Christ the Power and Wisdom of God

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ ²⁰Where 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? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Both to the cultured Greek and to the pious Jew the Christian message seemed like pure folly. Paul knows this and expresses it clearly. The Gospel still – for many – just does not make any sense! Paul makes the point that all the wisdom in the world had never found God – and this too remains true even today.

Let’s look briefly at the essence of the Christian message:

1. God has come to the earth and taken on the form of a human;

2. The ordinary carpenter from a remote and insignificant settlement – was indeed this God incarnate;

3. Jesus rose from the dead;

4. Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of the majestic Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament;

5. Jesus will come again to judge the world – the living and the dead;

6. There is an urgent need for people to repent and receive the promised gift of the Holy Spirit.

For Jews, being hanged in any form was a sign that one was accursed of God (Deut 21.23) so the crucifixion of Jesus was ultimate proof for them that Jesus was not the Messiah. Even though Isaiah 53 speaks of a suffering servant, the Jews never dreamt of a Messiah that would suffer. Jews also looked for signs – starling things. Jesus had performed many miracles and wonders and signs, but he was still too humble and meek and avoided the spectacular and ended up on a cross. Barclay concludes: “… it seemed to them an impossible picture of the Chosen one of God.”

In Britain particularly, Jesus has not been taken seriously by an increasing majority, especially since the 1960s because it just does not seem to make sense. Even senior clergy have taken pains to ‘prove’ that the Bible is unreliable, a mere fallible and very imperfect document that has in fact been discredited.

But what of the experience of credible and intelligent people? Some of the greatest British minds have been those of profound faith in this same Jesus of Nazareth who they have found, intimately and personally, to be whom he claimed to be, not because this is a rational thing, but something much more sophisticated – faith – what Kierkegaard claimed was the essence of what it means to be human.

Rowan Williams, Alistair McGrath, John Polkinghorne, Keith Ward, John Macquarrie, Richard Swinburne – all acknowledged as some of the greatest intellects of our time – and all men of the deepest and profound belief in the Christian message summarized above.

It is time that we stop worshipping at the shrine of reason and the limits of the human intellect, because that is to flatten and narrow human existence (to use an expression of one of the greatest philosophers of out time – Charles Taylor – and a lay Roman Catholic Canadian – not the African dictator!). Even when we have understood everything that it is possible for a human to understand – there is more – much, much more. It is available to all, not just to the great intellects, because it is God’s gift to humanity in and through the anointing of God’s Spirit Himself poured out into the hearts and minds of all who would receive it. It is called faith and it makes all who receive it wiser than human wisdom, stronger than human strength.