Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18–25
Date: March 3, 2024
Event: The Third Sunday in Lent, Year B
1 Corinthians 1:18–25 (EHV)
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. 19In fact, it is written:
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will bring to nothing.
20Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Jewish law? Where is the probing thinker of the present age? Has God not shown that the wisdom of this world is foolish? 21Indeed, since the world through its wisdom did not know God, God in his wisdom decided to save those who believe, through the foolishness of the preached message. 22Yes, Jews ask for signs, Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified—which is offensive to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25We preach Christ crucified, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
God’s Foolishness Is Wiser than Man’s Wisdom
What is the difference between foolishness and wisdom? How do you decide if something is smart or poorly thought through? Maybe you rely on what you’ve learned in school or other education opportunities. Maybe you put your trust in an expert in whatever field of information is being discussed to make up for what you don’t know. Maybe your years of experience and even your gut instinct lead you to evaluate a piece of information. And maybe you throw all caution to the wind (to be clear, I don’t recommend this), and you just trust what some random person on the internet posted on a text social media post or TikTok video.
In an age of disinformation and people constantly trying to be louder than people who oppose them, it’s ever more crucial to be sure that what we’re hearing and relying on to guide our decisions are coming from a place of wisdom and not of foolishness or naivete.
And this doesn’t just apply to what car we should buy or what a particular political candidate may or may not do in office if elected. This also applies to our faith life. There’s no end to the variety of opinions on the Christian faith out there, so if we hear something related to Jesus on the internet or from a friend or even from this pulpit, we want to be able to evaluate it, and see if what we’re hearing is wise or foolish. And to be able to do that, we need a solid grounding on what God’s wisdom is compared to the world’s wisdom.
Last week we heard Jesus promise us that the role of a Christian would be filled with crosses. And this morning, in our Second Reading, Paul expounds on one of the reasons why that might happen. Narrowly defined, those crosses may be suffering that we undergo for being Christians. And Paul reminds us why the world around us might cause us suffering for our Christian faith: they just don’t get it; the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. The message of Christianity, sins forgiven in Jesus’ life and death, is foolishness to those who do not believe, a ridiculous fable that makes a Christian somwhere between pitiable and detesable in the world’s eyes.
But why is the message of the cross, and specifically Jesus’ cross, foolishness to the world? Because it runs contrary to everything we naturally think and what we want to be true. What we want to think is true about us is that we’re not perfect, but we’re pretty good. We want to think that we can fix the problems we’ve caused. We want to think that while we might need or at least benefit from God helping us in our salvation, we can contribute something to that.
And if you think about it, that’s the way the world works, right? If I do something to really hurt a loved one’s feelings, perhaps a thoughtful gift or gesture will help to make up for that wrong. If I break the law, some fine, community service, or jail time will eventually even things out. Punishments should fit the crimes, and once the punishments are completed, then things are done.
But not so with God. You and I cannot contribute to making our sins and failures against God right again. It’s not that we lack the desire but the ability. It’s not that we just often don’t give it our all; it’s that this is impossible. No good work can make up for sin. We cannot make any decision to trust in God’s forgiveness. On our own, we are completely and utterly hopeless in all spiritual matters.
So God, in his wisdom and love, made a plan to take care of this problem himself. And that plan was something so absurd, so beyond the realm of comprehension, that no person would have ever been able to come up with it. So, for those of you who have been Christians for many years, perhaps all of your life, take a step outside of your faith for just a moment and try to view this from the outside:
We have two players in this scene: God and the collective of mankind. Now, God gave to mankind everything they could need or want and expected perfect obedience in return. What he got were rebellion and insubordination; he got his precious creatures making war with him with their sin. So, what’s the likely outcome of that? From a human point of view, we expect God just to stomp out mankind as a whole and be done with us, or at least set up a system where we have to try to make things right that we have messed up.
But not with God. That doesn’t work, and his love for us is so great that he can’t bear the thought of us being punished for our sins for eternity with no hope of rescue. So the plan of pure madness is that God himself, the one who was wronged in all of this, is the one who will take on the punishment for mankind’s sins. To try to put it in human terms, that’s like the police officer paying the speeding ticket for you, or the judge doing your community service, or even more egregious, the murder victim’s family taking on the life sentence in jail. If I can be bold and be understood properly, that is the most ridiculous plan I can think of.
Is it any wonder that the world scoffs at this plan? Is it any wonder that it might be seen as taking the easy way out or wildly misguided and naïve to believe such a thing? It’s no wonder that the world would think little of people who believe in this foolish plan.
My brothers and sisters, how good it is to be fools in Christ! That Jesus, God himself, would die to save sinners like you and me is insane! The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. By the Holy Spirit’s work in you, you can see this plan for what it is: the wisdom of the all-knowing God. It’s foolish because it makes no sense to our human rationale. It’s wise because it is the only thing that would work to save us. Since it was impossible for us to save ourselves or to even contribute minutely to that salvation, if God wanted us safe from hell, he had to do it himself.
The world can’t stand this. Your conscience is baffled by it. Your reason recoils from it. But what is greater? My reasoning or the all-powerful Creator of the universe? Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Jewish law? Where is the probing thinker of the present age? Has God not shown that the wisdom of this world is foolish? Indeed, since the world through its wisdom did not know God, God in his wisdom decided to save those who believe, through the foolishness of the preached message. The Holy Spirit used this message, this gospel, to create faith in your heart, so that even believing what God did is God’s work for you rather than something that you contribute! This foolish preached message is the means that God uses to crush our stony hearts of sin and replace them with hearts of flesh that trust in his love and forgiveness.
You can see rebellion against the simplicity and one-sidedness of the gospel in every other world religion that requires the human being to make peace with God, or the universe, or whatever might be its focus. Sadly, you can see even Christianity itself fighting against this as certain branches of the Christian faith put much more emphasis on your works instead of God’s, or assume you had the ability to decide to believe, or emphasize spiritual gifts or earthly wealth over and above Jesus’ forgiveness.
Everyone is looking for something else, something with more spectacle or personal responsibility. If we radically changed what we taught here, I imagine we could see a positive uptick in attendance and maybe even membership numbers. However, you and I care far too much about our and others’ eternal well-being to mess with the message God has given us to proclaim.
And some things never change because this tension was felt by Paul and the other messengers of the gospel way back in the first century: Yes, Jews ask for signs, Greeks desire wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified—which is offensive to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
No matter how appealing a different message might be to our natural reason or the world around us, we will continue to preach Christ crucified for sins. It might not make sense to our rational brain, but that’s only because we cannot fully see and understand God’s wisdom on our own. But with the Spirit-given faith to trust God’s work for us, we can see the necessity and completeness of God doing all of this in our place.
When Jesus died, God died for us. We heard Paul’s beautiful summary of the gospel to the Romans last week in our Second Reading: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This is the core of the gospel, the core of Christianity, the core of the hope of eternal life. We can do nothing; God did everything.
That might not prop up our egos, but it certainly gives us confidence. If God did it all for me, if Christ crucified alone is my rescue from this world of sin and rebellion against God and into eternal life, then I can be sure it was done right and completely. There is nothing left for me to do because Jesus did it all for me, just as he did for you.
The closing verse of our second reading speaks to those still-present protests from within our minds, “But I’m not that bad! But I can do something! But I have power in this!” The wisdom of my natural self is foolishness. The foolish-sounding will of God is true wisdom. We preach Christ crucified, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Something as important as our eternal life is not the place to try to insert yourself because that will end in eternal disaster. Instead, hide yourself in the foolishness of Christ’s death for you, which is God’s true wisdom and strength.
Rejoice in your blessing to be ever-so-foolish with God! Amen.
