The Cross is the Power & Wisdom of God

Jesus prayed in John 17:14-18, “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

We are in the world but not of the world. We should not conform to, become like the world but we should also not flee or hide from the world. Instead, we are called to be the countercultural alternative kingdom society of God’s people in the world. We are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. If we fail to fulfill this calling, the culture and the spirit of the world, of the nation, and surrounding culture will invade the church. We will become obsessed with self and be blinded by pride. This is what happened to the Corinthian church. As we look at the situation in Corinth try to see the similarities with the world, the society, culture, and nation we live in today.

1. The Greatest City in The World

After lying in ruins for about a hundred years since its destruction, Julius Caesar ordered in 44 B.C. that the city of Corinth be rebuilt. The city grew quickly and by the time of Paul, it had become the largest city in Roman Greece. Its strategic position made it a center for trade and commerce. It became a manufacturing center. It was a major tourist attraction because of all the games held there. It was a center for religious pilgrimages. Immigrants brought their deities with them, and some of the most famous temples of the empire were in Corinth. People from all over the empire came there to find their fame and fortune. It was a multi-cultural cosmopolitan city with its cultural, socio-economic, religious, philosophical, intellectual, racial, and ethnic diversities.

Corinth was the city of opportunity, the city of dreams. Do you want to have the good life? Go to Corinth! Do you want to become rich? Go to Corinth! Do you want to be famous and powerful? Go to Corinth! Many did become rich, famous, and powerful. So the people of Corinth had a growing civic pride and individual pride. I can hear them saying, “This is the best city in the empire, the greatest city in the world.” In this culture, your identity, sense of worth, self-esteem, and status, were all based on your achievements and the recognition by others of your accomplishments. A multitude of inscriptions all over the city describes the achievements of people. Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form and the way of life. 

Of course, there were many problems in Corinth society—religious license, sexual immorality, moral laxity, social disorder, power struggles, and greed. These were caused and fueled by this self-centered desire to be number one, to have it made, to become and be somebody. Corinth was the city of self-made somebodies, a city where many nobodies became somebodies who now looked down on the nobodies. 

The Corinthian believers were from this diverse population, and they brought their cultural baggage and problems with them into the church. Group attachments to particular teachers or leaders created rivalries and divisions within the church. There were disagreements and problems about marriage, worship practices, spiritual gifts, the resurrection, lawsuits among believers, and the tolerance of sexual immorality. They clung to their cultural values and ways. They were blinded by pride, bent by prejudice, and possessed by possessions. In their idolatrous worship of self, they had a hard time accepting the message of the cross and follow the way of the cross. 

2. God’s Power and Wisdom

So Paul explains to them that the cross is the power and the wisdom of God. God’s wisdom, his power, his ways of doing things, are radically different from that of the world. He turns human wisdom and power upside down, on its head. 

1 Corinthians 1:18-25 — For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 

In verse 17 Paul said that Christ sent him to preach the gospel — not with eloquent wisdom lest the cross be emptied of its power. Corinth was well known for its rhetorics, the art of persuasion. It became a form of public entertainment. The content of the message was not important. The aim was to convince, persuade and please the crowd with eloquent words, to play to and sway their emotions. But Paul wants the message of the cross to speak for itself. He wants people to be changed by the power of God, not by rhetorics. He did not want to use clever words to trick people into thinking they believe because they enjoyed his speaking style. The cross had to do its own work. Simply telling the story, preaching the good news of the cross, released a power radically different than the human power, a power that changes lives and communities—the power of God. 

So in preaching the message of the cross Paul did not use clever words like all the other teachers and public speakers in Corinth. On top of that, he did not receive payment for his teaching as was the cultural practice. Instead, he supported himself by working as a tentmaker, an artisan. That did not sit well with the somebodies in Corinth society. In a city where social climbing and status was a major preoccupation, Paul’s deliberate stepping down in status, from teacher to artisan, not receiving payment, and not using the rhetorics accepted by the culture — this was disturbing, disgusting. No wonder that even some believers questioned his apostolic authority, whether he was a true apostle. 

Paul came into a pagan city that prided itself on its intellectual and cultural life. He stood up to speak about Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified by the Romans but raised from the dead by God, and who was now the Lord of the world, summoning people to faithful obedience. This is foolishness to those who do not believe and are perishing, but for those who believe and are saved this is the power of God. That is why Paul says in Romans 1:16 — For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.

The gospel is not just another new philosophy or ideology. It is the power of God that sets aside, turns upside down, confounds, and shatters all human pretensions to strength and wisdom. God destroys the wisdom of the wise, frustrates the intelligence of the intelligent, sets aside the understanding of the experts (v.19). Where is the wise person, the teacher of the law for Jews or the scholar for Greeks? Where is the debater of this age, the philosopher? Where are the experts? No human intelligence, wisdom, science, philosophies, ideologies, political systems or power can save people or the world. Yes, they may bring temporary relief. They may solve current problems, but they are powerless to deal with evil and our sin. These cannot reconcile us to God. They cannot overcome death and give us new, eternal life. What human wisdom and power are powerless to achieve, God’s power and wisdom accomplished through the cross. 

We cannot know God through human wisdom. No human intelligence, wisdom, or science can comprehend and explain the mysteries of God. We can know God only through God’s self-revelation. And He did reveal Himself. First, in his creation since “what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” But foolish human wisdom did not want to believe and accept that. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.” (Ro 1:19-23)

God reveals himself through the preaching of the Word, through the preaching of Christ crucified and resurrected. And even this human wisdom rejects, then and today. The Jews demanded signs. Jesus did many signs and miracles. They did not believe. Then God gave them the biggest sign of all, the crucifixion and the resurrection. And they did not believe. Christ crucified was a scandal, a stumbling block for them. The Messiah was supposed to defeat the pagans, not be killed by them. Shameful. The Greeks looked for wisdom. A crucified Christ, a Savior on a cross? That’s madness. How can God become human and die on a cross? Perhaps if he died some heroic death, but death on a cross, the way of slaves and the worst criminals? No! A Messiah, a Savior, the Lord of the world on a cross — this is utter foolishness, a display of weakness. 

3. Death Leads to Life

But for those who are called and believe the cross is the power and wisdom of God. The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. On the cross and through the resurrection God confronted, conquered, and overturned all human wisdom and power. This is the mystery of God, the great paradox of God’s wisdom and power — death leads to life. (Some of what follows I borrowed and adapted from Paul Tripp’s Lenten devotions.) 

Still today human wisdom and power have a hard time grasping this and consider it folly and weakness. The message of the cross is too simple. So people design their own ways of salvation. Like the Corinthians we are easily blinded by pride, bent by prejudice, and possessed by our possessions. The wisdoms and powers of the world tempt us with the promises of fame, power, wealth, and the good life. We are tempted to seek fulfillment, satisfaction, success in human wisdom and power, not in God’s power and wisdom, in creation instead of the Creator.

Are we striving to be somebodies? Are we chasing after the good life? How would you define “the good life”? What do you feel you can’t live without? What has the ability to make or break your day? What do others have that causes you to envy? If you could acquire just one thing, what would it be? What does our use of money tell us about what’s important to us? Is there something we are asking human wisdom and power to do what only God’s wisdom and power can do? Are we asking creation to do something that only the Creator can do? 

Only the Creator has the power and wisdom to satisfy our longing hearts. Jesus is the bread that will satisfy our hunger. He is the living water that makes us thirst no longer. It is tempting to look to creation, to material things, to human power and wisdom to give us the good life because these things are so obvious. You can see it, taste it, feel it, smell it. But looking to human power and wisdom, to creation, will disappointment and enslave us. They become idols, and we become addicted to them. Because the buzz of joy these give us is so short, we have to go back again and again. And soon we are convinced that we cannot live without the next hit. The things we tightly hold onto takes a hold of us, and they now command our hearts which only God should ever control. And what holds our hearts will dictate our words and behavior. What the heart is full of, the mouth flows over with.

During this Lent season, we are called to remember that sin reduces us all to idolaters of creation, of human wisdom and power. Let us pause and reflect on the things that have taken too strong a hold on us, the things that we have come to crave too intensely and love too dearly. If someone doesn’t rescue us from our idolatrous and worldly pursuit of “the good life,” we will lose our lives. Death leads to life. We must die if we are ever going to live.

And that someone is Jesus Christ. Coming to Jesus and his cross is a death—our death. Christ died so that we may live. Now He asks us to take up our crosses, to lose our lives so that we may find life in Him—real, abundant, and eternal life. Don’t fight the death of your old life. Don’t fight the foolishness and weakness of the cross. It is the power and wisdom of God that gives life. Instead, believe and celebrate the new life that is ours by grace and grace alone. And remember that in this world our Savior will continue to call us to die daily because it is the way of life. Until that day when we are with Him in the new creation where there will be no more death but only life eternal.