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by
D.A. Carson
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April 3 - April 4, 2018
The heart of our wretched rebellion is that each of us wants to be number one. We make ourselves the center of all our thoughts and hopes and imaginings. This vicious lust to be first works its way outward not only in hatred, war, rape, greed, covetousness, malice, bitterness, and much more, but also in self-righteousness, self-promotion, manufactured religions, and domesticated gods.
It is far more: where human wisdom utterly fails to deal with human need, God himself has taken action.
the light of the cross, how well do the raucous appeals of competing public philosophies stand up? What place does the cross have in communism? What place does the cross have in capitalism? Does systematic hedonism lead anyone to the cross? How about dogmatic pluralism? Will secular humanism lead anyone to the most astonishing act of divine self-disclosure that has ever occurred—the cross of Christ?
Strangely, modern politicians speak of “the wisdom of the American people,” as if special insight resides in the masses.
That was not the perception of the founding fathers; it is certainly not a Christian evaluation.
Does democracy itself lead anyone to the cross?
Paul’s point is that no public philosophy, no commonly accepted “wisdom,” can have enduring significance if its center is not the cross.
Whatever the merits or the demerits of these various systems, they exhaust their resources on merely superficial levels. They do not reconcile men and women to the living God, and nothing is more important than that. They cannot uncover God’s wisdom in the cross, and if that is hidden all other “wisdom” is foolish.
the grammateus was the “scribe,” the expert in the law of God, the person knowledgeable in biblical heritage and in all the tradition that flowed from it.
“Where is the philosopher of this age?” (1:20). The word rendered “philosopher” might more literally be translated “debater” or “orator.” But in Greek culture rhetoric was so highly regarded that the best public philosophers were almost inevitably gifted and trained rhetoricians. To them, form was as important as content.
How well did their infatuation with form prepare them to follow one who never danced to faddish tunes?
He has reduced the vaunted wisdom of the world to folly.
Their failures are thoroughly blameworthy; their ignorance of God and their endless, self-centered preoccupation are culpable.
in this fallen order, human “wisdom” (in the sense already described) is deeply idolatrous.
How can idolatrous attempts to domesticate God be rewarded with deepening knowledge
of the Almighty? It could...
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The focus, as we have seen, is on the content of the preaching, not the form.
command. As long as people are assessing him, they are in the superior position, the position of judge. As long as they are checking out his credentials, they are forgetting that God is the one who will weigh them. As long as they are demanding signs, Jesus, if he constantly acquiesces, is nothing more than a clever performer.
Thus the demand for signs becomes the prototype of every condition human beings raise as a barrier to being open to God.
They create entire structures of thought so as to maintain the delusion that they can explain everything. They think they are scientific, in control, powerful. God, if he exists, must
meet the high standards of their academic and philosophical prowess and somehow fit into their system, if he is to be given any sort of respectful hearing.
the word Paul uses for “foolishness” is not accidental; it can be understood to mean “mania” or “madness.”
Gentiles wrote off the message of the cross not as eccentric, harmless folly, but as dangerous, almost deranged, stupidity.
Bernard de Clairvaux (1090–1153)
No, we are dealing with polar opposites. Human “wisdom” and “strength” are, from God’s perspective, rebellious folly and moral weakness.
Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry.
Jeremiah 9:23–24,
Like Jeremiah, Paul speaks of the “wise.” Jeremiah’s “strong man” becomes, for Paul, the “influential”—that is, the strength in view is not the strength of the weight-lifter but the strength of the opinion-maker, the person with clout. The “rich man” becomes the person “of noble birth,” since in preindustrial days the overwhelming majority of the wealthy sprang from the upper classes.
He is talking about those who are wise “by human standards”—and implicitly about those who are influential or well born “by human standards.”
In the days of the great evangelist
George Whitefield, the Countess of Huntingdon used to say that she was saved by an m: God’s word declares “not many noble,” not “not any noble.”
This is a point that our generation cannot afford to ignore. Why is it that we constantly parade Christian athletes, media personalities,
and pop singers? Why should we think that their opinions or their experiences of grace are of any more significance than those of any other believer?
28). In other words, God delights to prick all the pretensions of this rebellious world. Where proud men and women parade their mighty intellects, God chooses the simple; where wealthy people assess each other on the basis of their respective holdings, God chooses the poor;
where self-centered leaders lust for
power, God chooses the...
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Not only has he shamed and nullified the world by choosing so many people whom the world does not highly esteem, God has taken this step to shatter human boasting. God acts to redeem fallen men and women because he is gracious, and for no other reason.
God’s salvation springs from God’s grace, and it is received by those who trust him—not by the “beautiful people” or by the rich and powerful.
The only thing of transcendent
importance to human beings is the knowledge of God. This knowledge does not belong to those who endlessly focus on themselves. Those who truly come to know God delight just to know him.
As they learn that he is the God “who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth,” naturally they want those same values to prevail—not because their egos are bound up with certain arbitrary notions of, say, “justice,” but because their center is God and they take their cues from him and his character. They boast in him.
And now God’s most dramatic act of “kindness, justice and righteousness” has occurred—in the
death of his ...
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This wisdom from God is the cross; it is “Christ crucified” (1:23). Far from being vain and pompous
and of no eternal importance, this “wisdom” effects eternal changes and brings men and women into a deep relationship with the living God.
In short, this “wisdom,” this plan, means nothing less than “our righteousness, h...
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This “wisdom” secures our “righteousness” (a term that reflects our legal standing before God), our “holiness” (a properly religious term that reflects the exclusive sphere to which we now belong), and our “redemption” (a term drawn from the slave trade to reflect our newfound freedom from
sin, corruption, and death).
We are as foolish as the Corinthians when we make much of what cannot endure, when we promote the values and plans and programs of a world that is passing away as if they bear any deep significance.
When the pressure to “contextualize” the gospel jeopardizes the message of the cross by inflating human egos, the cultural pressures must be ignored.
