1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Christ the Power and the Wisdom of God
18 For the message about Christ's death on the cross is nonsense to those who are being lost; but for us who are being saved it is God's power. 19 The scripture says,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
and set aside the understanding of the scholars.”
20 So then, where does that leave the wise? or the scholars? or the skillful debaters of this world? God has shown that this world's wisdom is foolishness!
21 For God in his wisdom made it impossible for people to know him by means of their own wisdom. Instead, by means of the so-called “foolish” message we preach, God decided to save those who believe. 22 Jews want miracles for proof, and Greeks look for wisdom. 23 As for us, we proclaim the crucified Christ, a message that is offensive to the Jews and nonsense to the Gentiles; 24 but for those whom God has called, both Jews and Gentiles, this message is Christ, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For what seems to be God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and what seems to be God's weakness is stronger than human strength.
I never forget being at soul survivor one year and listening to J.John preach to several thousand teenagers. As I listened to him explain the gospel, I thought to myself, ‘that’s rubbish. He is making it all sound so uninteresting. No one is ever going to respond to this.’ As he wrapped up, he invited people to come to the front to give their lives to Jesus and my jaw dropped as I watched hundreds of teens surge to the front. It all made absolutely no sense. Unless, they weren’t responding to his words but the power of the Holy Spirit working through him. Something deeper was happening.
So often I see people who are incredibly intelligent struggle with Christianity. They want to know how it all works, what is the science behind it, how to prove God could be real. It all seems like a step of faith too far. Ricky Gervais, who is an outspoken atheist as well as comedian, says, ‘there are a lot of things that we don’t know about the Big Bang but lets not suddenly jump to saying the world started by magic.’ He is saying that a faith in the supernatural is foolish.
Paul agrees. He declares that the message of the cross is foolishness to people who don’t believe. He uses the Greek word moros which we get our word moron from. To people who want to think about it all logically, the idea of faith feels naive: “I believe in science!” To people who want a spiritual experience first, the Gospel can be frustrating as well: “If I saw God do something I would believe!” To those who want a quick fix the Gospel means to pick up a cross, to sacrifice and trust God beyond death. The Gospel is in many ways shocking: that our hope and eternal future is somehow tied to a man who was crucified as a traitor to his people. How does that work?
If you have been in church for too long, you can forget how shocking the gospel is. Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable of neither inflicting deep wounds nor healing them.” The answer to your emptiness is found in the cross. The answer to your dysfunction is found in the cross. The answer to your eternity is found in the cross. The cross is mysterious, confusing and yet infinitely accessible.
There is an invitation to a relationship and like every invitation, it is full of uncertainty and risk. It is so simple that the lowest of people can grasp it, and it is so deep that the most intellectual of thinkers can miss it. And you can return to the cross of Jesus time and time again and lay your burdens at his feet. Receiving forgiveness afresh and life anew.
The Gospel calls us every day to put our trust in Jesus, to lay aside our sinful nature and to live as a child of God. It is easy to forget how surprising it is to others.
What do you need to lay at the foot of the cross today?
