1 Corinthians 1:21

Paul is writing to a church split into parties, each attached to a favourite teacher: “I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas” (1 Corinthians 1:12). Behind the quarrels lay a high regard for wisdom and fine speaking. Corinth was a wealthy, crowded port of the Roman Empire with a mixed population, known for its immorality and for its schools of philosophy, where eloquent speakers and clever debaters won admiration and standing. Into that pride Paul sets verse 18, and everything he says about wisdom through 1 Corinthians 1–2 grows from it.

“The preaching of the cross” is the word of the cross. The Greek lógos means something said, and so a message or a subject, and here it is the whole message about the cross: God’s plan to save us through Christ’s atoning death. The cross, staurós, was first an upright stake or pole, then an instrument of execution, and in the gospel it stands for the whole event of Christ’s crucifixion with all that God accomplished in it.

The same message lands in two opposite ways. “Them that perish” are described with the verb apóllymi, which means to destroy fully, to perish or to lose. They are lost and on the road to ruin, and to them the cross is mōría, silliness or absurdity, something to scorn. Paul says the same of the natural man later in the letter: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Jesus set the same two ends before us when he said that God gave his Son “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16), and that the one who believes in him is free of condemnation (John 3:18).

“Unto us which are saved” is a present participle in Greek, so it speaks of those who are being saved, a work God has begun in us and is carrying on. To us the cross is the power of God. The word is dýnamis, force or might, often used of miraculous power, and here it is God’s own power to save, to give new life and to carry his purposes through. Paul says the same in Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). The line between the two groups is the real line that runs through humanity before God, between judgment and salvation.

“For it is written” brings in Scripture, and the words that follow are from Isaiah 29:14, probably as they read in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. Paul shows the Corinthians that God dealt this way with proud human wisdom long before the cross, so the pattern he describes carries God’s own authority.

“I will destroy” is apóllymi, the same verb as “them that perish” in verse 18. The wise who scorn the cross and the wisdom they trust come to the same end, for God brings that wisdom to ruin and it fails at the very thing it claimed to do. The word for wisdom, sophía, covers wisdom of every kind, higher or lower, worldly or spiritual, and in this passage Paul uses it both of human wisdom and of the wisdom of God. In this verse it is human wisdom that sets itself against what God has revealed.

The second line says the same thing again in other words, which makes it stronger. “Bring to nothing” is athetéō, to set aside, and so to disregard, cancel or make of no effect. “Understanding” is sýnesis, the power to grasp and comprehend, and “the prudent” are the synetós, the intelligent and shrewd who have it. God promises to make useless the cleverness of those who lean on themselves, and he stands above every human mind.

Verse 20 applies Isaiah’s word to Paul’s own day in three questions. “The wise”, sophós, points to the philosophers and thinkers of the Greek world, who looked for truth by reason and argument. “The scribe”, grammateús, was the Jewish scholar of the law of Moses, who copied, explained and taught the Scriptures, so deep religious learning is included too when it leans on itself apart from God’s revelation in Christ. “The disputer of this world” is the debater and skilled arguer, found among Greeks and Jews alike. Isaiah also asks, “Where is the scribe?” (Isaiah 33:18). Each “where” points to people who have nothing to offer when it comes to knowing God and being saved, and “of this world” marks their wisdom as earthly and passing.

The last question expects the answer yes: God has made the wisdom of this world foolish. The verb mōraínō comes from the word for a fool and means to make foolish, or to make something tasteless and dull. God has shown worldly wisdom to be empty wherever it tries to grasp or get around his plan of salvation through Christ crucified. Paul describes the same downfall in Romans: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21–22). That is why Paul’s own preaching in Corinth leaned on the Spirit’s power, so that their faith would rest on the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4–5), and why he warns believers elsewhere against being taken captive through philosophy (Colossians 2:8).

“In the wisdom of God” speaks of God’s wise ordering of history. In his wisdom he let the world try to find him by its own wisdom, and it failed. The verb ginṓskō means to know, come to know, perceive or understand, and for all its philosophy the world never came to know God that way. Its failure exposed the limits of fallen human reason and our need for God to make himself known, and it prepared the way for the means he had chosen.

“It pleased God” (eudokéō) speaks of his good pleasure and settled will. He chose “the foolishness of preaching”, where “foolishness” is mōría again, the world’s verdict, and “preaching” is the proclamation itself, the kērygma, whose content is Christ crucified. Its purpose is “to save them that believe”. God does the saving, and those who believe receive it as a gift: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

God’s choice has its reasons, and Paul gives them in the verses that follow. It shows how little human wisdom can do, so that no one can boast before God, who chose the foolish and weak things of the world to put the wise and the mighty to shame (1 Corinthians 1:26–29). It makes salvation wholly a work of grace, received by trusting God’s message. And it places the power of the gospel in its divine source and content, whatever the eloquence or standing of the one who preaches. All the glory goes to God, for Christ “of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31).

“The Jews require a sign” uses aitéō, to ask, beg, call for or demand, and they wanted proof before they would believe. A sign, sēmeîon, is a sign, mark or token, an indication, especially one with a ceremonial or supernatural meaning. What they asked for was the kind of mighty act they knew from their history: the plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna from heaven. They looked for a Messiah who would prove himself with plain displays of power and set up his kingdom, and a crucified Messiah contradicted all of it. Their fathers had put God to the test in the same spirit at Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17:7). Jesus did many signs, and he rebuked those who wanted them only as a spectacle. When the scribes and Pharisees asked him for a sign, he pointed them to the sign of Jonah, his own death and resurrection (Matthew 12:38–40), and he spoke of those who would believe only if they saw signs and wonders (John 4:48).

“The Greeks”, Héllēn, are properly the people of Hellas, then anyone who spoke Greek, and especially anyone who was not a Jew, so here they stand for the Gentile world shaped by Greek culture. They “seek after wisdom”, and zētéō is to seek, an earnest search or inquiry. The wisdom they pursued was philosophy, reasoned argument and eloquent speech. In both peoples, people set their own terms for God, one through religious tradition and the other through human reason, and the gospel answers both on God’s terms.

“We” is emphatic, meaning Paul and his fellow apostles, whatever others in Corinth prized. “Preach” is kērýssō, to herald or proclaim as a public crier does, and in the New Testament chiefly to preach the gospel. A herald announces the message he has been given, and its content is “Christ crucified”: Jesus is the Messiah, and the Messiah was crucified. His death is both the point of offence and the means of salvation. Paul told the Corinthians that he had resolved to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2).

“But unto them which are called” turns from those who stumble and scoff to those God has called. The word klētós means invited or summoned, and the called are those God has drawn to himself by his own gracious invitation and set apart for his purposes. Seeing who Christ truly is comes from God’s call, by his grace, and owes nothing to intellect, merit or effort.

“Both Jews and Greeks” shows that God’s call reaches every people. The Jews had the law and the covenant, and the Gentiles had stood outside it, and in Christ that barrier comes down. All are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28), and Christ is our peace, who has made the two one (Ephesians 2:14–16). The same words answer the divisions in the Corinthian church.

Paul says that Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom, so these belong to who he is as well as to what he does. His power was shown in his miracles, in his authority over sin and death, and above all in his resurrection, by which he was declared to be the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4). It is the exceeding greatness of God’s power that raised him from the dead (Ephesians 1:19–20). His crucifixion, which looked like weakness, was where he conquered sin, Satan and death and triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:14–15). His wisdom is just as full, for in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). God’s plan of salvation, conceived in eternity and carried out in time through Christ, with redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7–10), is the height of divine wisdom. So Christ meets both the Jewish demand and the Greek search, in a way neither people expected. The power the one looked for in signs and the wisdom the other sought are both found in Christ crucified.

“Because” gives the reason for verse 24. “Foolishness” here is mōrós, a different word from the mōría of verses 18, 21 and 23, meaning foolish, dull or stupid, and it is the word English borrowed for “moron”. “Weakness” is asthenḗs, feeble or infirm, lacking strength. “God” is theós, the common word for a deity, which with the article names the supreme Divinity, the one true God. Paul sets the least that anyone could say of God beside the most that people can produce themselves, and God’s least is greater. His “foolishness”, above all the message of a crucified Saviour, leads to salvation and eternal life, while human wisdom left to itself ends in blindness and ruin. His “weakness”, the public execution of an innocent man that looked like utter defeat, was where he triumphed over sin, death and the powers of darkness and redeemed his people. No army or government could ever have done that.

The cross is the central act of God’s work in history. There Christ, the Lamb of God (John 1:29), offered himself once for all as the perfect sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 9:26). He fulfilled the Passover sacrifice and the Day of Atonement and all that the Old Testament sacrifices and the prophecy of the suffering servant foreshadowed (Isaiah 53). In him God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). Those who believe receive new life and the indwelling Holy Spirit, and they walk in newness of life, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (Romans 6:4). This is why the message of the cross is the power of God: it carries the finished work of Christ, by which God saves.

This passage gives us a salvation that rests wholly on God. We are saved by believing the message of a crucified Christ, and God’s power does the saving, so none of us has any wisdom or merit of our own to boast of. The power of the gospel lies in God himself, which is why Paul could preach it plainly in a city that loved eloquence and trust the Spirit to open eyes. When the message is mocked or waved away, verse 18 has already told us to expect it, and the same word that some call foolish is still the power of God to those he calls. Above all the passage shows us who God is: wiser than all our wisdom, stronger than all our strength, and pleased to save through what the world despises, in the crucified Christ, who is himself God’s power and God’s wisdom.