1 Corinthians 1-2

What’s Happening?

The church in Corinth was full of former pagans trying to learn the way of Jesus. These new followers needed to get Corinth out of them and Christ into them. However, they were trying to follow Jesus using their old pagan habits of worship and Greek ways of thinking. The Greeks found their strength in arguing over who had discovered the deep, hidden wisdom of the divine. Instead, the Corinthians would need to learn the wisdom of Jesus and his cross. The problem was, this seemed like foolishness and weakness to them. In the midst of these troubles, the Corinthian church wrote a letter to the Apostle Paul, who planted their church, and 1 Corinthians is his response. 

To learn the way of Jesus, the Corinthians needed to unlearn division over favorite teachers (1 Corinthians 1:10). They had been learning from teachers like the talented speaker Apollos and the well-respected apostle Peter (1 Corinthians 1:12). But they began arguing about whose wisdom was better, as if Apollos and Peter were competing Greek orators or pagan-temple leaders with different paths to secret, hidden wisdom. Paul reminds them that these teachers are servants of Jesus, not rivals of each other. They had not come to build their own following among the Corinthian believers, but came to make them followers of Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:11-13). Paul calls them to unite around Jesus and not divide over teachers. He also urges them to not boast about who baptized them. Some thought they had special status as Christians because Paul had baptized them. But Paul emphasizes that real power doesn’t come from who baptized them but from Jesus, the one they were baptized into. And true wisdom isn’t found in the eloquence of their favorite teachers, but in Jesus, the one they preach (1 Corinthians 1:14-17). 

Paul and his fellow teachers preached that the deepest wisdom and strength of God were seen in Jesus’ crucifixion. But this was foolishness to a pagan Greek mind. They were used to worshipping gods of power and cunning, not one who dies in shame. And for the Jews in the church, Jesus dying under Roman oppression was incompatible with their view and hope of a Messiah, or Christ, who would overthrow their oppressors (1 Corinthians 1:18-24). But Paul points out that Christ crucified proves the wisdom and power of God because it defies the categories of human wisdom. If Jesus’ wisdom is so different that it seems foolish, it could have only come from God (1 Corinthians 1:25; 2:13-16). The message of Jesus that the Corinthians have received, despite it seeming like foolishness, proves that God has given them his own Spirit to understand his deepest wisdom, which the world in all its wisdom cannot understand (1 Corinthians 2:12-16). And because they did not comprehend it on their own, they cannot boast in themselves or their teachers, but in God alone who has revealed his wisdom to them (1 Corinthians 1:31). 

Where’s the Gospel?

God’s wisdom uses what the world calls foolishness and his strength uses what the world calls weakness. Paul preached a crucified Messiah without attempting to impress with rhetorical flourish. And his message was received and believed by the unimpressive, non-elite, and foolish of Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:26-27). They did not come to believe in Jesus through their own wisdom or through Paul’s strength, but because they were given true wisdom and strength through the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:10-12). And Paul is convinced that God who enabled them to receive this message will continue to work in them and transform their lives as they follow Jesus more and more closely (1 Corinthians 1:2-9). To become foolish in the ways of the world and wise in the way of God is to see Jesus crucified as wisdom and power.

The way God works always looks like foolishness to the world. In Jesus, ultimate power died in weakness. Ultimate wisdom got himself killed. No one understood why the divine would be crucified because its true purpose was hidden since before time began. No ruler, human or demonic, anticipated what God in his love had planned to accomplish through weakness and foolishness (1 Corinthians 2:7-9). In Jesus, God came as a weak human who claimed to be the Christ who would save his people (Matthew 26:63-64). In doing so, he incited the religious elite, Roman authorities, and the demonic powers working behind them to plot his death. When they successfully put Jesus to death and shame on a cross, they thought they had outsmarted this so-called Christ. But all of them were fooled (1 Corinthians 2:8). The cross was not a trap set for Jesus, but a trap Jesus set for them. On the cross, Jesus died in the weakest place under the strongest powers. But in dying, he outwitted death (Colossians 2:15). Jesus rose from the grave and broke its power over people (Hebrews 2:14-15). He showed from the weakest place, the grave, that he is most powerful. And he proved through the most foolish act, crucifixion, that he’s wiser than any earthly wisdom.

This is why Paul and others like him can’t stop talking about Jesus and his cross. The message of Christ crucified preached by simple fishermen and former prostitutes offers deeper wisdom than the eloquence of pagan Greek orators. Jesus is the only one worth boasting about (Galatians 6:14). No charismatic leader or eloquent preacher can provide deeper wisdom than Christ crucified. When we “foolishly” embrace the cross of Jesus, we wisely embrace life with God and overcome death and the powers of evil. Jesus has united us to one another in our common pursuit of him. Climactically, Jesus has united us to himself, the Wisdom of God, through giving us his Spirit.

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to see the God whose foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of the world. And may you see Jesus as the one who fooled the powers with his crucifixion.