Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
The Word of the Cross
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
18 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. · WEB
The cross divides the world into two audiences, and it offends Jew and Greek in exactly the ways each was most sure of.
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 1 Corinthians 1:18.
One message and two receptions, and the difference is not intelligence. The participles describe direction of travel — those who are dying and those who are being saved — so a person's verdict on the cross is a symptom of which way they are going, not the cause of it. And to a congregation ranking teachers by their power to impress, the cross is named the power of God: the thing that looks weakest is where the power actually is.
For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing" 1 Corinthians 1:19.
The pattern is old. Isaiah had said it of Jerusalem 's clever policy in a crisis Isaiah 29:14, and the questions that follow — where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the debater of this age? 1 Corinthians 1:20 — sound like the taunt of Isaiah over Assyria's advisers Isaiah 33:18. Three titles, and between them they cover both cultures in the church: the Greek intellectual, the Jewish scholar, the professional public arguer that Corinth admired.
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 1 Corinthians 1:21.
The sentence has a hinge in it worth slowing over. It was in the wisdom of God that human wisdom was left unable to find him — the failure is not an accident of history but an arrangement. Given every advantage of philosophy, the world didn't know God; so God chose a method its experts would classify as folly. Note what is called foolish: not the message, but the preaching — the announcement of it, a man standing up and telling people something happened.
For Jews ask for signs, Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks 1 Corinthians 1:22–23.
Each culture is offended at its own strong point. The Jews wanted a demonstration of power, and were offered a Messiah executed under a curse Deuteronomy 21:23 Galatians 3:13 — a stumbling block, the very word Isaiah used of the stone God would lay Isaiah 8:14 1 Peter 2:8. The Greeks wanted a coherent account of things, and were offered the crucifixion of a Galilean as the key to the universe. The gospel does not meet either demand. It is not an improved sign or a better philosophy; it is an event that both parties had to be re-educated to want.
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 1 Corinthians 1:24–25.
The two demands are then granted, in a form neither expected: to the called, Christ is the power the Jews asked for and the wisdom the Greeks sought. And the last verse is deliberately impossible — God has no foolishness and no weakness. Paul is measuring the thing men call foolish and weak in God against the best men have, and reporting the result. Corinth's whole scale of values is being weighed here, and the reason follows in the next paragraph: look at who is in the room 1 Corinthians 1:26.
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