When faced with a towering wall of flames amid a wildfire, one’s first thought probably would not be to apply more fire to the already extremely dangerous situation. As foolish as this action may seem, firefighters often do exactly that. A fire needs oxygen and fuel, such as dry vegetation or flammable structures, in order to keep burning. If one can cut off either the oxygen supply or the fuel supply, the fire can be brought under control. Firefighters often use this technique, known as “backfiring,” to halt or redirect a fire.
Fighting fire with fire seems to go counter to reason, or appears even foolish, when faced with a fast-moving wall of fire, pushing quickly toward a town or settlement. Yet, when done appropriately and carefully, this strategy can make the difference between survival and destruction by fire.
In the same way, Paul’s exaltation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross went against the sentiment of his day. In the introduction to his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul highlights the countercultural nature of the Christian message of the Cross, which is something that most of us living in Western, or Christian, contexts will struggle to understand. Most of us grew up in a world in which crosses on churches or in other public spaces were shorthand for Christianity and the message of salvation.
But the cross meant cruel death, severe punishment, and absolute shame to most people living in the first-century A.D. Greco-Roman world. Yet, contrary to the popular thinking of that time, Paul taught that the gospel of Jesus Christ was the power of God to those who accepted it (1 Cor. 1:18, ESV).
Lesson Themes
This week’s lesson highlights a number of important themes, including:
The Message of the Cross. The cross is God’s surprising, and all-encompassing, answer to the sin problem. It is the foundation of the gospel message preached by Paul and the other apostles to a world that had a radically different worldview.
True Wisdom. Wisdom was an important element of Greek philosophy and a major topic in distinct philosophical schools. Paul’s use of the term stands in stark contrast to its use in Greek philosophy and connects more easily to the understanding of wisdom in the Old Testament.
The Cross: Folly or a Way Home. The cross becomes either a stumbling block or folly to those who hear about it without embracing the One who hung there. Jesus died on the cross in order to offer the world forgiveness, transformative grace, and a way home to the God who invests all to save His fallen creation.
Part II: Commentary
1. Background: The Hellenistic concept of wisdom (sofia) in the New Testament period emphasized intelligence and theoretical knowledge over practical skills. A philosopher was a “lover of wisdom,” someone who understood and disseminated knowledge about the natural world and the human experience. Truth could be ordered into a general system that could help explain the world. Quite a number of differing Greek philosophical schools, with distinct emphases, existed during the time, but they all focused on observation, reason, logic, and intellectual arguments, even though they were not devoid of ethical concerns.
Six major Greco-Roman philosophical schools should be distinguished: the school of Pythagoras; the school of Plato and his successors; Aristotle’s peripatetic school; the school of Epicurus that emphasized imperturbability as the ideal; the cynics (emphasizing simplicity and freedom from societal conventions); and the school of the Stoics, which, during the time of the events of the New Testament, was known as Roman stoicism (or Late Stoa) and became the most influential school of philosophy during that time (see John T. Fitzgerald, “Greco-Roman Philosophical Schools,” in The World of the New Testament, eds. Joel B. Green and Lee Martin McDonald [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013], pp. 135–148).
In the Old Testament, wisdom is not limited to knowledge, or the integration of knowledge into a coherent system; rather, it describes the ability of a person to make right use of knowledge that is relationally connected to God. This knowledge is, thus, God-given and results in making ethical (i.e., “good,” echoing Creation language) decisions. Exodus 31:1–5 uses three key terms of wisdom language (ḥokmah, “wisdom;” binah, “intelligence;” and da' at, “knowledge”) to describe the divinely given skill that the artist Bezalel needed to create the tabernacle and its utensils. The use of these terms in this particular context helps us to understand that wisdom in the Old Testament is practical and goes beyond a mere intellectual endeavor.
The Old Testament authors ask big questions about God’s justice and how humans can obtain true wisdom, even though they recognize that not all our questions, nor our search for wisdom, will lead always to clear answers (for example, Prov. 20:24; Job 28:20, 21). Wisdom literature in the Old Testament includes the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and selected wisdom psalms (for example, Psalms 37, 49, 73).
The discovery of a significant corpus of wisdom literature, emphasizing knowledge among the writings from the Khirbet Qumran community in the first century B.C. (also known as Dead Sea Scrolls), highlights the fact that discussions about wisdom were an important element of intellectual and philosophical discussions among Jewish communities prior to the arrival of the Messiah in Palestine (see J. I. Kampen, “Wisdom Literature at Qumran,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, eds. C. A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000], pp. 1263–1268).
2. Foolishness and Wisdom: Following his initial greetings, thanksgiving, and exhortation to unity, Paul begins his message to the young church in Corinth by focusing on foolishness and wisdom. First Corinthians 1:18–31 is a rhetorical high point of the New Testament. Paul’s thesis statement to the Corinthians suggests that the gospel is folly to some, while it represents the saving power of God to others (1 Cor. 1:18). This paradox is significant, as it suggests; and as Paul points out in later chapters, the weakness of humanity is really an opportunity for God to display His strength.
The remainder of the passage offers a number of contrasts between wise and foolish, God and the world, strong and weak. The cross, an instrument of cruel Roman torture and death, has become the means by which God accomplished salvation. This argument, which underlies all the preaching of Paul and the early Christian church, must have felt countercultural and paradoxical to many newly converted Gentile believers. The “word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18, ESV) is shorthand for the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, offering salvation for those who have heard and believed in that word. We get a hint of the sense of the folly that any Greco-Roman audience would have perceived in this message: How could God save people (and the world) through the death of a crucified convicted felon? Jews, on the other hand, would perceive this message as a “stumbling block” (ESV), or Greek skandalon, as noted in 1 Corinthians 1:23. This stumbling block, on the one hand, or foolishness, on the other hand, refers metaphorically to an obstacle to one’s faith.
3. The Good News of the Cross: Right from the outset, Paul argues that the message of the cross is the power of God to those being saved. The cross offers believers the key to understanding God’s wisdom of offering salvation to those who do not deserve righteousness nor can ever attain it. The cross is also more than a sign or symbol, though Jews do not recognize it as such, even though they yearn to see miraculous signs (Matt. 12:38, 39; Mark 8:11, 12; also 1 Cor. 1:22). The desire to see signs and wonders reflects a basic spiritual blindness, and perhaps even a hardness of heart, by those who “demand” (not “ask for”) them. The gospel of the crucified and risen Christ does not elicit faith in Jews or Greeks but, rather, becomes to them a “stumbling block” or “folly,” respectively. Paul summarizes this reality in 1 Corinthians 1:25: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (ESV).
This pronouncement leads Paul to the next important statement: God’s election of those making up the church in Corinth was based not on their wisdom or their power and influence, but solely on God’s sovereignty (1 Cor. 1:26–29). God’s choice is never based on human accomplishments, power, or influence but happens in response to our grasping the hand of Jesus by faith. Sometimes we can grab the entire hand, while at other times we barely manage to hang on to the tip of the little finger of His hand—yet, rest assured, we can trust that we are in the center of God’s grace. This knowledge, according to Paul, saves us also from boasting about our own “faith accomplishments.” And “ ‘let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’ ” (1 Cor. 1:31, ESV, referring to Jer. 9:23, 24). Intriguingly (and perhaps anticipated already in the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8 in the Old Testament), Jesus Christ is the personified wisdom from God, His righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).
Part III: Life Application
Wisdom and folly are found closely linked in Paul’s opening chapter to the church in Corinth. He helps his readers understand that “human wisdom cannot lead to a true saving knowledge of God, which is only available through the foolishness of the gospel (v. 21).”—“1 Corinthians,” in Andrews Bible Commentary, ed. Ángel Manuel Rodríguez et al. (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2022), p. 1620. Discuss with your group the following questions as you consider 1 Corinthians 1:17–31:
1. What could be a stumbling block to our faith, though we have the advantage of being able to look back on nearly two thousand years of church history and the history of biblical interpretation?
What would be the best argument to make to those who consider the gospel message foolish or just a “sedative for the ignorant”?
What aspect, or aspects, of the good news of the Cross would appeal to people in your community, outside the church? What would make accepting the gospel more difficult for them?
Notes
Notes
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Key Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18
Study Focus: 1 Cor. 1:17–31.
Introduction
When faced with a towering wall of flames amid a wildfire, one’s first thought probably would not be to apply more fire to the already extremely dangerous situation. As foolish as this action may seem, firefighters often do exactly that. A fire needs oxygen and fuel, such as dry vegetation or flammable structures, in order to keep burning. If one can cut off either the oxygen supply or the fuel supply, the fire can be brought under control. Firefighters often use this technique, known as “backfiring,” to halt or redirect a fire.
Fighting fire with fire seems to go counter to reason, or appears even foolish, when faced with a fast-moving wall of fire, pushing quickly toward a town or settlement. Yet, when done appropriately and carefully, this strategy can make the difference between survival and destruction by fire.
In the same way, Paul’s exaltation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross went against the sentiment of his day. In the introduction to his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul highlights the countercultural nature of the Christian message of the Cross, which is something that most of us living in Western, or Christian, contexts will struggle to understand. Most of us grew up in a world in which crosses on churches or in other public spaces were shorthand for Christianity and the message of salvation.
But the cross meant cruel death, severe punishment, and absolute shame to most people living in the first-century A.D. Greco-Roman world. Yet, contrary to the popular thinking of that time, Paul taught that the gospel of Jesus Christ was the power of God to those who accepted it (1 Cor. 1:18, ESV).
Lesson Themes
This week’s lesson highlights a number of important themes, including:
The Message of the Cross. The cross is God’s surprising, and all-encompassing, answer to the sin problem. It is the foundation of the gospel message preached by Paul and the other apostles to a world that had a radically different worldview.
True Wisdom. Wisdom was an important element of Greek philosophy and a major topic in distinct philosophical schools. Paul’s use of the term stands in stark contrast to its use in Greek philosophy and connects more easily to the understanding of wisdom in the Old Testament.
The Cross: Folly or a Way Home. The cross becomes either a stumbling block or folly to those who hear about it without embracing the One who hung there. Jesus died on the cross in order to offer the world forgiveness, transformative grace, and a way home to the God who invests all to save His fallen creation.
Part II: Commentary
1. Background: The Hellenistic concept of wisdom (sofia) in the New Testament period emphasized intelligence and theoretical knowledge over practical skills. A philosopher was a “lover of wisdom,” someone who understood and disseminated knowledge about the natural world and the human experience. Truth could be ordered into a general system that could help explain the world. Quite a number of differing Greek philosophical schools, with distinct emphases, existed during the time, but they all focused on observation, reason, logic, and intellectual arguments, even though they were not devoid of ethical concerns.
Six major Greco-Roman philosophical schools should be distinguished: the school of Pythagoras; the school of Plato and his successors; Aristotle’s peripatetic school; the school of Epicurus that emphasized imperturbability as the ideal; the cynics (emphasizing simplicity and freedom from societal conventions); and the school of the Stoics, which, during the time of the events of the New Testament, was known as Roman stoicism (or Late Stoa) and became the most influential school of philosophy during that time (see John T. Fitzgerald, “Greco-Roman Philosophical Schools,” in The World of the New Testament, eds. Joel B. Green and Lee Martin McDonald [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013], pp. 135–148).
In the Old Testament, wisdom is not limited to knowledge, or the integration of knowledge into a coherent system; rather, it describes the ability of a person to make right use of knowledge that is relationally connected to God. This knowledge is, thus, God-given and results in making ethical (i.e., “good,” echoing Creation language) decisions. Exodus 31:1–5 uses three key terms of wisdom language (ḥokmah, “wisdom;” binah, “intelligence;” and da' at, “knowledge”) to describe the divinely given skill that the artist Bezalel needed to create the tabernacle and its utensils. The use of these terms in this particular context helps us to understand that wisdom in the Old Testament is practical and goes beyond a mere intellectual endeavor.
The Old Testament authors ask big questions about God’s justice and how humans can obtain true wisdom, even though they recognize that not all our questions, nor our search for wisdom, will lead always to clear answers (for example, Prov. 20:24; Job 28:20, 21). Wisdom literature in the Old Testament includes the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and selected wisdom psalms (for example, Psalms 37, 49, 73).
The discovery of a significant corpus of wisdom literature, emphasizing knowledge among the writings from the Khirbet Qumran community in the first century B.C. (also known as Dead Sea Scrolls), highlights the fact that discussions about wisdom were an important element of intellectual and philosophical discussions among Jewish communities prior to the arrival of the Messiah in Palestine (see J. I. Kampen, “Wisdom Literature at Qumran,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, eds. C. A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000], pp. 1263–1268).
2. Foolishness and Wisdom: Following his initial greetings, thanksgiving, and exhortation to unity, Paul begins his message to the young church in Corinth by focusing on foolishness and wisdom. First Corinthians 1:18–31 is a rhetorical high point of the New Testament. Paul’s thesis statement to the Corinthians suggests that the gospel is folly to some, while it represents the saving power of God to others (1 Cor. 1:18). This paradox is significant, as it suggests; and as Paul points out in later chapters, the weakness of humanity is really an opportunity for God to display His strength.
The remainder of the passage offers a number of contrasts between wise and foolish, God and the world, strong and weak. The cross, an instrument of cruel Roman torture and death, has become the means by which God accomplished salvation. This argument, which underlies all the preaching of Paul and the early Christian church, must have felt countercultural and paradoxical to many newly converted Gentile believers. The “word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18, ESV) is shorthand for the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, offering salvation for those who have heard and believed in that word. We get a hint of the sense of the folly that any Greco-Roman audience would have perceived in this message: How could God save people (and the world) through the death of a crucified convicted felon? Jews, on the other hand, would perceive this message as a “stumbling block” (ESV), or Greek skandalon, as noted in 1 Corinthians 1:23. This stumbling block, on the one hand, or foolishness, on the other hand, refers metaphorically to an obstacle to one’s faith.
3. The Good News of the Cross: Right from the outset, Paul argues that the message of the cross is the power of God to those being saved. The cross offers believers the key to understanding God’s wisdom of offering salvation to those who do not deserve righteousness nor can ever attain it. The cross is also more than a sign or symbol, though Jews do not recognize it as such, even though they yearn to see miraculous signs (Matt. 12:38, 39; Mark 8:11, 12; also 1 Cor. 1:22). The desire to see signs and wonders reflects a basic spiritual blindness, and perhaps even a hardness of heart, by those who “demand” (not “ask for”) them. The gospel of the crucified and risen Christ does not elicit faith in Jews or Greeks but, rather, becomes to them a “stumbling block” or “folly,” respectively. Paul summarizes this reality in 1 Corinthians 1:25: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (ESV).
This pronouncement leads Paul to the next important statement: God’s election of those making up the church in Corinth was based not on their wisdom or their power and influence, but solely on God’s sovereignty (1 Cor. 1:26–29). God’s choice is never based on human accomplishments, power, or influence but happens in response to our grasping the hand of Jesus by faith. Sometimes we can grab the entire hand, while at other times we barely manage to hang on to the tip of the little finger of His hand—yet, rest assured, we can trust that we are in the center of God’s grace. This knowledge, according to Paul, saves us also from boasting about our own “faith accomplishments.” And “ ‘let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’ ” (1 Cor. 1:31, ESV, referring to Jer. 9:23, 24). Intriguingly (and perhaps anticipated already in the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8 in the Old Testament), Jesus Christ is the personified wisdom from God, His righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).
Part III: Life Application
Wisdom and folly are found closely linked in Paul’s opening chapter to the church in Corinth. He helps his readers understand that “human wisdom cannot lead to a true saving knowledge of God, which is only available through the foolishness of the gospel (v. 21).”—“1 Corinthians,” in Andrews Bible Commentary, ed. Ángel Manuel Rodríguez et al. (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2022), p. 1620. Discuss with your group the following questions as you consider 1 Corinthians 1:17–31:
1. What could be a stumbling block to our faith, though we have the advantage of being able to look back on nearly two thousand years of church history and the history of biblical interpretation?
What would be the best argument to make to those who consider the gospel message foolish or just a “sedative for the ignorant”?
What aspect, or aspects, of the good news of the Cross would appeal to people in your community, outside the church? What would make accepting the gospel more difficult for them?
Notes
Notes