The Good Kind of Folly, The Bad Kind of Wisdom

Sermon Transcript

On November 3, 2020, the headline of the New York Times read, “Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected the 46^th President of the United States.” Do you remember how it hit you when you read it? Maybe you didn’t read it in the New York Times, but I’m guessing you saw it somewhere. Maybe you were ambivalent about it, but for many in America, that simple message evoked strong, and opposing reactions: Some rejoiced, while others lamented. More recently, on November 5, 2024, the headline at the Times was, “Trump wins 2024 Presidential Election, Defeating Harris.” How’d that one hit you? Once again, for many in America there was a strong, yet opposite response: Some rejoiced, while others lamented.

 

Big news has a way of doing that. As we turn to the Bible today, there is one big news headline that runs throughout all its pages, and the Bible summarizes that news with one word: gospel. The word gospel actually comes from a word meaning good news, and yet we are going to see in our passage today that the gospel also produces radically different responses in its hearers. We’re in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, which may surprise you if you’ve been with us recently, because we’ve been preaching through Proverbs on Sunday mornings. Last Sunday we finished the first nine chapters, and Lord willing, we’ll look at the last 21 chapters starting in 2025 with a series of topical sermons such as “Proverbs on anger” and “Proverbs on work” and “Proverbs on justice”. But before we get there, for the next three weeks we’re flipping over in our Bibles to the New Testament letter of 1 Corinthians, to look at what it has to teach us about the central theme of Proverbs: Wisdom. It’s not the only New Testament perspective on wisdom, nor is wisdom the only thing we’ll talk about as we go through it, but it is a prominent theme in this section of 1 Corinthians, and the perspective it provides is important.

 

In the part of this letter on which we are focusing Paul is writing to the church in Corinth to address division in the church, a perennial risk for churches, including our own. Whether it comes by pitting one Christian teacher over another or through a sense of our superiority, both of which were an issue in Corinth, division in a church is a big deal to God. Paul introduced the issue in the passage just before this one, and in the passage just after the section we are looking at, he is basically going to tell the church in Corinth that when they act like this, they are acting like the world. In between, then, what he wants to show them is how the gospel they believe should actually make them different from the world, because though it is good news, the response it evokes from the world and from we who believe it is radically different. The gospel is foolish to the world but powerful in us, and we’ll see that in this passage today by looking at the message of the gospel, and then at the power of the gospel.

 

The message of the gospel

 

Our passage begins in verse 18 with the big idea of the whole passage: 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. The verse begins with the word “for”, which connects it to verse 17, where Paul says Christ did not send him to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. And why would the cross of Christ be emptied of its power if he preached it with words of eloquent wisdom? Because, verse 18: The word of the cross by its nature is folly to those who are perishing. Therefore, if you present it with words of eloquent wisdom, you’ll be undercutting the very message you are proclaiming.

 

Notice that while the gospel is the same whether presented to those who are perishing or to those who are being saved, when you present it without eloquent words of wisdom, its reception depends on the recipient, not on the preacher. “Those who are perishing” are not just those who are dying bodily; that would apply to everyone. Rather, those who are perishing are those who are still dead in their sins and are therefore on their way to a final perishing under the judgment of God, what the Bible elsewhere calls the second death, or hell, while those who are being saved are those who have been converted to faith in Christ and who are now therefore on their way to eternal life after death in heaven.

 

Why is it the case that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, whereas to us who are being saved it is the power of God? Paul begins to explain in verse 19, and there his first explanation is because God prophesied through the prophet Isaiah that this is the very thing he would do. Interestingly, the original audience of those words in Isaiah were the Israelites, and God was rebuking them for honoring him with their lips while their hearts remained far from him. The “wise” he’s describing, then, are not the same as the wise in the book of Proverbs, those who fear the LORD and guard their heart with all vigilance. The wise God speaks of in Isaiah and in verse 19 of our passage are those who study a lot, who can put together fine rhetorical works, who can make a rational argument, but whose hearts are far from him. In the words of verse 20, they are those who have the “wisdom of the world” or in verse 26 are “wise according to worldly standards”. Whereas Proverbs 9:10 says the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight, in Isaiah God said of these “wise” ones that their fear of him was merely a commandment taught by men, and we see in verse 21 that those who have the wisdom of the world were those who did not know God. And though they held the position of “the wise” in Israel for a time, God predicted a day when he would destroy their wisdom, and that day has now come through the cross, especially in the proclamation of the message of the cross.

 

For since, in the wisdom of God, verse 21 says, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. First notice that the world did not know God through wisdom. Here he has in mind both the Jewish and the Greek world, as in verse 20 he mentions not only the Jewish scribes, but the “debater” of this age, likely a reference to Greek rhetoricians. Whether Jews or Greeks, none in the world were able to know God through wisdom. I mentioned when we looked at Proverbs that there is a general revelation of God in the world, and that explains in part why we can find other ancient books of wisdom outside the Bible that have some surface level of similarity to the book of Proverbs. God has even made it clear that he exists through the things he has made; plenty of people in the world did know that. But when it says here in verse 21 that the world did not know God through wisdom, it means none came to a saving knowledge of God through wisdom. Not even the scribes, who studied not only the general revelation of God, but the scriptures themselves, knew God through wisdom! Remember what Jesus said to the Jewish leadership when he was on earth: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).

 

That’s not to say that no one before the cross was saved; Jesus also said that Abraham saw his day and was glad (John 8:56). But to be saved even then, they needed more than a general revelation of God. To this day the general revelation of God in nature that is available to everyone is just enough to leave us without excuse. Nobody comes to a saving knowledge of God through it. And even with the special revelation of God, whether spoken by God directly to people like Abraham or through prophets or written down for us in scripture, while it is able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 3:15), you will only be saved by actually placing your faith in Christ Jesus. Merely searching the scriptures saves no one; you must follow the scriptures to the one to whom they point, Christ Jesus, and come to him, to have eternal life. You cannot come to a saving knowledge of God by searching the scriptures diligently, avoiding temptation, giving generously, listening to your parents, working hard, and loving your neighbor, even though Proverbs tells us all such things are wise in God’s sight. In the wisdom of God, verse 21 tells us, we cannot be saved through such wisdom.

 

Instead, it pleased God through the folly of what the apostles preached to save those who believe. How then can you be saved? It’s through the preaching of the gospel, the word of the cross. To understand that, you first must understand why we need a cross at all. There is a real God who exists outside our minds who made all things, including you and me. He made us in his image for a relationship with him in which we love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and for a life in the world in which we image, or reflect, what he is like. So as he is love, we are to love, as he is just, we are to do justice, as he is wise, we are to live wisely, and so on. But we all have in common not only our creation in the image of God; we also have in common that we have not loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, nor have we reflected his image accurately in the world. From our birth it had been our inclination to rebel against him and give our deepest love to something other than him, whether we have acknowledged his existence or even searched the scriptures diligently from a young age! And because God is so just, that violation of what he requires demands a punishment, a punishment of death forever apart from his favorable presence in hell. Growing up I’d assumed we were all heading for heaven and you had to do something really terrible to end up in hell; the Bible’s message is that we are all headed for hell, and God has to do something really glorious for us to end up in heaven, and the message of the cross is that he has! Out of sheer mercy and love, God the Father sent God the Son to take on human flesh, and to live as the perfect image of God for us, but then to die on the cross to pay the penalty for all the sins of all who would ever believe in him, and then to rise from the dead to eternal life so that now whoever turns from their sins and comes to him is forgiven of their sins, given a saving knowledge of God, and receives the gift of eternal life apart from any of their own good works. That’s the message of the cross.

 

I cannot rationally prove this message to you; no one can. But I can preach it to you. And it has pleased God to save those who believe through such preaching. Believe that message today, and you too will be saved. But some demand more. In verse 22 we read that Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. The Jews of Jesus’ day were generally expecting a powerful Messiah to come and bring them political liberation, and so demanded some sign of his power. The Gentiles or Greeks on the other hand were more drawn to logical rigor and rhetorical flare. The message of the cross satisfies neither. Far from a powerful work of political liberation, it looks like the ultimate weakness: Not only did Jesus die; he was forcibly nailed to a cross—where’s the strength in that? And how could you rationally prove that Jesus’ death on the cross was actually accomplishing our salvation? That he died on the cross is as verifiable a fact of history as any other fact of ancient history, but that he died for our sins cannot be rationally proven; it can just be preached.

 

If you are here today and you are not a Christian, are you demanding more than that from God? People say things like this all the time: “I could never believe in a God who ________.” What is that? It’s a demand. You’re saying to God, “Unless you do what I think God should or say what I think God should say, I won’t believe in you,” but what if in doing that you miss the real God? What if you perish eternally because you demanded something from God that he doesn’t owe you? In the best sense of the word, that’s foolish.

 

And not everyone does that to God. Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. When Paul was addressing the church in Corinth earlier in this chapter, in verse 9, he told them that God called them into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. In doctrinal terms we call this the effectual call. There is a general call of the gospel that goes out to all who hear it; you heard it already today. All who hear are called to come to Christ, but not all do. But the effectual call, the way the word is used here, is when God also calls through that general call in such a way as to affect the willing response of those so called, hence the term effectual. To those who are called like that, both Jews and Greeks, Christ crucified is revealed to them to be the ultimate power and wisdom of God. The called see with the eyes of faith what the world cannot: That at the cross the power of God is on display as he cancels our sin and accomplishes our redemption, and at the cross the wisdom of God is on display as the cross reveals God’s wise plan of salvation, whereby he has made a way for the demand of his justice against our sin to be satisfied without us having to satisfy it by our eternal condemnation, because Christ satisfied it in full when he died on the cross.

 

No wisdom of man could ever devise it; no power of man could ever accomplish it. And, therefore, the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Do you see the wisdom and power of God in the message of the cross today? When you come to church, let the message of the cross drive your worship. Praise God in song for his wisdom and power as it is revealed in the cross. I addressed the non-Christians in the room earlier, but let me ask my brothers and sisters in Christ…are you demanding more from God than what Christ did for you on the cross before you will worship God? Are you saying in your heart, “God you must first get me this job or this house or answer this question or resolve this issue in my life before I will worship you in spirit and truth”? Brothers and sisters, there is nothing greater that God can do for you than accomplish your salvation at the cross. There is no greater display of his power and wisdom he can give you. If you really believe that you were destined for hell, and that God had every right according to his justice to send you there, but not only has he not sent you there, he’s given his only Son to take the punishment you deserved, though he was totally innocent, such that now you are not perishing, but are being saved, what possible good reason could there be to restrain your worship of him? As the hymn says: “To God be the glory, great things he has done, so loved he the world that he gave us his son, who yielded his life, an atonement for sin, and opened the life gate, that all may go in…Oh come to the father through Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he has done.”

 

And let the cross then shape your life. If the cross is the place where the wisdom and power of God are revealed, what kind of wisdom and power are you seeking? The wisdom of God is good; power from God is good, but you can only get that kind of wisdom and power by first admitting your folly and weakness, trusting wholly in Christ as the wisdom and power of God, and then, by his Spirit, walking in the way he walked: The way of the cross. You want to grow in knowledge; that can be good. You want to grow in knowledge of the scriptures even; that can be good. But we can also easily seek these things as a way of feeling close to God while our hearts remain far from him. We can also easily seek these things so we can win arguments, attract attention, and feel superior to others who know less. But the fear of the LORD is the beginning of true wisdom, and any such wisdom he gives is given so that we might use it in the service of others. The only power worth having is the power to make an impact in the lives of others for their good, a power that only comes as we are willing to take up our cross and follow Christ, even when it means allowing ourselves to be hated and killed by the very people we seek to love, as it meant for Jesus himself.

 

Speaking of power, it is revealed not only in the message of the gospel, but as we’ll see beginning in verse 26, in the impact it had on the lives of the Corinthians themselves. Let’s look next at the power of the gospel.

 

The power of the gospel

 

Before verse 26 Paul has been talking in general terms about the word of the cross. Now in verse 26 he turns to the Corinthians and says: Consider your calling, brothers (and yes that includes sisters): Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. He doesn’t say none of them were; we know from Acts 18 that the ruler of the synagogue was one of them, for example. Some of you here today are wise in the eyes of the world, hold prestigious positions of authority, and/or were born into wealthy families with good reputations. You shouldn’t feel guilty about any of that, nor should you feel like the gospel isn’t for you. But, Paul says, not many in the church in Corinth were like that. The majority of the church was relatively uneducated, of lower social standing, and born to “common” families.

 

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, and the text even goes on to say that he chose the “things that are not”, to bring to nothing the things that are. When God came to save people, he did not pander to what the world already had deemed wise and powerful. Think about this: If you wanted to start a powerful movement, who would you want to enlist? You’d probably want highly skilled, highly trained people: Doctors, lawyers, accountants, Navy SEALS. You’d probably want people with some money to contribute: The wealthy. You’d probably want people with high positions: Government officials, heads of companies. You’d probably want people who are well connected: people from prominent families, maybe even social media influencers. And such people are used to being wanted; they’re “in high demand”; they get asked to come to events, serve on committees, and take jobs. And that feels good, doesn’t it? So what do many of us do? We try to become those people.

 

But God wanted to make it abundantly clear that while becoming those people may get you something in this world, it will not take you from someone who is perishing to someone who is being saved. All the titles, follows, and money will not do you one bit of good when you appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And to make that abundantly clear to the Corinthians, when the gospel was preached in Corinth, God chose to effectually call mostly those who had none of that stuff. Many of you here today have comparatively little of that stuff, and some of you have almost none of it. But God saved you to show everyone that that stuff isn’t the stuff through which we know God. If the church’s membership looked roughly like the Union League’s, what would everyone think? Ah, the same things that get someone into the Union League must be the things that get someone into heaven, but by God’s design the church of God in Corinth was a living witness against that idea.

 

How do you feel about that idea? Christ is offered to everyone, including members of the Union League, but you should realize that God ordinarily delights to call the nobodies, and that by coming to Christ, you are also joining a family that consists mainly of the nobodies in the world. How do you feel about sharing the Lord’s Supper with someone of a lower class than you in the eyes of the world? How about sharing your dinner table? How do you feel about the fact that they could actually be more spiritually mature than you and you might actually need to humbly learn from them how to become more like Christ? Can you imagine yourself being discipled by someone the world tells you you’re better than? We all need our minds to be renewed in this, don’t we? Here’s the thing to realize: We’re all equally created by God, we’re all equally guilty under sin in God’s sight by nature, and the only way any of us can be saved is by the sheer mercy of God first sending his son to die on a cross and then effectually calling us so that we believe that message of the cross, and he proves that’s the case by choosing to save those the world sees as the nobodies. Love those the world sees as nobodies, and stop viewing them as nobodies. Take a look at who you’re trying to spend time with: Are they all those the world views as better than you? Love them too; that’s fine, but if those are the only people you’re trying to get to know, what’s that indicate? And if you are one of those the world has told you are a nobody, don’t let that be your identity. The reality is that apart from the grace of God, we are all actual nobodies, whatever our standing in the world, but look at what is true of Christians in verse 30.

 

And because of him, because of God that is, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. You catch that? Because of God you are in Christ Jesus. Have you seen that all throughout the passage? First verse we looked at, verse 18: 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. Their response to the gospel doesn’t determine their condition; their condition determines their response to the gospel. It’s those who are called in verse 24 to whom Christ is both the wisdom of God and the power of God. It’s God choosing in verses 27-28, and it is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus. You say, “but I chose to believe in Jesus,” yes and amen, but why did you choose to believe while so many others hear the same gospel, the same call, and don’t choose to believe? Don’t you kind of intuitively sense that it’s only because God opened your eyes and changed your heart to believe? As the great hymn we introduced last week puts it, “Why was I made to hear your voice, and enter while there’s room, when thousands make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come? Twas the same love that spread the feast, that sweetly drew us in, else we had still refused to taste, and perished in our sin.” It’s because of God that you are in Christ Jesus.

 

And that’s the new identity for the nobodies in the eyes of the world, and even for the few somebodies in the eyes of the world who become Christians: In Christ Jesus. That’s the truest, most important thing about you if you are a Christian. You are in Christ Jesus. You were born in Adam, the first human. He was your representative before God, and in him you were guilty and dead, just like me. But now because of God, if you believe the gospel today, you are in Christ Jesus, and therefore he is to you wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. I’ve been saying throughout our series in Proverbs that wisdom is the art of perceiving reality and living in accordance with it. This is saying that Christ Jesus has become to us who are in him the ultimate reality. In his work on the cross we see the center of God’s plan of salvation, the big reality behind everything that God is doing. We need a wisdom from God, not a wisdom we attain by our efforts, and when we believed in Christ, he became to us that wisdom.

 

And, we need a righteousness from God, and Christ became that righteousness for us too when we believed in him. Righteousness refers to our standing before God as the perfect and ultimate judge. In the ancient world when someone appeared before a judge in a trial, the judge would evaluate the evidence, and then declare him either “righteous” or “guilty”. To declare the defendant righteous was to justify him; to declare him guilty was to condemn him. In Adam we were all guilty and therefore under the sentence of condemnation. The evidence was all against us: Not only was there Adam’s sin, but there were also the many ways we sinned against God in our own persons, and there was the heart of rebellion behind even our outwardly good deeds. But when because of God we believed in Christ, he became to us righteousness from God. All the good evidence he accumulated through his perfect life and sacrificial death was imputed to us when we believed, and in that moment, we were justified, declared righteous in God’s sight. Even today as you continue to struggle against sin and remain painfully aware of its presence in your life, on your best days and on your worst days, you are righteous in God’s sight if you are in Christ Jesus, because you have a righteousness from him, a righteousness not your own, a perfect righteousness: the righteousness of Christ. He is your righteousness.

 

He also became to us sanctification and redemption. Sanctification refers to setting something apart for God’s exclusive use. Under the Old Covenant, when a common loaf of bread was set apart for use in the tabernacle, it was made holy, or sanctified. In Adam, we were instruments for sin, but in Christ we have been set aside for God’s exclusive use. And redemption conveys a similar idea: It was a term taken from the marketplace and especially used for slaves: If you redeemed a slave, you paid a price to purchase them from their master and make them your own. We were slaves of sin, cursed under its dominion, but Christ’s death on the cross was the payment God’s law required to set us free and make us God’s own. Do you see what’s true of you then if you are in Christ Jesus today? Though you were not wise in yourself, Christ has become to you wisdom from God. Though you were guilty, Christ has become your righteousness, and now you stand justified. Though you were devoted to sin, Christ has become your sanctification, and now you are exclusively devoted to God. Though you were a slave to sin, you are now free, free from sin, free from the curse of the law, free even from the fear of death, for though you will die, you will live.

 

And therefore, verse 31: Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Did you see that in verse 29 as well? Why did God choose to save in this way? So that no human flesh might boast in the presence of God. If God mostly saved the wealthy, the powerful, the smart, and the prominent, what would that lead them to do? To boast in their wealth, their power, their intelligence, and their prominence, and to then look down on all those who didn’t have it. You feel that temptation? The gospel is what you need. Whether you happen to be one of the few Christians who is admired by the world or one of the many who the world sees as a nobody, let the gospel reshape your identity. To you who have much in the world, you should be able to look at all you have and all the admiration people in the world throw at you and say in your heart, “You know none of this matters very much, right? You know God is radically unimpressed with all of it, right? You know I have wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, I only have it in Christ, and I’m only in Christ because of God?” And to you who are nobodies in the eyes of the world, you should be able to look at all that other people have and all the admiration people throw at them and not at you, and say in your heart, “You know none of that matters very much, right? I mean, why would I waste my life resenting those people, trying to become one of them, or trying to get them to like me, when I already have wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption in Christ Jesus?” Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, and let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.