Rites & Callings

If you would take your Bibles
and turn back once again to First Corinthians, where we started
a couple of weeks ago. We started by looking at Paul’s
consideration of the main reason which he has written this epistle. That is a challenge to the factiousness
in which the Corinthians were engaged. With the formal greeting
behind him, in verses 10 through 12, Paul began to address their
behavior itself. And we looked at these verses,
Paul’s process in which he was engaged in restoring this priceless
treasure of his local church, which he had been used by God
to establish. But he begins, and initially
he begins by rebuking the factiousness and then a verification of the
factiousness, the report that he had heard from Chloe, and
then he gives particulars of that factiousness that we saw
in verse 12. I am of Paul, I am of Apollos,
or Peter, or Christ. Well, two weeks ago, I shared
with you that this verse, verse 10, is one of the most significant
verses in my Christian life, especially in the context of
ministry, I shared that it had happened in the context of something
that Walter Martin, the Bible Answer Man, had said. He said
that if two people agree on everything, one of them isn’t thinking. And
I like that, and I told you that I memorized it and for several
years set about questioning everything and looking at ideas and claims
and arguments with a critical eye. always finding something
that needed to be adjusted or something with which I could
disagree. But that whole approach fed pride. And even though I
believed that I was doing the right thing, I realized that
I didn’t like who I was becoming. And then I came across this verse. And once I read and really began
to come to grips with this verse, it was life-changing. I exhort
you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, this wasn’t
just a suggestion on Paul’s part, that you all agree and that there
be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in
the same mind and in the same judgment. And so when I really
began to interact with that verse, the verse I found came at just
the right time. I was open to it. I knew that
I developed a critical spirit, but I’d also become frustrated
with this tendency that I saw of people to just walk away from
arguments at the slight disagreement with this phrase, let’s agree
to just disagree. Because this verse showed me
that in dialogue, especially spiritual discussion, the goal
isn’t simply to bring a peaceful end to that dialogue. The goal
of spiritual, theological, doctrinal discussion is unity, single-mindedness. And so with the old way, Walter
Martin’s one of them isn’t thinking way, Nobody really had to even
dig in and present their argument with excellence and clarity.
Nobody needed to listen to anyone else’s position. Nobody really
even had to think. They just agreed to disagree. And so my concern with that was
that if what somebody really believes in their heart can’t
stand up to a little brotherly scrutiny, a little dialogue,
then it isn’t a very sound conviction. And so I rewrote Walter Martin’s
little saying. My version went like this. If
two people don’t agree on everything, maybe neither of them are thinking. And I made a concerted effort
to stop using that phrase, let’s agree to disagree. I started
listening and thinking and engaging and really stirring others to
a similar kind of engagement. I discovered that it should never
surprise us. When we come across a brother
with whom we disagree about some point of doctrine, I think it
would be utterly absurd to think that two people would just naturally
agree on every point of doctrine. But we don’t have to leave them
there. We should look at such occasions as an opportunity to
learn something and to express and to listen to their convictions
and to think and to dialogue and to possibly even arrive at
consensus. As I mentioned to you two weeks
ago, two brothers in Christ ought to be able to articulate each
other’s position as well as they are able to articulate their
own. Well, Paul is about to engage
in this very process with the Corinthians themselves. They
don’t agree. The Corinthians don’t agree and
they certainly are not going to agree with Paul, at least
not initially. But oneness is his goal. Unity
is his goal. Single-mindedness is his goal. And he sees that within the dear
church that God had used him to establish, in the supposed
one body of Christ, there is division forming and becoming
more pronounced. And rather than just introducing
this principle, that takes people beyond the let’s agree to disagree
mindset, he knows that he must immediately go to the core of
the issue and deal with the cause of this particular division.
The fact that they had formed parties around personalities,
around Paul and Apollos and Peter and Christ, such despicable factiousness
cannot be allowed to remain. If it were to continue, the very
church itself, at least the church in Corinth, would be destroyed.
But Paul knows well that error does not reside in one location
for long. Soon such error would be migrating,
just as Paul had once hoped would be the case with the pure gospel
of Christ, that it would emanate from Corinth throughout the whole
known world. Instead, this error now was preparing
to spread like wildfire, not only in the Church of Corinth,
but the very Church of Christ would be threatened by this deadly
division. And so this destructive error
must be exterminated at once. Paul must get their minds. I
want to look at verses 13 through 19 this morning. Would you begin
by reading those along with me? Has Christ been divided? Paul
was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the
name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none
of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say that
you were baptized in my name. Now, I did baptize also the household
of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether
I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to
baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech,
so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word
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, and the cleverness
of the clever I will set aside. I remember as a little kid, we
got to go to Disneyland. And I can’t recall exactly how
old I was, but I was finally old enough to drive the cars.
They had this incredible highway system in Tomorrowland, complete
with road signs and ivy-covered overpasses. Autopia, they called
it. And I swelled with pride as my
heart pounded, standing in line, waiting to drive these cars. They had real engines, and you
really had to steer them. I had finally arrived. regardless of the fact that I
had no driver’s license. And I really tried my very best
to follow the speed limit and obey the traffic signs and keep
my vehicle on the road. It was amazing. The wind was
in my hairs. The wind was blowing my hair
and I was living the California dream. But then years later, my pride
was checked. I found myself back at Disneyland,
much older this time, 17, 18, still now very disappointed to
suddenly learn that the cars actually straddled a cement guide,
a track, if you will. To my surprise, I hadn’t really
driven the car at all. In fact, once the car was set
in motion, it was immediately apparent that a kid If he were
tall enough to have his own car, could drive the course with his
eyes closed. What kept the car on the road
was not a natural adeptness for steering, as I had once thought. It was a track. A barely noticeable
boundary that kept the cars from an otherwise certain calamity. Paul notes that of the church
as well. The church needs boundaries. Ministry needs a track. The church needs parameters,
otherwise disaster is certain. And so he reminds the Corinthians
of some very basic ministry parameters. God-given limitations that prevent
the church from steering into the ditch of disaster. Let’s look at verse 13. Paul
is identifying his own calling by observing the boundaries of
his God-given calling, and the first set of these parameters
that he wants to look at is ministry parameters. This discussion in verse 13 and
following follows naturally from the preceding discussion. Paul
had rebuked their factiousness. He had verified their factiousness
from the report that Chloe had brought And I imagine that when
Paul identifies the particulars of their factiousness in verse
12, that I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, and
I am of Christ, I imagine they found themselves alone in their
own hearts on an island of shame. We noted what a heartbreak this
news must have been for Paul. His little church, which God
had used him to establish, was now dividing in part over him. And Apollos, as you might remember,
Apollos didn’t care for the division either. Remember, as Paul is
writing this very letter, Apollos is with him, both physically
and positionally. He wants no part of this developing
personality cult. We’re certain that Peter likewise
would also have rejected such man worship just as he had done
in Jerusalem. But to build a divisive personality
cult around Christ, that was perhaps the worst of all. Because
it claimed a false exclusivity to the Lord that was also factious. Paul had to deal with this destructive
error at once and he wastes no time. He begins his dismantling
of this scandalous behavior by laying down some parameters,
some boundaries, some guidelines. Look at verse 13. Has Christ
been divided? And the only possible answer
to that is no, impossible. Paul was not crucified for you,
was he? No, absolutely not. Or were you baptized in the name
of Paul? No. Perish the thought. Well, and to begin his dismantling
of the Corinthian construct, these four personality cults
that we’re developing, Paul begins with a salvo of questions, all
designed to expose and to counter the divided posture into which
the Corinthians had slipped. The first question pertains to
Christ himself, his nature. Has Christ been divided? And this is much more graphic
than our Western minds are probably inclined to receive it. Paul
is indignant at the very idea of what his church has done.
And he holds nothing back in this very blunt question. They formed their camps. They
were developing these multiplied personality followings Paul and
Apollos of Cephas and of Christ. The lines are drawn and so Paul
fires a missile. And is it possible, he puts to
them, that the Lord Jesus Christ could be divided up into portions? Is it possible that he could
be so cut up and allocated to any one individual or group?
As the Shema proclaims it, there is one God. And as Paul echoed
in Ephesians and also here later in chapter eight, there is one
Lord. One Lord, not many. One Lord,
not ever intended to be severed and divvied up like those two
bratty boys once asked Christ to referee and divide up the
family inheritance. Same word. Christ cannot be divided,
and while we may begin to grasp Paul’s very graphic metaphor,
we may still maintain a view of his physical body, and the
idea is abhorrent. But what Paul is referencing
here is the union that Christ has as head to his spiritual
body, the church. Christ cannot be severed from
the church. He cannot be portioned out, dismembered. If the church separates and divides,
Christ’s body would languish and die. It’s contrary to the
very idea of the body of Christ. And though this initial shot
that Paul fires must have hit its mark, This one argument would
have been sufficient. Paul fires another. Paul was
not crucified for you, was he? We know that the very idea is
absurd, and that is Paul’s intention here. He is decimating the Corinthian
so-called logic by taking their foolish notions to the logical
extreme. When they concocted this strange
idea of parties centered around personalities, they effectively
began to wrongly elevate Paul and align themselves under him
who was no savior. Jesus Christ is their one true
head. And so to align themselves with
anyone, especially any mere man, was to put such a person in place
of Christ. But Paul never did pay their
debt. He never could have paid their
debt. What would Paul’s blood have won them? Even if Paul had
gone to the cross on their behalf, he couldn’t have even paid for
his own sin, let alone an entire church’s. This is his solemn assertion.
Jesus Christ did actually die by crucifixion in order to redeem
them. Paul did no such thing. They
had no business putting Paul in the place reserved only for
Jesus Christ. This is the very reason that
we gather each Lord’s Day, isn’t it? To worship the risen Lord
for the salvation won by us or won for us by his sacrifice on
the cross. It’s an astounding truth. And
can it be that God should die for me? But he did. And we dare not grant that honor
to anyone else, especially another sinner for whom he died. But
he asks a third question. Or were you baptized in the name
of Paul? And the obvious answer here is
no as well. And though the point may have
been beginning to sink in, Paul lobs this additional missile. He puts the question to them
about their baptism. And it’s hard for us to even
hear this language, to be baptized in another person’s name. Because
to baptize in the name of a person is to be submitted and aligned
with that person. Because the name stands for everything
about the individual. And so baptism is that rite,
R-I-T-E, in which the believer acknowledges that they were laid
hold of and redeemed by Christ himself. So to be baptized in the name
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as directed in
the Great Commission, is to yield oneself to God entirely, purposing
to live so as to glorify Him alone. And baptism is such a
glorious opportunity for the child of God, an opportunity
to confess one’s faith and to proclaim fidelity to Jesus Christ
alone. Well, that fidelity, was exactly
what was at stake in forming these particular camps. I remember
in college, I had the opportunity to study Japanese business culture. And in that particular country,
employees of a company very proudly wear a company lapel pin. Whenever they’re at work, whenever
they have opportunity, they wear a lapel pin about the company
indicating their undying loyalty to their employer. This is Paul’s
challenge effectively to the Corinthians. They were wearing
the wrong pin. They were giving away loyalty
to others that should only have been to Christ. And were they
ever to be baptized in the name of another, say Paul, they would
immediately have repudiated their baptism to Christ. It would mean
nothing. Charles Hodge said it well here.
He said the grounds of our allegiance to Christ are, first, that He
is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Second, that He has
redeemed us. Third, that we are consecrated
to Him in baptism. All these grounds are peculiar
to Christ. To no other being in the universe
do believers stand in the relation which they all sustain to their
common Lord. There is but one Christ, one
Redeemer, one baptism. of the various prepositions here
that Paul could have used to talk about these things. He selects the most graphic preposition
of all, that we were not placed into Paul. Such an idea would
be absurd and meaningless. We were placed into Christ. What a horrible thought to Paul
this must have been. to have his own converts buying
into this other idea that pitted him against Christ. And so Paul points out that God
has worked out parameters into ministry without which there
would be no parameters at all. God kept the church out of the
ditch by limiting the church to faith alone in Christ alone
to recognize the lordship of Christ by yielding to him alone
for baptism. And God has parameters for Paul
as well. We see those in verses 14 through
16. Paul is identifying his calling,
narrowing his calling by identifying and observing the boundaries
of that calling. And not only in the general ministry
parameters that we see in verse 13, but look at verses 14 through
16. These are Paul’s parameters. These are the limits placed on
Paul by God. I thank God that I baptized none
of you except Crispus and Gaius so that no one of you would say
that you were baptized in my name. No, I did baptize also
the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether
I baptized any other.” God had put divine limitations
on Paul’s practice. In fact, when it unfolded, Paul
probably didn’t even know why. You’ll also likely recall that
we’ve met this Crispus previously, remember? Maybe his name just
stood out to you, different kind of a name. We met him in the
course of our flyover in the preparation to studying this
epistle. It was our background there in
the book of Acts. And we met him there, but let’s
refresh just briefly by turning back to Acts 18. Acts 18, if
you would. And scroll down to verse five.
When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting
himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the Jews
that Jesus was the Christ. But when they resisted and blasphemed,
he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on
your own heads. I am clean. From now on, I will
go to the Gentiles. Then he left there and went to
the house of a man named Titius Justice, a worshiper of God,
whose house was right next to the synagogue. Remember this?
It’s an amazing story. And then to make matters worse,
Crispus, verse 8, the leader of the synagogue, believed in
the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians,
when they heard, were believing and being baptized. So Paul steps
out in faith, weary of battling these faithless Jewish countrymen,
and God blesses this act of faith by providing him a new place
of ministry right next door. And without missing a beat, Paul
keeps right on preaching. And God keeps right on blessing
him. In fact, his very first convert is a man named Crispus,
remember? And Luke doesn’t squander the
opportunity to inform us that this man was the leader of the
synagogue. This is a big deal. And the passage
goes on to tell that many were believing and being baptized.
And even though it doesn’t mention Crispus specifically as one who
was baptized, at some point that happened. At some point that
happened because Paul did it. That’s what he tells us in 1
Corinthians. We don’t know why Paul did that
himself, except that it must have been a thrilling moment
in the life of the church to see the Spirit of God move in
such a way to bring someone so prominent to faith in Christ.
But this was a rare thing for Paul to baptize, as you will
see. Turn back, if you would, to 1
Corinthians. because he says there was another. Paul acknowledged that even though
his participation in church baptisms was rare, there were others,
namely a man named Gaius. And we know this man not from
the book of Acts and not really much here from 1 Corinthians,
just a name. The only other thing that scripture
tells us about Mr. Gaius is that he was a very hospitable
man. In the closing of Paul’s letter
to the Romans, one sentence about this man, Gaius, host to me and
the whole church, greets you. Tell him hi for me, he says.
And we don’t know for sure, and it would be nothing but guesswork
to say that perhaps Gaius was so thankful for the privilege
of having been introduced to Christ and having been baptized
by Paul that he sought to serve in the only way that he could,
room and board. He put Paul up, and maybe the
guy owned a hotel, a Motel 6, or a bed and breakfast, because,
Paul says, that he was not only host to him, but he was host
to the whole church. The saints stayed at Gaius’ place
whenever they had opportunity. And there was only one other
group that Paul could even recall baptizing, Stephanus and his
household, his family. You’ll likely recall that while
Paul was in Ephesus, he received a delegation from Corinth. Remember
those guys? And the delegation included Stephanus. Stephanus was special, very dear
to Paul. Because he and his family were
among the first ones in the region of Corinth, Achaia, to respond
to the gospel. That would really mean something.
And you could easily see Paul hastening to a body of water
to baptize these new converts. But other than these three, Crispus,
Gaius, Stephanus, Paul couldn’t think of anyone else that he’d
baptized. It wasn’t his regular practice.
And Paul here in verses 14 and 15 tells us why. Because God had made it abundantly
clear to him, now I thank God that I baptized none of you except
Crispus and Gaius so that no one of you would say you were
baptized in my name. Paul isn’t suggesting for a minute
here that he didn’t like doing baptisms. He probably rejoiced
like we do to hear somebody name the name of Christ. He certainly
isn’t telling us that he was afraid of water. He didn’t even
have a principled avoidance of the practice. It’s not my job. It’s just that God providentially
protected him, kept him from doing baptisms, Because likely,
had he known that one day he would be the center of this personality
cult, those three men that he did baptize would have had to
find somebody else. But as it was, Paul was thankful
that there hadn’t been more, that God had spared him from
an even greater trouble, which loomed ahead. In other words,
Paul didn’t plan it this way. He didn’t set out to not do baptisms. But it worked out for the good,
Romans 8. It wasn’t the way Paul planned
it. But in retrospect, it was providential
that he didn’t baptize more people. Doing so would have only made
the division that much deeper and greater. At least he could
go back, look back with integrity and be able to say that he was
not building a pool of potential followers. So God providentially
protected by these parameters as well. God kept Paul’s car
on the road, not Paul. And so there were these parameters,
not only parameters for the church, parameters for What’s the reason for these parameters?
God tells us in verses 17 through 19, not only ministry parameters
and Paul’s parameters, but the necessity of parameters. Look
at verse 17. For Christ did not send me to
baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech,
so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word
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 and the cleverness
of the clever I will set aside. Why parameters? Paul explains,
because Christ didn’t send me to baptize. Paul says that God
had put parameters on his own ministry. He wasn’t sent to baptize. Paul isn’t suggesting for a moment
that the right of baptism is not important. It was. It was
clearly expressed in the Great Commission that those who came
to saving faith in Christ were indeed to be baptized. Go therefore
and make disciples of all the nations. baptizing them in the name of
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That word baptizing is a participle
there in that sentence. It’s subordinate to the other
statement. Go therefore and make disciples. And when you go and when you
make disciples, see to it that they are baptized. And so the
command of the apostles was to see to it that this was done.
But for Paul, likewise, even though he wasn’t among the original
12 apostles, he too would have been expected to oversee the
completion of this important step in a believer’s life. And yet here Paul says that Christ
didn’t send me to baptize. There’s no contradiction. Believers
were, upon conversion, to be baptized, just not necessarily
by Paul or any one of the other apostles. They, including Paul, had a higher
calling, a different calling. Theirs was to preach, as we’ll
see in a moment. But Paul addresses that to which
he was not called first, parameters. His primary calling was not to
baptize. He was not sinning if he did
baptize someone, but it wasn’t his primary calling. And this,
remember, is at the heart of Paul’s argument. Believers in
Corinth were lining up under those leaders who had, in many
cases, personally baptized them. And Paul has already rejoiced
that his potential following by baptism was not greater. As
it was, Paul utilized other fellow workers in the gospel to complete
that believer’s commitment by baptizing. But the performance
of this rite was not tied to the apostleship. It didn’t need to be performed
by a noted evangelist or a pastor. Doing baptisms didn’t require
any particular title or training. There was no gift of baptism,
and this is not to diminish the rite itself. Baptism was a declaration
that a mighty work had already been done in the heart and life
of the convert. God’s word had been preached,
a sinner had come to repentance and faith, And now the sinner
was making a public declaration of that fact. Well, that whole
approach hearkened back even to Jesus’ ministry, John chapter
four. Therefore, when the Lord knew
that the Pharisees heard that Jesus was making and baptizing
more disciples than John, and then John, the apostle, the writer
of this gospel, inserts this little note Because as soon as
you heard that Jesus was baptizing, John said, although Jesus himself
was not baptizing, but his disciples were. And now the apostles had
a similar priority preaching the word. They were to informally
deputize others to perform baptisms. It’s a beautiful image. So what
was Paul’s job? Look at verse 17. Paul did not
send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Baptism wasn’t a
God-given priority for Paul. Preaching the gospel was. This
was true of Paul especially, as his directives are so clearly
recorded in Acts 26. He’s giving his testimony there.
In Acts 26, it says, get up, stand on your feet, for this
purpose I have appeared to you, Paul, to appoint you as a minister
and a witness, not only to the things in which you have seen,
but also to the things which I will appear, reveal to you.
Paul’s God-given purpose was to preach the gospel, to make
converts. Paul had his directives, baptism
wasn’t at the top of the list. Augustine explained it this way
very well some 400 years later. Listen to this. Augustine said,
even the less learned can baptize perfectly. You don’t have to
go to seminary to baptize someone. But to perfectly preach the gospel
is a far more difficult task and requires qualifications which
are far more rare. And so the apostles, including
and especially Paul, they were tasked chiefly with preaching
the gospel. But note, Paul was not only commanded
mainly to preach, he was to preach in a particular manner, not in
cleverness of speech. And with this one clause, When
Paul says that Christ sent him to preach not in cleverness of
speech, he utilizes a word that opens the door for him to enter
into a subject on which he will dwell all the way through chapter
four. The subject is wisdom. It’s translated
here as cleverness, cleverness of speech. But Paul says he was
tasked with preaching, not just any manner of preaching, but
preaching devoid of worldly wisdom. Such wisdom cannot even justly
be called wisdom. True wisdom, James says, is a
gift of God. You see, here’s what had happened
in the Corinthian church. In first century Corinth, in
the heart of Greek culture, wisdom was valued exceedingly highly. But it wasn’t godly wisdom. It
was the wisdom of the world. To offer up this kind of wisdom
was to philosophize, to theorize and speculate endlessly about
life’s crucially important questions without ever landing on a position. The longer that you could talk
and dialogue and discourse on some subject, especially if you
did it with verbal precision and creativity, the more exceedingly
wise a person was held to be. And it was especially good if
you could couch your speech in good oratory, that kind of thing. I remember in my first church
as a college pastor, had the opportunity to preach in big
church. And I don’t remember much about it. I think I did
okay for my first time. But the following week, the lady
in the pew behind me recognized me from the week before. And she began raving about my
message the previous week. And my head began to swell, and
just when I thought it would pop, that I might actually really
be something, she expressed that she too was an accomplished orator. And I came crashing back to earth.
Orator? Is that what you thought that
I did last week? It certainly was not my goal.
And in our day, one is considered wise If he knows many different
theories about life and one’s approach to God, if God exists, such a person is open-minded
and considered to be wise. Such wisdom was not for Paul. He didn’t want to go out and
merely give a good speech, make people feel good, hit his marks. This was his particular calling.
This is who he was in Christ. And so he was surely after much
more than preaching a technically sound message that was intriguing
and pleasant to listen to. His aim wasn’t the ear, but the
heart. He wanted not applause and accolades. He wanted repentance and faith.
The Corinthians had relapsed into longing for mere rhetoric. That’s what he’s saying. And
their assessment of preaching was skin deep. It wasn’t the
content of the message. They were more focused on how
the message was communicated, not what was said. And so likewise,
if they found a good one, who became more important than the
what? Content mattered little as long
as the popular orator said it well. Their ears tickled for
someone who could flower up his speech, who could hit his marks
and articulate himself well. They were superficial in their
thinking. And this in part is what had allowed them to wander
from the truth, to come up with this foolish notion of a personality cult. They were
a mess. And so, because Paul was no erudite
Greek speaker, his popularity with the Corinthians was waning.
Well, Paul would have none of it. He had been sent to do something
very different and for a very different purpose. His one aim
was not applause or popularity, but honoring the Christ of the
cross. Look at verse 17, Christ did
not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness
of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. Paul desired nothing more than
to preach the gospel in such a way that the cross A Roman
emblem of cruel torture would be declared to his hearers not
only as a means of Christ’s death, but as the great means of everlasting
redemption. Anything else, preaching focused
on garnering the cheers of the audience would have had a nullifying
effect on the message. to the mingling of human wisdom
with any version of the gospel would weaken it to the point
of uselessness. God had long since called such
behavior foolishness, and that’s what Paul calls it in verse 18.
For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing. They’re never going to like the
form of the message because it’s the content that they hate. As
soon as men begin meddling with the message of the gospel, which
they tend to too often criticize as too shocking for the modern
ear. As soon as they do that, they’re
on dangerous ground. That’s because the true gospel
will always be deemed by unbelievers as foolishness. That word foolishness
derives from the very word from which we get our word, moron. You heard it. To people of the world, a message
about a so-called savior who died on a cross is a message
of weakness, it’s for morons, it’s foolish. And Paul identifies
these so sadly as those who are perishing. They’re on a collision
course with eternal destruction. They hear As Paul says it in
2 Corinthians 2, they smell the sweet savor of Christ, but their
stubborn heart is made up. They’re perishing. It’s veiled
to those who are perishing, 2 Corinthians 4, 3. Paul’s point, why on earth
would anyone toy with the content of the gospel? when its purity
is rejected as outright foolishness, especially since not everyone
has the same low opinion of the word of the cross. There’s another group that’s
separate and distinct from the cross-hating hordes. These are
those who are embarked on the path of life. These are they
who are being saved. God has laid hold of them. They
have embraced the message of the gospel in faith. They are
those who, as Paul says in Romans 1, have been touched by the power
of God. The same message, so abhorrent
to one group, considered foolishness, is the very means of salvation
to the other. Paul’s point, again, is why would
we ever want to tinker with that message? Why would we ever want
to soften it or flour it up or reduce it to a message about
a way to God rather than the way? To blend the word of the
cross with the wisdom of the world is to destroy it. And Paul closes. Paul closes this paragraph by
buffeting his strong statement in 17 and 18 with one last note
of support from no less than divine prophecy,
Isaiah 29, 14. I will destroy the wisdom of
the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.
There in its original, it was spoken to the nation of Israel
a rebuke for their hypocritical service before God, specifically
by supplanting the wisdom of men in place of God’s commands. God rebukes them by undercutting
the very thing in which they had placed their hope, human
wisdom, worldly wisdom, so that when Paul quotes it here, He
is effectively echoing this thought as equally true for our day.
God destroys the so-called wisdom of the wise by the simplicity
of the gospel of the cross of Christ. And with this, Paul initiates
a discussion that will carry all the way through chapter four. It’s a running contrast between
the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. The wisdom of
the gospel, which Paul had preached. One pastor put it this way, the
apostle contrasts two kinds of wisdom, the wisdom of the world
and the wisdom of men. The wisdom, human wisdom, this
he pronounces to be folly, entirely ineffective for the salvation
of men. But the other kind of wisdom?
He calls the wisdom of God derived from God truths which human reason
could never discover. Would you humble yourself before
this God? Oh, merciful God, we thank you
that you didn’t just set things in motion and let them unfold. There were parameters put in
place for the Church of Christ We can’t do just anything, just
as Paul couldn’t just do anything. There’s a need and a reason for
these parameters. The reason is life, eternal life. Lord God, grant us the faithfulness
to your gospel to preach it in its fullness. to herald Christ
as the one who ingloriously died on the cross. And some will mock
us and shame us and ridicule us for that message. But we know that same message
is the power of life. It’s the power of Almighty God
to bring about permanent and lasting change in a sinner’s
life. Grant us that grace, Lord. It’s
in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.