginning of this letter) and Crispus, who both had once been the rulers of the synagogue, were there and they, perhaps, were men of repute. At the close of the letter to the Romans (which Paul wrote while he was in Corinth), he mentions a man named Erastus, who was the city treasurer. A man named Gains, who was evidently a wealthy businessman in Corinth, is also mentioned there. But that is about all the Scripture records of men who were of repute or knowledge in the congregation. The rest were the common, ordinary people of the city, those whom the world regarded as foolish. Many of them were slaves, perhaps, unknown people, "plain vanilla" people, like you and me.

Some of them were weak, the apostle says. They had no political or military clout; they were not men of influence, and they had no "in" with city hall. They were without power, apparently, to affect life around them, yet God chose them. They made up what we would call the working classes--artisans, tradesmen, the little people of the world.

Undiscovered Secrets

Paul points out that God even chose things "that are not to set at nought the things that are," that is, future events which had not yet come to pass, upon which great issues would ultimately hang. Perhaps Paul is referring here to certain chronologic secrets that had yet to be discovered. In those days they knew nothing about radio, television, and communications such as we know today, but all that was known to God. Perhaps some of the predictions of scripture about the last days rest for their fulfillment upon some of the things that have not yet been found. These are what d works with, "things that are not, to bring to nought the things that are." So, if you are feeling that nobody recognizes you, you ought to rejoice that you are a Christian because power and influence with men are not necessary for you to be greatly used of God. He often delights in setting aside the impressive things of men.

This does not mean that God does not use people of status and stature as well. He does, but only, remarkably enough, when they have learned that their usefulness is not derived from their position or their abilities, but rather from his presence in their lives. Is it not strange that we think so highly of the wisdom of the world when God thinks so little of it? Jesus said once, "What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:15), and what Paul is saying here seems to flow from that fact. What men put great store by is often set aside totally by God; it is abomination in the sight of God.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was for many years an outstanding pastor in London, says this:

We Christians often quote "not by might nor by power, but by my spirit saith the Lord," and yet in practice we seem to rely upon the mighty dollar and the power of the press and advertising. We seem to think that our influence will depend on our technique and the program we can put forward and that it would be the numbers, the largeness, the bigness that would prove effective. We seem to have forgotten that God has done most of his deeds in the church throughout its history through remnants. We seem to have forgotten the great story of Gideon, for instance, and how God insisted on reducing the 32,000 men down to 300 before he would make use of them. We have become fascinated by the idea of bigness, and we are quite convinced that if we can only stage, yes, that's the word, stage something really big before the world, we will shake it and produce a mighty religious awakening. That seems to be the modern conception of authority.

Unfortunately, that is too true today; it seems to be the basic philosophy of the church. It is, "Seek ye first the Lily Foundation and all these things will be added unto you." I find people everywhere who seem to think that it takes money to do God's work, that nothing can happen unless you get money first. It seems to me that this is a reversal of the whole position of Scripture, for in Scripture you do not begin with money, you begin with ministry. Anybody can be a minister of God. That is the glory of the Church, because God has put us all in the ministry. If you begin to do what God wants you to do, right where you are, and God begins to work through you, all the money ever necessary to cause that ministry to grow to perhaps worldwide dimensions is always available. Money follows ministry, not the other way around. How far we seem to have drifted from this. I think God delights in every generation to prove again, by some unusual demonstration, this great principle that Paul declares. God deliberately chooses the weak and the obscure and uses them in great power to remind us that it is not status, prestige, bigness or money that makes ministry for God effective.

Take a Peanut

In my early Christian life I remember reading of the life and ministry of Dr. George Washington Carver, the outstanding Negro scientist, who in the early part of this century was used of God in great ways among the black people of the South. Dr. Carver, a great believer and a choice servant of God, said that one day he prayed, "Lord, teach me the secrets of the universe." He said God said to him, "George, that is too big a subject for you. I want you to take a peanut, that is more your size, and work on that." So he began to explore what was in the peanut, and now it is a matter of record that he found over 325 different uses for it. He revolutionized the technology of the South. God used this simple, humble believer to open secrets of the universe that he hid from everyone else.

Remember how Jesus once put it, "I thank thee, Father…that them has hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to babes" (Luke 10:21). I have always loved that phrase from the eighth Psalm where David is rejoicing in the beauty and the glory of the heavens above.

When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,

the moon and the stars which thou hast established;

what is man that thou art mindful of him,

and the son of man that thou dost care for him?

Verse 2 of that psalm always puzzles people,

…by the mouth of babes and infants,

thou has founded a bulwark because of thy foes,

to still the enemy and the avenger.

What this refers to is that God chooses to open the mouths of children and mere striplings and use them, oftentimes, to do what the wise and the important have been unable to accomplish.

One of the greatest awakenings of the nineteenth century began in Cambridge University in England when D. L. Moody and his singer, Ira B. Sankey, came to that center of learning. In 1950 when I was traveling with Dr. H. A. Ironside, I met an Episcopal rector in Virginia who had been a member of that class in Cambridge when D. L. Moody came. He told us the whole University was outraged that this backwoods American preacher would dare to appear and speak in the center of culture of the English world. They well knew that he "murdered" the King's English. (Somebody once said that D. L. Moody was the only man he ever heard who could pronounce Jerusalem in one syllable!) So this rector said that he and others of his classmates who were not Christians determined that when Moody spoke in the chapel at Cambridge they would hoot him off the platform.

Moody began by asking Sankey to sing. (Sankey must have had a wonderful voice, because whenever he sang audiences quieted and listened to him.) As soon as he finished, Moody stepped to the edge of the platform and, looking directly at the students who were gathered there, he said these remarkable words, "Young gentlemen, don't ever think God don't love you, for he do!" This young man said that he and his classmates were dumbfounded by that beginning. Moody went on and in a few minutes he again said, "Don't ever think God don't love you, for he do!" Something about the very ungrammatical structure of these words captured them. The intense earnestness of this man spoke right to their hearts, beyond all the superficial, external things. That man said he later sought out Moody for a private interview, and Moody led him to Christ. A great awakening came to Cambridge University at the hands of that humble servant of God.

Now, God does this again and again to remind us that though he made the human mind, and he encourages us to use it to search for wisdom and knowledge, there is only one place we can learn to use this knowledge rightly--in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ out of the wisdom and understanding of the revelation of God in the Scriptures.

Why does God do this? Why does God seem to be so against all the "wisdom of the world," as Paul calls it here? Is he jealous of man? Is he the kind of God who loves to put people down? It sounds almost vindictive, does it not? The answer is given to us in verse 29, where Paul says God does this "so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."

But why is God against human boasting? We are all experts at it, but God does not like it. Why? Surely he is not jealous of us; no, the answer is that human boasting is always based on an illusion, but God is a realist. Those who boast in themselves or in their abilities think they have some power in themselves to succeed, and God knows that this is a lie. They are deceiving themselves; they are living in a fantasy world. Therefore, the kindest thing God can do is to find a way to puncture that sinful pride, collapse that platform of prestige, and shatter that illusion of self-sufficiency. This he does by using the obscure and the weak and the things that are oftentimes regarded as foolish.

Some years ago I read an article by a businessman friend of mine who recounted his own experience in this regard. He learned this the painful way. He writes,

It's my pride that makes me independent of God. It's appealing to feel I am the master of my fate; I run my own life, I call my own shots; I go it alone. But that feeling is my basic dishonesty. I can't go it alone. I have to get help from other people, and I can't ultimately rely on myself. I am dependent on God for my very next breath. It is dishonest of me to pretend that I am anything but a man, small, weak and limited. So, living independent of God is self-delusion. It's not just a matter of pride being an unfortunate little trait and humility being an attractive little virtue, it's my inner psychological integrity that's at stake. When I am conceited, I am lying to myself about what I am. I am pretending to be God, and not man. My pride is the idolatrous worship of myself, and that is the national religion of hell. [Howard Butt, Jr., in an article in CBMC Contact, © 1954].

That is right in line with what the apostle is telling us. God sets aside the wisdom, the pride, and the boasting of man because it is based upon an illusion, a fantasy, that men have in themselves power to act.

To Walk in a Different Way

Paul then sets forth for us in another beautiful passage the secret of true wisdom. What is it? It is the ability to recognize that though you may have little of what the world thinks it takes to succeed, if you have Jesus, and have learned to count on his power moment by moment, you have the secret of true success. Many Christians know that, but they do not act on it when the moment comes. The whole purpose of the Scriptures is to teach us to walk in a different way, to live by a different power and to do so with respect to everything we do. The simplest tasks are to be done in the power of Christ.

Look at what Paul says now, in verses 30 and 31:

He [i.e., God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord."

There is an interesting structure to the Greek sentence here. What Paul says is, "He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made to be our wisdom, even our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption." In other words, righteousness, sanctification and redemption are the explanation of what wisdom involves.

Elements of Wisdom

You will remember that wisdom is the right use of truth, and it always takes three basic elements to be wise. First, there must be a true perception of what is, an understanding of the nature of reality. If you are going to be wise about any situation you may face, you have to understand what forces are at work, what is happening, what is involved and what is driving them. Therefore, one of the fundamentals of wisdom is the ability to distinguish the true from the false, to understand reality.

Second, there must also be a true evaluation of worth; you have to be able to distinguish between what is trivial and what is important. Have you ever had the experience of arguing with somebody, perhaps your wife, or your husband or your children, and it started out over some small matter but then you became very involved in it? You grew hotter and hotter, and they grew hotter and hotter, and soon you ended up nose to nose, shaking your fists at one another, with your voices raised. Suddenly it occurred to you, "What are we arguing about?" You began to see that you had built up a trivial matter into a mountain of meaning and it was foolish to do so. We are all guilty of that, but to act wisely you must be able to put things in perspective and keep them there so they do not get out of focus.

The third element of wisdom is the ability to blend the two essentials of human life, truth and love, into that harmonious balance that keeps everything right on keel; to be honest yet patient, to be both frank and gracious. That is what we see so beautifully in Jesus. How honest he was, how frank he was, and yet he always had that gracious touch that was sensitive to the person to whom he spoke and the need of that person's life and heart. "Speaking the truth in love" is the sign of wisdom.

Christ has come to teach us how to live this way. The mark of somebody who is growing in Christ is that he or she is becoming able to exercise that kind of wisdom. And it begins, as the apostle tells us here, with the gift of righteousness. Christ is made unto us righteousness. Righteousness is really what we mean when we use the words "self worth," a full and loving acceptance in the eyes of God. It is a position to which we are able to return whenever we are threatened, or guilty or afraid, a position from which we can handle pressure.

If you feel worthless you cannot handle life, you lose the ability to function. You must have a sense of worth. The world says you have to earn that, but God says you can have it as a gift; it is yours already. Now, on that basis, start to handle life.

Then, wisdom moves into the process that Paul, alls "sanctification." That is the daily manifestation of a Christ like character becoming more and more visible in our life--the outward product of the inward righteousness. We will find ourselves manifesting this character of Jesus more and more as we learn to handle life according to the way God teaches us. We will become more loving, more patient, more understanding, more insightful, more courageous. We are all in the process. No one has made it yet, but we are on the way.

And finally, it results in redemption. Redemption is the restoration to usefulness of something that has been rendered totally useless. Have you ever pawned anything? I have. Put something in hock and you get some money (never anywhere near what it is worth) from a pawnbroker. That object of value is useless while it is in pawn. It sits there, gathering dust on the shelf or in the shop window, until it is redeemed. But when you go back and pay the redemption price, you restore it to usefulness. That is what God is doing with us; he is restoring us to usefulness. We, who in the process of sin have been rendered useless, are gradually being restored. The day will come when restoration will be complete, body, soul and spirit, and God will open up to us an avenue of service such as we have never dreamed of, because at last we have been made useful once more.

That is the wisdom of God. The world cannot do that, can it? It uses people for a little while and then discards them as useless. But God's wisdom is such that through the processes of life he is gradually restoring us to usefulness (redeeming us), and he does it through this wonderful gift of righteousness and this process of sanctification. Thus, we ought to give thanks continually for what he is doing in our lives. How far superior is the wisdom of God to the wisdom of man! That is why Paul concludes this with these words, "Therefore, let him who boasts, boast of the Lord." It is the Lord who can change you, not you, yourself.

A Negative Note

Now, in chapter 2, the apostle is looking back to his first visit to Corinth"

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom.

(Instead of "the testimony of God," some of the ancient manuscripts have the phrase, "the mystery of God," and I think, because of what follows, that is perhaps a better translation.)

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

That represents a deliberate decision the apostle made when he came to Corinth. He would not talk to them along the lines of the wisdom of men. He would not use flowery phrases and lofty, high-sounding words; he would not attempt to impress them with the beauty and the glory of Christian living, but he would start on the negative note of the cross of Christ.

To us, as to the Corinthians, the wisdom of the world always sounds impressive. We are exposed to it all the time through the media of newspapers, magazines, television, and even our conversations with one another. If you watch television you are encouraged to seek after "the good life," to become "beautiful people," to "live life with gusto," and to find the "real thing." We all know, of course, that using a different deodorant is not going to change life that drastically, or that changing your brand of perfume is not really going to introduce you into a world of romance and exotic excitement. However, we are continually exposed to this idea: if you only develop all your hidden powers you will find life the way you want to find it--there are things in you, in your personality, that need to be brought out.

There is a germ of truth there that the Scriptures recognize also. God made man a potentially wonderful creature, and it is not wrong to say there are hidden possibilities in every human being that need to be developed. Where the wisdom of the world goes astray, however, is in how to do it. The world promotes the idea that if we just know the right things take the right course, get involved in the right program, use meditative processes and various other methods, we will achieve what we are after. It always sounds so beautiful. It is usually couched in colorful phrases and supported by clever arguments. It is confirmed cm television and in color advertisements in the magazines by very impressive people and facts, so that it all seems right.

Things were no different in Corinth When Paul arrived, the whole city was given over to exploring methods of fulfilling life by various Philosophical schools, by giving themselves to fleshly indulgences in the worship of sex, and in various commercial and business enterprises by seeking after beauty, art, music, and the aesthetic things of life. That is why Paul made a definite decision not to speak in lofty, flowing phrases, or to tell people that all they needed was a little knowledge in special subjects. "But," he said, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."

They Are Afraid He Is Right

As we have seen, the cross of Christ is a judgment on the wisdom of man. What do the smart, powerful people of the world do with Jesus of Nazareth? They crucify him! They reject him; they deny him; they put him to death if they possibly can. That is what they did in the first century and they still do today. Why? Because they think he is crazy? No, even today, nobody thinks Jesus was crazy. They resist him because they are afraid he is right. He threatens people. As we have already seen, the cross is the result of confronting the world with the ways of God.

I want to share with you a quotation from Dorothy Sayers, a very insightful writer and popular theologian who has done a fine lob of defending Christian faith:

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore--on the contrary: they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him "meek and mild," and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.

To those who knew Him, however, He in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to Him as a dangerous firebrand. True, He was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before Heaven; but He insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; He referred to King Herod as "that fox"; He went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; He assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; He drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations. He cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; He showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, He displayed a paradoxical humour that affronted serious-minded people, and He retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb.

He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if He was God, there can be nothing dull about God either. But He had "a daily beauty in His life that made us ugly," and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without Him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness. [Affirmation of God and Man