1 Corinthians 1:24

THE WISDOM OF THE CROSS

‘Christ … the wisdom of God.’

1 Corinthians 1:24

Mark here the strong contrast drawn by the Apostle between the wisdom of God and the so-called wisdom of men, or, as it is called in Pauline phrase, ‘The wisdom of the world.’

I. The wisdom of God revealed in redemption, as a method of saving mankind.—Cowper sings—

O how unlike the complex works of man,

Heaven’s easy, artless, unencumbered plan.

This is true enough, if you are reflecting on the application of the ‘plan’ to human spiritual need. But the poet hardly strengthens his assertion when he proceeds to instance the rainbow ‘majestic in its simplicity,’ for the rainbow is not simple, but richly complex; and the many-coloured lights of which it is composed are only blent into one for man’s use; and this happens, too, curiously enough, to be the exact image the Apostle employs to describe, not the simple but the highly complex wisdom of God, in the passage where he describes it as ‘manifold.’ i.e. ‘many-hued’ (Ephesians 3:10), the colours being either associated in the bow or woven together in an elaborate embroidery; in either case describing complexity, and not simplicity.

II. The wisdom of God revealed in the Incarnation.—The subject of the Incarnation was strangely overlooked by the Church of a former day. This is the stranger, because it was not so overlooked by the early Church. Christians of the early centuries of the Christian era were never tired of meditating upon and writing books upon the subject. The wondrous thought of God coming down and dwelling among men took tight hold of their minds, captivated their souls. To defend this citadel of Gospel verities they considered the sacred duty of every Catholic against all comers. Gibbon may register his flippant sneer over the creed of Christendom hanging on a diphthong. But we know Who taught us to treasure less than a diphthong, a ‘jot’ or a tittle, a letter no bigger than an English comma, and the tiny horn that in size is about the twentieth part of one letter. At any rate, such care in defining this stupendous mystery apprises us of the immense importance those primitive believers attached to a right faith in it.

III. The wisdom of God revealed in the Cross.—Here is the crux in more than a literal sense. How freely men have canvassed the wisdom, the justice, the morality of the doctrine of the atoning death of Christ. They have not shrunk from ‘charging God foolishly.’ The Cross is an exhibition of injustice, in that it presents One suffering for others—Himself perfectly innocent, they guilty; and, by reason of these vicarious pains, the guilty received into favour, pardoned, restored, glorified. Injustice? Then all life is filled with injustice; for all life teems with vicarious pain. Is the soldier a criminal because he dies for his king and his country? Do the records of heroism all down the ages tell only of the miscarriage of justice wherever the heroes of the world’s annals have consecrated themselves to death for others’ sakes? Who thinks of punishment in the death they died, and who ought to think of punishment in the death of Jesus Christ?

Bishop A. Pearson.

Illustration

‘The words “wisdom,” “wise,” are found some twenty-eight times in this Epistle, and only fourteen times in all other Epistles put together. The reason is probably to be sought in the condition of the divided Church to which he is writing. Two parties were opposed to himself: the Apollos party, the Cephas party; the first representing the liberal intellectualism of the place, the second the Judaic conservative element. Here, then, you have the two lines; and so far as these party lines were being travelled on to the jeopardy of the Pauline preaching of the Cross, St. Paul does not hesitate, at any rate by implication, to stigmatise them both as the “wisdom of this world.” ’