1 Corinthians 1:20-21

‘Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know God, it was God's pleasure, through the foolishness of what was preached, to save those who believe.'

These words echo Isaiah 19:12 and Isaiah 33:18, but Paul does not say ‘it is written' and he is not citing those passages as evidence of God's ways' (unlike in 1 Corinthians 1:19). He is merely echoing language well known to him. ‘The wise' probably has in mind wisdom writings, and Greek and Hebrew schools of wisdom, and the like, ‘the scribes' has in mind the Jewish teachers, (it is not a word used of Greek teachers), and ‘the disputers' the Greek schools of philosophy and those who admired such teaching and sought to expand on it. (This rare word ‘disputers' was probably used by Paul deliberately as an indirect rebuff to the ‘disputing' of the Corinthian church). There much time was spent in disputing, both by them and those affected by them. Men loved to talk about and consider what they saw as wisdom. It made them think how wise they were. And they got very hot-headed about it. And some may have contained much that was good. But it did not achieve what it set out to accomplish, the salvation of those who treasured it. All was thrust to one side by the word of the cross. None of these have brought men to a knowledge of God, have brought into effective working His glorious power, for they have failed to identify Jesus Christ or provide reconciliation with God. They are ‘of this age', rather than of the coming age. They produce no way back to God. Spiritually therefore they are superfluous. God has set aside their efforts because they point in the wrong direction. And Paul was fearful lest this also happen with the message of Christian preachers, so that those who listened to them somehow missed the essential message of Christ and looked in the wrong direction.

(We should note here that this is not rejecting wisdom which is sought for its own sake, but wisdom which professed to offer salvation to its recipients. The Bible itself contains wisdom literature, e.g. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and wisdom teaching is found within the writings of the prophets, but while helpful it does not itself save).

Indeed by working through the preaching of the cross of Christ, and demonstrating that it is essential for salvation, God has shown up the folly of all efforts of men to achieve heavenly knowledge. Only God can reveal to man the full truth.

The descriptions bring out that both Greek (that which arises from Greek culture) and Jewish wisdom are set aside. This might be seen as tying in with the references to ‘Apollos' and ‘Cephas' (Peter) in 1 Corinthians 1:12, with the thought being that certain in the church were even seeing them as representatives of such Greek or Jewish wisdom teaching. The implication is that they were not to do so, for as such they would be nothing. Their only importance must lay in that they preached Christ. It also ties in with the distinctions in 1 Corinthians 1:22. Paul's point is that all such teaching has been set aside, whoever it comes from. Wisdom teaching is not salvation teaching.

‘In the wisdom of God.' The result may seem baffling but it is in the wisdom of God. For God knew that the other forms of wisdom could not achieve their aim. He knew that His was the only way. This was true wisdom. So Paul contrasts the true wisdom with the false wisdom, and he does it with irony. When it comes to heavenly things, true wisdom comes from God. Man does not understand the ways of God, and man's ‘wisdom' therefore leads him astray in the wrong direction.

The verse indicates God's sovereignty in that it portrays this failure as being revealed through God's wisdom. It was the all-wise God Who knew what would happen, and indeed Who in the last analysis determined what would happen. He knew that men would be surrounded by darkness and would not see light. He knew that they would fail to be truly enlightened and to recognise the Reconciler. And He determined, in giving that enlightenment, that men would not find that enlightenment through their own wisdom, but through faith, thus making it available to all. His determination of this came out in the result.

But man's state also, of course, resulted from the fact that man was blinded by his own sin, and thus would not, and in a sense could not, respond to God's revelation of Himself through nature (Romans 1:18; Acts 14:17; Acts 17:27), and now through the cross, because of his own sinfulness. Man could not blame God. He was at fault for his own failure. What God determined was the way in which His gift of enlightenment would come to man.

‘The world through its wisdom did not know God.' All man's efforts and all his brilliance could not enable him to know God, nor ever will. There his wisdom was defeated. The reason why this was so is given in the next chapter. He could speculate, he could surmise, he could talk about God, but he could not know God. He could not go beyond the world. Thus when he pictured God he often did it in terms of ‘corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts and creeping things' (Romans 1:23), the utmost in folly. Nor were the Jews, who had no images, in any better state. They had their own mental images. But they too were wrong. For Jesus Himself said they neither knew the Father nor Him (John 8:19; John 16:3). Whatever God they imagined was not the true God. They did not understand His ways.

‘It was God's good pleasure.' Again the sovereignty of God is stressed. All that happens is of His good pleasure, and especially this. But it is also the inevitable consequence of the way of things in the moral universe which He created.

‘Through the foolishness of what was preached.' It was not really foolish, of course. It only appeared so to foolish man. The message of the cross followed the divine logic and the divine understanding. It was the product of God's extreme wisdom. It was the issuing forth of God's divine power in the way He had determined. It appeared foolish because man did not have a full understanding of himself and his own inadequacy, and was not therefore aware that his need of reconciliation and atonement, which he actually showed himself to be aware of by his religious activities, could only be met by God taking on Himself all man's iniquity (Isaiah 53:6). Man still clung to the belief that with a great effort and a little religion he could save himself, with, of course, a little help from God and from his own religious ordinances, and he acted accordingly.

‘To save those who believe.' The basis of salvation is clearly emphasised. It is through faith in and response to God and what He has done in Jesus Christ, faith in the cross and in what it achieved, and faith in the crucified One through Whom it was achieved. Man can only be saved as he believes in and responds to Christ's sacrifice of Himself, the sinless One made sin for us, thereby receiving forgiveness, being declared righteous and being reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). That is why there is no other name under Heaven given among men whereby we can be saved (Acts 4:12).