For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Good News—not in wisdom of words, so that the cross of Christ wouldn’t be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, 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. I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing.”
Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn’t know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs, Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Greeks, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God; because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For you see your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble; but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong. God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that don’t exist, that he might bring to nothing the things that exist, that no flesh should boast before God. Because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: that, as it is written, “He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31 17. For Christ sent me not. He anticipates an…
17. For Christ sent me not. He anticipates an objection that might, perhaps, be brought against him — that he had not discharged his duty, inasmuch as Christ commands his Apostles to baptize as well as teach. Accordingly he replies, that this was not the principal department of his office, for the duty of teaching had been principally enjoined upon him as that to which he should apply himself. For when Christ says to the Apostles, (Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:15,) Go, preach and baptize, he connects baptism with teaching simply as an addition or appendage, so that teaching always holds the first place.
Two things, however, must be noticed here. The first is, that the Apostle does not here absolutely deny that he had a command to baptize, for this is applicable to all the Apostles: Go and baptize; and he would have acted rashly in baptizing even one, had he not been furnished with authority, but simply points out what was the chief thing in his calling. The second thing is, that he does not by any means detract here, as some think, from the dignity or utility of the sacrament. For the question here is, not as to the efficacy of baptism, and Paul does not institute this comparison with the view of detracting in any degree from that; but because it was given to few to teach, while many could baptize; and farther, as many could be taught at the same time, while baptism could only be administered to individuals successively, one by one, Paul, who excelled in the gift of teaching, applied himself to the work that was more especially needful for him, and left to others what they could more conveniently accomplish. Nay farther, if the reader considers minutely all the circumstances of the case, he will see that there is irony tacitly conveyed here, dexterously contrived for making those feel acutely, who, under color of administering a ceremony, endeavor to catch a little glory at the expense of another’s labor. Paul’s labors in building up that Church had been incredible. There had come after him certain effeminate masters, who had drawn over followers to their party by the sprinkling of water; Paul, then, giving up to them the title of honor, declares himself contented with having had the burden.
Read full note →
Not with wisdom of words There is here an instance of anticipation, by which a twofold objection is refuted. For these pretended teachers might reply that it was ludicrous to hear Paul, who was not endowed with eloquence, making it his boast that the department of teaching had been assigned to him. Hence he says, by way of concession, that he had not been formed to be an orator, to set himself off by elegance of speech: but a minister of the Spirit, that he might, by plain and homely speech, bring to nothing the wisdom of the world. Now, lest any one should object that he hunted after glory by his preaching, as much as others did by baptism, he briefly replies, that as the method of teaching that he pursued was the farthest removed from show, and breathed nothing of ambition, it could give no ground of suspicion on that head. Hence, too, if I mistake not, it may readily be inferred what was the chief ground of the controversy that Paul had with the wicked and unfaithful ministers of the Corinthians. It was that, being puffed up with ambition, that they might secure for themselves the admiration of the people, they recommended themselves to them by a show of words and mask of human wisdom.
From this main evil two others necessarily followed — that by these disguises (so to speak) the simplicity of the gospel was disfigured, and Christ was, as it were, clothed in a new and foreign garb, so that the pure and unadulterated knowledge of him was not to be found. Farther, as men’s minds were turned aside to neatness and elegance of expression, to ingenious speculations, and to an empty show of superior sublimity of doctrine, the efficacy of the Spirit vanished, and nothing remained but the dead letter. The majesty of God, as it shines forth in the gospel, was not to be seen, but mere disguise and useless show. Paul, accordingly, with the view of exposing these corruptions of the gospel, makes a transition here to the manner of his preaching. This he declares to be right and proper, while at the same time it was diametrically opposed to the ambitious ostentation of those men. It is as though he had said — “I am well aware how much your fastidious teachers delight themselves in their high-sounding phrases. As for myself, I do not simply confess that my preaching has been conducted in a rude, coarse, and unpolished style, but I even glory in it. For it was right that it should be so, and this was the method that was divinely prescribed to me.” By the wisdom of words, he does not mean λογοδαιδαλία, which is mere empty talk, but true eloquence, which consists in skillful contrivance of subjects, ingenious arrangement, and elegance of expression. He declares that he had nothing of this: nay more, that it was neither suitable to his preaching nor advantageous.
Lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect As he had so often previously presented the name of Christ in contrast with the arrogant wisdom of the flesh, so now, with the view of bringing down thereby all its pride and loftiness, he brings forward to view the cross of Christ. For all the wisdom of believers is comprehended in the cross of Christ, and what more contemptible than a cross? Whoever, therefore, would desire to be truly wise in God’s account, must of necessity stoop to this abasement of the cross, and this will not be accomplished otherwise than by his first of all renouncing his own judgment and all the wisdom of the world. Paul, however, shows here not merely what sort of persons Christ’s disciples ought to be, and what path of learning they ought to pursue, but also what is the method of teaching in Christ’s school. “The cross of Christ (says he) would have been made of none effect, if my preaching had been adorned with eloquence and show.” The cross of Christ he has put here for the benefit of redemption, which must be sought from Christ crucified. Now the doctrine of the gospel which calls us to this, should savor of the nature of the Cross, so as to be despised and contemptible, rather than glorious, in the eyes of the world. The meaning, therefore, is, that if Paul had made use of philosophical acuteness and studied address in the presence of the Corinthians, the efficacy of the cross of Christ, in which the salvation of men consists, would have been buried, because it cannot come to us in that way.
Here two questions are proposed: first, whether Paul here condemns in every respect the wisdom of words, as opposed to Christ; and secondly, whether he means that eloquence and the doctrine of the gospel are invariably opposed, so they cannot agree together, and that the preaching of the gospel is vitiated, if the slightest tincture of eloquence is made use of for adorning it. To the first of these I answer — that it were quite unreasonable to suppose, that Paul would utterly condemn those arts which, it is manifest, are excellent gifts of God, and which serve as instruments, as it were, to assist men in the accomplishment of important purposes. As for those arts, then, that have nothing of superstition, but contain solid learning, and are founded on just principles, as they are useful and suited to the common transactions of human life, so there can be no doubt that they have come forth from the Holy Spirit; and the advantage which is derived and experienced from them, ought to be ascribed exclusively to God. What Paul says here, therefore, ought not to be taken as throwing any disparagement upon the arts, as if they were unfavorable to piety.
The second question is somewhat more difficult, for he says, that the cross of Christ is made of none effect if there be any admixture of the wisdom of words I answer, that we must consider who they are that Paul here addresses. The ears of the Corinthians were tickled with a silly fondness for high sounding style. Hence they needed more than others to be brought back to the abasement of the cross, that they might learn to embrace Christ as he is, unadorned, and the gospel in its simplicity, without any false ornament. I acknowledge, at the same time, that this sentiment in some respects holds invariably, that the cross of Christ is made of none effect, not merely by the wisdom of the world, but also by elegance of address. For the preaching of Christ crucified is simple and unadorned, and hence it ought not to be obscured by false ornaments of speech. It is the prerogative of the gospel to bring down the wisdom of the world in such a way that, stripped of our own understanding, we show ourselves to be simply docile, and do not think or even desire to know anything, but what the Lord himself teaches. As to the wisdom of the flesh, we shall have occasion to consider more at large ere long, in what respects it is opposed to Christ. As to eloquence, I shall advert to it here in a few words, in so far as the passage calls for.
We see that God from the beginning ordered matters so, that, the gospel should be administered in simplicity, without any aid from eloquence. Could not he who fashions the tongues of men for eloquence, be himself eloquent if he chose to be so? While he could be so, he did not choose to be so. Why it was that he did not choose this, I find two reasons more particularly. The first is, that in a plain and unpolished manner of address, the majesty of the truth might shine forth more conspicuously, and the simple efficacy of his Spirit, without external aids, might make its way into the hearts of men. The second is, that he might more effectually try our obedience and docility, and train us at the same time to true humility. For the Lord admits none into his school but little children. Hence those alone are capable of heavenly wisdom who, contenting themselves with the preaching of the cross, however contemptible it may be in appearance, feel no desire whatever to have Christ under a mask. Hence the doctrine of the gospel required to be regulated with this view, that believers should be drawn off from all pride and haughtiness.
But what if any one should at the present day, by discoursing with some degree of elegance, adorn the doctrine of the gospel by eloquence? Would he deserve to be on that account rejected, as though he either polluted it or obscured Christ’s glory. I answer in the first place, that eloquence is not at all at variance with the simplicity of the gospel, when it does not merely not disdain to give way to it, and be in subjection to it, but also yields service to it, as a handmaid to her mistress. For as Augustine says, “He who gave Peter a fisherman, gave also Cyprian an orator.” By this he means, that both are from God, notwithstanding that the one, who is much the superior of the other as to dignity, is utterly devoid of gracefulness of speech; while the other, who sits at his feet, is distinguished by the fame of his eloquence. That eloquence, therefore, is neither to be condemned nor despised, which has no tendency to lead Christians to be taken up with an outward glitter of words, or intoxicate them with empty delight, or tickle their ears with its tinkling sound, or cover over the cross of Christ with its empty show as with a veil; but, on the contrary, tends to call us back to the native simplicity of the gospel, tends to exalt the simple preaching of the cross by voluntarily abasing itself, and, in fine, acts the part of a herald to procure a hearing for those fishermen and illiterate persons, who have nothing to recommend them but the energy of the Spirit.
I answer secondly, that the Spirit of God, also, has an eloquence of his own, but of such a nature as to shine forth with a native luster peculiar to itself, or rather (as they say) intrinsic, more than with any adventitious ornaments. Such is the eloquence that the Prophets have, more particularly Isaiah, David, and Solomon. Moses, too, has a sprinkling of it. Nay farther, even in the writings of the Apostles, though they are more unpolished, there are notwithstanding some sparks of it occasionally emitted. Hence the eloquence that is suited to the Spirit of God is of such a nature that it does not swell with empty show, or spend itself in empty sound, but is solid and efficacious, and has more of substance than elegance.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31 The taking away of an objection: that he gave…
The taking away of an objection: that he gave not himself to baptize many amongst them: not for the contempt of Baptism, but because he was chiefly occupied in delivering the doctrine, and committed them that received his doctrine to others to be baptized, whereof he had store. And so he declared sufficiently how far he was from all ambition: whereas on the other side they whom he reprehendeth, as though they gathered disciples unto themselves and not to Christ, bragged most ambitiously of numbers, which they had baptized.
Now he turneth himself to the doctors themselves, which pleased themselves in brave and ambitious eloquence, to the end that they might draw more disciples after them. He confesseth plainly that he was unlike unto them, opposing gravely as it became an Apostle, his example against their perverse judgments: So that this is another place of this Epistle, touching the observing of a godly simplicity, both in words and sentences in teaching of the Gospel.
Read full note →
With eloquence: which Paul casteth off from him not only, as not necessary, but also as flat contrary to the office of his Apostleship: and yet had Paul his kind of eloquence, but it was heavenly, not of man, and void of painted words.
The reason why he used not the pomp of words and painted speech: because it was God’s will to bring the world to his obedience by that way, whereby the most idots amongst men might understand, that this work was done of God himself without the art of man. Therefore as salvation is set forth unto us in the Gospel by the cross of Christ, then which nothing is more contemptible, and more far from life, so God would have the manner of the preaching of the cross most different from those means, with which men do use to draw and entice others, either to hear or believe: therefore it pleased him by a certain kind of most wise folly, to triumph over the most foolish wisdom of the world, as he had said before by Isaiah: that he would. And hereby this we may gather, that both those doctors which were puffed up with ambitious eloquence, and also their hearers strayed far away from the end and mark of their vocation.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv17–31 17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but…
17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
Ver. 17. Not to baptize] As my chief work, {so Jer 7:22} but to preach and plant Churches, wherein he had a very happy hand; as had likewise Farellus among our late reformers, Qui Mompelgardenses, Aquileienses, Lausanneuses, Genevenses, Novocomenses Ghristo lucrifecit, he gained five cities with their territories to Christ. (Melch. Adam. in Vii. xi.)
Read full note →
Not with wisdom of words] Which yet St Paul could have done as well as another; witness his artificial unstarching of the orator’s speech, Act 24:10-21. But he liked not to put the sword of the Spirit into a velvet scabbard, that it could not pierce, to speak floride plus quam solide, as those self-seekers at Corinth did, that sought more to tickle the ear than to affect the heart. It repented Augustine (and well it might) that when he was young he had preached more ut placeret, quam ut doceret, to please than to profit. And Luther was wont to say, he is the best preacher that preacheth vulgiter, trivialiter, maximeque ad populi captum. Not but that there is a lawful use of rhetoric in sermons, so it be free from ostentation. See the Preface to my God’s Love Tokens.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv17–31 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to…
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel; baptism was not his principal work, not the main business for which Paul was sent; it was his work, otherwise he would not have baptized Crispus, or Gaius, or the household of Stephanas, but preaching was his principal work. It is very probable others (besides the apostles) baptized. It is hard to conceive how three thousand should in a day be added to the church, if Peter had baptized them all, Act 2:41. The apostle goes on, telling us how he preached the gospel, and thereby instructing all faithful ministers how they ought to preach.
Not with wisdom of words, or speech. Wisdom of words must signify either what we call rhetoric, or logic, delivering the mysteries of the gospel in lofty, tunable expressions, or going about to evidence them from rational demonstrations and arguments. This was the way (he saith) to have taken away all authority from the doctrine of the cross of Christ: Divine faith being nothing else but the soul’s assent to the Divine revelation because it is such, is not furthered, but hindered, by the arguing the object of it from the principles of reason, and the colouring of it with high-flown words and trim phrases. There is a decent expression to be used in the communicating the will of God unto men; but we must take heed that we do not diminish the authority of God’s revealed will, either by puerile flourishings of words, or philosophical argumentation.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv18, 21, 22, 26, 30 Observe here, 1. The character and description given of…
Observe here, 1. The character and description given of the preaching of the gospel: it is called the preaching of the cross, that is, of a crucified Saviour; it represents him who died upon the cross as the proper object of our faith and hope, of our affiance and trust.
Observe, 2. The low and mean esteem which the philosphers and wise men among the heathens had of the doctrine of the cross, and of the preaching of the gospel; they esteemed it foolishness: The preaching of the cross is, to them that perish, foolishness.
Read full note →
So esteemed, 1. In regard of the subject of it; it is the doctrine of the cross, that is, of a crucified and despised Saviour; it accquaints us, that the eternal God, in the fulness of time, became a mortal man; that life became subject to death, and blessing subject to a curse; all which are such appearing contradictions, that natural reason is very prone to scorn and deride them.
2. The wisdom of the world, or the wise men among the Gentiles, did esteem the preaching of the gospel foolishness, in regard of the manner of it; because the gospel doth nakedly and barely propound some doctrines of faith, and positively requires our assent to them from the evidence if the things themselves, and from the authority of the principal speaker, God himself.
The mysteries of the Christian religion, though not contrary to reason, yet are above our comprehension; notwithstanding which, they do not only require our assent, but also challenge the obedience and adoration of our faith.
Now the wisdom of the world is not satisfied with God’s autos efey, with God’s authority in asserting; but requires that every doctrine of faith, and every mystery of the gospel, be made so plain and obvious, so clear and perspicuous, that their shallow reason may be able fully to comprehend it; for these reasons is the preaching of the cross, to them that perish, foolishness.
Observe, 3. What efficacy and virtue the gospel is of unto believers: Unto us which are saved, says the apostle, it is the power of God; that is, a powerful instrument in God’s hand for men’s conversion and salvation; the word preached is the organ or instrument through which the vital power of the Spirit is conveyed unto the souls of sinners, how much soever it is contemned and despised in the world.
Observe, 4. How the apostle upbraids the pride and folly of the learned philosophers and reputed wise men among the heathens, who, though they excelled in natural wisdom, yet despised evangelical truth, making reason their supreme rule, and philosophy their highest principle: "Where," says the apostle, is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? That is, where is the wisdom now of the wisest philosopher among the Gentiles? where is the wisdom of the scribe, or the interpreter of the law among the Jews? where is the disputer of this world, or the curious searcher into the depths and secrets of nature? Let them show so many brought, by all their wisdom, learning, and eloquence, to the knowledge of God, and to the practice of their duty, as the preaching of a crucified Christ hath done; yea, all their natural wisdom is mere folly, in comparison of the glorious effects which the preaching of the gospel has produced.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v17 We have here,
We have here,
I. The manner in which Paul preached the gospel, and the cross of Christ: Not with the wisdom of words (Co1 1:17), the enticing words of man's wisdom (Co1 2:4), the flourish of oratory, or the accuracies of philosophical language, upon which the Greeks so much prided themselves, and which seem to have been the peculiar recommendations of some of the heads of the faction in this church that most opposed this apostle. He did not preach the gospel in this manner, lest the cross of Christ should be of no effect, lest the success should be ascribed to the force of art, and not of truth; not to the plain doctrine of a crucified Jesus, but to the powerful oratory of those who spread it, and hereby the honour of the cross be diminished or eclipsed. Paul had been bred up himself in Jewish learning at the feet of Gamaliel, but in preaching the cross of Christ he laid his learning aside. He preached a crucified Jesus in plain language, and told the people that that Jesus who was crucified at Jerusalem was the Son of God and Saviour of men, and that all who would be saved must repent of their sins, and believe in him, and submit to his government and laws. This truth needed no artificial dress; it shone out with the greatest majesty in its own light, and prevailed in the world by its divine authority, and the demonstration of the Spirit, without any human helps. The plain preaching of a crucified Jesus was more powerful than all the oratory and philosophy of the heathen world.
Read full note →
II. We have the different effects of this preaching: To those who perish it is foolishness, but to those who are saved it is the power of God, Co1 1:18. It is to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but unto those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, Co1 1:23, Co1 1:24. 1. Christ crucified is a stumbling-block to the Jews. They could not get over it. They had a conceit that their expected Messiah was to be a great temporal prince, and therefore would never own one who made so mean an appearance in life, and died so accursed a death, for their deliverer and king. They despised him, and looked upon him as execrable, because he was hanged on a tree, and because he did not gratify them with a sign to their mind, though his divine power shone out in innumerable miracles. The Jews require a sign, Co1 1:22. See Mat 12:38. 2. He was to the Greeks foolishness. They laughed at the story of a crucified Saviour, and despised the apostles' way of telling it. They sought for wisdom. They were men of wit and reading, men that had cultivated arts and sciences, and had, for some ages, been in a manner the very mint of knowledge and learning. There was nothing in the plain doctrine of the cross to suit their taste, nor humour their vanity, nor gratify a curious and wrangling temper: they entertained it therefore with scorn and contempt. What, hope to be saved by one that could not save himself! And trust in one who was condemned and crucified as a malefactor, a man of mean birth and poor condition in life, and cut off by so vile and opprobrious a death! This was what the pride of human reason and learning could not relish. The Greeks thought it little better than stupidity to receive such a doctrine, and pay this high regard to such a person: and thus were they justly left to perish in their pride and obstinacy. Note, It is just with God to leave those to themselves who pour such proud contempt on divine wisdom and grace. 3. To those who are called and saved he is the wisdom of God, and the power of God. Those who are called and sanctified, who receive the gospel, and are enlightened by the Spirit of God, discern more glorious discoveries of God's wisdom and power in the doctrine of Christ crucified than in all his other works. Note, Those who are saved are reconciled to the doctrine of the cross, and led into an experimental acquaintance with the mysteries of Christ crucified.
III. We have here the triumphs of the cross over human wisdom, according to the ancient prophecy (Isa 29:14): I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Co1 1:19, Co1 1:20, All the valued learning of this world was confounded, baffled, and eclipsed, by the Christian revelation and the glorious triumphs of the cross. The heathen politicians and philosophers, the Jewish rabbis and doctors, the curious searchers into the secrets of nature, were all posed and put to a nonplus. This scheme lay out of the reach of the deepest statesmen and philosophers, and the greatest pretenders to learning both among the Jews and Greeks. When God would save the world, he took a way by himself; and good reason, for the world by wisdom knew not God, Co1 1:21. All the boasted science of the heathen world did not, could not, effectually bring home the world to God. In spite of all their wisdom, ignorance still prevailed, iniquity still abounded. Men were puffed up by their imaginary knowledge, and rather further alienated from God; and therefore it pleased him, by the foolishness of preaching, to save those that believe. By the foolishness of preaching - not such in truth, but in vulgar reckoning.
1. The thing preached was foolishness in the eyes of worldly-wise men. Our living through one who died, our being blessed by one who was made a curse, our being justified by one who was himself condemned, was all folly and inconsistency to men blinded with self-conceit and wedded to their own prejudices and the boasted discoveries of their reason and philosophy.
2. The manner of preaching the gospel was foolishness to them too. None of the famous men for wisdom or eloquence were employed to plant the church or propagate the gospel. A few fishermen were called out, and sent upon this errand. These were commissioned to disciple the nations: these vessels chosen to convey the treasure of saving knowledge to the world. There was nothing in them that at first view looked grand or august enough to come from God; and the proud pretenders to learning and wisdom despised the doctrine for the sake of those who dispensed it. And yet the foolishness of God is wiser than men, Co1 1:25. Those methods of divine conduct that vain men are apt to censure as unwise and weak have more true, solid, and successful wisdom in them, than all the learning and wisdom that are among men: "You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, Co1 1:26, etc. You see the state of Christianity; not many men of learning, or authority, or honourable extraction, are called." There is a great deal of meanness and weakness in the outward appearance of our religion. For, (1.) Few of distinguished character in any of these respects were chosen for the work of the ministry. God did not choose philosophers, nor orators, nor statesmen, nor men of wealth and power and interest in the world, to publish the gospel of grace and peace. Not the wise men after the flesh, though men would apt to think that a reputation for wisdom and learning might have contributed much to the success of the gospel. Not the mighty and noble, however men might be apt to imagine that secular pomp and power would make way for its reception in the world. But God seeth not as man seeth. He hath chosen the foolish things of the world, the weak things of the world, the base and despicable things of the world, men of mean birth, of low rank, of no liberal education, to be the preachers of the gospel and planters of the church. His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways. He is a better judge than we what instruments and measures will best serve the purposes of his glory. (2.) Few of distinguished rank and character were called to be Christians. As the teachers were poor and mean, so generally were the converts. Few of the wise, and mighty, and noble, embraced the doctrine of the cross. The first Christians, both among Jews and Greeks, were weak, and foolish, and base; men of mean furniture as to their mental improvements, and very mean rank and condition as to their outward estate; and yet what glorious discoveries are there of divine wisdom in the whole scheme of the gospel, and in this particular circumstance of its success!
IV. We have an account how admirably all is fitted, 1. To beat down the pride and vanity of men. God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise - men of no learning to confound the most learned; the weak things of the world to confound the might - men of mean rank and circumstances to confound and prevail against all the power and authority of earthly kings; and base things, and things which are despised - things which men have in the lowest esteem, or in the utmost contempt, to pour contempt and disgrace on all they value and have in veneration; and things which are not, to bring to nought (to abolish) things that are - the conversion of the Gentiles (of whom the Jews had the most contemptuous and vilifying thoughts) was to open a way to the abolishing of that constitution of which they were so fond, and upon which they valued themselves so much as for the sake of it to despise the rest of the world. It is common for the Jews to speak of the Gentiles under this character, as things that are not. Thus, in the apocryphal book of Esther, she is brought in praying that God would not give his sceptre to those who are not, Esth. 14:11. Esdras, in one of the apocryphal books under his name, speaks to God of the heathen as those who are reputed as nothing, 2 Esdras 6:56, 57. And the apostle Paul seems to have this common language of the Jews in his view when he calls Abraham the father of us all before him whom he believed, God, who calleth those things that are not as though they were, Rom 4:17. The gospel is fitted to bring down the pride of both Jews and Greeks, to shame the boasted science and learning of the Greeks, and to take down that constitution on which the Jews valued themselves and despised all the world besides, that no flesh should glory in his presence (Co1 1:29), that there might be no pretence for boasting. Divine wisdom alone had the contrivance of the method of redemption; divine grace alone revealed it, and made it known. It lay, in both respects, out of human reach. And the doctrine and discovery prevailed, in spite of all the opposition it met with from human art or authority: so effectually did God veil the glory and disgrace the pride of man in all. The gospel dispensation is a contrivance to humble man. But, 2. It is as admirably fitted to glorify God. There is a great deal of power and glory in the substance and life of Christianity. Though the ministers were poor and unlearned, and the converts generally of the meanest rank, yet the hand of the Lord went along with the preachers, and was mighty in the hearts of the hearers; and Jesus Christ was made both to ministers and Christians what was truly great and honourable. All we have we have from God as the fountain, and in and through Christ as the channel of conveyance. He is made of God to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (Co1 1:30): all we need, or can desire. We are foolishness, ignorant and blind in the things of God, with all our boasted knowledge; and he is made wisdom to us. We are guilty, obnoxious to justice; and he is made righteousness, our great atonement and sacrifice. We are depraved and corrupt; and he is made sanctification, the spring of our spiritual life; from him, the head, it is communicated to all the members of his mystical body by his Holy Spirit. We are in bonds, and he is made redemption to us, our Saviour and deliverer. Observe, Where Christ is made righteousness to any soul, he is also made sanctification. He never discharges from the guilt of sin, without delivering from the power of it; and he is made righteousness and sanctification, that he may in the end be made complete redemption, may free the soul from the very being of sin, and loose the body from the bonds of the grave: and what is designed in all is that all flesh may glory in the Lord, Co1 1:31. Observe, It is the will of God that all our glorifying should be in the Lord: and, our salvation being only through Christ, it is thereby effectually provided that it should be so. Man is humbled, and God glorified and exalted, by the whole scheme.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31 For Christ sent me not to baptize,.... Some think…
For Christ sent me not to baptize,.... Some think the apostle refers to his particular mission from Christ, Act 26:16 in which no mention is made of his administering the ordinance of baptism; but no doubt he had the same mission the rest of the apostles had, which was to baptize as well as preach; and indeed, if he had not been sent at all to baptize, it would have been unlawful for him to have administered baptism to any person whatever; but his sense is, that baptism was not the chief and principal business he was sent about; this was to be done mostly by those preachers of the word who travelled with him, or followed after him: he was not sent so much about this work,
but to preach the Gospel; for which he was most eminently qualified, had peculiar gifts for the discharge of it, and was greatly useful in it. This was what he was rather sent to do than the other, and this "not with wisdom of words". Scholastic divinity, or the art of disputation, is by the (f) Karaites, a sect among the Jews, called , "wisdom of words": this the apostle seems to refer to, and signifies he was not sent with, or to preach, with words of man's wisdom, with human eloquence and oratory, with great swelling words of vanity, but in a plain, humble, modest manner; on which account the false teachers despised him, and endeavoured to bring his ministry into contempt with others: but this way and manner of preaching he chose for this reason,
Read full note →
lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect; that is, either lest men's ears and fancies should be so tickled and pleased with the eloquence of speech, the elegancy of diction, and accuracy of expression, the cadency of words, and beauty of the oration, with the manner, and not with the matter of preaching, and so the true use, end, and design of the doctrine of a crucified Christ be defeated; or lest the success of the ministry should be attributed to the force of enticing words, and the strength and persuasion of oratory, and not to the energy of divine power attending the doctrine of the cross,
(f) Sepher Cosri Orat. 5. Sign. 15, 16. fol. 277. 2. 278. 1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31 For God did not send me to baptize -…
For God did not send me to baptize - That was not my chief errand: those of inferior rank and abilities could do it: though all the apostles were sent to baptize also, Matt. xxviii, 19 But to preach the gospel - So the apostle slides into his general proposition: but not with wisdom of speech - With the artificial ornaments of discourse, invented by human wisdom. Lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect - The whole effect of St. Paul's preaching was owing to the power of God accompanying the plain declaration of that great truth, "Christ bore our sins upon the cross." But this effect might have been imputed to another cause, had he come with that wisdom of speech which they admired.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv17–31 Verse 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize]…
Verse 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize] Bp. Pearce translates thus: For Christ sent me, not so much to baptize as to preach the Gospel: and he supports his version thus-"The writers of the Old and New Testaments do, almost every where (agreeably to the Hebrew idiom) express a preference given to one thing beyond another by an affirmation of that which is preferred, and a negation of that which is contrary to it: and so it must be understood here, for if St. Paul was not sent at all to baptize, he baptized without a commission; but if he was sent, not only to baptize but to preach also, or to preach rather than baptize, he did in fact discharge his duty aright." It appears sufficiently evident that baptizing was considered to be an inferior office, and though every minister of Christ might administer it, yet apostles had more important work. Preparing these adult heathens for baptism by the continual preaching of the word was of much greater consequence than baptizing them when thus prepared to receive and profit by it.
Not with wisdom of words] ουκ εν σοφια λογου. In several places in the New Testament the term λογος is taken not only to express a word, a speech, a saying, c., but doctrine, or the matter of teaching. Here, and in 1Th 1:5, and in several other places, it seems to signify reason, or that mode of rhetorical argumentation so highly prized among the Greeks. The apostle was sent not to pursue this mode of conduct, but simply to announce the truth to proclaim Christ crucified for the sin of the world; and to do this in the plainest and simplest manner possible, lest the numerous conversions which followed might be attributed to the power of the apostle's eloquence, and not to the demonstration of the Spirit of God. It is worthy of remark that, in all the revivals of religion with which we are acquainted, God appears to have made very little use of human eloquence, even when possessed by pious men. His own nervous truths, announced by plain common sense, though in homely phrase, have been the general means of the conviction and conversion of sinners. Human eloquence and learning have often been successfully employed in defending the outworks of Christianity; but simplicity and truth have preserved the citadel.
Read full note →
It is farther worthy of remark, that when God was about to promulgate his laws he chose Moses as the instrument, who appears to have laboured under some natural impediment in his speech, so that Aaron his brother was obliged to be his spokesman to Pharaoh; and that, when God had purposed to publish the Gospel to the Gentile world-to Athens, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, he was pleased to use Saul of Tarsus as the principal instrument; a man whose bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible, 2Co 10:1; 2Co 10:10. And thus it was proved that God sent him to preach, not with human eloquence, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect but with the demonstration and power of his own Spirit; and thus the excellence of the power appeared to be of God, and not of man.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 22, 26, 27, 30 1Co 1:17. For Christ sent me not to baptize…
1Co 1:17. For Christ sent me not to baptize — Not chiefly: this was not the principal end of my mission. He did not call me in so wonderful a way, and endue me with extraordinary powers, chiefly in order to my doing that which might be done as well by an ordinary minister: (all the apostles, however, were also sent to baptize, Mat 28:19 :) but to preach the gospel — Or to plant churches by preaching the gospel to those that never heard it before, Act 26:17-18. “The apostles, being endued with the highest degrees of inspiration and miraculous powers, had the office of preaching committed to them, rather than that of baptizing, because they were best qualified for converting the world, and had not time to give the converted, either before or after their baptism, such particular instruction as their former ignorance rendered necessary. These offices, therefore, were committed to the inferior ministers of the Word.” The apostle here slides into his general proposition, respecting preaching the gospel, namely, the doctrine which he preached, and the manner in which he preached it. Not with wisdom of words — Λογου, of speech, with the artificial ornaments of discourse, invented by human wisdom. This observation was intended to show the Corinthians how ill-founded the boasting of the faction was, who valued themselves on the learning and eloquence of their teachers. Lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect — Lest the bare preaching of Christ crucified, 1Co 1:23, as a fundamental article of Christianity, and the foundation of all our hopes, should be thought unavailing to procure salvation for guilty sinners. The whole effect of Paul’s preaching was owing to the power of God accompanying the plain declaration of this great truth, Christ bore our sins upon the cross. But this effect might have been imputed to another cause, had he come with that wisdom of speech which the Greeks admired. “To have adorned the gospel with the paint of the Grecian rhetoric would have obscured its wisdom and simplicity, just as the gilding of a diamond would destroy its brilliancy. Besides, it would have marred its operation as a revelation from God. For the evidence and efficacy of the gospel arise not from its being proved by philosophical arguments, and recommended by the charms of human eloquence, but from its being proved by miracles, and founded on the testimony of God.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv17–31 For Christ sent me not to baptize - That…
For Christ sent me not to baptize - That is, not to baptize as my main business. Baptism was not his principal employment, though be had a commission in common with others to administer the ordinance, and occasionally did it. The same thing was true of the Saviour, that he did not personally baptize, Joh 4:2. It is probable that the business of baptism was entrusted to the ministers of the church of inferior talents, or to those who were connected with the churches permanently, and not to those who were engaged chiefly in traveling from place to place. The reasons of this may have been:
(1) That which Paul here suggests, that if the apostles had themselves baptized, it might have given occasion to strifes, and the formation of parties, as those who had been baptized by the apostles might claim some superiority over those who were not.
Read full note →
(2) It is probable that the rite of baptism was preceded or followed by a course of instruction adapted to it, and as the apostles were traveling from place to place, this could be better entrusted to those who were to be with them as their ordinary religious teachers. It was an advantage that those who imparted this instruction should also administer this ordinance.
(3) It is not improbable, as Doddridge supposes, that the administration of this ordinance was entrusted to inferiors, because it was commonly practiced by immersion, and was attended with some trouble and inconvenience, while the time of the apostles might be more directly occupied in their main work.
But to preach the gospel - As his main business; as the leading, grand purpose of his ministry. This is the grand object of all ministers. It is not to build up a sect or party; it is not to secure simply the baptism of people in this or that communion; it is to make known the glad tidings of salvation, and call people to repentance and to God.
Not with wisdom of words - (οὐκ ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου ouk en sophia logou). Not in wisdom of speech, margin. The expression here is a Hebraism, or a form of speech common in the Hebrew writings, where a noun is used to express the meaning of an adjective, and means “not in wise words or discourse.” The wisdom mentioned here, refers, doubtless, to that which was common among the Greeks, and which was so highly valued. It included the following things:
(1) Their subtle and learned mode of disputation, or that which was practiced in their schools of philosophy.
(2) A graceful and winning eloquence; the arts by which they sought to commend their sentiments, and to win others to their opinions. On this also the Greek rhetoricians greatly valued themselves, and this, probably, the false teachers endeavored to imitate.
(3) That which is elegant and finished in literature, in style and composition. On this the Greeks greatly valued themselves, as the Jews did on miracles and wonders; compare 1Co 1:22. The apostle means to say, that the success of the gospel did not depend on these things; that he had not sought them; nor had he exhibited them in his preaching. His doctrine and his manner had not been such as to appear wise to the Greeks; and he had not depended on eloquence or philosophy for his success. Longinus (on the Sublime) enumerates Paul among people distinguished for eloquence; but it is probable that he was not distinguished for the graces of manner (compare 2Co 10:1, 2Co 10:10), so much as the strength and power of his reasoning.
Paul here introduces a new subject of discourse, which he pursues through this and the two following chapters - the effect of philosophy on the gospel, or the estimate which ought to be formed in regard to it. The reasons why he introduces this topic, and dwells upon it at such a length, are not perfectly apparent. They are supposed to have been the following:
(1) He had incidentally mentioned his own preaching, and his having been set apart particularly to that; 1Co 1:17.
(2) His authority, it is probable, had been called in question by the false teachers at Corinth.
(3) The ground of this, or the reason why they undervalued him, had been probably, that he had not, evinced the eloquence of manner and the graces of oratory on which they so much valued themselves.
(4) They had depended for their success on captivating the Greeks by the charms of graceful rhetoric and the refinements of subtle argumentation.
(5) In every way, therefore, the deference paid to rhetoric and philosophy in the church, had tended to bring the pure gospel into disrepute; to produce faction; and to destroy the authority of the apostle. It was necessary, therefore, thoroughly to examine the subject, and to expose the real influence of the philosophy on which they placed so high a value.
Lest the cross of Christ - The simple doctrine that Christ was crucified to make atonement for the sins of people. This was the speciality of the gospel; and on this doctrine the gospel depended for success in the world.
Should be made of none effect - Should be rendered vain and ineffectual. That is, lest the success which might attend the preaching of the gospel should be attributed to the graces of eloquence, the charms of language, or the force of human argumentation, rather than to its true cause, the preaching of Christ crucified; or lest the attempt to recommend it by the charms of eloquence should divert the attention from the simple doctrines of the cross, and the preaching be really vain. The preaching of the gospel depends for its success on the simple power of its truths, borne by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of people; and not on the power of argumentation, and the charms of eloquence. To have adorned the gospel with the charms of Grecian rhetoric, would have obscured its wisdom and efficacy, just as the gilding of a diamond would destroy its brilliancy. True eloquence, and real learning and sound sense, are not to be regarded as valueless; but their use in preaching is to convey the truth with plainness; to fix the mind on the pure gospel; and to leave the conviction on the heart that this system is the power of God. The design of Paul here cannot be to condemn true eloquence and just reasoning, but to rebuke the vain parade, and the glittering ornaments, and dazzling rhetoric which were objects of so much esteem in Greece. A real belief of the gospel, a simple and natural statement of its sublime truths, will admit of, and prompt to, the most manly and noble kind of eloquence. The highest powers of mind, and the most varied learning, may find ample scope for the illustration and the defense of the simple doctrines of the gospel of Christ. But it does not depend for its success on these, but on its pure and heavenly truths, borne to the mind by the agency of the Holy Spirit.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26, 29 Not to baptize. That is, the first and principal…
Not to baptize. That is, the first and principal intent, in my vocation to the apostleship, was to preach the gospel, before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. (Acts chap. ix. 15.) To baptize is common to all, but to preach is peculiarly the function of an apostle. (Estius; Menochius; Grotius) --- I was sent to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of speech, and as he says in the next chapter, (ver. 13.) not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, &c. The Spirit of God, which guided the thoughts and pen of St. Paul, and the other sacred writers, inspired them to deliver the gospel-truths with great simplicity, without the ornaments of an artificial human eloquence, lest the cross of Christ should be made void, lest the conversion of the world might be attributed to any human means, and not to the power of God, and of Christ crucified. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv17, 26 A. Repugnant to the predelictions of both Greeks and…
II. THE TRUE METHOD OF PREACHING
A. Repugnant to the predelictions of both Greeks and Jews
Read full note →
1Co_1:17-25
17Not with [in ἐν] wisdom of words, [discourse15] lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. 18For the preaching [discourse] of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. 19For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of 20the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this16 world [the world]? 21For after that [since]17 in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased 22God by the foolishness of preaching18 to save them that believe. For [since both]19 23the [om. the] Jews require a sign, [signs]20 and the [om. the] Greeks seek after wisdom: But we [on the contrary]21 preach Christ crucified, unto the [om. the] Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the [om. the] Greeks [Gentiles ἔθνεσι]22 foolishness; 24But unto them which are called, [these, the called]23 both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 25Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
[The connection.—from the mention of his commission, especially to preach the Gospel, the Apostle takes occasion, as it were incidentally, to set forth the manner in which this work was to be done. The topic thus introduced has however a direct bearing upon the previous one, for he handles it in a way both to vindicate his own course to which some had taken exception, and also to rebuke those tendencies, which, in their antagonism to a pure Gospel, had engendered contention and schism. Of the mode of transition to this theme Bengel remarks: “I doubt whether it would be approved by the rules of Corinthian eloquence. Therefore the Apostle in this very passage is furnishing a specimen, so to speak, of apostolic folly, and yet the whole is arranged with the greatest wisdom.”]
1Co_1:17 b–21. [The proper mode of preaching described first negatively].—Not in wisdom of speech.—οὐκ ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου. It is better to join this clause to the word “preach” just preceding, than to the main statement “Christ sent me.” [As to the meaning there are three distinct interpretations. 1. That of Calvin and others, who place the stress on “speech,” and understand by the phrase ornate and artificial discourse in contrast with plain homely speech. The objection to this is that it fails to give due weight to the word “wisdom,” which is used by the Apostle in a strict sense throughout the chapter, and is the special object of his animad version. 2. That of Olshausen, who takes it to denote “word-wisdom,” i.e., “a wisdom in appearance and not in reality,” an interpretation which de Wette justly styles “sonderbar.” 3. That of Storr and Flatt, de Wette and Hodge, who, taking the emphasis to be on “wisdom,” and understanding it of the subject-matter, suppose the Apostle to be repudiating here all connection with heathen philosophy. But to this it may be replied that such repudiation was wholly gratuitous, for no one would imagine that in preaching the Gospel he would be likely to employ the speculations of a secular Wisdom 4. That of Meyer and Kling, who while emphasizing “wisdom,” understand it as referring to the form of discourse. According to this, what the Apostle asserts is that he was not to preach the Gospel in a philosophical manner, making it a matter of science rather than a vital power for the heart and conscience. In such a case the Genitive would be used analogously to the Hebrew construction, where the first noun in construction qualifies the second. Hence “wisdom of discourse” would be=philosophic discourse. See Nordheimer Heb. Grammar B. III. 1 Corinthians 5. § 801. 2.] So Neander “Σοφία λόγου=σοφία ἐν ̓τῷ λέγειν, not wisdom absolutely, but the wisdom of dialectic demonstration.” Indeed it is not to be denied that in the course of this paragraph both σοφία and λόγος are used also in relation to the subject matter, and that this is always more or less affected by the mode of exposition. Unquestionably it makes a difference whether the subject matter is first vitally apprehended by the spirit and then creates its own form of expression for itself, or whether a form foreign and unsuitable is forced upon it, drawn from other spheres of life and thought; in other words whether the Gospel is proclaimed naturally in its divine excellence and simplicity, or whether, taken up under the conceptions of an alien philosophy, and arrayed in the rhetoric and dialectics of a people still unsanctified (like the Greeks for example), it be thus presented to the mind. An instance of the latter kind occurred not only in the Gnosis of the heretics, but also to a certain degree in that of the Alexandrian Church of a later period. And probably it was with an eye to the beginning of such a tendency in the party of Apollos that the Apostle affirmed that, according to the will of the Great Commissioner, it devolved on him not to preach the Gospel “in wisdom of speech.” And the expression means nothing else than: not in the style of a philosopher trained in the rhetoric and dialectics of the schools, [but in that of a witness, bearing testimony to the great facts in and through which God had chosen to reveal himself. The reason for this was], lest the Cross of Christ be made of none effect.—Κενωθῇ, become empty, void; here according to the connection: be robbed of its power and influence. By “the Cross of Christ” we understand that death of Christ upon the cross by which we are redeemed and reconciled to God. This is the centre and kernel of all Gospel preaching, by the power of which sinners are delivered from the tyranny of sin, and restored to a new and divine life. And this cross, he says, would be bereft of all efficiency for such results were it set forth in the forms of philosophy, inasmuch as in this way it would serve only to call out the assent of the intellect or awaken an aesthetic pleasure, while the flesh, that is, the corrupt natural life of the selfish heart, would remain unaffected. But let the cross only be held up before that heart in its divine simplicity, and it would then display an energy destructive of this life. Through it the flesh with its affections and lusts would be crucified. (Gal_5:24). But although this blessed result is obtained by means of preaching or doctrine, yet it does not follow from this that we are to make “the cross” here equivalent to “the doctrine of the cross, or to the doctrine of Christ crucified.” Rather the relation which this clause sustains to the foregoing implies that here we are to understand the simple fact itself held up in its own native majesty and power. [Whatever obscures or diverts attention from this deprives, it to that extent of its power].
1Co_1:18. [The position thus taken he proceeds to explain and substantiate from obvious facts.—For the preaching (lit: word λόγος) of the cross is to them that perish folly, but to those that are saved, ourselves, it is the power of God.—Here the force of the argument is to be found in the second member of the antithesis. The first is introduced merely as a concession to a supposed objection. The Corinthians might retort, “The cross of Christ rendered without effect by wisdom of speech! Why, your method of preaching is not half so taking and effectual as the one you denounce.” This the Apostle concedes, but limits its applicability only to a certain class, to those who are in the way of sin and are going to destruction. ‘These,’ he says, ‘are blind. They have no sense of sin, and gee not therefore the wisdom of the cross. To them it is folly. But while to them I acknowledged it is such as you say, yet to those who are in the way of salvation, the cross is a thing of power. They see its meaning. They feel its disenthralling and life-giving influences. And it is by what you see of its effect among these that you must judge of it”]. Accordingly that to which this divine power is ascribed, “the word of the cross,” must be regarded as Gospel-preaching in its simplest and most unadorned style, the earnest exhibition of the great act of redeeming love directly to the heart, without human accessories. It is not the doctrine about the cross, but the word which presents the cross itself in its concrete form and in its plain and pungent application to human conditions. It is of this he predicates a divine power. But this power is manifested only among such as are saved—a thought which is brightened by the foregoing contrast. In both clauses the sign of the Dative “to” means “in their judgment.” But in the one case it is a judgment proceeding from a blinded mind, in the other a judgment founded upon blessed experience. In reference to the first see 2Co_4:3-4; to both 2Co_2:15-16. To the former it seems absurd to have the fact of Christ’s death nakedly held before them as the ground of all salvation—to hear a voice from the cross calling unto them “Look unto me and be saved,” because they see no rational connection between cause and effect here. These are “the lost,” i.e., they are excluded from all participation in the blessedness and glory of God’s kingdom, and are doomed to bitter anguish and disgrace. (See 2Th_1:9; Rev_21:8; Rev_22:15; Mar_9:43). In contrast with this appears the state of salvation, that is, a deliverance from this doom, (see Luk_6:9; Mat_18:11; Jam_4:12) which includes also a share in the blessedness and glory of God’s kingdom. (Comp. 2Ti_4:18; Rom_5:10; Rom_8:21). There are here, then, two classes of persons contrasted in relation to their final lot. For the purpose of designating them uses P. the present participles (ἀπολλυμένοις—σωζομένοις) as the ones best suited, since time is not taken into account. It is therefore not “the present for the future” for the purpose of indicating the certainty of the lot contemplated, nor yet does the present denote the progressive development in the condition of the parties. Nor yet would it be in place here to introduce the idea of predestination, as Rückert does, taking the terms to denote the divinely appointed destiny of two classes, for with Paul this idea never occurs in any such way as to exclude the idea of a free self-determination, (comp. 2Th_2:10; Act_13:46) since to all pro founder contemplation the work of God and the act of man in the genesis and development of faith are inseparably one. “This only must be conceded that the Apostle’s mode of expression is grounded upon a τρόπος παιδείας; a mode of teaching peculiar to him. Paul delights to refer back everything at once to the divine superintendence. Only in this reference the human receptivity or non-receptivity is at the same time included.” Neander. On “the power of God” see Rom_1:6 where the Gospel is said to be “the power of God to every one that believeth.” The contrast between “folly” and “power” is certainly not a strict one, but nevertheless a true one. As the former implies that the Gospel is, according to the judgment of those that perish, a weak thing, so does the latter imply that it is to the others, a manifestation of divine wisdom; or, as the idea of folly excludes that of power, so does the idea of power presuppose that of wisdom.
1Co_1:19. Confirmation adduced from Scripture. “For it is written [“This formula with its following citations is found only in those Epistles of Paul which were addressed to churches in which there was a large admixture of Jewish converts. It does not occur in those written to the Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, which were composed almost entirely of Gentile converts. This coincidence between the History in Acts and the character of the Epistles is evidence of the genuineness of both.” Words.] I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to naught the prudence of the prudent.”—This Divine declaration is taken from a prophecy of Isaiah, which culminates in an announcement of salvation through the Messiah. (Isa_29:14, comp. 1Co_1:17 ff.), and, as the result and penalty of the hypocritical conduct of the Jewish people, proclaims the downfall of the wisdom of their wise ones and the vanishing of the understanding of the prudent, so that this wisdom and understanding should contribute nothing towards their deliverance in the day of evil. This judicial threatening on the part of God was incontrovertibly fulfilled in the times of the New Testament. The wisdom of the ungodly proves unfit for apprehending the Gospel salvation. In reference to this it loses all its availability and appears as nothing worth. The citation is not literal, though, according to the sense, exact. [It is taken from LXX. with slight variation: ἀθετήσα for κρύψω, and αὐτοῦ omitted twice. “The prophet makes use of neuter verbs, while Paul turns them into the active form by making them have a reference to God. They are however perfectly the same in meaning. “Wisdom perishes,” but it is by the Lord’s destroying it. “Prudence vanishes,” but it is by the Lord’s covering it over and effacing it.—The application of this to the subject in hand is this: The Lord has been wont to punish the arrogance of those who, depending on their own judgment, think to be leaders to themselves and others; and if this happened among a people whose wisdom the other nations had occasion to admire, what will become of others?” Calvin]. In reference to this subject see the words of Christ: Mat_11:25 ss.; also 1Co_15:7-8.
1Co_1:20. [The Apostle’s triumphant challenge for disproof of this declaration.—Where is a wise? where is a scribe? where is a disputer of this world?—The designations here are all anarthrous, and Meyer, de Wette, Kling, all translate as above. Alford, Stanley, Hodge, Barnes, insert the article. The difference in meaning is plain, though not important. In the one case the inquiry is after the person mentioned, q. d., ‘Where is a wise man to be found?’ as though he were not. In the other the question is, ‘What has become of him conceding that he exists?’ The latter better suits the drift of the text.—There is a question also as to whether these words likewise are cited from the Old Testament. There is something like them to be found in Isa_33:18, uttered “in a burst of triumph over the defeat of Sennacherib,” and Stanley considers them as taken from thence. But as the Apostle is here evidently speaking in his own name, we can regard his language as no more than an undesigned imitation of that of the Prophet—a lingering echo of it freely reproduced to suit a present purpose. He is here appealing in his own name to existing facts by way of confirmation. Where is the wise? etc. So Calvin]. They have vanished. They pass for nothing in the Divine economy. So far as it is concerned, they are as if they had never been. His mode of challenge occurs also elsewhere with Paul (1Co_15:55; Rom_3:27; Rom_3:29; Rom_3:31.)—The last attributive: “of this world,” belongs, although not grammatically, (since the questions are rapid and abrupt), yet logically, to all the three terms, and describes those mentioned as belonging to the lower stage of human development, the Præ Messianic period. This old world, so far as it seeks to maintain itself still, even after that which is perfect has come in Christ, shows itself to be perverse and at enmity with God; yea, as in itself evil, because pervaded with error and sin. Comp. Gal_1:4, “from the present evil world.” Here the term rendered “world” is a αἰών and more properly denotes a period of time, an age of the world. The antithesis to this is αἰὼν ἐκεῖνος or μέλλων: that age, or: the coming age. (הַבָּא עוֹלָם). This is a course of existence founded on the redemptive work of Christ, and includes in itself all the impulsive forces and power of the new life. Until the end of “this age,” the “coming age,” will be in a germinal state, enclosed and restricted within the envelope of the present; but then it will burst into open manifestation as the sole reality. The αἰὼν οὗτος: present age, is identical with ὁ κόσμος: this world. The only distinction is that the latter designates the sphere of life itself as one essentially godless and corrupt in its on-goings, especially the human race as alienated from the life of God, while the former indicates the period of time through which it continues. Hence in Eph_2:2 we see the two united in one phrase. αἰὼν τοῦ κόσμου τούτου: the course of this world. The present age, as the period of the rule of sin and error, has for its god or governing principle the devil, as in 2Co_4:4 he is denominated ‘the god of this world,’ and in Joh_12:31 ‘the archor or ruler of this world.’ In so far now as the Jews also in their hostility to the perfect revelation of God in Christ, by which they became blinded to the nature of earlier revelations, also (2Co_3:14 ff.) belonged to this corrupt age, and inasmuch as in the progress of this discussion the Jewish element also is brought up to view, we shall be obliged to understand by the “wise” here mentioned, Jewish as well as Pagan sages, (not the one or the other exclusively); and since the Apostle afterwards speaks of wisdom only, it may be well perhaps to take the term “wise” in a general sense as denoting all those who were devoted to the higher science, or at least pretended to be such; and the other two terms as specific, “the scribe” denoting the wisdom-seekers among the Jews—and “the disputer,” the like among the Greeks. Such appropriation of the terms is supported by the fact that according to the uniform usage of the New Testament (Act_19:35 alone excepted) “scribe” is the designation of the Jewish learned class. But the other term, συζη τητής, which is best translated: “disputer” (comp. συζητεῖν Mar_8:11 ff.; συζήτησις Act_15:2; Act_15:7; Act_28:29), and hence denotes a class of persons who make disputing their business and have facility in it, can be only incidentally applied to the Sophists then widely spread throughout the Hellenic world. So Meyer. But would it not be more suited to the rhetorical character of the passage to make no such disposition of terms, but merely to abide by the general fact that the Apostle had in his eye men who boasted of their learning and science and ready abilities, and as masters of the truth looked down contemptuously upon the masses—men who were to be found among the Jews as well as among the Greeks,—and that only in the word “scribe” there is a prevailing reference to the Jew? [Stanley, who takes 1Co_1:20 as a modified citation from Isa_33:18, says “These expressions acquire additional force by a comparison with the Rabbinical belief that the cessation of Rabbinical wisdom was to be one of the signs of the Messiah’s coming ‘see the quotations from the Mishna in Wetstein ad loc.), and that this was expressly foretold in Isa_33:18. Analogous to this was the belief of Christians that the oracles of the heathen world ceased on the birth of Christ”].
The challenge is strengthened by a further question—hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?—i.e. actually demonstrated that it is not what it professes to be; but rather, folly—unreason, stupidity, incapacity for knowledge in relation to the highest matters. [“We must here carefully notice these two things that the knowledge of all the sciences is mere smoke, where the heavenly science is wanting; and man with all his acuteness is as stupid for obtaining of himself a knowledge of the mysteries of God as an ass is unqualified for understanding musical harmonies.—Paul (however) does not expressly condemn either man’s natural perspicuity, or wisdom acquired from practice and experience, or the cultivation of mind obtained by learning; but only declares that all this is of no avail for acquiring spiritual wisdom.—We must restrict what he here teaches to the specialties of the case in hand.” Calvin].
1Co_1:21.—Shows why and how it was that God had made foolish the wisdom of this world.—For since in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching [κήρνγμα, not κήρυξις, not so much the preaching as the thing preached, though not without an implication of the former] to save them that believe.—The relation of the premise to the conclusion is that of a sequence, divinely ordained in the way of punishment [rather of mercy], so that in the first man’s guilt [rather guilty impotence, see below], is assigned as the ground of what is stated in the other. From this we perceive the incorrectness of Rückert’s view, who, snuffing predestination everywhere, explains the phrase “in the wisdom of God” to mean: “in virtue of God’s wisdom, its leading and appointment.” Neither does it consist with the relation of the two clauses to explain it of the wisdom of God’s plan of salvation in the Gospel (Mosheim and others); for the refusal to recognize this wisdom was not anything to which the divine determination spoken of in the second clause could be referred, as to something definitely concluded upon. To this it must be added that from the very beginning, before the disposition of men in relation to it could be ascertained, the preaching of the Gospel had for the world the appearance of folly. The case is entirely different in 1Co_2:6. Rather we must here understand a reference to something prior to Christ, to certain exhibitions of Divine wisdom previous to the revelation made in Christ, in and through which man could or ought to have discerned God,—to its sway in nature and history, and indeed not merely to that revelation alluded to in Rom_1:18 ff; Act_14:17; Act_17:24 ff, but also to the ordinances of this wisdom in the guidance of the covenant-people, who, because of their unbelief (with the exception of the “election,” Rom_11:7), belonged together with the world. Neander, on the contrary, discovers here only a contrast instituted between revelation and the religion of reason, and regards the wisdom of the Greeks as the particular object of whose relation to Christianity the Apostle is treating. But this interpretation is opposed by the fact that in the 1Co_1:22-24 closely connected by ἐπειδή: since, with v. 21, Paul three times expressly states that by “the world,” in v. 21, not only the heathen but also the Jews are intended. But does not the declaration in reference to the heathen that, they “did not know God” conflict with Rom_1:21 where it said that ‘when they knew God they glorified him not as God?’ We must here distinguish between that sense of a God forced upon the mind by a revelation of God, a merely passive religious notion, the ineffectualness of which is set forth even in the passage above referred to, and that living knowledge of God, which involves communion with Him, and which is the thing here denied of the world and which, had the world possessed, it would have qualified the world for the comprehension of that more perfect revelation in Christ which was to be the fulfilment and consummation of all that had gone before, so that had this knowledge existed such a decree of God as is affirmed in the second clause would not have been made, nor would the preaching of the Gospel have been to them foolishness. The “wisdom” then, “through” which the world knew not God (διὰ τῆς σοφίας), denotes that intelligence by means of which the knowledge of God ought to have been attained, but was not. It is the appropriate organ of the human mind, sharpened by culture, through which God is perceived and recognized as He displays Himself in His wisdom; in other words, the eye for discerning God’s light. But this proved itself disqualified for its proper end, since the world, the possessor of this wisdom, had become alienated from the truth and love of God, and hence perverted and darkened by error and sin. The translation, “on account of their wisdom,” as though this was the cause of their not perceiving God would require the accusative (διὰ τὴν σοφ αν). It might still be questioned whether the phrase “through wisdom” does not refer like the previous one to the wisdom of God, so that it has its corresponding antithesis in the phrase, “through the foolishness of preaching.” This is Bengel’s view. “In the wisdom of God, i.e. because the wisdom of God was so great. By wisdom, namely, that of preaching, as is evident from the antithesis, by the foolishness of preaching.” So, too, Fritsche (Hall, Lit. Zeit. 1840). “After that, in the wisdom of God, i.e. while God allowed His wisdom to shine forth, the world did not recognize God, through the wisdom made available for them by God, then God resolved to choose means of directly the opposite kind. In setting forth the antithesis here, it occurred to him to emphasize strongly the wisdom of God, which failed of attaining its end.” But all things considered, the view carried out by us merits the preference, and the repetition of “the wisdom of God” must always appear somewhat artificial.24
The judgment [rather the merciful pleasure] of God towards a world not recognizing Him in consequence of its own sin, is introduced by the phrase εὐδόκησεν ὁ θεός,—God was pleased—hence “concluded,” “determined.” It indicates here not so much the freedom or pure favor, from which the resolve proceeded, as the suitableness of his proceeding to the end contemplated, or to the circumstances of the case. We find it first among the later Scripture writers, and most commonly in the Sept. In the New Testament it occurs chiefly in Paul (Rom_15:26; Gal_1:15 ff.). In reference to the expression and thought comp. Luk_10:21. The world had shown itself incapable of discerning God in His wisdom through its wisdom. Therefore God found it good no more to appeal to human wisdom by the manifestations of His wisdom, but by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe,—i.e., by a proclamation, the contents of which carried the impress of folly, or must need appear foolish to the world as it was. This was to deliver from sin and wrath, and introduce to everlasting blessedness those who should believe in what was declared. In other words, the determination was, to appeal to faith instead of to reason. [So Hodge: “The foolishness of preaching means the preaching of foolisness, i.e., the cross.” But is there not an allusion to the nature of the preaching itself as being distinct from philosophical disquisition in the simplicity of its method. Preaching is heralding, proclaiming facts and messages, a foolish matter for those who delight in the subtleties and arguments of philosophy.] From this it is clear [?] that the phrase “through foolishness of preaching” does not furnish, as might appear to be the case at first sight, the contrast to the phrase “this wisdom,”25 but to the other, “in the wisdom of God;” and the antithesis to “this wisdom” is to be sought in “them that believe.” Faith is pure receptivity, and as such is directly the opposite of all endeavors after knowledge by the unaided powers of the intellect, such as are peculiar to human wisdom. It is the humble acceptance and appropriation of the testimony concerning Christ crucified, in spite of all the objections which the understanding of the natural man may urge against the doctrine of salvation, and in the utter renunciation of one’s own opinions, and in the entire repudiation of predominant theories. In the act of believing there are united, therefore, both humility and courage. Finally, there is still another correspondence in the words “know” and “save.” Knowledge ought to lead to salvation (comp. Joh_17:3). Not knowing, therefore, hindered the obtaining of salvation.
1Co_1:22-24. Modein which the Apostle fulfilled the good pleasure of God expressed in 1Co_1:21.—Since both Jews require signs and Greeks seek after wisdom, we therefore on the contrary preach Christ crucified.—[So Kling translates the passage. But there is a question here as to the construction. This verse, like the previous one, begins with ἐπειδή. It may therefore be taken as a parallel to that, (so Hodge, Meyer), resuming the thought and amplifying it (so Stanley), and like the preceding having a protasis26 and apodosis (as Kling); or it may be joined by ἐπειδή directly to the previous clause, and regarded as explanatory of what is said of the “foolishness of preaching” being the means of saving believers (so Alford, Calvin, Rückert, de Wette). In this case the second clause instead of being an apodosis would be directly dependent on ἐπειδή, and the rendering would be:—Since, or seeing that, while both Jews require signs and Greeks seek after wisdom, we on the other hand preach Christ, etc.—This seems to us the most natural rendering. See Winer, P. 3 § 65: 6. But Kling rejects it as “the less suitable.” According to his view], what the protasis states is the result of “not knowing God” (1Co_1:21); what the apodosis states is the judicial procedure corresponding to it as carried out in “the foolishness of preaching,” viz., a refusal to yield to vain demands for wisdom, and the counter preaching which appears to those making these demands as absurd, but which to believers proves to be the power of God and the wisdom of God. The ἐπειδή introduces a case well known and made out: since indeed; the δέ (after ἡμεῖς) is used also elsewhere in the apodosis after ἐπεί and ἐπειδή to make the antithetic relation of this clause the more prominent: therefore, on the contrary (comp. Meyer on this passage). This construction is favored by the parallelism between the protasis and apodosis in 1Co_1:21, and those here found. The και,—και: both,—and, unite here classes alike in one respect, i.e., in the unwarrantableness of their demands, but otherwise diverse, and they belong not exclusively to the subjects mentioned (Jews and Greeks), but serve to connect the two clauses in one whole: “since it is so, that both Jews require signs and Greeks seek wisdom.” Jews and Greeks here represent two classes of men according to their peculiar characteristics. Hence they are mentioned without the article. It is as if he said “since people like the Jews seek, etc.” The Greeks here as in Rom_1:16, and elsewhere, stand as pars pro toto, for the Gentiles generally, who, according to the most probable reading, are mentioned afterwards in 1Co_1:23. They are the people who best represent the whole multitude of nations (έθνη) found outside of the covenant relation with God, and who, in respect of culture and language, prepared the whole civilized world for Christianity; just as the Jews, scattered among them all, did the same thing in respect of religion, being freighted with the promise which was to be fulfilled in Christ. It was among these two nations that Christianity had its first sphere of operations,—the Jews, who had the first claim to announce the fulfilment of that promise which had been preserved, and of that hope which had been awakened by them (comp. Act_13:46; Act_3:25; Rom_1:16; Rom_15:8), and the Greeks, who had carried out the work of human culture in science and art, and had, as it were, taken the whole civilized world in possession, and so had furnished the most perfect form for the human appropriation of the truth of revelation, and so the richest receptivity for the life and truth which were in Christ, and which were fitted to ensure them the most perfect satisfaction. But in both alike did Christianity encounter peculiar obstructions. The Jews clave to the external form of revelation, the miracle; and they did this to such a degree as to insist on having it before their eyes in its most striking, dazzling form, as the condition of their acceptance of the truth. They thus betrayed their fundamental unbelief and disaffection for the truth which rebuked their sin, humbled their pride, and demanded of them entire self-denial. This is what is meant by their “seeking after a sign,” or, according to another reading, “signs.” (Comp. Joh_4:48; and Mat_12:38; Mat_16:4; Luk_11:16; Joh_2:18; Joh_6:30). (Meyer, Ed. 3.) “Signs, that is, miraculous tokens, by which Jesus, whom the Apostles asserted to be risen from the dead and ascended on high, should prove Himself to be the Messiah. These they still called for, inasmuch as the miracles of His earthly career had lost for them all evidencing power, in consequence of His crucifixion”). The Greeks, on their part, had been captivated by the outward show and glitter of their civilization. Whatever did not appear before them under the name of a new philosophy (comp. Act_17:19 ff.), or was not sustained by philosophic proof, or was not set forth with logical and rhetorical art, this they refused to accredit; and by insisting on wisdom only in a form agreeable to them, they likewise betrayed their unbelief and their aversion to that Divine truth which required a mortification of their vain self, with all its pride of science and art, and which demanded a humble surrender to a revelation in Christ that infinitely surpassed all their attainments. Thus on both sides, in modes diverse and conditioned by their peculiar histories, did the same opposition arise to the preaching of the Gospel which held up to their faith the one Christ, who was declared to have secured the salvation of mankind, and built up the way to regal glory, not through wondrous miracles, according to the demand of the Jew, nor through such wisdom as wisdom-seekers sought, but by suffering the shameful death of a malefactor. Thus did the preaching of the Apostles and their associates (ἡμεῖς) concerning a crucified Messiah, their public proclamation of this fact and its significance in all simplicity, prove for the Jews a stumbling block, i.e., an offence, a hinderance to faith, the occasion of a fall, something causing them to err (comp. πρόσκομμα Rom_9:32 ff.). A person hanging on the accursed tree presented such a contrast to all their desires for some glorious exhibition of power (such as destruction to their enemies, etc.), that they could do no otherwise than reject Him. [“They could have tolerated Christ on the mount, but not Christ on the cross.”—A. Butler].—For the Greeks (Gentiles) foolishness.—That salvation could come to the world through a crucified Jew appeared to them plainly absurd. It was an instrumentality utterly inadequate to the end proposed. Thus while to the Jews such a person was an object of horror, as one accursed of God, to the Gentiles he was an object only for scorn and contempt. (Comp. Act_23:18-32; Luk_23:36-41). To this, however, there is a noble contrast.
But unto these—the called—Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.—This clause might be taken to depend on “we preach,” so that this would be repeated in thought, and “Christ the wisdom of God” form an antithesis to “Christ crucified” with its adjuncts: We preach Christ as crucified, who for the Jew is a stumbling block, etc., but to those who are called we preach Christ as the power of God. Bengel appears to suggest this, when to “Christ” he adds “with his cross, death, life, kingdom,” and says further, “When the offence of the cross is overcome, the whole mystery of Christ lies open.”—But the course of thought would be more simple if we put “Christ crucified” directly in opposition with what precedes: “We preach a crucified Messiah who to the Jews is a stumbling block, etc.—but to them who are called, Christ—the power of God.” By it then is signified, that He, the crucified one, at whom the Jews stumble, is to the called, the Anointed of God, (Messiah, Christ),—the One in whom the promise of a heavenly king is fulfilled, the Power of God, etc. This corresponds also to the expression respecting the “word of the cross” in 1Co_1:18. The αὐτοῖς: to these serves to give prominence to “the called” as the chief persons in the case, who occupy a positive relation to “the crucified,” and enjoy an experience corresponding to it. It points at the same time to those already mentioned, to “them that believe,” 1Co_1:21, and to the “saved,” 1Co_1:18; and while the first of these terms designates their subjective position towards the Gospel, the second shows the advantage they derive from it. The term “called” indicates the Divine ground on which they stand. (On κλητόι: called, comp. 1Co_1:2). By the addition of: both Jews and Greeks he gives us to understand that in the purpose of grace denoted in their calling the separation hitherto existing between these parties had been removed. (Comp. Rom_9:24; Rom_10:12).—the power of God and the wisdom of God.—Here we have the antithesis to “stumbling block” and “foolishness.” While the Jews were asking how a person crucified and accursed could possibly be the Saviour of Israel, how one so utterly devoid of strength could be able to overthrow all hostile power, and the Greeks were deeming it absurd to expect salvation from one who came to so miserable an end, the chosen of God were, on the contrary, experiencing and confessing that from this very crucified Redeemer there issued a Divine power, the power of a heavenly life and peace, a renewing, sanctifying, beatific power, such as could be found in nothing creaturely, and that accordingly Christ was the possessor of such a Divine power, that in Him there existed a Divine wisdom that was capable of solving the hardest problems, of lighting up the darkness that rested on the ways of God, of fulfilling God’s noblest purposes of bringing men back from all their wanderings into the path of life and of introducing them at last to their final destination.
1Co_1:25. A general proposition, substantiating what has just been said.—Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God mightier than men.—The phrase “foolishness of God” is not to be taken too abstractly, as if it meant the Divine folly. The Apostle is evidently here speaking from a human point of view and implies merely that which appears foolishness in God. He here has in mind God’s dealings with men in the Gospel, such as the procuring of salvation through the crucifixion of Christ, and other things connected therewith, which in the judgment of self-styled wise men of this world, who measure every thing by the measure of their fancied wisdom, appeared contrary to reason. Now of this apparent foolishness of God he affirms that it surpassed in real wisdom all men however wise they seemed to be in their own sight, or were held to be by others, or whatever they might be able to reason out or imagine. In a similar manner we must interpret the following expressson, the weakness of God—By this he means a Divine scheme which seemed weak to those who held merely to physical force and boasted in that (for instance, the, procuring of redemption through one subjecting himself to the humiliation of death on the cross), but which in fact is stronger than men, i.e., exerts a mightier power than they with all their imagined strength and prowess. Bengel adds: “Although they may appear to themselves both wise and strong, and wish to be the standards of wisdom and strength.” Thus interpreted, it would be needless to construe the words “than men” as involving a figure of speech in which a comparison instituted with a person or thing as a whole, properly applies only to a part of it, or to some quality in it, as though they meant: “than the wisdom of men,” or “than the strength of men.” Both interpretations, however, amount to the same thing.—There is still another construction suggested by what follows, viz.: that by the foolishness and the weakness of God are meant the persons themselves who are “called” (1Co_1:24), who experience Christ crucified as “the wisdom of God and the power of God,” so that they in consequence become Divinely wise and strong, and are thus enabled as the foolishness and weakness belonging to God to surpass men, i.e. that portion of the race who remain out of Christ in wisdom and power. “The thought is this—Human nature delights in doing great things. God, on the contrary, in His earthly dispensations always appears weak and small at the first, and not until afterwards reveals the overwhelming power that is concealed in His instrumentalities.” Neander.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Christ and His cross—Christ crucified.—This is the clear light from Heaven, which comes to scatter all the darkness of man’s sinful life. This is the key to all the riddles of a history that has been deranged and confused by falsehood and sin. All God’s revelations in the Old Testament, his ordinances, institutions, promises, judgments and blessings here reach their fulfilment and find their real explanation. All the hints of truth current among heathen nations—all their sighing and striving after the knowledge of God and communion with Him, all attempts to get rid of the consciousness of guilt, to atone for sin and to effect a perfect restoration to Divine favor—all the labor of the wise to discover a clue for the great labyrinth of human life—in short every thing which glimmered as a ray of light here and there in this darkness, obtains in Christ its proper goal; and in so far as it at last leads to the apprehension of this perfect light and salvation, it has been not in vain. Here is the “power of God” which in place of a thousand-fold yet vain endeavor on the part of man is able to insure a true Divine life, an undisturbed peace, an all pervading sanctification—spreading from the inmost centre of a heart that embraces the holy, forgiving love of God,—and an invincible patience and steadfastness combined with the serenest tranquillity amid all the plagues, diseases, adversities and conflicts which may assail us from within and without. Here, too, is the wisdom of God. From this the deepest problems of human knowledge and human activity receive light, so that they can be recognized in their truth and in the goal to which they tend; and right methods of solution for them may be attained. Here the eternal thoughts of God, and the thoughts of man which spring up responsive to these out of the inmost truth of the human heart through the operation of the all-enlightening Logos, encounter each other. Here redeeming love with its wondrous plan of forgiveness and regeneration meets the manifold devices and strivings of man for the removal of guilt and, the acquisition of the chief good, and gives them a perfect satisfaction.
2. Christ and His cross—as confronting the world.—But the more this revelation of God in a crucified Saviour surpasses all the doings of man hitherto, the less can it be measured by the standard of truth and goodness existing among men, the less can it come within the scope of their ordinary conceptions. Where, therefore, the heart has not been renewed by a surrender to the truth foreshadowed by its mysterious need and corresponding to it, and so no change has been wrought in the whole course of thought, there this revelation remains an incomprehensible mystery; and where to the indolence, which refuses to stir out of the old beaten track, there is added an arrogant pride, which, with arbitrary exaggeration and embellishments insists on making what already exists the measure of the new and rejects whatever does not suit the demands thug originated, there, it is certain, that the revelation of God will be violently opposed. And this will be so much the more sure to occur, when, for the sake of presenting a contrast with the vain parade of carnal self in adhering to what is externally imposing and brilliant, and in cleaving to its own productions which seem so beautiful and fair, the revealed truth and grace are constrained to show themselves in an unpretending form, putting contempt upon the proud display of might by assuming a lowly aspect of weakness and setting at naught a lofty pretentious wisdom by wearing the guise of foolishness in order to lift humanity thereby out of the vanity of its conceited claims, and out of the arbitrariness of its own devices and endeavors, into the experience of a true divine power and wisdom.—But the cross and its preaching, which prove such a stumbling block and foolishness to those who are bound up in their vain conceit becomes to those who obey the heavenly calling in faith and who in the mortification of self with all its foolish conceits and pretensions yield themselves to the influences of the grace and truth in Christ, and in so doing experience its enlightening, sanctifying and beatific power, the wisdom of God and the power of God. Thus it happens that men with all their wisdom and power remain far inferior to what belongeth unto God, however foolish and weak it may seem.
3. “1 Col_1:22-24 afford us a point of observation which enables us to survey Church History in clearest light. The Apostles found two distinct tendencies setting in in strong hostility to the Gospel, the desire for miracles, and the conceit of wisdom. These two tendencies show themselves repeatedly through all times. A false, one-sided supernaturalism and a false one-sided rationalism are ever in rivalry with each other either to resist the Gospel in open enmity or to disturb and corrupt it by secretly insinuating themselves into it. It may be said that all external opposition and all internal peril to the Gospel resolve themselves at last into these two opposite principles. So long as a pure Gospel withstands and excludes these it will succeed in satisfying the genuine human needs lying at their foundation and in thus quieting them on both sides. This proves itself to be the true wonder-working power before which all other miracles must pale, and the true wisdom of God before which all other wisdom must be put to shame, and thus does it exhibit itself in both ways as the absolute Religion.” Neander.
4. [Since it is “to the called” that the Gospel proves “the power of God and the wisdom of God,” by bringing them at last to believe and be saved, it follows that the difference in the effects produced by the Gospel, so that on the one hand it appears to some as an offence and to others as foolishness, but to others still as a means of salvation, is all owing to the calling of God—his effectual calling.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1. The cross of Christ is made of none effect by cunning words or the wisdom of speech.—For the wisdom of speech Isaiah 1, on the one hand scholastic wisdom which a. culminates only in knowledge, not in reformation; b. gives no satisfaction on the chief point, Religion; c. being in constant strife with itself evermore corrupts rather than improves; 2. On the other hand an artificial rhetoric, which springs not from the heart or from zeal for a cause known to be true, but aims only to dazzle and please, and by this means to persuade. But a mode of proceeding so altogether unworthy of heavenly truth robs the cross of Christ of its peculiar power; since a. the attention is turned away from the subject to the speaker, and so the heart is diverted and betrayed into vanity; b. and everything is viewed according to its fitness to delight; c. and the effect is ascribed not to the power of the truth presented but to the eloquence displayed. After Heubner.
2. The preaching of the cross. 1, is foolishness for those who are lost. a. Who are these? They are such as are hardened in their own guilt—such as follow their own perverted sense and will not accept of truth or consent to self-humiliation, so that humanly judging there is nothing to be hoped for from them. b. Why is the preaching of the cross foolishness for them? Because to the world, which insists on its own importance, everything appears absurd which fells its pride, destroys its meritoriousness and conflicts with its wisdom and righteousness. 2, is a wisdom of God unto us who are called.—The believer who permits himself to be saved, awakened and enlightened by the spirit of God, finds in the cross a divinely derived and divinely operating power, which draws the heart into peace with itself and with God, fills it with holy love, and strengthens it with a new power of life; and he recognizes therein a wisdom far surpassing all human thought and sense. After Heubner.
3. The vanity of scholastic wisdom or the judgment of God upon conceited worldly wisdom.—1. It effects nothing, because it aims only at show and not at improvement. 2. God allows it to be betrayed into folly and shame, because it seeks to be wise and strong without God, without prayer and piety. 3. Christianity exposes it in all its barrenness, since, while Christianity renews humanity, worldly wisdom perishes in its own schools, and is unable to maintain its own progress. After Heubner.
4. The causes of the rejection of the Crucified.—1. The Jewish desire for whatever was striking, imposing and externally mighty; 2. The Gentile conceit of wisdom and a vain misculture; 3. The pride of both which sought to comprehend God, but which would not enter into the apparently weak and foolish ways and means of his economy. After Heubner.
5. The preaching of the cross has with those who are saved a threefold effect. 1. It shames, inasmuch as man crucified Christ with his sins; for a long time did not recognize him; did not honor or thank him; and was willing so long to tolerate the sins which nailed Him to the cross. 2. It humbles, by reminding us of Christ’s own love, in that He, the Great God, died for us poor worms, and did so much for us when we were utterly worthless. It inclines us also to benevolence towards all men who differ from us only in this, that we are sinners saved, while they can and may yet be saved. 3. It awakens, gives power and life, so that we not only are ready and inclined, but also are enabled to love God, and to prove our love by works.
6. The Cross of Christ is an offence to all men who think that a good life will ensure them a happy end. These are the enemies of the Cross in the midst of Christendom. They worship it externally; they take pride in it, but in fact they hate the doctrine of the Cross. They cannot accept the truth that Christ has become our Redeemer and that we are saved out of sheer mercy, so that the holiest, the most pious, the most liberal, the most upright man is just as far from Heaven as the most miserable sinner, and that there is but one way for all. To the wise and prudent the cross of Christ is foolishness. The truth that Christ died for us they regard as a fable. There are persons even among [nominal] believers who take it as a compliment if they are said not to believe. Yet should one accuse them of holding the truth, and yet of living in untruthfulness, disobedience and ingratitude towards God, it would be the same as if he pronounced them deliberate villains. Oh! could they but once hear the Gospel in a way to pierce their
hearts they would certainly ask, What shall we do? Let the doctrine of the Cross be once made vital in the soul, then would there be no need of exhortation, alarm and threatening in view of this or that judgment. It would be sufficient to say, “The Saviour died for me.” If we are in trouble for our sins, and the hope of salvation vanishes, and the voice comes, “Christ has died and earned salvation for us,” how the heart not only seizes but holds fast to the declaration! How the truth penetrates like a divine power into the soul which can never be lost or forgotten! Then are our sins buried in the depths of the sea; they can no more tyrannize over us. Then we need sin no more. Such is the effect of the Word of the Cross in them that believe. Gossner.
Hedinger:—Power, wit, all human work and counsel corrupts faith, misleads in the church, and hinders the efficacy of the means of grace. In divine things, the more foolish anything seems to the world, the better it is. “Wisdom, wisdom, ready understanding, science, learning out of a thousand books!” Such is the cry of the world. An evil sound is it in the churches and in the schools. One thing is needful—one book, one Christ.
Starke:—The Gospel has a differencing effect according to the character of the persons who hear and use it. Mankind are divided into two classes: 1. Unbelievers; they are such as live on, without caring for their salvation, either in security or hypocrisy; each word and work of theirs is a step toward Hell. 2. Believers; they are those who are in daily concern about their salvation; and this is with them so vital a point that even when unmoved by efforts from abroad, while in the midst of their labors or talk, they are not easily repelled from it (1Co_1:18). Wisdom is in itself something divine, and before the fall the image of God in man consisted in it (Col_3:10); and even now the inclination to know and learn something is a remnant in us of this divine image. But if our natural wisdom profits us but little now, and is every where scandalized, this is the fault, not of wisdom, but of our corrupted reason and understanding. None of the loftiest and most learned of this world ought to be ashamed of the simplicity of the Gospel, for God Himself, the, highest and wisest of all, let Himself down to it. Sufficient is it for us that an infinite power resides in the Cross to deliver us out of all our deep depravity, (1Co_1:21).—God can never suit people. One will have it this way and another that. Shame on you! God does as it pleases Him (Mat_11:16 ff.). Men always delight in what is strange, lofty, conspicuous. Instead of desiring that God’s name alone should be praised they seek themselves in every thing. They look either at power, wealth, faculty, or at learning, prudence, dexterity. Both are means to greatness, but they prove hinderances in the kingdom of God. (1Co_1:22).—God will remain unsurpassed in His words and works (Psa_78:41), but their wisdom and strength are vain. The world makes wisdom to consist in much learning which secures honor and regard. But a believer considers it the height of wisdom to know that he is a poor sinner, becomes justified and saved only in deepest humility. The greatest power consists in being able to overcome ourselves and the kingdom of Satan. God can put to shame all the devices of the craftiest and all the might of the greatest in this world. Why wilt thou fear? Look to God! He can and will give thee enough for all things (1Co_1:25).
H. Rieger:—Let him who would even now, by the preaching of the Cross, awaken a sense of the Cross in the hearts of men, and thereby coöperate for their salvation, not seek for assistance from the fickle arts of worldly wisdom, but let him observe what renders himself humble, and subdued, and what he can thus convey with a tender spirit to others, and let him shun every thing which on the contrary tends to puff himself up and wherewith he is tempted to court the favor of men.
[Spencer: (1Co_1:21).—“Some Christian ministers sometimes think to do Christianity a very good service by philosophizing it to make it keep up with the times. In all this they do Christianity no other service than rob it of its power by robbing it of its peculiarity, and do no other service to the ‘philosophic minds’ which they say they would influence, than just to mislead them and keep them away from true faith in Christ and reliance on his great atonement.
Every thing is coming to be philosophized. Many a minister in the pulpit—shame on him—betrays his trust to the Bible and his God by teaching religion very much as if it were a new matter of reason, and human progress, and human discovery, instead of taking God’s Word as his authority and instructor, and uttering in the ears of the people like the old prophets, Thus saith the Lord God. Beware of such proceedings. They tend to infidelity. Learn duty from God. The Bible is safe. Philosophy is blind.”]
[Robertson:—“Men bow before talent even if unassociated with goodness, but between these two we must make an everlasting distinction. When once the idolatry of talent enters, then farewell to spirituality; when men ask their teachers, not for that which will make them more humble and God-like, but for the excitement of an intellectual banquet, then farewell to Christian progress. Here also St. Paul again stood firm. Not Wisdom, but Christ crucified. St. Paul might have complied with these requirements of his converts, and then he would have gained admiration and love, he would have been the leader of a party, but then he would have been false to his Master—he would have been preferring self to Christ.”]
Footnotes:
[15]1Co_1:17.—[ἐν σόφίᾳ λόγου might be rendered: in philosophic discourse.]
[16]1Co_1:20.—The τούτου of the received text is undoubtedly transferred from the preceding. Lachmann and Tischendorf reject it according to the best authorities.
[17]1Co_1:21.—[ἐπειδή is not temporal but illative.—Alf.]
[18]1Co_1:21.—[κηρύγματις: passive noun, the thing preached both in contents and in form.]
[19]1Co_1:22.—ἐ͂πειδη και. it may be rendered: “For both,” but Kling translates as above.]
[20]1Co_1:22.—The plural σημεῖα is better attested: whether it is internally the more probable may be doubted.
[21]1Co_1:23.—[δὲ after ἐπειδή expresses contrariety.]
[22]1Co_1:23.—ἔθνεσι is decidedly better attested than the received ’Ελλησι which arose out of 1Co_1:22; 1Co_1:24.
[23]1Co_1:24.—[“αὐτοις δὲ τοῖς κλητοῖς; the αὐτοῖς serves to identify the called with the believers, 1Co_1:21.”—Alf.]
[24][Kling has hardly done justice to the view which he calls Rückerts, and stigmatizes as Predestianationism. There certainly is no little plausibility, and much fair ground in Scripture for interpreting. “in the wisdom of God” All the movements of the ante-Christian period were unquestionably so disposed by Providence as to prepare the way for the coming, and the reception of Christ. And why may it not have been a part of the Divine plan to allow the world to try its own wisdom, and test its capacities to the utmost, in order that its utter inefficiency for discovering God, and finding out a means of salvation, might be fully proved and thus that consciousness of ignorance and inability be awakened, which is one of the first conditions of simple faith in revelation? Paul hinted at this very truth in his speech at Athens (Act_17:26-27). “And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us.” This interpretation carries therefore a legitimate and Scriptural sense, and it is preferred by Alf., Barnes, Poole, and most American sermonizers.
But there is still another interpretation, worthy of consideration, as having the advantage of giving to the important word “wisdom” a uniformity of meaning throughout the entire passage. What Paul is here controverting is the fondness for philosophic speculation so characteristic of the Greeks, and which in the Corinthian Church was threatening to destroy the practical nature of Christianity, and turn it into another scheme of philosophy. This tendency, or rather its products, the Apostle calls “wisdom” (σοφία), and it is, as he says, something he would not indulge in, however pleasing to the Corinthian temper. One reason for this was, the utter inefficiency of all philosophy in the matter of religion. He does not condemn it absolutely, but relatively to the ends in view. This, therefore, it became him distinctly to state, which he does in 1Co_1:20-21, may be paraphrased thus: “For since in its speculations concerning God, the word through speculation and philosophy did not know God, it pleased God through “the announcement of the simple facts of the Gospel, which to a speculative mind seems like folly; to save those who accept them in mere faith.” We thus take σοφία=φιλοσοφία, make τοῦ θεοῦ the objective Genitive, and interpret the whole phrase “in the wisdom of God,” as denoting the sphere of thought in reference to which the Apostle was speaking. This was in fact theosophy, a word compounded of just the ones here associated. The antithesis then in the two clauses would be between philosophy and preaching, between scientific knowledge and faith, accepting the simple proclamation of the Gospel ].
[25][One would suppose that the naturalness and indeed inevitableness of this contrast would have shown the incorrectness of Kling’s interpretation. (See Winer, part 3 sect. 47. d.) Paul means here to set the simple “testimony of Jesus” over against “philosophy” or “wisdom,” and the method of faith over against the method of reason. In all that follows he is correct.]
[26][Rob. in Lex. observes that ἐπειδή is never used in the protasis.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv17–31 Paul says this not to depreciate baptism; for he…
Paul says this not to depreciate baptism; for he exalts it most highly (Rom 6:3). He baptized some first converts; and would have baptized more, but that his and the apostles' peculiar work was to preach the Gospel, to found by their autoptic testimony particular churches, and then to superintend the churches in general.
sent me--literally, "as an apostle."
Read full note →
not to baptize--even in Christ's name, much less in my own.
not with wisdom of words--or speech; philosophical reasoning set off with oratorical language and secular learning, which the Corinthians set so undue a value upon (Co1 1:5; Co1 2:1, Co1 2:4) in Apollos, and the want of which in Paul they were dissatisfied with (Co2 10:10).
cross of Christ--the sum and substance of the Gospel (Co1 1:23; Co1 2:2), Christ crucified.
be made of none effect--literally, "be made void" (Rom 4:14); namely, by men thinking more of the human reasonings and eloquence in which the Gospel was set forth, than of the Gospel itself of Christ crucified, the sinner's only remedy, and God's highest exhibition of love.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 17. Sent—’Απεστειλε, the word whence apostle is derived. Note…
17. Sent—’Απεστειλε, the word whence apostle is derived. Note on Mat_10:2. Christ apostled me not to baptize. Baptizing was not named in his apostolic commission. Act_9:15; Act_22:15; Act_26:16-18; Gal_1:16. Yet baptism was included in the commission of the twelve, (Mat_28:19,) to be done, doubtless, either by themselves or by subordinates appointed.
Wisdom of words—Not hereby meaning skill in speech; nor, as Olshausen, “word-wisdom;” nor philosophical discourse; but wisdom or philosophy which is the subject of words or discourse by philosophers. This will appear in our progress. The Greek word here rendered wisdom, σοφια, sophia, is the last half of the word φιλοσοφια, philosophia, philosophy; and means throughout this chapter precisely the same thing, except that the former signified wisdom, and the latter, signifying love of wisdom, was the more modest profession for a sage to make. Both terms mean that system of thought, originated by the intellect of deep thinkers, which assumes to decide on the origin of all things, the existence of God, and the nature and destiny of man. The systems were admired for their profundity, and men divided into sects and schools following different leaders of thought, just as the Corinthian Christians were following different leaders. That such is the meaning of the word here is plain from 1Co_1:22, where the sophia is expressly affirmed to be that which was the object of the search of the Greeks. In its best form this sophia was the nearest approach to true religion that the unaided reason of man could attain. Yet, source of pride and partisanship as it was to the intellectual Gentile world, the apostle triumphs in declining a similar homage from the Church, and in abasing sophia to the bottom, and placing the cross at the summit. Not but that there was a value and a grandeur positively in the Greek sophia. It was only as it came in competition with the cross, as a substitute for the Gospel, as a means of enlightenment and salvation to men, that it was to be abased; just as all things belonging to mere man must be abased before that which is truly of God. Hence the sophia, with all of its human nobility, power, and pretension, must all be trampled in the dust when the triumphs of the cross were approaching. Socrates and Plato were illustrious men; their philosophies were a noble product; but when they come into collision with Christ and his cross into what nothingness must they not sink!
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but…
17. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel] “Even the less earned can baptize perfectly, but perfectly to preach the Gospel is a far more difficult task, and requires qualifications which are far more rare.”—Augustine.
not with wisdom of words] Rather discourse, as in 1Co_1:5. Here the matter of the discourse as well as its expression is meant, though the latter is probably the predominant idea. For it is impossible to study the philosophy of the Apostolic and post-Apostolic period without seeing how much it consisted of word-play.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31 (17) Not to baptize.—Preaching was eminently the work of…
(17) Not to baptize.—Preaching was eminently the work of the Apostles. The deacons used to baptise (Act_10:48). The mention of “the preaching of the glad tidings” affords an opportunity for the Apostle stating in vindication of himself why that, and not philosophy, was the subject of his preaching, “lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.” Such, and not inability or ignorance, was the grand cause of his simplicity.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv17–31 Sent me not to baptize, but; that is, according…
Sent me not to baptize, but; that is, according to Semitic idiom, "not so much to baptize, as". (Mat_28:19) The word "sent" (apesteilen) involves the meaning "made me an apostle" (apostolos). The primary function of the apostles was "to bear witness". (Mar_16:15; Act_1:8, etc) To preach the gospel. St. Paul again "goes off" at this word, and dwells for eight verses on the character of his preaching. Not in wisdom of words; not, that is, in a philosophic and oratorical style. The simplicity of the style and teaching of the apostles awoke the sneers of philosophers like Celsus and Porphyry. The cross of Christ. The central doctrine of Christianity, the preaching of a crucified Redeemer. Should be made void. The rendering of the Authorized Version is too strong; the cross cannot "be made of none effect." The word means "should be emptied". (comp 1Co_9:15; 2Co_9:3; Php_2:7; Rom_4:14) made void of its special and independent power. The words, "the cross of Christ," form the emphatic end of the sentence in the Greek.
The world"s greatest blessing and its greatest evil.
Read full note →
the cross of Christ should be made of none effect." Here we have
I The greatest BLESSING in the world. "The cross of Christ." By "the cross of Christ" the apostle did not mean, of course, the timber on which Christ was crucified, or any imitation of that in wood, brass, marble, gold, silver, or paint. He uses the word as a symbol, as we use the words "crown," "court," "bench," etc. He meant the eternal principles of which the cross of Christ was at once the effect, evidence, and expression he meant, in one word, all that we mean by the gospel. And this, we say, is the greatest blessing in the world today. The human world lives under a system of mercy, and mercy pours on it every hour blessings innumerable. But no blessing has come to it, has ever been found in it, or will ever come to it, equal to the cross or the gospel. Look at it, for example, in only three of its many aspects, and you will be impressed with its incomparable worth.
1. As a revealer. The chief value of the material universe is, that it reveals the spiritual and the eternal; but the gospel reveals all that the material does of God and the universe with much greater fulness and effect. It presents
2. the "image of the invisible God." All true theological doctrine and ethical science come to us through the cross. It is the moral light of the world.
3. As an educator. That in human life which is the most successful in quickening, evolving, and strengthening all the powers of the human mind is its chief blessing. The "cross of Christ" has done this a thousand times more effectively than any other agency. Art, government, science, poetry, philosophy, owe infinitely more to it than to any other agent in the world. The cross is to the human soul what the vernal sunbeam is to the seed; it penetrates, warms, quickens, and brings all its latent powers out to perfection.
1. As a deliverer. The cross is more than a revealer or an educator; it is a deliverer. The human soul is condemned, diseased, enthralled; everywhere it groans under the sentence of its own conscience. It languishes under a moral malady; it is fettered by lusts, prejudices, evil habits, and social influences; its deepest cry is, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" The cross bears a pen to cancel the sentence, a balm to heal the wound, a weapon to break the fettering chain. Such, and infinitely more, is the cross. What would human life be without it? A voyage without a compass, chart, or star.
II The greatest EVIL in the world. What is the evil? Making this cross of "none effect." That is "none effect" so far as its grand mission is concerned. Some effect it must have; it will deepen the damnation where it does not save. "We are unto God a sweet savour," etc. We offer three remarks concerning this tremendous evil.
1. It is painfully manifest. The fact is patent to all, that the cross has not to any great extent in Christendom produced its true effect. Though it has been in the world upwards of eighteen hundred years, not one-tenth of the human population know anything about it, and not one-hundredth of those who know something of it, experience its true effect. Intellectually, socially, politically, it has confessedly done wonders for mankind; but morally, how little! How little genuine holiness, disinterested philanthropy, self-sacrificing devotion to truth and God! How little Christliness of life! In all moral features, England is well-nigh as hideous as heathendom.
2. It is easily explained. How is it done? The apostle in this verse indicates one way in which it could be done, that is, by "wisdom of words," by which we understand him to mean gorgeous rhetoric. What is called the Church has done it; that is, the assembly of men who profess to be its disciples, representatives, ministers, and promoters. The Church has done it:
(1) By its theologies. In its name it has propounded dogmas that have clashed with reason and outraged conscience.
(2) By its polity. It has sanctioned wars, promoted priestcraft, established hierarchies, which have fattened on the ignorance and poverty of the people.
(3) By its spirit. The spirit of the Church, as a rule, is in direct antagonism to the spirit of the cross. The spirit of the cross is self sacrificing love; the spirit of the conventional Church has been to a great extent that of selfishness, greed, ambition, and oppression. Malrepresentation of Christ by the Church is the instrument that has made the cross of "none effect.
3. It is terribly criminal. It is wonderful that man has the power thus to pervert Divine institutions and blessings; but such perverting power he has, and he uses it every day even in natural things. He forges metals into weapons for murder, he turns bread corn into liquids to blight the reason and to damn the souls of men. Wonderful power this! and terrible is the crime in employing it for perverting the cross of Christ. A greater crime than this you cannot conceive of. Were you to turn all bread into poison, make the flowing rivers pestiferous, quench the light of the sun, mantle the stars in sackcloth, you would not perpetrate a crime half so enormous as that of making the cross of Christ of" none effect.
CONCLUSION. Two questions.
1. What is the spiritual influence of the cross on us? Has it crucified unto us the world; destroyed in us the worldly spirit the spirit of practical atheism, materialism, and selfishness?
2. What are we doing with the cross? Are we abusing it or rightly employing it?
The mission to preach.
No man did so much as Paul to prevent Christianity degenerating into form. He had himself been galled by the bondage of the old dispensation, and he the more rejoiced in the liberty of the new. He upheld the spirit against the letter, the life against the ceremony. He did not depreciate baptism, for it would not have been easy to depreciate the ordinance and at the same time to honour the spiritual reality it symbolized. But others could and might administer the rite of purification; he was at liberty to leave this to them, in order to give himself the more devotedly to his own special and appointed work, the preaching of the gospel.
I THE LANGUAGE EXPRESSES THE CONVICTION OF A DIVINE MISSION.
1. The Christian, and emphatically the Christian preacher, does not go his own way and do his own work in the world. He does not claim to direct his own steps.
2. Christ is the sender. To Paul he had said, "Unto whom now I send thee;" and Paul acknowledged concerning his commission, "I received it not of men." It is a high and sacred truth that we are sent men. The soul that awakens to a sense of the reality of life and hears the voice of God, proves its vitality by exclaiming, "Here am I; send me." Every Christian is, in a sense, a missionary, an apostle of Christ.
II THE LANGUAGE ASSERTS THE VAST IMPORTANCE OF PREACHING. It is common amongst worldly men to undervalue this spiritual agency; they think more of political or physical power than of moral influence. What is preaching? It is the use of moral means towards a moral end. It is the presentation of truth to the understanding, of authority to the conscience, of persuasion to the heart. Above all, it is the use of a Divine weapon, though with an arm weak and ill adapted for a service so high. Our Lord himself was a preacher, Paul was a preacher, and preachers have been among the greatest moral factors in the history of all Christian nations. Preaching is the vehicle of a Divine blessing, the means towards a Divine and immortal result.
III THE LANGUAGE LAYS STRESS UPON THE SUBSTANCE OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. Paul felt himself called and qualified to preach the gospel.
1. This was good news. An argument may be reasoned, an oration may be declaimed, a poem may be sung, but that which has to be preached is good news.
2. It was good news from God. From any inferior source good tidings could scarcely have deserved the name. Man needed pardon, the principle and power of a new life, hope for the future; and these were blessings God alone could bestow.
3. It was good news concerning Christ. Thus to preach Christ and to preach the gospel were one and the same thing. For Christ was to man the wisdom, the power, and the love of God.
4. It was good news for all men. It brought liberty to the Jew and light to the Gentile, truth to the inquiring, comfort to the sorrowful, peace to the sinful penitent, and hope to the downtrodden and the slave.
APPLICATION.
1. The preacher may be reminded of his true vocation.
2. The hearer of the gospel may be reminded of his precious privilege and of his sacred responsibility. T.
Vers. 17-25.
The preaching of the cross.
I THE CROSS IS TO BE PREACHED. The gospel cannot be preached unless the cross is. The cross is the central fact. The con, verging point of the Scriptures is found in "Christ crucified." Without the cross Christianity becomes meaningless and powerless. Salvation and the cross are indissolubly linked: the cross speaks of the shedding of blood, "and without shedding of blood is no remission". (Heb_9:22)
II THE CROSS IS TO BE PLAINLY PREACHED. As "not many wise" are called, it is but reasonable that the unwise and simple minded should be specially borne in mind. The offence of the cross is not to be lessened by "wisdom of words." Knowledge of the meaning of the cross is the deepest need of the world; all things should be subordinated to conveying that knowledge with utmost clearness and fulness. Men cannot be saved by eloquence, or philosophy, or learning; they can by the cross. "The great preachers have been natural orators, not rhetoricians or actors." The greatest care is necessary lest, by the character of our preaching, the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. Some preaching seems designed for the very purpose, and succeeds deplorably.
III THE CROSS IS TO BE PREACHED, NOTWITHSTANDING ITS UNFAVOURABLE RECEPTION Some, indeed, receive it with all gladness, but our obligation to preach it is not dependent upon its reception. We may always remember that the cross is what men want, though it may not be what they wish.
1. To the Jew the cross was a stumbling block, He looked rather for a military than for a martyr Messiah one who would deliver by sound of trumpet and sword, not by ignominy and death. If he is to believe, he must have signs from heaven (ver. 22), miraculous interventions, and not a reiteration of the event which was the greatest scandal to his mind, and most grievously shocked his prejudices and anticipations. The Jew put the cross very low down. We can make anything into a stumbling block if we will only put it low enough.
2. To the Greek the cross seemed foolishness. That the great revelation for which he and the world had been looking so long should come through a crucified Jew, and be most closely associated with that crucifixion itself, appeared to him too absurd, he would have welcomed a philosopher with a new philosophy, he sought after wisdom that is, his wisdom. In the cross there was too profound a wisdom for even his keen eye to discern, and so he called it folly. He thought the cross was shallow, because he was shallow himself, though he little suspected it. Further, he desired philosophic demonstration about matters of religion, and had a great horror of "faith." And his pride was wounded (and that which wounds our pride is always folly). That all must come to God by the same way, making a similar confession of sin and impotence, was in conflict with his most cherished ideas. The approach of barbarians to the cross made it a way of foolishness to the Greek. There are many "Greeks" now.
IV THE CROSS IS TO BE PREACHED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IT OPERATES AS A GREAT TEST OF CONDITION. The character of its reception indicates the condition of those who hear. To some it is foolishness but only to those that are perishing. Only to them! They are so utterly blind that the brightness of the cross is blackness. To others it is the power of God and the wisdom of God and they are the saved. They are "both Jews and Greeks" (ver. 24). The new nature has conquered the old. All is changed when the heart is. These Jews sought for power; these Greeks sought for wisdom; and here both were found when Jew and Greek responded to the Divine call.
1. We may well ask ourselves What is the cross to us? The answer will indicate whether we are perishing or being saved. The preaching of the cross to us is a personal test.
2. In preaching the cross, we should strive and pray that it may not be foolishness to our hearers, knowing what this would indicate.
3. In preaching the cross, we must not be too disconcerted if men receive our message as one of foolishness. This will not indicate faultiness in the cross, but in those who hear its story, though of course there may be faultiness in our mode of telling that story.
V THE CROSS IS TO BE PREACHED WITH THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE FAILURE OF EARTHLY WISDOM. Ancient schemes of philosophers having some external indication of wisdom, what has become of them? "Where is the wise?" etc. Where are the scribes and their improvements upon the Divine Law? God has made in the course of the ages all such "wisdom" to become folly recognized folly. "The world by wisdom knew not God." Human wisdom gave the world no more piety, but much more pride. Human wisdom has failed most egregiously all along the line to redeem and regenerate men. Calvin bluntly says, "We must here carefully notice these two things that the knowledge of all the sciences is mere smoke where the heavenly science is wanting, and man with all his acuteness is as stupid for obtaining of himself a knowledge of the mysteries of God as an ass is unqualified for understanding musical harmonies." If the cross fails, failure is universal. H.
Vers. 17-25.
Man"s wisdom and God"s.
The mention of baptism leads the apostle to speak of his preaching at Corinth. His mission was "not to baptize, but to preach the gospel," and he proceeds to vindicate his discharge of that mission as against those who preferred the "wisdom of this world.
I THE THEME OF EVANGELICAL PREACHING. He calls it "the word of the cross;" "Christ crucified". (comp 1Co_2:2) Here at Corinth, even more than elsewhere, Paul felt the necessity of adhering to the simplicity of the gospel and disclaiming the "wisdom of words" upon which others laid stress. The central point in his teaching was that which he delighted to sum up in the expression, "the cross of Christ." He did not keep the Crucifixion out of sight as a thing to be ashamed of, but gloried in it as the distinguishing feature of the good news he proclaimed. The humiliation and death of the Saviour of men, his "becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross", (Php_2:8) is the very kernel of the gospel, the key which unlocks the mystery of his work. Paul might have told them of a purer morality than their moralists had taught, and a sublimer philosophy than Socrates or Plato had imagined; but this would at best have stirred only a few minds to new thought, and made a few earnest hearts feel that perfection was further off than ever. It was otherwise when he could speak to them of the cross of Christ, with all that it implied; for in this is the Divine answer to the great life query which men had striven in vain to answer How can man be just with God? Here is the One dying for the many, the Son of God suffering as a substitute for sinners, and thus salvation actually accomplished. To preach this was truly to bring glad tidings. The example of the apostle is a pattern for all preachers. Let us not think to recommend Christianity by hiding the cross or reducing it to a figure of speech, as if the death of Christ were merely a testimony to the sincerity of his life. Christianity without the cross is no real evangel to men. You may admire the spotless life of Jesus, rejoice in his wonderful teaching, bless him for his Divine philanthropy, and weep over his undeserved fate; but this would simply make him a greater Socrates or a greater Paul. It is his atoning death above all that makes him more to us than any of the illustrious teachers or martyrs of history. But while this is true, we must not suppose that preaching Christ means nothing more than a simple recital of the way of salvation. Paul"s letters are virtually summaries of his oral teaching; and in them we see how the one theme expands into the whole circle of Christian truth, how Christ appears as Prophet, Priest, and King, and how the gospel is applied to the trials and duties of actual life. Let us not make narrow what God has made so broad. Let us not stunt and deform our spiritual life by feeding only on one kind of nourishment, and refusing the large provision he has made for us. We shall preach Christ aright only by exhibiting the fulness that dwells in him.
II THE METHOD OF EVANGELICAL PREACHING. Whilst the main reference in this passage is to the theme of the preacher, there is also a reference to the manner in which that theme is presented. "Not in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void." We may preach Christ in such a way as to neutralize the gospel"s peculiar power.
1. We may do this by merely speculating about the death of Christ. Philosophical essays on the work of Christ, and disquisitions on Christian doctrine, have their place and value; but they must not usurp the place of simple preaching. They appeal only to the intellect, whereas the sermon appeals to the heart and conscience as well. As a matter of experience, it is
2. found that the style of preaching here condemned is productive of little spiritual fruit.
3. We may do this by a rhetoric which hides the cross. The gospel may be so adorned that men"s attention is drawn to the gaudy trappings or to the preacher himself, instead of being fixed on the truth; and in so far as this is the case its influence is lost. The flowers with which we bedeck the cross too often hide it. The right idea of preaching may be gathered from the two words translated "preach" in this passage. The first means "to bring glad tidings the good news of a Saviour for sinners (eujaggelizesqai, ver. 17); the second signifies "to proclaim as a herald" the facts of salvation and the invitations and promises founded upon them (khrusein, ver. 23). Evangelical preaching is a publication of the good news to men, a direct setting forth of Christ in all his offices. Thus presented, the cross is full of power to draw men to the Saviour. (Joh_12:32)
III HOW THE GOSPEL ARREARS TO THOSE THAT REJECT IT. The preaching of the cross affects men according to their prepossessions. Bent of mind, education, surroundings, largely determine their attitude towards Christ. Two classes are mentioned by the apostle who rejected the gospel for two different reasons.
1. The Jews. "Jews ask for signs," i.e. they crave for some outward miraculous exhibition to call forth their wonder. "Master, we would see a sign from thee" (Mat_12:38) was their constant demand of Jesus; and, in so far as the demand was a legitimate one, it was complied with. Peter on the day of Pentecost could speak of Jesus of Nazareth as "a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs". (Act_2:22) The chief sign of all was the cross; but the Jews did not understand it. They stumbled at it as a "scandal," which they could not get over, and which seemed to them to say the opposite of what God intended. The cross was in their eyes the token of humiliation and shame. They looked for a Messiah attended by far different manifestations, and they would not believe in One who had been crucified. There are still those among us who, like the Jews, seek after signs. They crave for the outward, the visible, the sensational for something to dazzle and startle. The Roman Catholic will go hundreds of miles to visit the spot where "our Lady" is supposed to have appeared, will gaze with devout reverence on the curdled blood of Januarius turning liquid before his eyes, and will touch with awe the relics of some saint, believing that they will cure his diseases. The Protestant, disdaining these superstitions, shows the same spirit in other ways. He may love the sensuous in worship and the sensational in preaching. He may run after the man who is an adept in oratorical jugglery, who knows the day and the hour when the world is to end, etc. Whatever is novel, unusual, popular, is sure to find such sign seekers among its ardent supporters. To men of this temper the cross of Christ is still a "stumbling block. For it speaks of humiliation, of obedience unto death, of a quiet unostentatious doing of the will of God; and this is the very thing such people feel to be distasteful. To go with Jesus into the garden, and there drink the cup God puts to our lips; to endure with him the contradiction of sinners, and be exposed to shame and hissing; to go after him, denying ourselves and bearing our cross; this is the meaning of the sign. Is it any wonder if men stumble at it?
2. The Greeks. "Greeks seek after wisdom." The idea of a crucified Saviour was to them foolishness. Accustomed to the speculations of their own philosophers, set forth with learning and subtlety, these lovers of wisdom applied to the doctrine of the cross a purely intellectual test. It was in their eyes a new philosophy, and Jesus of Nazareth was to be tried by the same rules as the founders of their own schools. To these critical Greeks Paul had nothing to offer but the story of him who was crucified (compare our Lord"s words to the Greeks. (Joh_12:23, etc.) The cross for them, as for the Jews, had but one language it spoke of the lowest infamy; and to preach salvation by a cross would be in their view the sheerest absurdity. These Greeks have still their representatives in modern life. There are those who glorify human intellect, and think themselves capable of solving all mysteries. How many of our men of science seem to lose their heads when they come to speak of Christianity! They have nothing but a sneer for a "theology of blood;" and their quarrel with Jesus is that, after giving the world such splendid precepts, he should have imagined that he could save men by letting them crucify him. In forms less extreme than this the same spirit may be traced. Many hearers of the Word have more regard to the mental grasp of the preacher, the literary finish of the discourse, or the manner in which it is delivered, than to the scriptural and edifying character of the truth preached. The simple preaching of Christ crucified is to their thinking comparative folly. Let us not be carried away by this craving for wisdom. "When once the idolatry of talent enters the Church, then farewell to spirituality; when men ask their teachers, not for that which will make them more bumble and Godlike, but for the excitement of an intellectual banquet, then farewell to Christian progress" (F. W. Robertson). Observe the apostle"s statement with regard to thesedespisers of the cross: "In the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God." Men groped after him, but could not find him. It was part of the Divine scheme that the wisdom of the world should have free scope to work; and only when it had exhausted itself was the world ripe for the bringing in of the gospel. This was a part of the preparation for Christ. Human wisdom is still inadequate. It cannot save a single soul. Men perish as they speculate; men die as they frame theories of life. In God"s view, man"s wisdom is folly; in man"s view, God"s wisdom is folly. Which is the wiser?
IV HOW THE GOSPEL APPEARS TO THOSE THAT RECEIVE IT. They are described as "called" (ver. 24), as "believers" (ver. 21), as "being saved" (ver. 18); each term presenting a different aspect of their condition. They are called by God out of the world into the fellowship of Christ; being called, they believe in him; and believing, they are in the way of salvation. There is no salvation without faith, and no faith without the calling of God by his Word and Spirit. Now, to all such Christ is "the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God." The Jew stumbled at the cross as a thing of weakness; the believer rejoices in it as a thing of power. It has done for him what all other appliances failed to accomplish. It has made him a new creature, bringing him out of darkness and death into light and life. Every one who has been cured by a particular medicine is a witness to the efficacy of that medicine; so every saved sinner bears testimony to the power of the cross. And there is wisdom here as well as power wisdom of God." Christ crucified is not a philosophy, but a fact; yet through this fact there shines the highest wisdom. We can well understand how the Greek mind, once brought to the obedience of faith, would revel in this view of the cross. He would learn to see in Christ "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge". (Col_2:3) In him "God is just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus". (Rom_3:26) In him we have the highest exemplification of that great law of the kingdom: "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted". (Mat_23:12) All that the ancient philosophies had been striving after the knowledge of God, the nature of man, and the meaning of human life is to be found in Christ and him crucified. Here is the centre of all knowledge, round which all else revolves in order and beauty. Here is the shrine where the wise men of the earth must fall down and worship the touchstone by which their speculations must be tried. Here is "the wisdom of God," outshining every other manifestation in creation and providence that wisdom by which we become wise unto salvation. B.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 30, 31 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to…
1Co_1:17-31
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.
Read full note →
Pauls preaching
I. It exalted the Cross of Christ as the central element of the gospel. The apostle does not teach that truths associated with the details of Christian belief and living are not proper themes for the pulpit; nor that ritualistic observances are of no importance; nor that he considered as naught the human wisdom seen both in logic and skill; what he meant was that the gospel as the means of salvation revealed by God was everywhere the burden of his message. Neither church observances nor creeds, nor mans philosophy can become a substitute for this essential truth.
II. It made the agency of God essential in causing the Cross of Christ to have saving power.
1. Paul gives the reason of man its proper place in the apprehension of the truth, and the truth so apprehended its proper place as connected with regeneration; but he never teaches that the truth alone, however fully understood, will secure salvation. Being saved is not an intellectual process only, even though the sacrifice of Christ be the truth considered. Only when made the power of God through the attending influence of the Holy Ghost does it save.
2. Pauls preaching insisted that this Divine agency can render the weak--
(1) Able to appropriate the gospel in its saving power. The pride of high station and marked ability would not avail, but the humility of confessed unworthiness and dependence upon him who would attract Gods favour and incline its possessor to accept the Saviour He has provided. Hence, the poor, the ignorant, the wicked, the child, will find no barriers around the Cross when they turn toward it for help.
(2) Useful in throwing over opposition and causing the gospel to triumph (1Co_1:27, &c.).
III. It declared that the result of the gospels proper presentation must be that God, and not men, will have all the glory (1Co_1:29; 1Co_1:31). Conclusion: Pauls preaching declares--
1. That true salvation is the penitent and trustful acceptance of the crucified Christ.
2. That true religion is loyalty to God. (J. Exells, D. D.)
The true work of the preacher
Paul sought to teach that there were different functions which belonged to the officers of the Church. Some were to serve tables, some to administer the ordinances. He did not cast contempt on the ordinances, but declared that he had a special work appointed him.
I. The office of the preacher arose with the Saviour. There were instructors previously. The prophets were much more teachers than predictors. The Rabbis when Christ was upon earth were teachers. Christs method of teaching was utterly different. Outwardly it was the same--He went from place to place, He taught sitting, &c.; but the interior contents of His teaching were very different. Christ spake with authority; so does every man who speaks from the roots and fundamental elements of truth.
II. Preaching is teaching in a vitalising way ethical truths--truths which ally men to God and to each other. They must be taught so as to breathe the life of Him who teaches. They must carry personal power.
III. It is not to be thought that this function of the Christian Church has ceased even in liberally educated and cultivated sections of society. Let us look closely and ask, Is the function of the preacher temporary? Will it ever pass away? There is one element belonging distinctively to the preacher which will for ever give him a place and function which can never change: the bringing of the truth home to men in a living form. In the light of this observe the genius and the sphere of preaching--
1. From this sphere are excluded largely the higher forms of theological speculation, for it is not possible to bring these home to men in a living way. His distinctive business is to deal with those truths which he can take into his consciousness, and, having given to these a personal expression from himself, send them forth living truths. His proper sphere is ethical truth. That which men most need to know is how to love God and man perfectly. This is his whole duty. To teach this duty is the sphere of the preacher.
2. This includes every condition of mankind.
3. From this it appears that no man is a true preacher whose chief business is the organisation of worship, the conduct of Church affairs, or mere pastoral administration. The true preacher is the utterer of truth.
4. Then as no man can represent in himself every form of the human mind, or have a full conception of all truth, the preacher must necessarily be a partialist. The robin sings as a robin, bluebirds as bluebirds. One man has large power of imagination, another overflowing emotion, &c. All are fragmentary preachers. No man was ever built large enough to preach the whole of God.
5. Pride, vanity, and unspiritual life will effectually prevent the preacher becoming personally, experimentally, a presentation of the truth to the people. (H. W. Beecher.)
Preaching
I. It has been ordered by Divine wisdom that the gospel should, as much as possible, avail itself of the ordinary channels of communication and influence in spreading through the world.
II. The secret of the power of preaching.
1. It conveys far better than any other vehicle the affirmation of the whole man--his whole nature, his whole experience--to the matter which he desires to communicate.
2. It brings into play all the affinities, sympathies, and affections of the being, and is therefore a most powerful instrument in arriving at the truth.
3. So much is true of all preaching. But in the preaching of the gospel there is a source of special power--the principle of representation the power and right to speak to men in the name of God. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)
Pauls preaching
1. Observe, Paul does not say we preach Christ as if the declaration of the personal dignity of the God-man were all. Neither does he emphasise the crucified as if the setting off of the death of Jesus as that of a martyr and for an example were enough. But he combines the two. The dignity of the Christ was needed to give efficacy to the sacrifice on the Cross, and the sacrifice on the Cross was required to complete the work of the Christ.
2. In the prosecution of his work Paul met with three classes, each of which treated his message in a peculiar fashion. The Jew and the Greek, without trying the gospel on themselves, rejected it--the one for its lack of power and the other for its lack of wisdom; but the third class, acting on the only true philosophical principle of proving the matter by personal experiment, found in it both the power of God and the wisdom of God. Nowadays it is sturdily insisted on that nothing shall be received save that which rests on the basis of observation and experiment, but that is all the gospel asks; and here we see that those who reject it are those who refuse to put it to the test. Which of the two classes is the more scientific? The Baconian philosophers should not hesitate as to the reply. Christ crucified is--
I. The power of god.
1. Yes, but this power is not physical like the might of an army; nor material, like that which is connected with a development of matter; nor mechanical, as derived from any sort of mechanism, but dynamical, as exerted by spirit upon spirit. It is power unto salvation. It is not therefore to be tested by material gauges, as one measures the pressure on a steam-boiler, or estimates the horse-power of an engine. We are to look for its operation in the human heart. Its trophics are in character, and its results are in life.
(1) Take it in the case of an individual, and the transformation wrought on such men as Paul, and Augustine, and John Newton, may well illustrate its reality and efficacy.
(2) Take it in the case of communities, and Christianity has either implanted or stimulated regard for the personality of the weakest and the poorest; respect for women; the absolute duty of each member of the fortunate classes to raise the unfortunate; humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and even the brute; unceasing opposition to all forms of cruelty; the duty of personal purity; the sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance.
2. But are we quite sure that it is the power of God? Yes, for there are only two spiritual powers in the world--that of evil and that of good. Very evidently, therefore, a result like that of the conversion of a man, and the revolution of society, from evil to good, must be traced up to God. Man cannot do it for himself, for as water cannot rise above its level, so the soul cannot change its nature by its own efforts. And what one man cannot do for himself, the aggregate of men cannot do for the race. They had four thousand years given to them in which to make the experiment, and here (verse 21) is the result.
II. The wisdom of God.
1. Wisdom is manifested in the choice of such means as are best adapted to the production of the end. The problem to be solved in the salvation of men is, How shall a sinner be forgiven without weakening the sanctions of morality and giving encouragement to evil? Now the race vainly wrestled with that for four millenniums; but the despair of humanity is the opportunity of God, for in Christ crucified we are shown a just God and a Saviour.
2. Wisdom is seen in the securing of different ends by one and the same means. So salvation is not merely forgiveness; it is also regeneration and growth in holiness. Its highest result is character, and the renovation of that is produced by the Holy Ghost. Now the dispensation of the Holy Spirit would have been impossible save for the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross; while, again, the love of Christ, as manifested in His sacrifice on the Cross, is the great means used by the Spirit for the regeneration and sanctification of the believer. Conclusion: From all this four inferences follow. If Christ crucified is the power of God unto salvation, then--
1. Any sinner may be saved through faith in Him.
2. There is no other way of salvation.
3. When men are saved through this means the whole glory of their salvation is due to God.
4. If we would see such results from our preaching as those which followed Pauls, we must preach the same gospel, Christ crucified. This is the gospel for our age, because it is the gospel for all the ages. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The gospel as preached by Paul
I. There is a gospel to be preached. Amid all the diversities of doctrine and ritual there are some things which must be found in all Christian preaching: that Christ alone can save men; that He can save any man and all men; that He saves men completely and for ever. No man can be said to preach the gospel who does not make these thoughts central and controlling. He may preach very important and helpful truth; but until he makes Christ the ground, the motive, and the end of his teaching, he is not a preacher of the gospel. The gospel is good news. It is not the publication of the moral law. It is not telling men what they ought to be and do. The ministry of Christ was not needed to teach that lesson. Conscience proclaims it, and universal experience confirms it. It is not equivalent to the affirmation of the eternal and universal Fatherhood of the Holy One. It implies this, but it is more. That consoling thought is imbedded in the Old Testament. Paul affirmed more than that. In his preaching the person of Christ assumes central and permanent prominence. In Him the law of God is fulfilled and honoured. In Him the love of God leaps from the heavens to the earth links itself with the burden and guilt of humanity, challenges the powers of darkness and the might of death, achieving a practical and eternal victory. Fear rules paganism, hope smiles in the Old Testament, assurance is the ringing keynote of the gospel. So much for the contents of the gospel. It is crowded into this sentence: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
II. But does the world need such a message? Can we not get along fairly well without it? That is the very question which Paul discussed in Rom_1:1-32. What does the world need? Righteousness. That secured and the millennium would be there. But the one thing most needed is the thing most difficult to create and promote. It cannot be said that there has been any lack of earnest attempts. Confucius, Sakya-Muni, Zoroaster, and Socrates, tried to supply the want. But the multitudes were deaf to their appeal; and Rome at the zenith of her culture was but a veneered brutality. And mightily endowed as Judiasm was it failed to achieve even its own reformation. The men who boasted in the law trampled upon it every day. A mightier hand than that of Socrates, or of Moses, was needed to save the world. A more than human hand, though nerved by an inspired heart, must smite the ranks of evil.
III. But granting that the world needs just the help which the gospel declares has been brought to it. will even this secure the desired result? To this we can only answer, first, if it does not then God is clearly and hopelessly defeated, for a greater than Christ cannot, come to the rescue; and second, if Christ be what the gospel affirms Him to be, the triumph of righteousness is a foregone conclusion. Hence the tone of victory in the New Testament is always in the present tense. Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. This is our highest assurance. It receives impressive confirmation in the historical triumphs of Christianity. Its moral conquest of the civilisations of Rome and Greece are unquestioned. Its restraining and reorganising energy during the Middle Ages is freely admitted. Its profound and salutary influence upon modern life is beyond cavil; but there is a more direct and living proof of its power. Hundreds among you can bear testimony to the grace of salvation in Jesus Christ. What the gospel has done for you it can do for all. (A. J. F. Behrends, D. D.)
The gospel neither ritual nor philosophy
I. A large class of minds like to make a superstition out of their religion. Mere words addressed to the understanding and the heart appear too feeble, too immaterial. They long to be set in rapport with the superhuman in some realistic way. Establish some sign. Paul, generalising from what he saw before his eyes, calls this demand of human nature Jewish; but it is common everywhere. It has penetrated every religion from the days of the Chaldeans downwards. One after another Judaism, Buddhism, Parseeism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, have succumbed to this demand for material signs. Each of them has degenerated into a system of ceremonial and stooped to pander to the sensuous taste of its devotees.
II. There is in man a tendency, not So widespread, but nobler than the vulgar bent to superstition--after intellectual satisfaction and an exhaustive knowledge of truth.
1. No sooner had Christianity appeared than this appetite seized upon it, questioned it, thought to find in it what it had failed to find elsewhere. Generalising, again, Paul termed this the Greek habit of mind. The Greek, he says, searches after philosophy; but it is as little exclusively Greek as the bias to superstition is exclusively Jewish. In our day it is no less profound, unsuitable, or eager than it ever was. Men claim that it shall be as systematic, exhaustive, and demonstrable as a science; that it shall help to answer the unanswered problems of existence; that it shall abjure all pretensions to be supernatural; that every one of its facts be found explicable on natural grounds; and that its boasted virtue to save shall prove as intelligible as the action of any other truth upon human minds.
2. Follow out this conception of Christianity to its issues, and what have you? Not a genuine revelation from heaven; not the advent of a Divine power to save; but simply some very beautiful and elevating truths, discerned first by a certain Jew of Palestine and by him added to the worlds treasure-house of thought, yet competing with many discoveries of more modern times. Is it not to some such appraisement of the gospel that a great deal of modern discussion among the learned is tending? Nay, is there not a way of preaching and defending the gospel--such a way as Paul avoided in speculative Corinth--which actually invites men to rate its value as low as this among the rival systems of human wisdom?
3. Against such a misconception of the essence of the gospel, what is St. Pauls protest? It is true, he seems to say, the gospel is a rational word, and not a magical rite. It is spoken truth, and it acts, like truth, through the misunderstandings of men. But, for all that, it is not a philosophy. With abstract truth it has little to do; but it proclaims Jesus the Messiah, and proclaims Him as crucified for the sins of men. Its real character is this--it is a, testimony from God which we are not called upon to discuss so much as to credit. It is in this, accordingly, that its power lies. For power it unquestionably possesses. Only not the mere power of wisdom, but the quiet personal power of the Speakers authority and the Speakers love. Speculate about this and it may seem in your sagacious eyes folly. But cease to criticise and be humble enough to believe it, to surrender yourself to Him who speaks; then it will prove itself to be Divinely wise and strong in your experience. It will work in you as no human wisdom works; it will save you as no intellectual system saves.
4. On this side also I think a faithful Church needs just now to speak out in clear tones. It is not the first time in the history of our faith that the gospel has been like to lose its characteristic spirit by evaporation. Treat it as you treat an ordinary system of thought, and you end (as Paul feared to end) by making the Cross of Christ of none effect. You miss its very essence as a gospel. For what makes it to be a gospel? Just this, that it is Gods own record of His peculiar way of having mercy upon sinners. It is a plain, practical, personal appeal from our reconciling Father to each wandered soul among us; or it is nothing. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)
The foolishness of preaching
As Paul repudiates the idea that he had given any countenance to the founding of a Pauline party, it occurs to him that some may say, True enough, he did not baptize; but his preaching may more effectually have won partisans than even baptizing them into his own name could have done. And so Paul goes on to show that his preaching was not that of a demagogue or party-leader, but was a bare statement of fact, garnished by absolutely nothing which could divert attention from the fact either to the speaker or to his style. Paul explains to the Corinthians--
I. The style of preaching he had adopted while with them
1. His time in Corinth, he assures them, had been spent, not in propagating a system of truth which might have been identified with his name, but in presenting the Cross of Christ. In approaching them he had necessarily weighed in his own mind the comparative merits of various modes of presenting the gospel, and he well knew that a new philosophy clothed in elegant language was likely to secure a number of disciples. And it was quite in Pauls power to present the gospel as a philosophy; but he determined not to know anything among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
2. Paul then deliberately trusted to the bare statement of facts and not to any theory about these facts. In preaching to audiences with whom the facts are familiar, it is perfectly justifiable to draw inferences from them and to theorise about them. Paul himself spoke wisdom among them that were perfect. But what is to be noted is that for doing the work proper to the gospel, for making men Christians, it is not theory or explanation, but fact, that is effective. It is the presentation of Christ as He is presented in the Gospels which stands in the first rank of efficiency as a means of evangelising the world. The actor does not instruct his audience how they should be affected by the play; he so presents the scene that they instinctively smile or find their eyes fill. Those onlookers at the crucifixion who beat their breasts were not told that they should feel compunction; it was enough that they saw the Crucified. So it is always; it is the direct vision of the Cross, and not anything which is said about it, which is most effective in producing penitence and faith.
3. The very fact that it was a Person, not a system of philosophy, that Paul proclaimed Was sufficient proof that he was not anxious to become the founder of a school or the head of a party. And that which permanently distinguishes Christianity from all philosophies is that it presents to men, not a system of truth to be understood, but a Person to be relied upon. Christianity is for all men and not for the select, highly educated few; and it depends therefore not on exceptional ability to see truth, but on the universal human emotions of love and trust.
II. Why he had adopted this style.
1. Because God had changed His method (verse 21).
(1) Even the wisest of the Greeks had attained only to inadequate and indefinite views of God. To pass even from Plato to the Gospel of John is to pass from darkness to light. Plato philosophises, and a few souls seem for a moment to see things more clearly; Peter preaches, and three thousand souls spring to life.
(2) That which, in point of fact, has made God known is the Cross of Christ. No doubt it must have seemed mere lunacy to summon the seeker after God away from the high speculations of Plato to a human form gibbeted on a malefactors cross. None knew better than Paul the infamy attaching to that cursed death, but he knew also its power (verses 22-24). As proof that God was in their midst the Jews required a demonstration of physical power. Even at the last it would have satisfied them had Christ stepped down from the Cross. The Cross seemed to them a confession of weakness, and was a stumbling-block they could not get over. And yet in it was the whole power of God for the salvation of the world. For the power of God that is required to draw men to Himself is not power to alter the course of rivers or change the site of mountains, but power to sympathise, to sacrifice self, to give all for the needs of His creatures. It is this love of God that overpowers men and makes it impossible for them to resist Him.
2. Paul appeals to the elements of which the Church was actually composed.
(1) It is plain, he says, that it is not by anything generally esteemed among men that you hold your place in the Church (verse 26). It is not men who by their wisdom find out God and by their nobility of character commend themselves to Him; but it is God who calls men, and the very absence of wisdom and possessions makes men readier to listen to His call (verses 27-29). It is all Gods doing now; it is of Him are ye in Christ Jesus. Human wisdom had its opportunity and accomplished little; God now by the foolishness of the Cross lifts the despised, &c., to a far higher position than the wise and noble can attain by their might and their wisdom.
(2) Paul thus justifies this method by its results. The Cross may seem a most unlikely weapon with which to accomplish great things, but it is God who uses it, and that makes the difference. Hence the emphasis throughout this passage on the agency of God. But for this reason also all ground of boasting is removed from those who are within the Christian Church.
(3) In Pauls day this argument from the general poverty and insignificance of the members of the Christian Church was readily drawn. Things are changed now; and the Church is filled with the wise, the powerful, the noble. But Pauls main proposition remains: whoever is in Christ Jesus is so, not through any wisdom or power of his own, but because God has chosen and called him. And the practical result remains. Let the Christian, while he rejoices in his position, be humble.
3. Paul avers that had he used enticing words of mans wisdom the hearers might have been unduly influenced by the mere guise in which the gospel was presented and too little influenced by the essence of it. He feared to adorn the simple tale lest the attention of his audience might be diverted from the substance of his message. He was resolved that their faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Here again things have changed since Pauls day. The assailants of Christianity have put it on its defence, and its apologists have been compelled to show that it is in harmony with the soundest philosophy. It was inevitable that this should be done; but Paul considered that the only sound and trustworthy faith was produced by direct personal contact with the Cross. And this remains for ever true. (M. Dods, D. D.)
The true minister of Christ
I. His commission.
II. His paramount work.
1. Not to baptize, much less busy himself with a thousand other things.
2. But to preach the gospel.
III. His prescribed methods.
1. Not with wisdom of words.
2. But simply, plainly, pointedly.
IV. His motive.
1. That nothing might hinder.
2. But everything promote the effect of the Cross of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The aim of the ministry
In a village church in one of the Tyrolese valleys, we saw upon the pulpit an outstretched arm, carved in wood, the hand of which held forth a cross. We noted the emblem as full of instruction as to what all true ministry should be, and must be--a holding forth of the Cross of Christ to the multitude as the only trust of sinners. Jesus Christ must be set forth evidently crucified among them. Lord, make this the aim and habit of all our ministers. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Lest the Cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
The Cross of Christ of none effect
I. The cross of christ is an instrument intended and adapted to produce a certain effect. So far as man had to do with it it was intended to abase a prophet whom many honoured, to kill as a malefactor a Man whose great fault was that He had no fault at all. So far as God had to do with it, it was intended to be a Divine force. The Cross of Christ is to be a Divine force with an effect retrospective, aspective, and prospective.
1. The Cross fulfilled the first promise; it was the good thing of which the sacrifices were a shadow; it was the event toward which the course of all events had tended.
2. The Cross cast a long, deep shadow upon the Holy Land; its peculiar people; its priesthood, temple, and ritual; a night-of-death shadow to cover a time of change in which old things would pass away and all things become new.
3. The Cross shed light into the darkness of the world, and indicated those stirrings of the Divine mercy which terminated in the proclamation of salvation to the world. As matter of history, since the Cross of Christ has begun to take effect, it has caused religious systems hoary with age, and rooted by ten thousand fibres in the hearts of the people to be laid aside as worn-out garments. It has spread civilisation over many nations; it has been a key to unlock the treasures of all useful knowledge; it has elevated art, widened commerce, removed the fetters from the slave; it has founded hospitals and schools, checked the harsh government of rulers, quelled the anarchy of subjects, restored woman to her primitive position, imparted peace and joy to the home, exalted nations, and is now both the light and leaven of the world. The Cross of Christ alone saves.
II. Paul speaks of the cross being made of none effect.
1. To make the sun of none effect would send our world back to chaos, but this ruin would be--
2. Small compared with negativing the Cross of Christ. And Paul tells us that if he had exhibited the Cross with wisdom of words, it would have been powerless in his hands. He cannot mean intelligible and acceptable words; for without such the Cross could not be manifested at all. By wisdom of words is meant the artifices of rhetoric, &c. If the Cross were a jewel to be hoarded and hid I would make its bed in wool; but as it is a gem to be used let me see it as it is. If the Cross were an inferior gem I might add to its worth and beauty by the setting; but as its value is beyond price, let its surroundings be as simple as possible. The question is not, however, one of taste, but of utility. Shall we mingle with our daily bread that which will deprive us of its nutritive effect?
3. The Cross is made of none effect when--
(1) It is made identical with the crucifix, as though the Cross were nothing more than His crucifixion. The crucifix to the vulgar eye puts exclusively forward the bodily sufferings of Christ, and its effect is to bring us into sympathy with them. This is the effect of painting, poetry, and music, when employed upon the same subject. But the Cross of Christ is not an example of suffering merely, but the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world.
(2) False doctrine and speculation concerning it are taught. The effect of the Atonement is in itself, not in its philosophy. And if the attempt at explanation fail, and the philosophy be false, I exhibit a cross framed by my own vain imagination. Then, what have I done? I have led men from living waters to the appearance of a fountain in shining sand.
(3) It is exhibited without a personal recognition of its claims. That which you say about it will not be believed unless it appears important and true, and it cannot appear real and momentous except as exhibited in faith. Faith begets faith.
(4) Its requirements are multiplied and complicated. It saith, Come to Me; Look to Me; Believe in Me. If we surround it with a long and difficult creed; if we clothe it with an elaborate ritual; if we plant it in the shrine of a particular ecclesiastical polity, and require men to come to it, by these we make it of none effect.
(5) There is lack of faith in its power. It is impotent in the hand of an unbeliever. Our faith does not affect the value and efficacy of the Cross in the eye of God; but it does in the eye of man.
(6) When it is used for objects foreign to itself. Ecclesiastics have used it to satisfy their ungodly ambition; political rulers as an engine of government; private individuals as a, spy in a camp uses the password, and prejudice has been raised against it.
Conclusion:
1. What is the effect of the Cross of Christ upon yourselves?
(1) Child of Christian parents, you have been directed to it ever since your eyes opened to see. Other things have had effect. The scenes of your early life; the books you have read; the companions with whom you associated, &c. And what has been the effect of the Cross of Christ? It has repelled you or attracted you. Repelled you! The magnet of the eternal mercy repelled you!
(2) Pupil of a Christian school!
(3) Hearer of Christian preaching and possessor of Holy Scripture, unless you are saved by it you will be damned by it. Christian brethren, what is its daily effect upon your hearts and lives? Are you crucified with Christ? Is its effect to captivate your heart; to command your energies; to sanctify your life?
2. What is the effect of the Cross in your hands? We more than fear that Christians and Churches of Christ have done much to make the Cross of Christ of none effect. (S. Martin.)
The worlds greatest blessing and its greatest evil
I. The greatest blessing in the world--the Cross of Christ. By the Cross of Christ the apostle did not mean of course the timber on which Christ was crucified, or any imitation of that in wood, &c. He uses the word as a symbol, as we use the words Crown, Court, Bench, &c. He meant the eternal principles of which the Cross of Christ was at once the effect, the evidence, and the expression--i.e., all that we mean by the gospel. And this is the greatest blessing in the world to-day. Look at it
1. As a revealer. All true theological doctrine and ethical science come to us through the Cross. It is the moral light of the world.
2. As an educator. The Cross is to the human soul what the vernal sunbeam is to the seed; it penetrates, warms, quickens, and brings all its latent powers out to perfection.
3. As a deliverer. The Cross bears a pen to cancel the sentence, a balm to heal the wound, a weapon to break the fettering chain. Such, and infinitely more, is the Cross. What would human life be without it? A voyage without a compass, chart, or star.
II. The greatest evil in the world. Making this Cross of none effect, i.e., so far as its grand mission is concerned. Some effect it must have; it will deepen the damnation where it does not save. We are unto God a sweet savour, &c. This tremendous evil is--
1. Painfully manifest. Intellectually, socially, politically, it has confessedly done wonders for mankind; but morally, how little! How little genuine holiness, disinterested philanthropy, self-sacrificing devotion to truth and God, Christliness of life!
2. Easily explained. The apostle indicates one way, viz., by wisdom of words, i.e., gorgeous rhetoric. The Church has done it by
(1) Its theologies. In its name it has propounded dogmas that have clashed with reason and outraged conscience.
(2) Its polity. It has sanctioned wars, established hierarchies, which have fattened on the ignorance and poverty of the people.
(3) Its spirit. The spirit of the Cross is self-sacrificing love, the spirit of the Church has been to a great extent that of selfishness, greed, ambition, and oppression. Malrepresentation of Christ by the Church is the instrument that has made the Cross of none effect.
3. Terribly criminal. It is wonderful that man has the power thus to pervert Divine institutions and blessings; but such power he has. He forges metals into weapons for murder, he turns breadcorn into liquids to damn the reason and the souls of men. A greater crime you cannot conceive. Were you to turf, all bread into poison, make the flowing rivers pestiferous, quench the light of the sun, mantle the stars in sackcloth, you would not penetrate an evil half so enormous as that of making the Cross of Christ of none effect. Conclusion:
1. What is the spiritual influence of the Cross on us? Has it crucified unto us the world?
2. What are we doing with the Cross? Are we abusing it or rightly employing it? (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The Cross neutralised by theories about it
The force of κενὸς (cf. 1Co_15:14; Rom_4:14) may be conveyed by the words empty of content, unreal, not having objective existence, consisting only of opinions, sentiment speculation. The Cross of Christ is a real cause in the moral order of things. To substitute a system of notions, however true and ennobling, for the fact of Christs death, is like confounding the theory of gravitation with gravitation itself. (Principal Edwards.)
The preaching which the apostle condemns as ineffective
I. Scholastic preaching, which--
1. Aims only at the intellect, not at the heart.
2. Gives no satisfaction on the main point--religion.
3. Deals with philosophical speculations which injure rather than edify.
II. Rhetorical preaching.
1. Which proceeds not from a zeal for the truth, but from a desire to please.
2. This unworthy mode of dealing with Divine truth robs the Cross of its effect, because it diverts the attention from the truth to the speaker and distracts the heart--because it excites a craving for merely intellectual gratification--because the impression produced is referred to the ability of the preacher and not to the truth itself. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv17–31 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize. Paul…
17. For Christ sent me not to baptize. Paul does not intend to disparage baptism, but to say that, in the division of labor, the work assigned him was to preach, while others did the baptizing. If the common views of his physical condition are correct, he was hardly strong enough to do a great deal of baptizing. Not with wisdom of words. Instead of seeking eloquence or philosophical speculation, which might hide the cross, he told the simple story of the gospel in plain and simple language.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v18 1Co_1:19-20.—Isa_29:14 (nearly as LXX.), and a free imitation of…
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co_1:19-20.—Isa_29:14 (nearly as LXX.), and a free imitation of Isa_30:18. For.—Sustains the general drift of 1Co_1:17-18, not any particular clause. “The cessation of Rabbinical wisdom was to be one of the signs of Messiah’s coming; and that this was foretold in Isa_33:18 was believed among the Rabbis. (So Stanley.) Also, “The heathen oracles are dumb,” silenced since Christ came. Remark, “age” and “world” used together here (in the Greek).
Read full note →
1Co_1:21.—Difficult; but probably, “In God’s wise ordering of the history of the world and of human thought, the result of all their experiment and inquiry is this: ‘An unknown God.’ ” Paul came fresh from his address at Athens (Act_17:23) to Corinth. Still, worth considering this reading: “By means of and from the wisdom of God displayed in ‘the things that are made’ (Rom_1:20) the world did not arrive at knowledge of Him; He now therefore will propose what the world thinks the folly of His Gospel of the Cross. Will they know Him through that? They who believe will, and do, and the knowledge is salvation.”
1Co_1:22.—Notice, “Jews,” “Greeks,” q.d. men of the Jew-type of mind and heart, and of the Greek-type. There are such in all races, religions, ages. Signs (from heaven) suit the Oriental, the childlike, emotional type; wisdom the Western, harder, manlike, logical type. The Jew wanted to see the finger of God; the Greek wanted to explain all by philosophic theory.
1Co_1:24—Power for the Roman; wisdom for the Greek. Power and wisdom, meeting the moral weakness and moral darkness of the fallen humanity. The age-long experiment of the Jew ended in the knowledge of man’s moral helplessness; that of the Greek race, his moral ignorance.
1Co_1:26. Your calling.—Choose between, (a) “they who called you,” and (b) “those who are called.” Probably the latter. But both are true, and both are included, as particular embodiments of it, in the great fundamental rule which God has followed “in His manner of calling you,” viz. “not many,” etc. Not many.—Always a few, as Crispus. Can almost count, however, the exceptions in the New Testament on one’s fingers, and hardly any of them counting for much in the world’s estimation.
1Co_1:28. Base.—Of no special honour of birth. Are not … are.—“Nonentities,” “entities” (Evans).
1Co_1:30. Are ye.—Q.d. “Now were, and still are, nothing and nobody, in the eyes of the world. But before God, and in Christ, you are indeed something and somebody, with a life of important, eternal reality.” (See Homily).
1Co_1:31.—Jer_9:23.
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_1:18-31
Grouping the topics of the paragraph around 1Co_1:29, we have:—
I. A great principle of God’s government consistently carried out. God alone must be exalted.—
1. In threefold reiteration here. “That no flesh should glory,—or literally, “that all flesh should not glory,”—“in His presence” (“before God,” better reading, 1Co_1:29); “He that glorieth … in the Lord” (1Co_1:31); and the triumphant laugh in the face of the world’s wisest ones, “Where is the wise?” etc. (1Co_1:20). Paul stands by the cross of “the Lord of Glory,” and casts his exultant glance around. The Cross of Christ has been planted, like God’s Royal Standard, in the midst of the battle-field. Now the field is clear. Beaten, discomfited, discredited, by God’s “foolish” method, the competing “wisdoms of the world” have vanished, or are vanishing, leaving the cross of Christ in possession! [So in the Day of Questions, the last day of the Lord’s public ministry, every typical world’s-wise-man assailed Him. But He held His own, and one after another slunk away beaten, until at last He Himself completed the rout by turning questioner, and finally silencing every opponent with His problem about David’s Lord and David’s Son (Matthew , 22).]
2. The Old Testament origin of Paul’s quotation, here and in 2Co_10:17 (from Jer_9:23-24), carries back the principle into the earlier dispensation, and shows that the Spirit guided him with a sure and right instinct to lay his hand upon a great and perennially valid principle of all God’s rule and administration of His government; one that must obtain wherever there are creatures capable of knowing Him. In no world can it be conceived that this great law should not be in force. He is the One and Only Being who can make Himself the centre and object of all intention and activity, and who can claim that all other life than His own should converge upon Him as its Object and End and Goal. In us such self-centering is of the very essence of Sin; it is our root-rebellion against our God. It is a prime and simple necessity of His position and character and very Being. To ask less, to permit less, to man or to any other creature, were to abdicate His position as God. The Bible sets Him forth abundantly full, full to the overflow, of love; His mercy is eagerly ready and “forward” to bless; the first advance to union between Himself and sinners has always come from His side. His ear is always open to the cry of the feeblest, bowing Himself to the man of contrite and trembling heart; indeed, loving to “dwell with” such a man (Isa_57:15; Isa_66:2). Yet the condescension is never exhibited at the expense of the majesty. “He is God and none else. His honour will He not give to another.” To compare great and small, and with all reverence: men hear from time to time of our Queen performing acts of kindly condescension and of simple womanly kindness, to the sick and poor and aged. But if any presumed upon this to exercise undue familiarity as to an equal, she would be the first to draw back. To allow another on some state occasion to occupy the throne in her presence, would not be condescension, but abdication. The Creator and the creature can never with His consent even seem to change places. The world’s “wisdom” is rooted in the pride of human nature in itself and its powers of discovery. No field can be supposed beyond its exploration; no height, or depth, or vastest extension of truth, but it can take in all. If God hide Himself, then there is no God; this wisdom can find none. If His ways pass its systematisation, or do not commend themselves to the world’s judgment or “moral sense,” they are evil or folly. Over all that pride of intellect He must win a victory. To men the perpetually attractive temptation is, “Ye shall be as God, knowing.…” Human intellect must lower its high-borne pennon in the presence of the Royal Standard of God’s wisdom. The proud intellect which will acknowledge neither limitation nor error, the proud heart which will own no weakness or sin, must alike bow in the presence of God. It is true of the whole arrangements for the spread of the Gospel; it is true of the provisions in the Gospel for the salvation of the individual sinner.
II. Seen in the arrangements for the spread of the Gospel.—
1. Hardly necessary to point out the once current, customary misconception of Paul’s words, “the foolishness of preaching.” Even an English reader of the R.V., with its margin, may now see that the “folly” lay in the matter of the preacher’s message, and not at all in that particular method of delivering it (1Co_1:21). Vivâ voce instruction and appeal is one of the aptest methods of winning attention and securing conviction. For appeal, whose aim is to secure immediate results, whether of conviction or action, the living voice of the man speaking face to face with his fellow has better prospect than the writer, whose written or printed page lies cold and silent before, perhaps, a listless eye. Every true preacher is, first of all, a public speaker; the natural basis upon which is superinduced his special grace, is the same as that of the speaker upon any secular theme, the lecturer, the parliamentary orator, the very demagogue. He will cultivate it, as part of its consecration, and will learn his very art in order that he may the better win the ear of his listeners, and thus find for his Master a way to their hearts. God has often glorified Himself by using “very poor speakers” to deliver His message. Wisdom of “words,” if made by preacher or hearers a thing aimed at for its own sake, or for the applause it may bring and the pleasure it may give, may “make the Cross of none effect” (1Co_1:17). Yet foolish preaching is no thing to praise or value, or (as it were) to cultivate. The speaker will seek to be at his best, for God. But all this is quite away from any thought of Paul here. Any supposed “poor preaching” is not, in itself, one of the illustrations of God’s method which he adduces.
2. The message itself seemed foolish.—“Jews” and “Greeks” (1Co_1:22) are not only historical names, but generic and typical. There are always “Jews” and “Greeks” amongst the men to whom any Paul addresses himself, in every age, in any country. They are two variants of the natural mind, under the influence of the natural heart. And we “who are called” (1Co_1:24), and have made the “call” a reality [see the tense, as compared with that in 1Co_1:2], both from our memory of the old days in our own life, and from the very nature of the case, can see how “foolish” the “preaching of the Cross” must seem to such. Here is proposed for man’s acceptance a system of “truth” whose Teacher is a man hanged publicly on a gibbet, on a thing whose whole associations were those of our gallows, but aggravated in their painfulness and shame. “We are being saved” by it (1Co_1:18), and know its “wisdom” and its “power.” To us they are worthy of God; they carry their own credentials. But “to those who are perishing” such a story may well seem “foolishness.” Apart from the power of the Holy Ghost in it (1Co_2:4), it would be a message with which to send men only on a fool’s errand. To tell the Roman masters that the hope of the world was in a Jew, rejected by His own people, hanged publicly on a gallows by a Roman quaternion and their centurion, at the instigation of Jewish religious authorities,—Gallio well reflected the temper with which the best of them would receive such a tale. He cared nothing indeed for the rioting; he could afford to ignore a petty Jewish squabble, though under his very eyes. But the same lofty, “gentlemanly,” if not supercilious, contempt would have been his answer—a Roman answer—if the “preaching of the Cross” had been fairly submitted to him for his judgment. The Jew was stung to the quick when Pilate’s “title” seemed to offer to the nation a crucified peasant of Galilee as its King and Messiah. The “Jew” of all ages who wants “signs,” who demands, in order to belief, unmistakeable self-disclosures of the Unseen, Supernatural, Order, who wants to see his God, will hardly bear to be pointed to Jesus of Nazareth crucified. “Such foolishness!” The “Greek,” looking for his Ideal Man, feeling after God, requiring of everything proposed to him for acceptance that it shall fit into some beautifully ordered, symmetrical, closely articulated scheme of philosophic thought, was hardly to be won to attention by this story of a Divine Man dying on a gallows. That the supreme revelation of God? That the supreme form of the Beautiful, the True, the Good? On Mars’ Hill attention ended in an explosion of mocking laughter (Act_17:32). “Foolishness!” Sensible men, not to say philosophers, to give serious attention to such a story! Not even the learning of Paul, or the eloquence of an Apollos, could make such a story anything else but a “folly” and a stumbling-block. If it kept the field, then, and drove out all competitors, there must be something in it not of man. The most successful preacher “may not glory in His presence.” “This is the finger of God.”
3. Look at the men who bore it.—(For they are fairly included in the unfinished sentence of 1Co_1:26. R.V. margin is not too broadly comprehensive. What was true of the first converts was true also of the first preachers.) They were not reclaimed reprobates, indeed; nor by any means wanting in native common sense or shrewdness. Their “baseness” (1Co_1:25) only means that they had no advantage from what with men gives prestige. Yet manifestly they were not the men whom human wisdom would have chosen to confront the “scribe” of the Jew, or the “disputer” of the Greek market-place (Act_17:18). Men would not have chosen the equivalent of a little company of Whitby or Peterhead fishermen, with a farm labourer or two, and a subordinate collector of Customs, even though joined afterwards by a graduate of the theological school of a small and uninfluential sect, to be the men to clear away religions deeply rooted in the popular life, or consecrated by hoar antiquity. Paul was the best educated of them all, yet his strictly “Hebrew” home (Php_3:5), though in the Greek city of Tarsus, would not permit to him much acquaintance with any ordinary secular literary knowledge, and his learning was mainly in that Rabbinic lore which seems to us, as it would to his Gentile contemporaries, so largely trivial, and indeed often contemptible. Humanly speaking, he was by no means the man to put forward as the best representative of the new faith, to discuss it on Mars’ Hill, or in the Agora of Athens, with the heirs of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. From the standpoint of human prudence, it would have seemed to be the very best method of handicapping the message and lessening its chances of reception, to commit it to such men as its apostles and promulgators. Precisely. But God’s foolishness was God’s way. Such “weak” and “base things” put the world’s wisdom and strength and prestige to shame. The success justified the method, and justified the use of such messengers of the cross. And the method obviously secured this end, that “no flesh”—certainly not the successful messengers themselves—“should glory before God.”
4. Look at the first converts.—In Corinth even the “chief ruler of the synagogue,” the Crispus whom Paul had the joy of receiving as a Christian, soon after he had transferred his labours to the house of Titus Justus, was a man of no account except amongst the Jewish community. The Gentile mob dragged before Gallio his successor in office, Sosthenes, with very scant respect. A few converts may have been won from the descendants of the Roman colonists with whom the city had been repeopled. But, as usual, the artisan and the slave, the small trader and the sailor, would form the bulk of the Corinthian Church. It is just one of the touches of “foolishness” in God’s plan that, though the “noble, the mighty, the wise after the flesh” need the Gospel of the Cross as much as do the “foolish, and weak, and base,” its reception has seemed to be made distinctly more difficult for them than for others. The exceptions in the New Testament to Paul’s statement are few. In Philippi the first to be won for Christ were a purple-seller and a gaoler, not the magistrates. Jerome boasted in after years (on Gal_3:3), “Ecclesia Christi non de Academia, et Lycæo, sed de vili plebecula congregata est” (Farrar L. of Chr., i. 197). But it was long a standing matter of scorn that the adherents of the new faith were almost exclusively from lower grades of society. Not that the Gospel has any republican prejudice against, or dislike for, the rich or the aristocratic. [“Not many,” but always some. “How I thank God,” Lady Huntingdon used to say, “for the letter m! If it had been ‘not any’!”] The exceptions to Paul’s statement in the New Testament can almost be counted upon one’s ten fingers. But the exceptions are there. [And possibly the percentage of the “wise and noble” has been as great as that of the far more numerous lower classes.] The Gospel met the case of Nicodemus; of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus; of Dionysius, a judge of the sacred court on Areopagus; of Erastus, the city-treasurer of Corinth itself (Rom_16:23); and these were but the precursors of a noble few, who are nobler because position or wealth or learning were consecrated to the service of the Gospel of a crucified Jesus. But these were not saved because of their social standing; as it was no prejudice to them, so it gave no advantage; and they joined a company of people, humble and often rude, who could impart no social consideration, and in company with whom they lost that which they already had.
5. And yet these arrangements of God’s plan have been crowned with success.—The foolishness of God is wiser than men; the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Here is plain matter of historical fact. Such preachers, bearing such a message, winning mainly such converts, “have turned the world upside down.” Such messengers have evidently no ground to glory in their success, as if it arose out of their own qualifications or abilities. To win such converts brought no glory in the eye of the world. The converts themselves could not suppose that anything in themselves drew out any special mercy of God towards them. To join the “sect everywhere spoken against” brought no credit. Looked at on any side, the arrangements for the spread of the Gospel were such as to debar all pretence of “flesh” glorying in the presence of God.
5. All this not only historically, but generally, true.—All Christian workers—and by no means preachers alone—need to remember that God proceeds on the same lines still. The “wise” and the “scribe” are not extinct. Their judgment is that of the natural heart always. They would say: “Convert the men of influence among the Roman masters of Corinth. Catch Gallio, and the whole city will go with him.” [It was a bad day for the world when, not of Christ, but of Constantine, it could be said: “The world is gone after him!” (They who said this so bitterly of Christ, knew not of the glorious fulfilment of their words symbolised in the very next verse, when “the Greeks”—the first “ears” of the harvest of the Gentiles—came to “see Jesus,” Joh_12:19-20).] “Convert a philosopher or two, or a rhetorician, amongst the Greeks; these will carry their disciples with them.” The critic will dishearten the Christian Church as he points out that, in the mission-fields of the world, or, indeed, in the Churches at home, the bulk of the converts and membership belong to the middle or the working and lower classes. The divorce between Culture and Christianity is distressing, but it is not novel. It is nothing new or surprising if a Church reaps a more abundant harvest amongst the pariahs or the aborigines of India than amongst the Brahmins. God always has lighted His fire from the bottom, [and first ignites the slight material!] He began with the fisherman, and the fallen woman, and the publican, and the slave. Often does He begin with the servant maid or the child to-day, when He saves a family. “The poor have the Gospel preached to them,” whilst it does reach and save culture and birth and wealth. These need “to become fools that they may be wise” (1Co_3:18). “That no flesh should glory.”
6. No man may be a successful winner of souls who disregards this rule of God’s procedure.—If God have “given the tongue of the learned,” that he may know how to speak “a word in season to him that is weary” (Isa_50:4); if to natural gifts have been added opportunities of culture; if the ready tongue and warm heart are used to win many to the story of the Cross; if the Spirit of God make his gifts nobly auxiliary to the work of pulling down strongholds, and bringing hearts to the obedience of Christ; then he needs to remember that these are gifts, and that he is only an instrument. The axe may not complacently dwell upon its temper or edge, nor count up proudly the stout trees it has been used to fell. Every victory must be laid simply at the feet of the Lord of the battle. In the day that God’s labourers begin to “glory in His presence,” in that day will they be laid aside. “Things that are not,” they will revert to their original nothingness.
7. The humble may hear hereof and be glad.—The “weak” and the “foolish” are the very instruments God can best employ. He will have no joint saviours of “them that are perishing.” He wants men and women who will be content to offer themselves, and all the glory of any success, to Him.
8. So also the message must not be tampered with. The Gospel is significantly summarised as “the preaching (the word) of the Cross” (1Co_1:18).—To conciliate the pride of unsanctified intellect, the Sufferer on the cross must not be hidden behind the Babe in the manger, and still less behind the gentle, tender Healer of disease, and of the Teacher who—account for it, and for Him, as we can—spake as never man spake. [Calvary, and not even Bethlehem, is the true Kiblah of the Mecca of the pilgrimage of a sinful world, in search of rest to heart and conscience. Even on Christmas morning, the Christian preacher will also say, “Let us go even unto Calvary.”] The message must be characteristically, whatever else it includes, the word of “Christ, and Him,” too, “(as) crucified.” As a simple matter of often verified experiment, “foolishness” though this be, it has satisfied the needs of human hearts better than any “other Gospel” (Gal_1:9). All great revivals of the life and vigour and progress of the kingdom of God in the world, have been in the closest association with this specific type of teaching; they have demanded it, and have produced it. It may be “a stumbling-block” (also in Gal_5:11); but it may not be dispensed with. As matter of experiment it has been the foundation stone, of “God’s own power and wisdom,” on which effectual teaching and practical holiness of life have age after age been securely built. Try anything else, whether upon the world’s “wisdom,” or upon its sin and misery; the result will only be another verification of 1Co_1:20; if the Church will confront the world’s wisdom with the like worldly wisdom, God will make even His own people’s effort to end in manifest “foolishness” The “argument of the Cross” [so Evans, bringing into close connection with the same word in 1Co_1:17] best secures that “no flesh should glory before God,” and it therefore best succeeds.]
III. Seen in the provisions of the Gospel for the salvation of the individual sinner (1Co_1:30-31).—(See also Separate Homily.)
1. For the overthrow and shaming of the imposing “entities” of the world, God has chosen to take and use “non-entities,” “things that are not,” have no existence [making His new creation out of “nothings”]. And, as truly, for their own salvation He has taken care that, if “they now are” at all, and are anything, or have anything—“wisdom, righteousness, holiness, redemption,” every man shall “glory only in the Lord.” Only “in Christ Jesus” have they, or are they, anything. “He is made” all these things to them. Apart from Him they are foolish, guilty, unholy, lost—nothing!
2. In this fact, that the Gospel does nothing to conciliate either the intellect or the proud heart of man, does it stand very sharply distinguished from all other religions. In varying form, but with substantial unity, these exalt human nature, not abase it; if in any degree it needs elevation or recovery, the sufficient force is said to be within the man himself. In Stoicism man could be his own saviour; he must be self-reliant, and independent of all men and all things in his struggle after good; pride was indulged on principle. And in this it was but a special and philosophic formulating of the thought and feeling of human nature, even at its best, everywhere. That Gospel can hardly be of human origin, which even conceives of attaining success in a totally different direction. It tells a man that of himself he has nothing to recommend him to God; that he can do nothing to win His favour; that, whether “by wisdom” (1Co_1:21), or by works, he can attain to no knowledge of God; that all he gets is “of God,” purely and simply, and for the sake of Christ; that even in the faith which lays hold of all, there is no merit—it is exercised in the strength of grace. As the Gospel has been seen above to be “a stumbling-block” to the natural understanding, so it is also an offence to the natural heart. All is of grace. Men, even the “Jew,” the “Greek,” the “wise,” the “scribe,” the “mighty,” are “perishing” together. There is now only one fundamental classification: “them that are perishing,” “us who are being saved.” No matter how high may rise the edifice of a Christian’s life and holiness, at the foundation of all, lies the fact that the grace “of God” “in Christ” has in the first instance made him who “was not” into a saint. After long ages of heaven’s perfected “redemption,” it will still remain true that Christ Jesus is “made redemption” to him. He is in that world only as a man “redeemed” “of God” “in Christ.”
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1Co_1:18. The Preaching [the Word] of the Cross.—Observe the connection between this and the preceding verse. Paul is jealous over himself as a preacher, and over his hearers, lest he should lay himself out to use, and they should desire to hear, “the wisdom of words”; he is jealous lest “The Cross should be made void.” For “the Cross” is the summary, and the very heart, of another “word” which God has spoken; the very strength of it, and the secret of its effectiveness, are there. It is God’s “argument,” set over against man’s “arguments.” [So Evans.] Its whole force lies in the fact that it is not a theory, or a philosophy, but a fact; and that fact a “Cross.” Christianity, the Gospel, God’s latest revelation of Himself, alt gather themselves up around this startling sight, a Cross and a Crucified One. The effectiveness of this “Word” must be guarded at all costs; therefore the “wisdom of words” must be watched or banished altogether. Observe then—
I. A wonderful fact about Christianity: the prominent place given in it to “the cross of Christ.”
1. The Russian painter Verestchagin a few years ago in his exhibition of paintings hung side by side three pictures: A Russian Nihilist being executed by hanging, in a thick-falling snowstorm; Several wretched sepoys of the Mutiny of 1857, writhing helplessly, and in terror, as they stood bound to the muzzle of the guns whose discharge was to execute the sentence upon their revolt or treachery; The crucifixion of Christ. Three executions! The realism of this last was exceedingly great. No doubt it was very true to what was to be seen outside the walls of Jerusalem on a certain Friday morning of April, in the year 30, by one of the visitors come from foreign lands to keep the Passover. No doubt an execution, the execution of a strange man of Nazareth, of whom there had been a good deal of talk in the country for some three years past, was what was discussed at the gatherings for the Supper in upper rooms in Jerusalem that evening. If there were, as an early Christian apologist asserts, an official report from Pilate to Rome, it would be the matter-of-fact report of an execution. How comes “an execution” to be the central argument of God’s message to mankind? Why is this crucifixion of the Author of the new religion so vital to it? One of the preachers of the new faith, Peter, was himself crucified, like the Master whom he served. But the cross of Peter has never affected the world’s religion and civilisation and history like the cross of Christ. Why not? Of the hundreds and hundreds of Jews who were crucified by Roman hands outside and upon the walls of the city in the day of its capture and destruction, not one has left his name, or by his death made any such perceptible mark on the world’s life and thought, as this other crucified Jew has done. Nobody would die for Peter because Peter was crucified. Thousands of spectators are year by year profoundly stirred by the pathos of the Oberammergau dramatisation of the scenes of Calvary; yet the emotion stirred by the intense realism of the death of Josef Meyer is of another older altogether to the stirring of hearts all over the world caused by even the mental contemplation of the dying of Jesus upon His cross. Why? If any heart is really “blessed” at Oberammergau, if by chance any life is changed by a real conversion in consequence of what is seen and felt there, manifestly it is not the crucifixion of the man Meyer which has effected the change, but the cross and death of Christ, which perhaps then was made for the first time to have any reality, and so any power of appeal, to the spectator’s heart.
2. The relation of the death of Christ to His Gospel is close, and uniquely close.—The death of Peter might have been, like Paul’s, by decapitation, for all that it would have mattered to the substance of his teaching and to the issue of his life’s work. It is an accident of history merely that Socrates died by the poison-cup, rather than by any other method of execution. Neither the fact nor the mode of the death of Buddha or Confucius is of any importance to their system of doctrine. Pascal lays his satirical finger upon the fact that, whereas the plan and the success of Mahomet meant the death of others, to the plan and success of Christ His own death was essential. [So Talleyrand’s well-known reply to Le Reveillière Lepeaux, who had read before the Institute in 1797 an essay upon the re-establishment of Theophilanthropy. “I have but one observation to make. In order to found His religion, Jesus Christ was crucified and rose again. You ought to attempt as much” (Guizot, Meditations, pp. 1, 2).] It would be impossible to exhibit Christianity, except in a mutilated form whose identity had become doubtful, if no stress were laid upon the fact that Christ was crucified, or, above all, if that fact were left out altogether. As Christ identifies Himself with His Gospel, and with Truth, so here Paul brings into solitary prominence this one fact, “the Cross,” as practically the sum and substance of Christianity. Without the story of the crucifixion of Christ, or with it, if that be only an accidental fact of the history; if that death were only an unfortunate, unintended, premature conclusion of the ministry of Christ—of Jesus; then His work and His works would perhaps long ago have faded into indistinct history or myth. At any rate, His teaching would at the utmost have been a beautiful code of ethics, the most beautiful the world possesses, but hanging, as it were, in mid-air, and weak, just as all the noblest systems of morals are all weak, in having no adequately efficacious working power. He would have been just one among the world’s greatest and choicest names; the best loved of them all, perhaps, but not the present-day personal power He is, not only to a few cultured people who can realise the past and be influenced by it, but to the masses who must live, and must be raised, and must be saved, in the present.
3. The guilty conscience and the burdened heart feel and know why Christianity meets them with a unique helpfulness and sufficiency.—Whatever be the reason, the fact is certain that it is the Cross which makes Christianity the religion of every heart. John Bunyan was not merely casting Puritan or any temporary phase of theology into the form of a story; he was not merely generalising from his own experience; he was summarising universal experience; when he takes his Christian to the Cross, and there, and not till then, makes his burden fall off, and the man set forth with a new freedom and lightness of heart. The sight of the Cross made the burden fall. So say all guilty souls. They push on past the manger of Bethlehem; they have no ear for the name “Immanuel” until they have been to Calvary. When their heart has there been disburdened of its load, then first is that heart at leisure to come back to Bethlehem and learn the lesson of the holy manger. But the profundities and mysteries of condescension and love in the Incarnate Babe need a heart to understand them which has first seen the Crucified One “made sin for us.” No New Testament writer, not even John, contributes more than does Paul to what light we have on the Incarnate Son; but the centre of gravity of Paul’s scheme of the Gospel, “my Gospel,” as he calls it often, will be shifted, if the Incarnation and the Birth become, more than the Death and its Atonement, the objects of attention, the subjects of preaching. It is a glorious Gospel, truly, which lies in the very name “Immanuel,” God with, instead of against, us; it has in it all the possibilities of life (Rom_8:31). The race now is made up of “men of God’s goodwill. “But how? Why? How is the individual, conscious of guilt in the past record, and more deeply conscious still of an inward, deep-seated heart aversion from God and from gôod, to enter into the Name “Immanuel”? Has the word reached him too late, since he has sinned, and is a sinner? The answer is at the Cross, or it is nowhere. It would not be fair to make the Incarnation merely one step in a chain of arrangements leading up to the Cross, and existing for its sake. Really each is in some points for the sake of the other. It is plain that if the Incarnate Babe exhibits and proclaims the reconciliation, the Cross makes it. “He hath reconciled us … by the death of His Son” (Rom_5:10). We can date the death on Calvary within narrow limits. We cannot date the true Reconciliation; we read mysterious things of “a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world” (1Pe_1:20). But when God would make plain His heart to guilty, lost man, He chooses to emphasise the word of the Cross, not “the word of the Manger.” Reconciliation is the first step back to peace. Christian speculation on the meaning of the Incarnation, and its possible relations to the whole creaturely universe, has been fruitful in noble thinking. But Christian preaching which is to touch even “the base things,” in the most unworthy sense of “base,” has always, as matter of experiment, found in the Cross a better help for souls, and the best appeal for the use of the winner of souls. At the Cross he has found his ποῦ στῶ, from which to lift the world.
II. “The Cross” is a summary of Gospel preaching.—Of course the interpretation of this phrase of Paul will depend on our whole reading of the entire New Testament. It is one of those single words into which is condensed, and in which is assumed, all the customary belief and teaching of a man’s lifetime. “How much do you mean by ‘the Cross,’ Paul?” “How much? Ask them which hear me constantly, ask them who read me most closely; behold, they know what I mean!” But at least it is manifest that Christ Himself made it central to His Gospel. The Gospel lies within an ellipse, of which these are the two foci (and the two are fundamentally one, the central Truth of a circle):
1. A cross for the Master;
2. A cross for each of His disciples. Midway, or thereabout, in the course of His three years’ ministry, in the few days of retirement to the neighbourhood of Cæsarea Philippi (Mar_8:27-38), for the first time did Christ speak definitely to His disciples about death as the issue of His ministry, though not as yet precisely specifying that this should be by crucifixion. The news, so startling to a Jew, that this should be at the hands of the revered and representative men of his nation, and so saddening to a loving disciple, Peter was for hushing back, and, indeed, would have had His Master entertain no such gloomy thoughts: “Be propitious to Thyself, Lord (Mat_16:22, literally); be kinder to Thyself than that!” Quick and sharp the cry broke forth from Jesus, “Behind Me, Satan!” Had the Adversary himself retained Peter on his side, the disciple could have said nothing more thoroughly according to his mind. Such a suggestion—to delete the cross from the programme of the Saviour’s earthly sojourn and its work—was the very desire of the Devil. [It had been his proposition long before that the King should make a “short cut” to His kingdom, avoiding the cross, Mat_4:8-10]. The voice was Peter’s voice; the thought was the thought of Satan. There must be a cross for the Master, or His work would go undone; there would be no Gospel of redemption. A few days after, as the little company, Jesus leading the way, the twelve “coming after Him,” were slowly moving through some village of the neighbourhood, the villagers stood gazing at the little company of strangers, and Jesus stopped, and calling them to Him, said “unto them all” (Mar_8:24; Luk_9:23), what Peter was not for hearing even for his Master, “Every man must take up his own cross”—as I do Mine; “daily”—as from the first I have done Mine. What Peter would not hear of for his Master, he and every disciple must hear of for himself, else there can be no discipleship. The whole Christian host, the Captain and the rank and file, all carry their cross. There is no Christian who does not. To himself and to his Lord the Gospel is “the word of the Cross.”
1Co_1:21. Seeking and finding God.
Introduction.—Some striking and suggestive turns of phraseology here:
1. “The world” is seeking “to know God.” Of the “believers” who are brought to the goal which “the world” misses, it is not said that they “know God,” but, what at first seems a very much smaller thing, that they are “saved.” “Is that all?” “Yes; and a very glorious attainment too. It is, in fact, the reward and goal of the world’s search.” “To know God” and “to be saved” were long before closely linked (Joh_17:3). “In knowledge of whom standeth [consisteth] our eternal life.” (I.e. as in the ancient collect, “Quem nosse vivere est.”)
2. The world seeks for God by the way of “wisdom.” They who find this salvation which is the knowledge of God, find Him by the path of “believing”; another path altogether, which nevertheless justifies itself as the highest wisdom (1Co_2:6) to those who are brought by it to the goal.
3. Are we to press the distinction between “in the wisdom of God” [taking the customarily accepted turn of thought as that of Paul] and “it pleased God”? Perhaps not too strongly or too far. Yet it is true that it is no “good pleasure” of God to see His world groping after the knowledge of Himself in vain. [Act_17:26-28 is very explicit: “He hath made … that they should seek … if haply they might find Him.”] It may be His “wisdom” that they should not “by wisdom find Him out”; but He loves to be found and known and loved. We have, then,
I. The world’s inquiry.
II. God’s answer.
I.
1. The heart and the intellect of man do inquire after the knowledge of God.—Man’s mind and heart will not be forbidden to inquire after God. Of no avail to throw doors open—invitingly open—and to solicit exploration, in directions to which admittance is given by gates inscribed “To Science,” “To Music,” “To Philanthropy,” “To Truth and Right,” and to shut up Religion-gate, or to build up the door leading out towards the road “To God.” This fact in itself goes some way towards, and has someworth as, an answer to the question, “Is God knowable?” It were strange if the instinctive, or at least the ever-recurrent, inquiry of mind and heart, “O that I knew where I might find Him!” were a mere lying, deluding impulse, driving men to search endlessly after what could not be found, or after One who did not choose to be found; or if the idea of a God were only an ignis fatuus leading into mere bottomless bog and darkness. There can be no demonstration of Him, as there can be no demonstration that there is no God. But if the very constitution of man’s mind be not a contradiction and a lie, then the unceasing quest after God witnesses to a possibility of a real knowledge of Him. Not a complete one—that is out of the question, by universal consent; but a real, if incomplete, knowledge, sufficient, moreover, for regulative [though not merely regulative] purposes. [The child “knows” the father, even though the man’s life, and the particular character of its own parent, be in their whole round far beyond its present comprehension.
2. Man is morally a strange contradiction in this matter.—The natural heart is averse from God, “and desires not the knowledge of His ways” (Job_21:14); yet the famous sentence of Augustine is the summary of the universal human experience: “Tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet; quia fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.” (Conf., I. i. 1.) “The fool says in his heart ‘No God,’ ” but, as Bacon quaintly puts it: “It is not said, ‘The fool hath thought in his heart,’ so as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, and be persuaded of it; for none deny that there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there were no God” (Essays, “Atheism”). It is a lesson which the “fool” must say over and over to himself, to be quite sure: “No God, No God, No God.” David never heard of an atheist by professed creed. [Another David, David Hume, avowed at the table of Baron d’Holbach, that he had never met with an atheist. “Allow me,” said his host, “to introduce you to thirteen,” indicating his guests.] Long ago Cicero pointed out that no nation of atheists had ever been found (De Nat. Deor., i. 16). It is another thing, and capable of ready explanation, that now and again peoples have been found, few in number and low down in the scale of civilisation, in whom the very idea of worship seemed almost or quite extinct, and their life and thinking reduced to the narrowness of the animal existence. Yet the vague sense of a supernatural is hardly ever absent, and the idea of a God can always be called out again in even the most imbruted and degraded. Every man is capable of it, as no noblest animal is. As matter of history, belief has ever been before disbelief; belief has seemed natural, disbelief and denial have been induced, and matters of education. Man “cries out after God, after the living God” (Psa_74:2). “This inquiry and search after God is the origin of all religion, and the truth even of heathenism” (Luthardt). And yet man is a prodigal who “goeth into a far country,” where his Father may be out of sight and out of mind. It is the dislocation of God’s order seen everywhere in His creation; man, like the rest, is “out of joint,” as the result of a moral confusion in God’s “very good” world and its order.
3. The intellect starts on its quest on some four great lines of argument, four great highways, as it hopes, to the assurance that there is a God and to some knowledge of Him. A few, capable of such thinking, have argued that, because man can have the conception of a Perfect Being, there must be somewhere a reality corresponding to the conception; that there must be an Infinite Substance, of whom [or which] Time and Space must be “accidents”; that the ideas of the Infinite, the Absolute, the Eternal, must have their root and basis somewhere; “the thought of God implies the existence of God.” Often discredited, argued out of court, criticised or refined away, dismissed, buried, but with a wonderful resurrection power about it, the “No effect without a cause” argument has been a path along which a far larger class of minds—“practical people”—has set out to find God. Wider still in the field of its appeal, a broad way at which many—most—have gone in in their search, is the argument from Design, which is not really affected even if modern “evolutionary” science makes good all its claims, and turns every hypothesis into certainty; it would only be a revolutionising of our knowledge of the method, by which the Creator had effectuated and carried out His design; however the result has been brought about, He is still there, directing the processes, guiding the whole, from inception to conclusion. [Said Newton: “Hæcce compages solis, planetarum, et cometarum et stellarum, non nisi Consilio et dominio entis cujusdam potentis et intelligentis oriri potuit.”] “Every science without exception shows that the order and [concurrent] adaptation and harmonies of nature are such as to make the chances no less than infinite against the supposition of Chaos, or the absence of the designing intelligence.” Said Bonaparte in Egypt, after listening to the atheistic talk of a group of officers and savans, gathered at his tent door under the lustrous stars of a sub-tropical night, “All very well, gentlemen; but who made all these?” [There is even in the Sublime and the Beautiful in Nature, secured as so much of it is by the very same properties of matter—mechanical, chemical, or other—and their combinations, as secure the more utilitarian results of Design, a concurrent “design argument,” which leads many minds towards the Mind, towards God. (See this popularly accessible in Pres. Day Tracts, No. 20, R.T.S.] The common agreement of the vast majority of the race, account for it how men may, has always been to some a promising line of quest after God. “Where all the world have turned their steps, surely in that direction He is to be found.” So men have said, nor without justification.
4. The heart and the moral nature have contributed to all the inquiry. The heart, as well as the intellect, has had its own “wisdom” by which it has sought “to know God.” And its wisdom has been the wisest. It has, indeed, affected the search after Him, in every line of quest. Very much according as their heart and moral condition have been, so have the inquirers valued or disparaged the paths by which the reason sought after Him; so have they hoped or feared that the path might lead them to His throne; so have they been urged onward by desire or dragged forward with reluctance, towards the place where perchance He might reveal Himself to the searchers. But the moral nature of man reaches out groping hands after Him. The sense of wrong and right has looked eagerly if it might see a Supreme Lawgiver somewhere behind “Right” and “Wrong.” Conscience has intimated a moral world and its Ruler. The personal manhood has given supreme testimony to a Person with whom it may have fellowship, and the sense of dependence has reinforced the argument. “The same heart in man which trembles before an Authority above him yearns to be able to trust in Him.” And the inquiry of the heart after God is the more earnest when the sense of guilt, so strange, so unreasonable, so inexplicable, and yet so completely justifying itself to the man who passes through its experiences, presses home the question: “How may I find God? If I find Him, what kind of God shall I meet? Will there be any pity, any mercy, any pardon, any love? Can there be? Can He show any?” Man can give no satisfying peace. The sinner has no authority to speak peace to himself. Nature is not without analogies which may suggest forgiveness; she has healing herbs for wounds and diseases, occasioned by violations of her own laws. But the guilty heart wants to know the Lawgiver, and His mind towards itself and its sin.
5. Abundantly clear from the history of human thought, philosophical or theological, that by any of these roads, or by all combined, the race has never come to any satisfying certainty about God. “His eternal power and Godhead” have not always been understood by the things that are made (Rom_1:20). All these arguments have always been open to all, to study and use. They none of them depend upon Revelation. The wisest wisdom of this world has exercised itself upon them. Yet there is not one of them which is so demonstrative in its force as to compel assent or to give certainty. [There is not one which may not be frittered away by over-subtle criticism; not one from which the intellect cannot find a way of escape, if sore pressed by it in controversy.] There is not one which brings absolutely and infallibly to God. Phenomena and the Finite have not necessarily suggested an Infinite Subsistence. The unity of design is as consistent with the operation of one of two, or of one of many, workers left to do as he wills, as with the operation of One Only Worker. He must be very and sufficiently wise and powerful, but not of logical necessity all-wise, all-powerful. “Is number finite or infinite?” asked a believing French savant of some atheistic men of science. “Finite.” “Then the universe had a beginning.” But the argument does not of necessity shut men up to a Creator. Men of “wisdom” have, in fact, held an Eternal Matter, or a self-originated Universe. Endless have been the ancient and modern, Oriental and Western, variations upon the Pantheistic theory of God and the world. A personal God, who is Creator, has not always been a God of providential rule over, and care for, His creation. Polytheism has been the belief of large sections of the race in all ages. The inquiry of mere wisdom has always, in point of fact, left men without just views or settled convictions. “The various apprehensions of wise men,” said Cicero long ago, “justify the doubtings of sceptics, and it will be time enough to blame these when others agree, or any one has found the truth” (De Nat. Deor., i. 10, 11. See Note at end of Homily). “(The wisdom of this world) does not deny Divine existence, though a good many persons are coldly doubtful and ‘agnostic’ on the subject. But as in the first century any effective conception of God was wearing out of thoughtful minds [Emperors, not only like Augustus, but like Tiberius and Nero, were deified. On the other hand, all the vilest, meanest, Oriental or African gods and cults were being welcomed at Rome], … so now there are mere vague and high-sounding phrases about the Almighty current among the worldly-wise. He is a force—personal or impersonal, no one knows; where seated, why operative, how directed, none can tell. Or, He is a dream of Ineffable Beauty, and a fountain of Ineffable Pity; but how to reconcile this with the more severe aspects of nature and life baffles all the wisdom of the world. The sages are puzzled; the multitude know not what to think; and so ‘the world by wisdom knows not God’ ” (Dr. Donald Fraser). “Anima naturaliter Christiana,” cried the old apologist; but his word is both true and untrue. The anima Christiana truly finds reason enough to believe that in the design of its Maker it would “naturally” have known God. But there has been a blinding of the eye that looks for His traces; it cannot read aright the teachings of (say) nature. [It is “the pure in heart” now that alone “see God.” The Sir Galahads, not the Lancelots, see the Holy Grail.] In some lines of argument the evidence also has got confused; it cannot be read with absolute confidence; [the pieces of the puzzle have got jostled, and some perhaps are lost; it is not easy to discover the design which would lead to a Designer]. The altar “to an unknown God” in Athens is confessedly a symbolical fact in a representative city; man’s wisdom with all possible advantages avowing a result so incomplete as to be a defeat of any search “by wisdom” only. The wisest minds need God’s pilotage if they are to reach Himself. Science does not find man in man’s body, nor God in God’s world. The most modern thing is to take the confession of failure and wear it as the badge of superiority: “Agnostic, we!”
6. And this was “in the wisdom of God.”—The whole moral history of earth and mankind may probably be a great object-lesson in sin, its meaning, its mischief, its misery, and in grace, its manifold wisdom, and infinite fulness, for the teaching of other worlds and other races. The failure of mere fallen, darkened reason, even in its wisest, mightiest, most industrious examples, to “come at” God, “though He be not far from any one of us,” may not be the least instructive detail in this great Didactic of the story of our race. However that may be, with regard to “principalities and powers in heavenly places,” and however the question may be decided whether, if sin had not darkened man’s reason and perverted his heart, and confused and blurred some of the clearest evidence for a God, man might then “by wisdom” have known God, [if, indeed, he would then have had any need to search; man is seeking now a lost vision and knowledge]; as things are, this world-wide, age-long result all falls in with the great principle of 1Co_1:29; 1Co_1:31, that all pride of human intellect should be utterly excluded, made impossible by its utter failure to “find out God” (Job_11:7). The knowledge, when it comes, is to be through a “Salvation,” and salvation is for “those who believe.”
II. God’s answer.—
1. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in” the midst of Israel, so God has “lifted up” His Son upon a cross in the midst of mankind, groping with blind eyes, and outstretched hands, and yearning heart after Himself. The central Figure of history is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. The central Fact of the history of the Christ is the Cross. [The wise men from the East asked, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?” Thirty years after Pilate gave the answer, putting upon the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”] The world for ages had been asking, “How, where, may we find and know God? Is there a God to know and find?” The answer given by the “preaching” of Paul and his fellows and their successors is, “Look at Jesus Christ, and above all at Him crucified, and see and know God.”
2. All we need to know, perhaps all we can be made to know, about God, we hear from Jesus of Nazareth; indeed, more truly still, we see it in Jesus of Nazareth. “He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father.” [As we say of a boy whose father is unknown to an inquirer who, nevertheless, is acquainted with the lad, “Well, he is his father over again.”] What He said and did, and above all, the reasons, the principles of judgment and action, which underlie all He said and did,—we may transfer them all to God, and say, “Thus and thus does He act and judge.” His relation, e.g. to prayer and to sin, is exhibited in Christ. His requirement of faith in Himself in order to sight and health and blessing, is a revelation of God in this respect. We have a record, attested by historical evidence, sufficient when the nature of the case is taken into full account, of a Person and His character and teaching, starting with which we gain, at the least, a crucial and probative instance that there is a “supernatural” Order, which in that one case at least has broken in upon, and manifested itself in the midst of, the natural. The world of God and of things spiritual disclosed itself in Him, His life and work. It is an ascertained fact, and level to the apprehension of the simplest. And when, moreover, it is understood that the whole Written Word is the word of Christ the Revealer, then all its teachings about God become those of Christ. And, as matter of fact, the only certain and satisfying knowledge of God has been that which is given in the Word of God; the Written and the Incarnate are for this purpose one.
3. But Paul singles out again and again the Cross as the central point of the revelation. A knowledge of God is, in his view, given there which does not even come through the three years’ ministry. [When Moses pleaded, “Show me Thy glory,” and God made His goodness to pass before His servant, it was not even a partial refusal of his request. His “goodness,” “pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin,” is His “glory” to sinners’ hearts (Exo_33:18 to Exo_34:7).] It is interesting in the last degree to hear the confession of even secular students of history that the cross of Christ is the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the modern; that all ancient history, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, all led up to it and converged upon it, whilst all the life of the modern world radiates from it; interesting to see how typical was the simple fact that in the very inscription on the cross were gathered up all the best history of preceding ages,—Hebrew, Greek, Latin—Religion, Wisdom, Law—Worship, Speculation, Government; profoundly interesting to see how Christianity meets the “Jew”-type, “requiring a sign” of the nearness of the Supernatural [“for outward, visible wonders”], and of the “Greek”-type, asking for the True and Beautiful and Good [“for inward completeness of system”]; meeting the one in the failure of his moral quest, and the other in the failure of his intellectual inquiry. But the “base” and “despised” and guilty want first and most urgently an answer for the conscience. And, once more it may be said, that the Cross has, age after age, given a satisfaction on this point found nowhere else. “Theories of the Atonement” have not always been consistent or wise, or duly considerate of all the facts; the analysis of the way in which the holy Justice of God was displayed at Calvary, as well as the Mercy, may sometimes have been mechanical and overdone. Much of all this has, moreover, been beyond the mass of seeking souls. And, apart from it all, by “believing” they have at the Cross come into a “salvation” which has meant “knowledge of God.” Their faith in Christ has been crowned by a gift of the Spirit, whose indwelling has restored more and more perfectly spiritual vision and judgment and power. They have been put by Him en rapport with spiritual things. There has come a “demonstration of the Spirit,” which has given evidence and proof and certainty. God reveals Himself to their “spirit.” They understand the reason of the failure of the search “by way of wisdom.” “Wise” or “foolish” after the mere intellectual standard of “the world,” the “saved” “know,” and they are saved at the Cross by “believing.”
NOTE.—Plato complains how hard it is to discover the Father of the universe. Socrates held it to be the greatest possible happiness to know the will of the gods, but did not believe this discoverable by principles of reason, and recommended divination [Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Chr. Belief, pp. 78, 79. He, with others, says further:] Men never found God as personal, as holy, as Creator. Plato’s God oscillates between Nature and a Divine Idea. Aristotle made Him personal, but limited by primordial matter, and only a Demiourgos. The utmost attained to by the race was an intermittently shining, half-obscure presentiment, but not that God is and can only be One.
1Co_1:30. Christ our Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption.
I. Wisdom.—In two senses. Not even in Paul’s, or in God’s, could we be “wise” if there were no Christ to know, and unless He helped us to know Himself. He is the great Fact to know which is Wisdom. He gives the faculty for knowing, and the Spirit who exhibits Him to our awakened perception. He is Himself the Revealer, the Sum of all Revelation, and the giver of the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” (Eph_1:12). Like the “world” at Corinth, the “world” to-day makes no account of such “wisdom.” But “knowledge” and “ignorance,” “wisdom” and “folly,” are all relative terms. Measured by one standard, placed in one set of circumstances, judged by one purpose, a man may be wise. With no change in himself, but with another set of conditions, in other circumstances, for another purpose, he may be a fool. To be really wise he must have the knowledge just then required and must know how to apply it. On a certain voyage, for example, so long as all went well, the ship’s surgeon was the wise man of the company. Besides his medical skill, he knew everything which could make the tedium of life on shipboard pass agreeably away. He easily carried the palm for popularity, and for being the universally clever man. The ship was wrecked on a desolate island. It became a question of finding shelter, of finding and cooking food, and here the many-sided man was utterly at fault. The common sailors, with their experimental knowledge of a thousand-and-one odds and ends of practical convenience, despised the doctor as a helpless hindrance. There was a curious reversal of the position. He had been a hero, a little god, on board; now he was a fool who wanted feeding and could find no food. The only wisdom known to the Book of God is Divine knowledge, and that is all bound up in Christ. No Christian will wisely undervalue mere natural wisdom or culture. The wide knowledge of the facts of the universe and their laws—Science; the wide mastery of the facts of the past and the great principles underlying them—History; the full-stored knowledge of the human mind, and of its laws—Philosophy; literary lore; the accumulations of the linguist; all these are noble and ennobling possessions, elevating, widening, as well as furnishing the mind which is enriched by them. All due honour even to the “wise man after the flesh.” All highest honour to such Wisdom when she becomes the handmaid of Divine truth. But all this is only fair-weather knowledge. The storm is coming, the wreck of the present order of things; the day of peril and of judgment, when the great question will be Eternal Life or Eternal Death. Even now all mere human knowledge is of things that “vanish away.” Knowledge and the objects of knowledge both are in ceaseless flux; a shifting, ever-changing knowledge of a shifting, ever-changing world, a partial knowledge perpetually under revision, correction, or enlargement. The one unchanging Fact is God in Christ. When, in “the new heavens and the new earth,” our science, history, literature, language, art, shall have been made obsolete, or shall have become mere curious memories, the knowledge of God will abide, true as ever, important as ever. “Can you tell me about God?” is a question which somehow the human mind cannot let alone. “Tell me about man, about myself. What is the meaning of the strange conflict always going on within me, between a higher and a lower self? What is the voice I sometimes seem to hear within me? and why is it so often a voice of self-reproach?” And then, when sin is understood, come the great questions: “Tell me whether there is any way of peace with myself and with God? Is He good? But that only makes me the more sadly wrong. Do not tell me what you hope, or think. Has He spoken? What are His terms of restoration?” Up to Paul’s day the wisest man of this world never answered such questions with any finality of satisfaction. The world’s wisdom has no final answer to-day. The very simplest Christian has an answer—an answer which, in ten thousand instances, has “worked” well in practical life. He believes he has reached certainty, where the wisest thinkers who disdain the help of Revelation go, groping and guessing, over the same wearisome ground of human ignorance; he certainly has learned to solve moral questions in practical living, as they are never solved elsewhere. He has learned a wisdom on these topics which will have abiding value in the dissolution and vanishing of all other knowledge besides, and will avail even at the bar of God. The Christian man’s theory of life and morals, his doctrine of God and of creaturely existence, are in fact a complete philosophy, which centres for him in Christ. All we can know, certainly all that we need to know, of God, for regulative ends, is exhibited in Christ. We hear from His lips a revelation of God; but we do not only listen, we look and see what God is, in His own holiness. Every great principle of His dealing with petitioners and with sin may be traced out in, and often lies upon the very surface of, the works of Christ. Said Augustine: “The works of Christ are themselves words of The Word.” The Bible is through the Spirit the revelation of Jesus Christ; and thus again He is “made to us wisdom” on the great topics of the inward moral schism, its meaning and origin and remedy. At His cross is the only definite word anywhere found about the pardon of guilt. And all the “wisdom” is one into which they have lived their way. It is verified knowledge; it is the knowledge of Life. God and Conscience and Sin—they understand these by the teaching of the Spirit of Christ. The way of peace with God, they know it, they have availed themselves of it—it is Christ’s work. Peace within themselves instead of the old moral discord—they have learned the secret of that also. And everything which is really wisdom, before God, and in the presence of eternity, they are being taught by the Spirit of Christ. The Revealer is Christ, the great Prophet of God.
II. This passes over into Righteousness and Sanctification.—We should once more have expected “power” to be linked with “wisdom.” But no, something better—“righteousness.”
1. These to be taken together.—They go together, in fact, as closely as in the grammar of the text. To a heart which learns Paul’s dialect they become almost a familiar two-worded unit of his customary thinking, as they are used in the vocabulary of Paul. Righteousness and Sanctification cover the whole career of the Christian life from pardon to glory. They are one work; one salvation; one glorious life. [Rom_8:30, “them He glorified,” began to be true from the moment of “them He justified.”] Not the same thing: the one the first step; the other the whole subsequent course. [In the illustrative language of Psa_40:2, the Righteousness is located at the point where the foot is first set firmly upon the rocky brink of the “horrible pit”; Sanctification is the progressive departure farther and farther from the pit, with “goings” which are more and more “established.”] The one the work of pardoning, the other of the purifying, grace of God; in modern phraseology, blessings respectively objective and subjective; in old theological language, relative and real; imputed, imparted. The one restores His favour, the other His image. Apart from all technical phraseology, the fashion of which may change from teacher to teacher, from Church to Church, from century to century, the distinction is a real one and an inevitable one. The righteousness is the result of an act of pardon; the sanctification is the result of a process. It is one thing, and a simple one, to “justify” a man from his past debts; it is another and a longer, greater matter to cure him of thriftless or extravagant habits; yet both combine, and are needed, for complete help for the debtor. Something must be done for men, very much in men, if the work of redemption is to be accomplished. [The “Jews” were not only delivered from their captivity in Babylon; they were cured by it of the love of idolatry which had brought the captivity upon them. In the unvarying symbolism of Scripture the “blood” deals with guilt, the “water” with impurity. The “water and the blood” are the credentials of a complete Saviour (1Jn_5:8).] A man who is “safe” in regard to the guilt of the past is “saved,” but in a very elementary sense only. That does but clear the way for a “salvation” which is larger, and complete: “Sanctification.” The man who is forgiven must go on to be holy.
2. Christ is our sanctification.—Not at all as though there were in the Gospel any vicarious holiness belonging to His work, such as will excuse the man who believes in Christ from seeking and working out a very real personal holiness. There was truth in the out-of-fashion and discredited phrase “Imputed Righteousness” (meaning “imputed holiness”). But it was only true to those who are aiming at realising their holiest in practice and attainment. Imperfection will cling where it brings no guilt. In Christ they are judged “holy” by a law which for His sake is interpreted in evangelical grace, and is reckoned as fulfilled by love. But God desires to have His “righteous” ones really “sanctified.” And the grace which sanctifies is secured for them, as pardon was, by the work of Christ. With Him was freely given the Spirit who makes them holy—Christ is the model and the means of their sanctification. It is the work of the Great Priest of the Gospel order.
III. Redemption is the crown of the work of Christ.—The word is here used in its highest and noblest sense. In a lower, narrower use it is the foundation of salvation; men could not be “saved,” if they had not been first “redeemed.” The redemption of the race is the basis and background of the salvation of the individual. But, looking forward, we see salvation fulfilled, culminating in redemption. Man is not only soul and spirit, “but body, soul, and spirit.” The body was redeemed by Christ [not Eph_5:23; but 1Co_6:20]; and as it has shared in the ruin and curse wrought by sin, so it will share in the deliverance wrought by Christ. [It is part of the “creature,” Rom_8:21-22.] It must wait longest for, and must receive latest of all, its part in the redemption of our complete manhood by Christ; but He wore it Himself, and still wears it, in a glory which is an earnest and pledge to the very body that He will not reckon His redemption complete until His people stand by His side before His Father [“Behold, I and children which God hath given Me” Isa_8:18; Heb_2:13], the last trace of the fell work of sin gone from every part, even the humblest, of their nature. The body will rise because He has risen, body and all. It will appear in glory, as, and because, He appears in glory. The vista of New Testament revelation leads up to a House in whose courts there move about, as if “to the manner born” [they have been “new-born” to it], a glorious Family, every one of whom is “conformed to the image of God’s Son,” “the firstborn amongst many brethren” (Rom_8:29). He is the pattern whose reproduction in them accounts for the strong “family-likeness” in them all. This is their “good” (Rom_8:28), up to which “all things have been working together”—Grace, Providence, even History in its worldwide, age-long course. The “redemption of the body” (Rom_8:23) will be the latest element in a redemptive process which at last puts every man who is in the new Race, whose Head is the Second Adam, beyond the reach of sin or death. As an Idea in the mind and heart of God—to speak humanly—the beginning of this whole Redemption is dateless, “before the world was.” Historically, its unfolding anticipated Calvary. But in a true sense the initial moment was when He cried in death, “It is finished!” And its completion will date from the moment when the Divine-human Redeemer looks for the first time upon the gathered, completed company of His own, and sees His own victory over Sin and its work, Death, realised in His people. The King and Deliverer will then cry once more, “Finished!” His people will say, “Thou art made unto us Redemption!”
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
1Co_1:20-21. Human Wisdom.
I. Challenged,
II. Confounded,
III. Superseded, by the Gospel.—[J. L.]
1Co_1:20. “Where,” indeed!
I. What have they not attempted?
II. What have they not promised?
III. What have they achieved?
IV. How are they brought to nought?—[J. L.]
1Co_1:30. Christ is made [cf. Joh_1:14 (another tense of same verb), the great primal wonder, of which this is one purpose and outcome. See Appended Note] Wisdom to us.
The true culture is the conforming of our manhood to the ideal in Christ. “Is it not a fact that a certain superficial refinement of manners, some acquaintance with the forms of good society, a little stock of ordinary phrases, and the fact of having seen or heard something of the best known products of literature, together with a fashionable style of dress, is, in the opinion of most, a sufficient claim to the possession of culture.… Only look at the simple-minded man, not possessing much outward culture, but animated by the Spirit of Christ, and by sound piety; what a sense of moral fitness, what correct tact, what sound judgment, especially as to the ethical value of any person or action, do we find gradually produced in him. In such a case the educating influence of Christianity is frequently shown in a most surprising way.” (Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, pp. 40, 43.)
1Co_1:30. Christ is made unto us Redemption.
I. By an atoning sacrifice (Gal_3:13).
II. By infusing the spirit of a new life.
III. By abolishing death as the penalty of sin. There was evidently death, violent death, in the pre-Adamic geological ages. But the “violent” death may have been painless, for aught we know. If not, it may have been that there would have been no death for the crown of creation, man. Or if there had been death for him, it would have been only dissolution, natural, happy. Sin, indeed, turned dying into Death. It is Death because it is not only the penalty of sin, but it is the physical anticipation and adumbration of the true Death—“death that is death indeed”—the abandonment of the soul by God Who is its Life. Sin links fear with the thought of death, for to an innocent moral nature, one might as reasonably hope as fear, before the presence of the unknown future. Now in Christ death is once more only dying; decease, departure, falling asleep. The one thing which now the dying of a Christian is never called is “death.” He hath abolished death; it practically counts for nothing to His people. He has abolished its bondage of fear (Heb_2:15).
1Co_1:30. Christ made to us … Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption.
Stanley brings out three pairs of correlatives.
I. Subjective.
1. Righteousness.
2. Holiness.
3. Freedom.
II. Objective.
1. Acquittal.
2. Consecration.
3. Deliverance.
APPENDED NOTES
1Co_1:21. Seeking God.—To be blessed by God, to know Him, and what He is, that is the battle of Jacob’s soul from sunset till the dawn of day. And this is our struggle—the struggle. Let any true man go down into the deeps of his own being, and answer us, what is the cry that comes from the most real part of his nature? Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob asked for that in his first communion with God—preservation, safety. Is it even this, to be forgiven our sins? Jacob bad a sin to be forgiven, and in that most solemn moment of his existence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it this, “Hallowed be Thy name”? No! Out of our frail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in the earthlier hours of our religion may be this, “Save my soul”; but in the most unearthly moments it is this, “Tell me Thy Name.” We move through a world of mystery; and the deepest question is, “What is the being that is ever near, sometimes felt, never seen? That which has haunted us from childhood, with a dream of something surpassingly fair, which has never yet been realised? That which sweeps through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness? That which has touched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain? That which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness, and conceptions of superhuman excellence. Shall we say It or He? What is It? Who is He? Those anticipations of Immortality and God, what are they? Are they the mere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a living something beside me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, echoing through the vast void of Nothingness? Or shall I still call them God, Father, Spirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside me? Tell me Thy Name, thou awful mystery of Loveliness! This is the struggle of all earnest life.”—F. W. Robertson, “Sermons,” i. 45, 46, “Jacob’s Wrestling.” Cf. “In Memoriam,” cxxiv., “The heart’s refusal of Atheism.”
1Co_1:21. The Foolishness of the Preaching.—If Christianity had been an “idyll” or a “pastoral,” the product of the simple peasant life and of the bright sky of Galilee, there is no reason why it should not have attracted a momentary interest in literary circles, although it certainly would have escaped from any more serious trial at the hands of statesmen than an unaffected indifference to its popularity. But what was the Gospel, as it met the eye and fell upon the ear of Roman Paganism? 1Co_1:23; 1Co_2:2. Here was a truth inextricably linked with other truths equally “foolish” in the apprehension of Pagan intellect, equally condemnatory of the moral degradation of Pagan life. In the preaching of the Apostles, Jesus Crucified confronted the intellectual cynicism, the social selfishness, and the sensualist degradation of the Pagan world. To its intellect He said, “I am the Truth”; He bade its proud self-confidence bow before His intellectual Royalty. To its selfish, heartless society, careful only for bread and amusement, careless of the agonies which gave interest to the amphitheatre, He said, “A new commandment,” etc. (Joh_13:34). Disinterested love of slaves, of barbarians, of political enemies, of social rivals, love of man as man, was to be a test of true discipleship. And to the sensuality, so gross, and yet often so polished, which was the very law of individual Pagan life, He said, “If any man will come after Me,” etc. (Mat_16:24); “If thine eye offend thee,” etc. (Mat_18:9). Sensuality was to be dethroned, not by the negative action of a prudential abstinence from indulgence, but by the strong positive force of self-mortification. Was such a doctrine likely, of its own weight and without any assistance from on high, to win its way to acceptance? Is it not certain that debased souls are so far from aspiring naturally toward that which is holy, elevated, and pure, that they feel toward it only hatred and repulsion? Certainly, Rome was unsatisfied with her old national idolatries; but if she turned her eyes toward the East, it was not to welcome the religion of Jesus, but the impure rites of Isis and Serapis, of Mithra and Astarte. The Gospel came to her unbidden, in obedience to no assignable attraction in Roman society, but simply in virtue of its own expansive, world-entrancing force. Certainly, Christianity answered to the moral wants of the world, as it really answers at this moment to the true moral wants of all human beings, however unbelieving or immoral they may be. The question is, whether the world so clearly recognised its real wants as forthwith to embrace Christianity? The Physician was there; but did the patient know the nature of his own malady sufficiently well not to view the presence of the Physician as an intrusion? Was it likely that the old Roman society, with its intellectual pride, its social heartlessness, and its unbounded personal self-indulgence, should be enthusiastically in love with a religion which made intellectual submission, social unselfishness, and personal mortification, its very fundamental laws? The history of the three first centuries is the answer to that question. The kingdom of God was no sooner set up … than it found itself surrounded by all that combines to make the progress of a doctrine or of a system impossible. The thinkers were opposed to it; they denounced it as a dream of folly. [He quotes Tacit., Ann., XV. 44, “Exitiabilis superstitio”; Suetonius, Nero, xvi., “Superstitio nova et malefica”; Celsus’ comparison of the worship of Christ with the Egyptian worship of cats, crocodiles, etc.] The habits and passions of the people were opposed to it; it threatened somewhat rudely to interfere with them. There were venerable institutions, coming down from a distant antiquity, and gathering round them the stable and thoughtful elements of society; these were opposed to it, as to an audacious innovation, as well as from an instinctive perception that it might modify or destroy themselves. National feeling was opposed to it; it flattered no national self-love; it was to be the home of human kind; it was to embrace the world; and as yet the nation was the highest conception of associated life to which humanity had reached. Nay, religious feeling itself was opposed to it; for religious feeling had been enslaved by ancient falsehoods. There were worships, priesthoods, beliefs, in long-established possession; and they were not likely to yield without a struggle … It was a time when the whole administrative power of the empire was steadily concentrated upon the extinction of the Name of Christ What were then, to a human eye, the prospects of the Kingdom of God? It had no allies, like the sword of the Mohammedan, or like the congenial mysticism which welcomed the Buddhist, or like the politicians who strove to uphold the falling Paganism of Rome. It found no countenance even in the Stoic moralists; they were indeed amongst its fiercest enemies. [In foot-note he adds, “Who can marvel at its instinctive hatred of a religion, which proclaimed a higher code of Ethics than its own, and which, moreover, possessed the secret of teaching that code practically to all classes of mankind? (See next Appended Note, a.)] If … it ever was identified by Pagan opinion with the cœtus illioiti, the collegia illicita, with the moral clubs of the imperial epoch, this would only have rendered it more than ever an object of suspicion to the government. Between the new doctrine and the old Paganism there was a deadly feud.”—Liddon, “Bampton Lectures,” III. iii. 3 (β).
a. Appended Note to above: “Most men, being incapable of understanding logical arguments concerning truth, need instruction through parables; thus those who are called Christians derive their faith from the parables of their Master. They sometimes act, however, like those who follow true philosophy. There are some among them who, in their zeal to control themselves, and to live honourably, have succeeded in becoming in nothing inferior to true philosophers.”—Galen (the physician); from a lost work on Plato. Quoted in Luthardt.
1Co_1:23. The Cross and its Victory.—To the ancient world the cross was the symbol of shame; to us it is our joy, our comfort, and our boast. There is nothing which can possibly be more opposed to all our natural ideas than the cross. We can understand a God of majesty; we can comprehend a manifestation of God in the great interests of humanity; but nothing could be more directly opposed to our every notion than that the death on the cross should be His supreme manifestation. “To the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness” (1Co_1:23). And so it is still. And yet it was just the preaching of the Cross that conquered the world. In proportion as concessions are made to the repugnance of the natural reason to the cross is Christianity weakened and its efficacy lessened. It is only the Christianity of the cross which is the victory over the world. And it has conquered. A few years since a drawing representing the Crucified was found upon the walls of the ancient palace of the Cæsars in Rome. The rude sketch speaks to us from the midst of the times of the struggle between Christianity and heathenism, and is a memorial of the manner in which the minds of men were then stirred. Some heathen servant of the emperor is taunting his Christian fellow-servant with this contemptuous sign. The relic belongs to about the year 200, and is by far the most ancient crucifix we know of. But this … is an ironical one. It is a caricature of Christ, before which a Christian stands worshipping, and it bears the inscription, “Alexamenos”—the name of the derided Christian—“worshipping his God.” We see that the Crucified Saviour and the preaching of the cross were the scorn of the world; and yet this conquered the world. In the great struggle between heathenism and Christianity the cross was the sign of victory. Whether the story is true or not that Constantine, before his decisive battle with Maxentius, saw in the clouds of heaven the appearance of a cross, with the inscription, “By this shalt thou conquer,” even if it is a fiction, it is yet truth in the form of fiction, for the cross was the victorious power, and such it will remain. If Christianity is to conquer the world, it will only do so as the preaching of the Cross, and not by concessions to the natural reason. It is contrary to all natural logic that God should humble Himself to such an extremity. That death upon the tree of shame should be His supreme revelation is contrary to all the logic of the natural reason. But it is the logic of love; and love can hold its own against the logic of the mere understanding, for it has on its side the higher logic of truth.—Luthardt, “Saving Truths,” 136–8.
[The caricature referred to, known as the Graffito, was on the plaster of the wall of one of the guard-rooms of the Pretorians, the body-guard, the household troops, of the Emperor, in the ruins of the Imperial Palace on the Palatine. The head of the Crucified One is probably that of an ass. (It was a common popular slander that the Christians worshipped an ass.) The worshipper is most likely a Pretorian, like the draughtsman of the caricature. A readily accessible engraving and description of the Graffito may be found in “Italian Pictures” (p. 55), Religious Tract Society, Pen-and-Pencil Series.]
1Co_1:23. The Victory of the Cross.—Everything seemed to conspire to render its victory utterly impossible. Its origin was against it; it seemed but a Jewish sect. Its advocates and followers had nothing attractive about them, and belonged for the most part to the lower and uneducated classes. Its doctrine was a “stumbling block”; it appeared a most vexatious “foolishness.” Its reverence for God, too, was suspected, for the Christians, using no images of the gods, were taken for atheists. The worst and most immoral things were said of its mysterious rites. Public opinion was prejudiced against them, philosophy assailed Christianity with intellectual weapons, whilst the authorities opposed it with brute force. And yet it triumphed. So early as the reign of Nero it was, as Tacitus indignantly asserts, very widely diffused. (Multitudo ingens, Ann., xv. 44.) Nor did it avail to arrest its progress, that Nero, in order to divert from himself the guilt of the great conflagration of Rome, executed vast numbers of Christians; not so much, as Tacitus says, because they were guilty of this crime, as because they were hated by the whole human race. (Tac., ut supra.) Nevertheless, Christianity continued to spread. An interesting letter of the younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia, to his friend the Emperor Trajan, written about seventy years after the death of Christ, is still extant, distinctly pourtraying the state of the Christian cause at that time in the places which had been the scenes of St. Paul’s and St. John’s ministries. “This superstition,” writes Pliny (Epp. v. 97), “has spread on all sides, in towns, in villages, and in the country; the temples of our gods stand deserted, and sacrifices have now for a long time ceased to be offered. I arrested a few girls called deaconesses, and put them to the torture, but discovered nothing besides excessive and pernicious superstition.” … And a century later, Tertullian, in his Apology (c. 37), could say to the heathen, “We are but of yesterday, and yet we have taken possession of your whole country—towns, islands, the camp, the palace, the senate, the forum; we have left you only the temples!” Nor could the great persecutions—of which ten may be enumerated—ever hanging over the Christians arrest the triumphs of Christianity. No age, no sex, was spared; all the strength of the empire was put into requisition; certain of the most energetic of the emperors, such as Decius and Diocletian, considered it their special duty to root out Christianity from the world, because the very existence of the Roman Empire depended upon its extirpation. But the arm of the executioner failed before the fidelity of the Christians. Diocletian was obliged to give up his work; he retired from the stage, but Christianity remained, and in the person of Constantine ascended the imperial throne, and has since governed, even externally, the Roman world.—Luthardt, “Fundamental Truths,” 267–9.
1Co_1:23. The Victory of the Cross over Heathenism.—“As Heine puts it, while the gods of Greece were assembled at the feast of the immortals, and Hebe tripped round with her goblets of pleasantest nectar, and infinite laughter rang round the happy banqueting board, and the feast was at its fullest, the music at its sweetest, suddenly there came gasping towards them a pale Jew, dripping with blood; a crown of thorns on His head, bearing a great cross of wood on His shoulder; and He cast the cross on the high table of the gods, so that the golden goblets trembled and fell, and the gods grew dumb and pale, and ever paler, till they melted in utter mist.”—From “A Lay Sermon” by Gerald Massey.
1Co_1:30. Christ … Wisdom to us.—“Verse 30, viewed apart from its connection, is a great text, and great in the greatness of its mystery. Became, not was made. This verb denotes a transition from one state or mode of subsistence to another, e.g. ‘the Word became flesh,’ i.e. being God, the Word passed into a mode of subsistence in which He was man as well as God. Similarly we are said (2Co_5:21) to ‘become the righteousness of God in Christ,’ i.e. to pass from our low estate of sinful humiliation to the high level of God’s perfect righteousness. Thus, according to 1Co_1:30, the Son of God, when He entered into human nature, entered also into the Divine scheme of wisdom, and translated it into life. For unquestionably the substance of that scheme of wisdom was the union of the two natures in the Person of God’s Son, together with the manifold benefits flowing from that union. Of this hidden counsel of redemption, which was willed and planned before Creation itself, Jesus Christ was in His Person the embodiment, and in all that He wrought and suffered, the historical manifestation and pleroma. Thus He became wisdom from God; not ‘became from God’; the order of the Greek is against that view. Again, as the Father in heaven was the first cause or fountain of this wisdom, … so Christ on earth may be regarded in His work as a cistern gradually filling with this wisdom, and after His ascension overflowing with it from heaven into the larger cistern of His Church below. This overflow commenced on the Day of Pentecost. Thus He became wisdom to us from God, i.e. wisdom from God for us to receive. But this abstract counsel or wisdom of the Father, which was planned by Him before the ages were made, and which in the sphere of time became concrete in the Incarnate Son, what was it? What it more precisely was, both in its embodiment in Christ and in its relation to us men, is further defined in three heads. The eternal purpose is drawn out of its secret depths, so to speak, like a telescope of three lenses, in three evolutions, each in its own place:
1. Righteousness;
2. Sanctification;
3. Redemption.
1. Righteousness of God the Father imputed, not the righteousness of Christ, for that is nowhere in the New Testament said to be imputed. It is the proper fruit of Christ’s obedience unto death, and the imputatation of it to believers on earth approaches by degrees to assimilation precisely as progress is made in the inner life of sanctification. Indeed, the “both and” indicates this mutual correlation. Of the absolute Righteousness God is the giver because of Christ’s meritorious Passion, and in it the saints, after the Resurrection, are set indefectible. The last link in this threefold chain of wisdom is redemption, i.e. of the body together with the soul and spirit in the resurrection of the saints at the Parousia. In brief, the whole means this: God—He alone is the first and efficient cause of your union and fellowship with Him who became flesh and translated into life and made actual in time the ideal plan of eternity, mediating for us the threefold benefit of that Divine counsel, righteousness imputed, holiness imparted, redemption consummated.—Evans, “Speaker.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv17–31 17. “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but…
17. “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.” Here we see clearly and demonstratively that while water baptism in some way or other with reference to quantity, quality, subject, manner, or administrator has been the bone of contention among the religious denominations through all ages, and really the hot-bed of schisms, here you see plainly that, instead of deserving such prominence in the gospel economy, it is in fact no part of the gospel, and never was, but merely incidental to it — right in its place, but no part of the thing itself; hence, utterly unessential to salvation. This is clearly tenorable from Paul’s discrimination between baptism and the gospel. If it had been a part of the gospel, Paul never could have said, “Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel,” “not in wisdom of word, in order that the cross of Christ may not be made empty.” Why is the cross the great salient fact in the plan of salvation? Because on it Jesus made the atonement and redeemed the world from sin, death and hell. Such is the historic truth of the cross. Again, because all of His followers must go with Him to the cross, be nailed to it and die; i. e., just as the humanity in Him, though sinless, died on the cross for sin, so must the sinful humanity in us i. e., Adam the first, die on the cross; otherwise we never can follow our risen Savior up to heaven. This is the experimental truth of the cross. Hence we find that even Romanism does not make the cross too prominent. It is all right to show it up externally in order that our senses may assist our faith. But the trouble with them is they stop with the externalities, retaining only the historic doctrine of the cross, having lost sight of the experimental, which is the essence, and is indispensable to salvation. Many Protestants clamor constantly about water baptism, which you see plainly here from this irrefutable truth is no part of the gospel, but merely incidental to it, and hence not necessary to salvation; whereas they make nothing of the cross, which is really everything.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v17 Section 2. (1Co 1:17-31.)
Section 2. (1Co 1:17-31.)
The Cross in its twofold aspect.
Read full note →
The apostle now enters at once upon his theme, Christ, unknown by the world, the cross His emblem, whom it was impossible to commend to the world, therefore, by any means other than the "demonstration of the Spirit" to the convicted soul. Yet this Cross is at once the inlet of all wisdom to him who understands it, -the knowledge of itself and of God; the actual meeting of the need which it has discovered. Thus it is true wisdom, -not that barren wisdom of the world which fails man just where needed most, but that which under the severest test becomes the most conspicuous.
1. The apostle’s disclaiming here of being sent to baptize is in perfect harmony with what has just been said of the connection of baptism with the Kingdom rather than the Church. Certainly those who received their commission from the risen, but not yet ascended Christ, could not have spoken in this way. Sent to baptize they were, and by Him who grounds it upon all power committed to Him, that is, upon the Kingdom that is His (Mat 28:18-19). He who was distinctly sent from Christ in glory, and declares himself to be in an especial manner the minister of the Church (Col 1:25), to whom was committed the administration of that till then unknown mystery (Eph 3:6-9), expressly denies baptism to have a place in that distinct commission! And this is the more noteworthy, because with regard to the Lord’s Supper, which he might have received, like baptism, from those who were apostles before him, but which is plainly connected with this administration, he says emphatically that he had "received from the Lord" that which he delivered to them: this too in this very same epistle in which he denies his having received baptism in this way from Him, and which is an epistle for the authoritative regulation of the Church on earth (1Co 14:37).
But he was also minister of the completed gospel (Col 1:23); and this is what he turns to speak of now. Christ had not sent him to baptize, but to preach the gospel -the glad tidings of a love now going out towards all, and in which his own heart went out in sympathetic gladness. Yet here it was the word of the Cross he carried, an ominous word of humiliation, suffering and penalty endured; and which, if endured for men, yet declared their condition who could be saved only by such a sacrifice. Here, therefore, no mere wisdom of words would suffice. That would be ignoring the very condition for which the Cross was alone the remedy. It was not a mere misunderstanding which wise words would remove, but a heart away from God which had declared itself in lace of the wondrous revelation of God in Christ: men have both seen and hated both Christ and His Father. And men, according to Scripture, are the same everywhere; this condition is not an exceptional one, but, "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man."
What use, then, of mere appeals to man, when Christ has Himself appealed, to get no answer but the Cross? The very "word of the Cross is to those that are perishing foolishness;" while indeed to those who are being saved "it is the power of God." Yes, the power of God; but then this alone can be trusted to work in it. The wisdom of the wise is brought to an end; the understanding of the man of understanding set aside: did any of them, with whatever wisdom they might have, excogitate the gospel? or produce any equivalent to the gospel? They had had ample time to do it, if they could. The nations that had once known God, had, in fact, spite of that knowledge, glorified Him not as God, nor been thankful for the knowledge, as the apostle tells the Romans; and this was the secret of the idolatry which covered the earth with hideous forms, the reflection of the lusts which warred in their members. What could be expected of those who had thus turned their backs on God, and conjured up gods not to meet the need of conscience, but to satisfy the impulses of their depravity?
God indeed, as we know, never left Himself without witness, -never meant to leave man to the mere blind gropings of a darkened intellect. Apart from the witness of external nature which is everywhere, somewhere the light was shining all the time. In the midst of the most cultivated nations of antiquity, and at the headquarters of their commercial traffic, -in close intimacy with Egypt, (upon whose bestial gods was executed once a judgment which resounded far and near,) -and in turn with Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, there was a people who held in their hand the revelation of God, progressing with the onward march of the generations that went by. But this was not what they craved or would receive. Thus in the self-chosen darkness their wisdom ripened till in Greece, the land of the typical Gentile, in the midst of those who professedly sought after wisdom, it produced its fairest blossoms and its ripest fruits. The wisdom of God was pleased to give ample time for the development. As in Israel under law it was to be proved that man was without strength and ungodly, so amongst the Gentiles was it to be proved that the world by wisdom knew not God. Then, when the need was fully shown, which could not else be met at all, "it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching" -not of preaching as a method, but of the thing preached in human estimation -"it pleased God to save those that believe."
2. Not merely to Gentile philosophy, which in its very designation was a "pursuit of wisdom," but to the legal Jew no less, the cross was naturally the very opposite of what he looked for. The Jew, as we see in the Gospels, demanded signs -significant wonders. And such indeed was the Cross, the mightiest that could be; but what child of the law could accept one in which the law itself was against the sufferer, -the curse of the law upon him? Doubtless they had read of One despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, upon whom Jehovah laid the iniquity of others, and with whose stripes they are healed. Yes, but was not that Israel suffering for the sins of the world? So have they turned the edge of conviction from themselves to weave out of texts like these a subtle web of self-righteousness in their own defence. But how indeed could they think of their glorious Messiah as in the place of one made an offering for sin? How little could they imagine that in all this reasoning they were but fulfilling the prophecy they were perverting, -"He was despised, and we esteemed Him not!"
The reason why to the Greeks it was foolishness was at bottom the same -intense blindness as to man’s condition and the enormity of sin before a holy God. Their gods came down to earth indeed, and in forms lower than the human; but it was in pursuit of their own lusts and passions, as vehement and unrestrained as any that could be found in man. Here was a setting forth of "new gods" indeed, which at once proclaimed a new estimate of sin, and swept aside under its condemnation all their rabble of dishonored deities. Were indeed all these to be replaced with that gaunt Figure of rejection and death, outcast by these contemptible Jews themselves?
But if such then were the message, what hope in announcing it? None but in God’s new-creative call, the call of the gospel certainly, but the gospel made good in the soul by the mighty energy of the Holy Spirit. Many heard and hear the universal gospel-call, only to reject it; but to all those called according to the word of the apostle here, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It is a call effectual as God can make it, -"not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance" (1Th 1:5); the result being a veritable new birth: for we are "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you" (1Pe 1:23; 1Pe 1:25).
Thus the "foolishness of God" -what with men may be considered that -approves itself by its blessed fruit in those in whose hearts, opened by divine grace, it has been received effectually, an incoming of light and joy and peace which nothing else can avail to bring. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men," whatever may be the form of the philosophy he favors; and the "weakness of God," -Christ "crucified through weakness," -"is more powerful than men."
3. If such then is the true character of world-wisdom, such its contradiction to all that is genuinely this, it is but the consequence to be expected, that the calling of God will not be characteristically of those wise according to the flesh, or mighty, or noble. He has, in fact, put upon the most conspicuous developments of the world-spirit the brand of His reprobation. He chooses the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and its weak things to shame its might, and things ignoble and despised, things that are naught in men’s eyes, to bring down to naught all things in the world together, that no flesh may glory in the presence of God. Alas, it is this "great Babylon that we have builded" that exalts man to his shame, and drives him out in result among the beasts that know not God, to be more bestial than they. We must accept this abasement that God may be able indeed to exalt us, and enrich us in our poverty with the riches of One self-impoverished to enrich us. In this way man is blessed indeed, and God is glorified.
We who believe are in Christ Jesus, -filled up in all His fulness; and the wisdom which here we find manifests itself as truly that by its power to meet and put away all the disastrous consequences of the fall, and bring in an overcompensation of blessing that is indeed divine. And this is what the form of the sentence here conveys; "righteousness, as well as sanctification, and redemption," being the distinguishing blessings that are found in the wisdom that is from God, and which manifest its truly divine character.*
{*So the margin of the R.V., though ungrammatically, "both."}
It will be found also upon examination that the words stand in the order needed to bring out their relation to the fall; to that, let us remember, which began man’s pursuit of wisdom, away from God. Still, "vain man will be wise, though be be born a wild ass’s colt." No wonder if he should sadly lose his way. Yet in all this, supreme above it all, God works out His purposes of blessing, using even the evil itself to do so. For, if wisdom were hoped for by man from the knowledge of good and evil, this (which indeed was always designed for him by God, and which he had no need to take from Satan) is in fact overruled in such a way as to give him the deepest possible apprehension of these that (one may suppose) the creature could have; and thus, in the redeemed, to bring about a fuller conformity to the mind of God, than perhaps a being unfallen could attain. No angel could in this way by reason of use have his senses exercised to discern both good and evil." And the very presence of the evil in us after new birth is a fact whose import seems to lie in the same direction.
At the best, a wisdom of this kind could not, however, by itself solve any one of the most serious questions which perplex men, and will perplex them, apart from revelation. And this is what distinctly the book of Ecclesiastes is designed to show. Wisdom there is the object of the most earnest search by one who had special human wisdom given him by God, so as to be wiser than all men beside; and with riches and power back of it all, to carry out, as far as mail might go, his experiments. But the wail goes up from this eager seeker of what he prized and longed for: "I said I will be wise, but it was far from me." Death baffles him. The seal upon a fallen condition cannot be broken by that which induced the fall. "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward? or the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? . . . As thou knowest not the way of the spirit . . . so thou knowest not the works of God that worketh all." Revelation must come in then; and here what joy to realize how it has indeed come in!
Christ is made unto us wisdom from God; and thus with Christianity, for faith, every cloud is lifted. The wisdom that is from God is a casket of priceless jewels; in which the redeemed one finds, not only liberty, but marvelous enrichment. How much is contained in just those three words, "righteousness, sanctification and redemption!" And they are in an order of progressive fulness, as we shall see, by which we enter more and more into the heart of God.
Righteousness is the first need of the sinner, and which we see symbolically met in that robe which death furnished to cover the nakedness which was the first felt need in Eden. "I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." Yet God had made him naked, not like any beast of the earth with its protective covering, but safe in the purity of his uprightness, open to the light and not ashamed. How all was altered now! The consciousness of guilt was upon him: the law of sin was already in his members; and God Himself recognizes the impossibility of restoring that lost innocence; he must have a covering, and a better one than any that he can invent with all his power of invention. Who could imagine that death, the penalty upon him, was to be that which should provide him with this? Yet we know that this is indeed the truth. The penalty must be endured, if the sinner is to be justified before God. Righteousness for him is not in any impossible work of his hands, or new life lived, but in the first place by the death of Him of whom all the sacrificial law spoke -whom it foreshadowed. The blood of the sacrifice -token of the life poured out -was that which was offered to God for the acceptance of the offerer; and we are thus "justified by His blood," every charge against us is refused, His resurrection from the dead being the assurance of the demand met, and thus the public sentence of justification of every one that believeth in Jesus.
But this is negative merely, -there is no imputation of guilt, and that is all; and it is not all that God has done for us; we have not in this yet reached the robe of righteousness, which death indeed must obtain for us, but which goes beyond the mere putting away of sin, and gives us a positive standing in the presence of God. Christ is not merely negative but positive righteousness to us. We stand in Him, in the value that He has for God, who has achieved, not merely for us but for Him also, that which has glorified Him in all His attributes. In His death all that we were by nature and practice both was branded and set aside, -"our old man crucified with Him," -and we are accepted in the Beloved, in that unchangeable perfection which is His, living because He lives. He is the Priest that offered for us, to whom belongs the skin of the burnt-offering (Lev 7:8); and here we are brought back as it were to Eden, to see whence those skins that covered the first sinners of mankind were derived. How from the beginning did the eye of God contemplate the coming Redeemer in His sufferings and the glories that should follow!
Yet, however wonderful this righteousness, more is needed and more provided for us in Christ. God could not merely cover the nakedness of a sinner, while leaving him still the sinner that he was before. Man fallen was corrupt as well as guilty; and Christ is made unto us not only righteousness but also sanctification.
Now sanctification is spoken of in two different ways in Scripture: we are sanctified positionally, and we are sanctified practically, -by the blood and by the Spirit of Christ; as the blood with the oil upon the blood consecrated the priest of old (Exo 29:20-21). Positionally, as is evident, it is the blood of Christ which has set us apart to God. And this is what sanctification means, setting apart to God. The Lord thus speaks of sanctifying Himself when He is going to take a new position as Man with God: "For their sakes," He says, "I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth" (Joh 17:19). This was no spiritual change in the Lord, which it were blasphemy to think; it was simply a new place that He was taking for us God ward. Upon this too our sanctification, positionally and practically, depends. He is gone in to God as Man. Entitled ever to such a place by virtue of all that He was, His own personal perfection, He is now gone in for men; and therefore, "By His own blood He entered in once into the holy place. having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb 9:12). Thus He enters as our Representative, and the blood that He has shed sets us apart, or sanctifies us, to God, in the power of His finished work, "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb 10:10). Thus the conscience is effectually purified, the worshiper once purged having no more conscience of sins (Heb 9:13-14; Heb 10:2); a thing how absolutely necessary for practical sanctification, for which we must be near to God: there is no possible place of distance from sin but in nearness to God.
Practical sanctification has its two factors in the new birth, and the operation of the Spirit through the Word upon the believer, taking of the things of Christ to show them to him. In new birth Christ is our life, and thus we have a nature capable of responding to the Word ministered to it, although still and ever the Spirit’s work is necessary to make the Word good in the hearts of the children of God.
But being born again, it is Christ once more, as apprehended by the soul in what He personally is, and in the place in which He is, who is the power for sanctification. And herein is the wisdom of God in Him fully and wonderfully displayed. He who has put away our sins and set our consciences at rest in the presence of God, has thus laid hold upon our hearts, and won us for Himself and for God, revealed in Him, for ever. Christian life -what only can be called so -is thus love’s free and happy offering to Him who has loved us: "He died for all, that they which live should no more live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for us, and rose again."
Let us notice that "rose again;" for if our hearts are thus Christ’s, where is Christ? In heaven. And where then are our hearts? That is the power for practical holiness, an object -the Object -for our hearts outside the world, outside the whole scene of temptation and evil. We have not to look about in the world, to see what of good we can perchance find in it: Christ is in heaven. Holiness is for us by heavenliness. How simply and in what perfect wisdom has God provided for us by the power of an absorbing affection, the Object withdrawn from us, outside the world, and becoming thus the goal of a pilgrim’s heart and a pilgrim’s steps!
And now, finally, what is "redemption"? This is the last of the three things found, according to the apostle, in this wisdom. of God in Christ. What then is redemption? It is God’s love acting from itself, and for itself, to satisfy itself at personal cost, in getting back that which has been alienated from Him, and which yet He values. It is more than purchase, or even repurchase; for this might be, not because of its value to myself, but to give it away again, or for some other reason. But redemption is for oneself, the getting back for oneself what one’s own heart values, -the value of which is known by the price that one is willing to pay for it. Redemption brings out thus the heart of the redeemer.
And in Eden, amid all the goodness with which he was surrounded, man, taught of Satan, had learned to suspect the goodness of God. There and then he had lost God: for He is not God, if He is not good. Since then, naturally, "there is none that seeketh after" Him, -that believes there is anything in Him for which to seek Him. Natural religions are religions of fear and self-interest only, and men’s gods are the image of their own corruptions. God must reveal Himself; and how gloriously has He done this! Not goodness merely to man innocent in Eden, but infinite love to those who in Christ could see and hate Him. "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." Christ is the redemption-price that shows the heart of the Redeemer; this wondrous gift, the Father’s heart told out in transcendent righteousness, and holiness, and love.
Nor can we forget that redemption has yet to show its power in the transformation of the body itself; that in the image of Christ fully we may enjoy the blessedness that is ours in Him for ever. Then indeed shall he that glorieth glory in the Lord; and the full blessing of the creature shall be found when He alone is glorified by all.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v18 1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians
PERISHING OR BEING SAVED
Read full note →
1Co 1:18.
The starting-point of my remarks is the observation that a slight variation of rendering, which will be found in the Revised Version, brings out the true meaning of these words. Instead of reading ‘them that perish’ and ‘us which are saved,’ we ought to read ‘them that are perishing,’ and ‘us which are being saved.’ That is to say, the Apostle represents the two contrasted conditions, not so much as fixed states, either present or future, but rather as processes which are going on, and are manifestly, in the present, incomplete. That opens some very solemn and intensely practical considerations.
Then I may further note that this antithesis includes the whole of the persons to whom the Gospel is preached. In one or other of these two classes they all stand. Further, we have to observe that the consideration which determines the class to which men belong, is the attitude which they respectively take to the preaching of the Cross. If it be, and because it is, ‘foolishness’ to some, they belong to the catalogue of the perishing. If it be, and because it is, ‘the power of God’ to others, they belong to the class of those who are in process of being saved.
So, then, we have the ground cleared for two or three very simple, but, as it seems to me, very important thoughts.
I. I desire, first, to look at the two contrasted conditions, ‘perishing’ and ‘being saved.’
Now we shall best, I think, understand the force of the darker of these two terms if we first ask what is the force of the brighter and more radiant. If we understand what the Apostle means by ‘saving’ and ‘salvation’ we shall understand also what he means by ‘perishing.’
If, then, we turn for a moment to Scripture analogy and teaching, we find that that threadbare word ‘salvation,’ which we all take it for granted that we understand, and which, like a well-worn coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcely remains legible-that well-worn word ‘salvation’ starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It means either-and is used for both-being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord’s miracles, and it involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and his deliverance and security. The negative side, then, of the Gospel idea of salvation is the making whole from a disease, and the making safe from a danger. Negatively, it is the removal from each of us of the one sickness, which is sin; and the one danger, which is the reaping of the fruits and consequences of sin, in their variety as guilt, remorse, habit, and slavery under it, perverted relation to God, a fearful apprehension of penal consequences here, and, if there be a hereafter, there, too. The sickness of soul and the perils that threaten life, flow from the central fact of sin, and salvation consists, negatively, in the sweeping away of all of these, whether the sin itself, or the fatal facility with which we yield to it, or the desolation and perversion which it brings into all the faculties and susceptibilities, or the perversion of relation to God, and the consequent evils, here and hereafter, which throng around the evil-doer. The sick man is healed, and the man in peril is set in safety.
But, besides that, there is a great deal more. The cure is incomplete till the full tide of health follows convalescence. When God saves, He does not only bar up the iron gate through which the hosts of evil rush out upon the defenceless soul, but He flings wide the golden gate through which the glad troops of blessings and of graces flock around the delivered spirit, and enrich it with all joys and with all beauties. So the positive side of salvation is the investiture of the saved man with throbbing health through all his veins, and the strength that comes from a divine life. It is the bestowal upon the delivered man of everything that he needs for blessedness and for duty. All good conferred, and every evil banned back into its dark den, such is the Christian conception of salvation. It is much that the negative should be accomplished, but it is little in comparison with the rich fulness of positive endowments, of happiness, and of holiness which make an integral part of the salvation of God.
This, then, being the one side, what about the other? If this be salvation, its precise opposite is the Scriptural idea of ‘perishing.’ Utter ruin lies in the word, the entire failure to be what God meant a man to be. That is in it, and no contortions of arbitrary interpretation can knock that solemn significance out of the dreadful expression. If salvation be the cure of the sickness, perishing is the fatal end of the unchecked disease. If salvation be the deliverance from the outstretched claws of the harpy evils that crowd about the trembling soul, then perishing is the fixing of their poisoned talons into their prey, and their rending of it into fragments.
Of course that is metaphor, but no metaphor can be half so dreadful as the plain, prosaic fact that the exact opposite of the salvation, which consists in the healing from sin and the deliverance from danger, and in the endowment with all gifts good and beautiful, is the Christian idea of the alternative ‘perishing.’ Then it means the disease running its course. It means the dangers laying hold of the man in peril. It means the withdrawal, or the non-bestowal, of all which is good, whether it be good of holiness or good of happiness. It does not mean, as it seems to me, the cessation of conscious existence, any more than salvation means the bestowal of conscious existence. But he who perishes knows that he has perished, even as he knows the process while he is in the process of perishing. Therefore, we have to think of the gradual fading away from consciousness, and dying out of a life, of many things beautiful and sweet and gracious, of the gradual increase of distance from Him, union with whom is the condition of true life, of the gradual sinking into the pit of utter ruin, of the gradual increase of that awful death in life and life in death in which living consciousness makes the conscious subject aware that he is lost; lost to God, lost to himself.
Brethren, it is no part of my business to enlarge upon such awful thoughts, but the brighter the light of salvation, the darker the eclipse of ruin which rings it round. This, then, is the first contrast.
II. Now note, secondly, the progressiveness of both members of the alternative.
All states of heart or mind tend to increase, by the very fact of continuance. Life is a process, and every part of a spiritual being is in living motion and continuous action in a given direction. So the law for the world, and for every man in it, in all regions of his life, quite as much as in the religious, is ‘To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.’
Look, then, at this thought of the process by which these two conditions become more and more confirmed, consolidated, and complete. Salvation is a progressive fact. In the New Testament we have that great idea looked at from three points of view. Sometimes it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past in the case of every believing soul-’Ye have been saved’ is said more than once. Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplished in the present-’Ye are saved’ is said more than once. And sometimes it is relegated to the future-’Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,’ and the like. But there are a number of New Testament passages which coincide with this text in regarding salvation as, not the work of any one moment, but as a continuous operation running through life, not a point either in the past, present, or future, but a continued life. As, for instance, ‘The Lord added to the Church daily those that were being saved.’ By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are being sanctified. And in a passage in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which, in some respects, is an exact parallel to that of my text, we read of the preaching of the Gospel as being a ‘savour of Christ in them that are being saved, and in them that are perishing.’
So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christian man lives in this world; and every one who professes to be Christ’s follower ought, day by day, to be growing more and more saved, more fully filled with that Divine Spirit, more entirely the conqueror of his own lusts and passions and evil, more and more invested with all the gifts of holiness and of blessedness which Jesus Christ is ready to bestow upon him.
Ah, brethren! that notion of a progressive salvation at work in all true Christians has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call yourselves Christ’s followers, and are not a bit further on than you were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions {perhaps less so, for relapses are dangerous} than you were then-have not advanced any further into the depths of God than when you first got a glimpse of Him as loving, and your Father, in Jesus Christ-are contented to linger, like some weak band of invaders in a strange land, on the borders and coasts, instead of pressing inwards and making it all your own. Growing Christians-may I venture to say?-are not the majority of professing Christians.
And, on the other side, as certainly, there are progressive deterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin. How many men there are listening to me now who were far nearer being delivered from their sins when they were lads than they have ever been since! How many in whom the sensibility to the message of salvation has disappeared, in whom the world has ossified their consciences and their hearts, in whom there is a more entire and unstruggling submission to low things and selfish things and worldly things and wicked things, than there used to be! I am sure that there are not a few among us now who were far better, and far happier, when they were poor and young, and could still thrill with generous emotion and tremble at the Word of God, than they are to-day. Why! there are some of you that could no more bring back your former loftier impulses, and compunction of spirit and throbs of desire towards Christ and His salvation, than you could bring back the birds’ nests or the snows of your youthful years. You are perishing, in the very process of going down and down into the dark.
Now, notice, that the Apostle treats these two classes as covering the whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives. If not in the one class we are in the other. Ah, brethren! life is no level plane, but a steep incline, on which there is no standing still, and if you try to stand still, down you go. Either up or down must be the motion. If you are not more of a Christian than you were a year ago, you are less. If you are not more saved-for there is a degree of comparison-if you are not more saved, you are less saved.
Now, do not let that go over your head as pulpit thunder, meaning nothing. It means you, and, whether you feel or think it or not, one or other of these two solemn developments is at this moment going on in you. And that is not a thought to be put lightly on one side.
Further, note what a light such considerations as these, that salvation and perishing are vital processes-’going on all the time,’ as the Americans say-throw upon the future. Clearly the two processes are incomplete here. You get the direction of the line, but not its natural termination. And thus a heaven and a hell are demanded by the phenomena of growing goodness and of growing badness which we see round about us. The arc of the circle is partially swept. Are the compasses going to stop at the point where the grave comes in? By no means. Round they will go, and will complete the circle. But that is not all. The necessity for progress will persist after death; and all through the duration of immortal being, goodness, blessedness, holiness, Godlikeness, will, on the one hand, grow in brighter lustre; and on the other, alienation from God, loss of the noble elements of the nature, and all the other doleful darknesses which attend that conception of a lost man, will increase likewise. And so, two people, sitting side by side here now, may start from the same level, and by the operation of the one principle the one may rise, and rise, and rise, till he is lost in God, and so finds himself, and the other sink, and sink, and sink, into the obscurity of woe and evil that lies beneath every human life as a possibility.
III. And now, lastly, notice the determining attitude to the Cross which settles the class to which we belong.
Paul, in my text, is explaining his reason for not preaching the Gospel with what he calls ‘the words of man’s wisdom,’ and he says, in effect, ‘It would be of no use if I did, because what settles whether the Cross shall look “foolishness” to a man or not is the man’s whole moral condition, and what settles whether a man shall find it to be “the power of God” or not is whether he has passed into the region of those that are being saved.’
So there are two thoughts suggested which sound as if they were illogically combined, but which yet are both true. It is true that men perish, or are saved, because the Cross is to them respectively ‘foolishness’ or ‘the power of God’; and the other thing is also true, that the Cross is to them ‘foolishness,’ or ‘the power of God’ because, respectively, they are perishing or being saved. That is not putting the cart before the horse, but both aspects of the truth are true.
If you see nothing in Jesus Christ, and His death for us all, except ‘foolishness,’ something unfit to do you any good, and unnecessary to be taken into account in your lives-oh, my friends! that is the condemnation of your eyes, and not of the thing you look at. If a man, gazing on the sun at twelve o’clock on a June day, says to me, ‘It is not bright,’ the only thing I have to say to him is, ‘Friend, you had better go to an oculist.’ And if to us the Cross is ‘foolishness,’ it is because already a process of ‘perishing’ has gone so far that it has attacked our capacity of recognising the wisdom and love of God when we see them.
But, on the other hand, if we clasp that Cross in simple trust, we find that it is the power which saves us out of all sins, sorrows, and dangers, and ‘shall save us’ at last ‘into His heavenly kingdom.’
Dear friends, that message leaves no man exactly as it found him. My words, I feel, in this sermon, have been very poor, set by the side of the greatness of the theme; but, poor as they have been, you will not be exactly the same man after them, if you have listened to them, as you were before. The difference may be very imperceptible, but it will be real. One more, almost invisible, film, over the eyeball; one more thin layer of wax in the ear; one more fold of insensibility round heart and conscience-or else some yielding to the love; some finger put out to take the salvation; some lightening of the pressure of the sickness; some removal of the peril and the danger. The same sun hurts diseased eyes, and gladdens sound ones. The same fire melts wax and hardens clay. ‘This Child is set for the rise and fall of many in Israel.’ ‘To the one He is the savour of life unto life; to the other He is the savour of death unto death.’ Which is He, for He is one of them, to you?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv17–31 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to…
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void . [A baptism is part of the commission ( Mat_28:19 ). Paul was sent to baptize; but it was not necessary that the apostle should administer the rite in person. It sufficed if he saw to it that it was done ( Joh_4:2 ). Paul does not here mean to assert that he preached without study or forethought. His words must be construed in the light of the context; which show that he intends to deny that he encumbered the gospel message with any philosophical reasoning.]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv18, 20, 27, 30, 31 (See Scofield "Rom 1:16")
saved
(See Scofield "Rom 1:16")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv17, 20, 26 The Wisdom of God and the Foolishness of Men.
The Wisdom of God and the Foolishness of Men.
The foolishness of the Gospel-message:
Read full note →
v. 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel; not with wisdom of words, lest the Cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
v. 18. For the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
v. 19. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
The apostle here characterizes his office, trying to make it clear to the Corinthian Christians wherein the ministry of the Gospel really consists. He says of himself that Christ did not send him, did not entrust him with the office of an apostle, for the purpose of baptizing, but for that of preaching the Gospel. The appointment to this office did indeed include the work of administering Baptism, Mat 28:19. Incidentally, however, the work of preaching, of bearing testimony of Christ and His atonement, was the chief calling of the apostle. Without the Word of the Gospel the Sacraments have no efficacy. "Without the Word of God the water is simple water and no Baptism. " The function of administering the sacrament of Baptism follows from the greater function, that of spreading the Gospel-message. "In the command to preach the command to baptize is included in this way, that he who is called to preach the Gospel is also empowered to baptize; but, on the other hand, not every one that is empowered and has the right to baptize thereby also is qualified and called to preach. Therefore Paul can say that Christ had not sent him to baptize, without thereby undervaluing Baptism as a means of grace. The actual performance of the act of baptism, which belongs to the office of the Church, Mat 28:19, the apostles could have carried out through others, Act 10:48; See Joh 4:1-2, who were their hands and Christ’s in this service. But the preaching of the Gospel, through which alone the practice of baptizing is made possible, they could indeed carry on in fellowship with others, but they could not personally omit this function or have it done only through a delegation of preachers, for they were trumpets in the world of nations and lights in the darkness."
The apostle now shows wherein the true power of the Gospel consists, first from the negative side: Not in wisdom of speech, not in the rhetorical argumentation of Greek philosophy, lest the cross of Christ be rendered void, without effect. To clothe the preaching of the Cross in the words of man’s wisdom, to seek for great oratorical effect in teaching its glorious truths, is not only not doing a service to the message of Christ, but it is fraught with the greatest danger to the Gospel, it works harm; it shuts off the power of the divine message. The true Gospel-preacher is not to stand before his congregation primarily as an orator trained in the art of rhetoric, but as a witness of Christ, bearing testimony to the great facts in and through which God has chosen to reveal Himself to men. The doctrine of the justification of a poor sinner, whose center is the cross of Calvary, is bereft of its efficiency by any deliberate display of art, which brings forward the person of the messenger rather than his message. In many modern churches in which the Gospel of Christ is occasionally, incidentally, mentioned, the very intellectual or esthetic pleasure which the hearers feel under the sway of the speaker’s artful eloquence will tend to shut off the influence of the Gospel contained in the minister’s message.
This assertion Paul now supports by a fact from experience: For the Word of the Cross is to them that are lost foolishness, but to us who are saved it is the power of God. The Word of the Cross includes the account of all that was done for the entire world on the cross, the message of reconciliation through the work performed on the cross by the Redeemer. And this Word, this Gospel, is to them that perish, that are on the way to perdition, folly; their considering it so is the cause of their being lost; their reason, their wisdom, their entire sinful nature, rises in opposition to a message which is so utterly at variance with the pride of man, and therefore they do not receive the benefit of its assurance. But on the other hand, that same Word is to them that are saved, that is, to us believers, the power of God unto salvation. The believers of all time know that the Cross of Christ, the message of the crucified Christ, is a saving power. In the statement of the facts of the redemption of the world lies the power of the Gospel, not in any man’s way of presenting them. And the very fact that we have experienced the power of the Word in our own hearts is to us a testimony of our salvation.
For the fact that the wisdom of this world, in regarding the Gospel-preaching folly, paves the way for its own damnation, Paul adduces a Scripture-passage: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will frustrate, Isa 29:14. Just as the wisdom of the Jews, which relied upon shallow cunning, was brought to naught in the days of the prophet, just as their hypocrisy and lip-service resulted in their rejection, so the wisdom of him that believes himself to be exceptionally rich in understanding according to the standard of this world, and with supercilious haughtiness despises the message of the Cross, will be frustrated. "Gentile and Jewish wisdom, united in the rejection of the Gospel, are coming to a like breakdown; and Paul draws a powerful warning from sacred history. " And the warning must be sounded today as strongly as it ever was in the history of the world.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 Christ did not send me to baptize
Christ did not send me to baptize
This means that baptism was not the primary goal of Paul's ministry.
Read full note →
words of human wisdom ... the cross of Christ should not be emptied of its power
Paul speaks of "words of human wisdom" as if they were people, the cross as a container, and of power as a physical thing that Jesus can put in that container. This can be stated in active form. AT: "words of human wisdom ... those words of human wisdom should not empty the cross of Christ of its power" or "words of human wisdom ... people should not stop believing the message about Jesus and start thinking I am more important than Jesus" (See: Active or Passive and Metaphor)
translationWords
send
baptize
preach
good news
word
wise
cross
power
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31 1:17 The important thing is not baptism, but the…
1:17 The important thing is not baptism, but the preaching of the Good News; baptism signifies people’s response to the message. • clever speech: Eloquence, or an appeal to human wisdom. • for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power: Too much emphasis on eloquence and the persuasiveness of human reason can distract from the simple message that Christ died for people’s sins so that they could be forgiven (1 Cor 2:1-5; 15:1-3).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.