Today we continue our series of sermons from the First Epistle to the Corinthians. To help you remember a bit of what we talked about last time, I will briefly remind you.
We spoke about Paul himself and his ministry as an Apostle. He begins his letter by saying that he became an Apostle by the will of God; he did not decide to become one himself. God called him when he actually wanted to kill Christians. This is important because some were saying, “What kind of Apostle is he? Peter, John — they are real, but Paul is not, and his word does not have the same weight as, for example, Peter’s.”
After the greeting, Paul immediately begins to rebuke them for the problem of division. It wasn’t that they had split the church, but within the church they had divided into factions based on their favorite preacher. Some said, “I follow Paul,” others “I follow Apollos,” and others “I follow Cephas” (meaning Peter). Paul will continue to talk about this topic until chapter 4 because it is a very important subject for him. Nothing destroys the spirit of a church like divisions and disputes between brothers and sisters. In Corinth, there was a culture of following a teacher who was very smart or eloquent.
If you remember, his answer was very simple: “Is Christ divided?”, “Was Paul or Apollos crucified for you?”. No, of course not.
And we stopped at verse 17, where he says that he actually did not want to use cleverness and his talents for wisdom and eloquence to convince someone to become a Christian.
The Message of the Cross
“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:17-18).
Notice that Paul knows that for unbelievers, the word about Christ sounds somewhat foolish, but he specifically does not want to change the Gospel to accommodate unbelieving “wise men.” He wants to deliver the Gospel purely, as he received it, because despite the simplicity of the Gospel and its apparent lack of logic to unbelievers, it has great power to save people from eternal destruction and give them eternal life.
The Gospel says that we are sinners and are under the wrath of God, and our conscience knows this is true. And when the Gospel says that Christ, the Son of God, came to earth and died on the cross to cleanse your sins, and if you repent and accept by faith, then God will cleanse you and give you salvation — then:
For one listener, this sounds foolish, but for another, these words pierce the heart like lightning, regenerating that person, and that person is changed by such power that their life will never be the same again. This is the power of the Gospel — to change people’s lives and their families so dramatically.
Even today, we have gathered for communion. For an unbelieving person, this is an incomprehensible thing: “What are they doing there? Everyone is eating bread piece by piece and sharing wine.” It will seem like nonsense.
But for us believers, it is God’s commandment and a sacred thing, and we remember the death of Christ, through which we received the cleansing of sins. Today we will once again feel this power of God’s forgiveness, and we will feel peace in our hearts after communion. This, my dear ones, is the power of God.
The Wisdom of the World and the Wisdom of God
“For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:19-21).
“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” — what words! How can one not agree with this. Look at the so-called developed countries today, where the literacy rate is the highest. You only see all the crazy things in these countries. A person becomes a cat and walks in cat clothes, thinking he is a cat. In undeveloped countries, he would have been sent to a psychiatric hospital long ago, but in developed ones they say, “Well, if he feels like a cat, then he is a cat.” Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
But I would like to draw your attention to verse 21: “Since… the world did not know God through wisdom.” Do not think that the world can know God if it becomes very smart. It is not a question of the mind here; it is a question of the heart and sin. Does a scientist not know that “nothing can happen by itself,” that “if there is something, then there is some force that made it”? Scientists understand that this world must have been caused by some “explosion,” as they say; that is, they understand there had to be some event and something so strong to create the world we see. But as soon as you ask, “And where did this ‘super-particle’ come from, from which the explosion happened, and what caused this particle to explode?” — the scientists say, “Well, we don’t know that yet.” You don’t know, or you don’t want to know that “nothing appears by itself and won’t even explode if there were no one to make it happen.”
But look at what Paul says next: “…it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” That is, God specifically chose a path of salvation that seems like “folly” or nonsense to the unbeliever.
So: if after you tell someone the Gospel, they say it’s foolish, show them this verse and say that it’s supposed to sound that way at first glance.
Brothers and sisters, we should not be ashamed to speak the simple Gospel, as it is in the Word of God, even if it doesn’t sound very convincing at first. God intended it that way. Speak as you received from the Word of God, because it contains great power to give a person salvation and forgiveness of sins!
We Preach Christ Crucified
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:22-25).
These words are very famous; you have probably heard them, and in many churches, they even hung on the walls.
Basically, there are two categories of people: those who look for supernatural signs, miracles, or some special markers; and those who look for wisdom or philosophy, for whom the harder the topic, the fewer people understand it and it’s open only to the very gifted, the better. So that everyone hears and says, “Oh, how smart, look what wise things he says.”
You have probably heard people say more than once, “If there is a God, let Him do this or that, and I will believe.” Or, “If there is a God, let Him show Himself, and I will believe.” These are the ones who look for signs or miracles.
I always tell them: God has already shown Himself in Christ; He has already done many miracles that no one could resist. Но instead of believing in Him, these same people crucified Him.
When He opened the eyes of the man born blind in chapter 9 of the Gospel of John, no one could refute it. Even after the Pharisees did their investigation, they didn’t say to him, “You’re lying, your eyes weren’t closed.” They called his parents and asked them too, but they told this blind-born man that they didn’t believe him because He did it on the Sabbath. That is, the problem is not in the miracle or the signs.
On the other hand, the Greeks, who were famous for their philosophy, sought something wise, philosophical, which only famous thinkers could decipher. When Paul spoke to them in Athens (Acts 17) about Christ, at first they listened to him because he spoke wise things about the “Unknown God.” This sounds mystical, it’s clever, that God does not live in a house built by man, that is, in their temples. But as soon as he spoke to them about salvation and resurrection, they began to laugh and did not accept him.
Paul knows this. Paul was a Jew and knew what the Jews wanted. Paul also grew up in Tarsus, among the Greeks, and he knew very well what the Greeks wanted to hear. But knowing all this, he still says, “we preach Christ crucified,” which is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.
And the question to Paul is: why are you doing this, knowing that this will be the reaction?
The answer is in verse 24: “to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” That is, he knows there are people whom God has called, for whom the preaching of Christ will be both power (which the Jews seek) and wisdom (which the Greeks seek).
In Christ, there is both the power and the wisdom of God. Only this is visible to those whom the Lord called through the Gospel and those who believed. These are not “smart” people and not “religious” people — these are simple people whom God called, and the Holy Spirit regenerated through the preaching of the Gospel.
God’s Election
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are” (1 Cor. 1:26-28).
Paul says: the proof of my words is yourselves, the church in Corinth. Or one could even say: the church in Sydney.
The church consists of people from all walks of life, but especially simple people: not academics, not statesmen, not princes or princesses. These are simple people whom God chose.
Look at how many times he says, “God chose.” The social structure of the church itself speaks of God’s election because here we see different layers of society, especially simple people who came together to worship their God.
In the church, we have not gathered based on our interests (for example: “everyone in our church is a fisherman”), we have not gathered by social status (we have both poor and rich), we have not gathered by nationality (we have different nationalities), we have not gathered by level of education (we have both doctors of science and people who didn’t even finish school normally).
One thing united us — Christ and God’s election and calling through the Gospel. By the way, this phenomenon of the diversity of people in the church proves that the Gospel is not only for the wise or the powerful, but it is for everyone whom the Lord calls, and it is God’s work, not man’s.
And why did God do it this way?
Let the One Who Boasts Boast in the Lord
“so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor. 1:29-31).
From these verses, it is clear why God did it this way: “so that no one might boast.” That is, so that no one could say, “I believed because I was so smart,” or “I believed because I had a pure heart,” “I believed because my mother is a believer,” “I believed because I am a noble person.”
Paul says, “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus.” That is, the fact that you believed and became a Christian, or became “in Christ,” is not from you, but “from Him.”
Brothers and sisters, we must always remember this and not forget that it is from Him that we became and are Christians — by God’s mercy.
Today we will remember His death and suffering. I would like for you, when you take this piece of bread and drink the wine, to think once more about these words and say to yourself: “It is because of Him that I became a Christian, because of Him that I believed, because of Him that I still go to church. GLORY TO YOU, MY GOD!”
We have nothing to boast of, which is why we boast in You! Amen.