1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Butler's Comments

Unity Occasions Glory to God Alone (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

26 For consider your call, brethren, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth; 27but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, 28God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; 31therefore, as it is written, Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 1:26 Their deficiency: The very fact that there existed in Corinth a body of believers, immature and struggling, but united in the love and peace of Christ, proved that whatever unity they had achieved was to be credited to God the Father and Christ the son, for there was no other such body of human beings in Corinth like them. The philosophers and politicians had not produced such a fellowship. These Christians certainly had not come to their fellowship through wisdom according to worldly standards. Paul reminds them to take a look at (Gr. blepete, see, look) their condition at the time they answered the call to the Gospel. Not many of them were sophisticates (Gr. sophoi, wise) as judged by worldly (Gr. sarka, fleshly, human) standards, Not many were powerful as the world would estimate power; nor were many of noble birth (Gr. eugeneis, well-born).

God actually chose what the sophisticates, the powerful and the nobility would call foolishness to form a society in Corinth of loving, caring, righteous-living people. They were called Christians. This put all the philosophies and other human attempts of man to create his own Utopia, by his own wisdom, to shame. The faith and righteousness of Christians became, as it were, a condemnation of all the humanism of their society, just as Noah's obedience to God thousands of years earlier (cf. Hebrews 11:7).

The apostle's enunciation of the former lack of worldly prestige of these Corinthians is mild compared to his reminder of what a few others had been before becoming Christians (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11). The gospel not only has the power to create a kingdom of love and peace and goodness out of the unsophisticated and powerless people of the world, it also has divine power to bring into this same kingdom, by conversion, people who were formerly the dregs of humanity. Its power is operative, however, only when human beings acknowledge they have no sufficiency in anything that is human and surrender to the revelation of God's redemptive plan for their lives.

1 Corinthians 1:27-28 Their dynamic: When one considers the tools God chose to use in his redemptive program and the end result he produced, one must admit divine power as the source. God chose what the world, in all its accumulated expertise, calls foolishness (Gr. mora, moronic, stupid), to demonstrably put to shame the sophistication of worldly-wisdom. The world, with all its science, philosophy and psychology has never done what the gospel has done. God chose the weak things (Gr. asthene, no strength, sick, impotent) in order to expose the shame of what the world calls strong and powerful. The world calls the vicarious atonement of Christ sick. But the change wrought in the lives of those who believe Christ proves that the world is wrong in what it depends on for power.

God chose to use what the world calls low and despised (Gr. agene, inconsequential, unknown; and exouthenemena, contemptible, rejected) to abolish (Gr. katargese, nullify, destroy) the things which the world in rebellion against God considers effective. Paul is not the first God uses to reveal this. The Old Testament Prophets warned their people that God was going to accomplish man's redemption by a despised and rejected Messiah, one in whom was no comeliness and who would not be esteemed (cf. Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12). Jesus warned in his parables that the kingdom would start as small and insignificantly as a mustard seed but would grow to be huge (Matthew 13:31-32). Righteousness, love, self-control, humility and faith are things the world calls weaknesses. Wealth, fame, self-sufficiency, political position and skepticism are things the world calls powerful. God has demonstrated his sovereign wisdom by putting everything the world calls powerful to shame through the power of the redemptive work of Christ. Only the gospel of Christ produces the society of people transformed into loving, hoping, trustworthy, faithful, peaceful servants of God. Wealth, fame and political power all combined has never done it and never shall.

God chose the betrothed of a lowly Jewish carpenter as the mother for the Savior of the world. He decided this Savior was to be born in a cattle-shed. This Savior's friends would be harlots and hated publicans. He would select as his intimate co-workers fisherman, publicans and women. But these low born and rejects would, with the divine message of God's reconciling grace through the cross of Christ, turn the world upside down (cf. Acts 17:6) showing that philosophies of men were totally inadequate while the word of God changed people and society for the best.

It is through this word that human beings may be born again (cf. 1 Peter 1:22-25). Through these promises human beings may partake of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4). Through this, human beings receive power to be transformed and purified (cf. Romans 12:1-2; 1 John 3:1-3). And the word of God is the only instrument chosen by God to accomplish this in the world. The world thinks otherwise because it has believed the devil's lie told in Eden (Genesis 3:1-7) that to trust, depend upon and obey God is weakness, while independence from and resistance to God brings power.

1 Corinthians 1:29-31 Their declaration: God deliberately gave salvation to mankind as a gift so that no human being might boast. He chose to effect man's salvation through what the world called weaknesses so that man would not be able to glorify himself or any of his finite schemes. Salvation is absolutely by faith in the redemptive deeds done by God in Christnot by any merit of man. Salvation is appropriated (or accepted) by man's believing obedience to the covenant terms decreed by God in his New Testament. But man, by accepting salvation, never merits it, His sins were paid for by Christ's deathfinally and completely. When finite and sinful man compares himself with other finite and sinful men, he is inclined to find someone who, in his estimation, is worse than himself. He then resolves to trust in his own self-righteousness and his own glory, (cf. 2 Corinthians 10:12). But when man, by belief in the divine record (the Bible) honestly compares himself with the infinite and absolutely righteous God (and his Son), he finds nothing in himself to trustnot even his own feelings (Jeremiah 17:5-10, esp. Jeremiah 17:9-10; Mark 7:21-23; Ephesians 4:22; Ecclesiastes 9:3; Isaiah 6:5). Jeremiah, tempted to follow his own feelings and desires, surrendered to the word of God burning in his bones (cf. Jeremiah 20:7-12), and preached to turn man's trust in the Lord.

The KJV is nearer a literal translation of the Greek text in 1 Corinthians 1:30. The Greek phrase is: ex autou de humeis este en Christo Iesou. Literally that would be translated: but out from him you are in Christ Jesus. The RSV gives the meaning in its translation: He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus.. Christ is the source of our salvation because he became (Gr. egenethe, 3rd aorist, sing. passivehe was both made and willingly became) our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. God was in Christ on the cross, reconciling the world to himself. God decreed (made) Christ to be sin for us and righteousness for us (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:11-21). At the same time, Christ, the Son, willingly became sin for us (Hebrews 10:5-10). God decided on the substitutionary atonement by his Anointed One from the foundation of the world (cf. 1 Peter 1:19-20; Isaiah 53:1-12, etc.). The Son of man knew he had come into the world as a vicarious ransom for the sins of the whole world (Matthew 20:28; Matthew 26:28). He knew that it was only by his perfect sacrifice men would be able to be set apart (sanctified) to God (cf. Hebrews 10:5-10; John 17:13-26). Christ is the source of our sanctification. We could never be good enough on our own to be set apart unto God! If we are sanctified for God at all it is because we trust completely in the merit of Christ's perfect sacrifice, Of course, we must choose to accept his sanctification for us. And our choosing must conform to his revealed will. The same concepts apply to any claims we may have to wisdom or redemption. Christ alone is the source. We choose whether we want what he offers or not on his terms.

1 Corinthians 1:31 is a quotation of Jeremiah 9:24. Jeremiah faced the same problem with God's covenant people 600 years before Paul. Men basked in their own self-glory. The glory of other men was what they thought was the ultimate meaning of life (Jeremiah 9:23). As a result they conducted their lives on the bases of falsehood, hypocrisy, treachery, slander and deceit (Jeremiah 9:1 ff.). But Jeremiah poured out his life in ministry of the Word to turn them to glorying in the Lord (Jeremiah 9:24) and in what the Lord determines is righteousness.

Paul wrote a great deal about boasting and glorying to the Corinthians. The Corinthians apparently assumed that anyone with the office of apostle would automatically be boastful, proud and arrogant. Paul did not behave like that (see 1 Corinthians 3:18-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-13; 2 Corinthians 11:1-33; 2 Corinthians 12:1-21). Paul made it plain that Christians have nothing to boast about except the grace of God (Romans 3:27-28; Galatians 6:14; Philippians 3:3-7; 2 Corinthians 12:9). And who can boast in self when all one is or has or hopes to be is by the grace of Christ?

Since all Christians are thus joined and united to Christ by grace alone, such unity must give occasion to glorifying only Christ. Whatever results from the regenerative work going on in the church on earth, whether through spiritual leaders or those being led, it all redounds to God's glory and not man'S. Man works, God gives the increase. Unless God gives the increase, there will be none of any value or permanence at all, no matter how hard and expertly man works.