Sermon text: 1 Corinthians 1:18–25
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The theology of the cross and the theology of glory are two diametrically opposed theological systems. The theology of the cross emphasizes exactly what it says it does: the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the life of service and suffering of ordinary people called Christians.
A theology of glory is a theology that preaches that all will be well if you just believe hard enough, you pray hard enough — that God is not the source of any suffering at all, but rather something in your life that needs to be corrected. A theology of glory looks to big, giant churches and says, “There’s God, because there’s the people.” A theology of glory is one of, quote, success and enduring legacies and the like. And a theology of glory and a theology of the cross have been two diametrically opposed systems from the very beginning of the New Testament church.
And it’s the topic to which Paul addresses himself in the first chapter of our Epistle lesson today. That’s why Paul was given to write: “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”
The gospel, you see, itself is the theology of the cross. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in a stable, not in a palace in Jerusalem. Jesus grew up as a Nazarene, a carpenter’s son, not the son of a rich noble. Jesus set up His base of operations in a despised part of the country — Galilee of the Gentiles, Capernaum, the land of Zebulun and Naphtali — rather than in Jerusalem. He called His disciples from the same place, that land of Zebulun and Naphtali, rather than seeking out the so-called best and brightest of the schools in Jerusalem. And of course, there is the fact that Jesus spent His entire ministry with the despised, with social outcasts, with common people, ordinary people, rather than with the religious elite, the office holders of the day and the leaders. And finally, there’s the matter that Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, was forsaken, died on the cross of Good Friday as an atoning sacrifice to appease the anger of the heavenly Father. All of that is good news, and all of that is called a theology of the cross. Jesus is Himself a redeeming Savior, not a successful one.
God has a strange way of dealing with the world and with us. The problem is that we sinful human beings think we’re right and God is wrong when things go wrong in our lives. Paul was given to write about this: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” God’s ways are not our ways.
Paul faced throughout his ministry hostile Jews and Gentiles who were wedded to their very own thinking, to their own theological system. So each time Paul went into a synagogue to preach a theology of the cross, he was often and immediately confronted with a theology of glory. He’d hear things like this: “Show us a sign, Paul. If Jesus is God, then prove it in such a way that makes sense, so that we can believe it and see it ourselves, and come to reason about it our own way.”
Paul could count on those words, or a version of the saying, wherever he preached and whenever he preached in the synagogue. His fellow Jews had some specific beliefs about the Messiah. And none of those beliefs included the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God, the Messiah to come. They relied too much on sinful human reason and what their eyes could see and what they could think, which often created conflicting ideas about how and what should happen to the promised Messiah when He came. Thus, they were looking for a Messiah that made sense to them: an all-powerful healer and leader, a warring king. In their wisdom, they seemed to pass over the text that described the Messiah as a suffering, silent servant, or a lamb being led to slaughter, or a man who would be despised and rejected by the very Jews He came to save.
Ruled by the iron fist of the Roman Empire, most of the Jews wanted a savior who would come with great signs and wonders. So when Paul showed up in their synagogues preaching the kingdom of God was near, that the promised Messiah had come to die for their sins — why, there’s a bit of a falling out between Paul and the Jews. They were hoping to hear of a Messiah that had come, and that He would use His mighty power to their political and military advantage. They wanted to hear all about the glorious signs and miracles and the announcement of deliverance from oppression, and they wanted it now. And if Paul could not deliver on that kind of message and produce proof, why, they had no interest in hearing anything he had to say.
So Paul preached, and he preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and he told them that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and that He had died for them and had been raised from the dead and ascended on high. But that wasn’t the savior they were looking for. In their way of thinking, the crucifixion itself disqualified Jesus as the Messiah. God’s Messiah, they thought, would not be forsaken, would not be made to suffer, would not be crucified, and certainly he would not die on a cross. But how could Jesus be the Holy One of Israel if He died on a cross? After all, they had Deuteronomy 21:23 staring them in the face: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” If this Jesus was hanged on a cross — that is, on a tree — then He could not possibly be the chosen one of God. The tree proves that He was the cursed one of Deuteronomy 21, not the promised Messiah for salvation from the occupying forces of Rome. They needed something more.
Thus Paul writes in verses 22 and 23: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
But Christ’s death on the cross for the sins of the world was and is the greatest sign and wonder of them all, the greatest of all, because that’s what He came to accomplish: to work our salvation, not to succeed in this life. To most of the Jews, the cross was a repulsive sight. It was a stumbling block to faith — a stumbling block they simply could not clear.
The Greeks didn’t handle it much better either. They were a people who had Socrates, Aristotle, Plato in their history. They prided themselves on reason, logic, and Socratic questions like, “Is something good because God loves it? Or does God love it because it’s good?” They occupied themselves with those kinds of puzzles. The Romans had their own philosophies too, which had more to do with duty and civic virtue than anything heavenly or otherworldly. But if Paul could not make the right kind of arguments and thus prove that there was wisdom that leads to victory and success, then they might as well believe in a Jesus of pure glory and no mercy at all. But the doctrine of vicarious atonement didn’t fit their notions of strength and victory. Again, the cross would prove problematic for such a people: the Romans, the Greeks, and the Jews altogether. In the Roman Empire, only two sorts of people were crucified at the time: criminals or disobedient slaves. The idea that the Son of God would submit to such a death was an intolerable notion to the Greeks and the Romans and the Jews. Crucifixion was such a hideous death, born out of failure and weakness, they could not see any kind of victory in it. The death of Jesus had the weakness of humanity written all over it. Weakness and foolishness were among the worst character traits that a Roman could have.
Yet in the face of all the resistance and scorn, Paul continued to proclaim the gospel. Because no matter how foolish it sounded to the unbeliever, Jesus Christ crucified and risen was and is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation for you and the whole world.
Again, Paul: “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
We too want answers that make sense. When we fall sick, when life is filled with unfairness and suffering, when it seems our friends have forsaken us, when all looks lost and we find ourselves alone, we want answers from God. Why me? Why now? Why this? We want to know what His plan is, what God is doing to us, and why He’s doing it to us. Just when we think we’re growing stronger, God does something to make us weak. It’s through the theology of the cross that Paul came to understand the purpose of weakness and suffering. He wrote in 2 Corinthians 12: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. … For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
That’s a very different way of thinking about the troubles that come into each of our lives. It isn’t about what we want or what we think ought to be. That was the problem in the church in Corinth. It was the problem with all the churches. He wrote to the Christians in Colossae: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”
God hasn’t changed the way He works in the world. He does not look for the best and the brightest, the most handsome or beautiful, or the extraordinary man or woman in order to redeem the world. Paul wrote to those Christians in Corinth in that second letter: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, the things like sin and death.” And why does God choose to use the ordinary, the weak, and the foolish? Verse 29 tells us exactly why: “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” God takes away from us any possibility of boasting for our own conversion. All the credit goes, in the biblical text, to the Lord God Himself. If someone comes to faith after hearing me preach, or comes to realize how great a sinner he or she is and finally hears the gospel and believes, it’s not because I preached a doozy on Sunday morning, nor because they were smarter than someone else who left unmoved and unimpressed. It’s because the word went out and accomplished the purpose for which God sent it.
As we read in the Small Catechism: I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in my Lord Jesus Christ or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith, a poor, sinful being.
So we preach Christ crucified. We hang crucifixes in our churches and around our necks so that we can bear witness that in fact Christ is the power and the wisdom of God. Because we have learned to know that God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom. God’s weakness is stronger than man’s strength. And so for us and for the world, we preach Christ crucified — even though it isn’t, never has been, never will be the popular intellectual message. We acknowledge that what we believe is foolishness apart from true Christian faith. But we proclaim it anyway. We proclaim it because it’s not only the message that brings forgiveness of sins. And where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also by necessity life and salvation.
But we preach it because there is no life and salvation in preaching good works. There’s no life and salvation in environmentalism or feminism or pragmatism or nihilism or progressivism or moralism or any other ism of man. No matter how popular it is in the culture, or how many professors at universities preach it, we preach Christ crucified because the Lord has given us the privilege of declaring His praise. We point to Holy Baptism and gladly declare it is not water only, but water together with the Word. And we proclaim the gospel in absolution and in sermon, because that is how the Holy Spirit works faith through the preached word. We point to the Lord’s Supper and gladly declare that it is more than a mere symbol. Rather, it is the crucified and risen Christ in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine, and distributes the forgiveness of sins. We do all of this because of God’s foolishness, because He chose the lowly things, the ordinary things, the despised things of this world to nullify the things that are.
So we say with St. Paul: Christ has become to us wisdom from God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” For your sins in thought, word, and deed have been forgiven you in the wisdom that is God’s, namely Jesus Christ. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.