Paul's contextualization fail - Notes on 1. Corinthians 1:17-18

Verse 17

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

Cleverness of speech

Paul makes the transition from the previous topic of divisions to the power of the Gospel. Last time we spoke about Not picking apart the picture of God painted by all those who preach his name in truth. This time we will take a closer look at what appeal this picture has to us. What is the power that draws us to it?

The power of Paul's message was not in his cleverness of speech. That's certainly not because of any lack of intellectual ability on his part. When we read through Paul's writings that is abundantly clear. There's no doubt that the man is brilliant and quite able to preach the Gospel with cleverness of speech. So why didn't he? And out of all places he might decide not to speak cleverly, why did it have to be in Corinth?

You see, Corinthians—and Greeks in general—were people who had an appreciation for clever speech. Carefully crafted arguments and high-minded philosophy was highly esteemed in their culture. The elite members of society would devote most of their time to political and philosophical discourse. This is the culture that brought us such names as Plato and Aristotle, still famous today for their handling of what the Greeks called the “Logos” – The word.

We see a snapshot of this Greek culture in Acts 17, as Paul runs into some of these Greek philosophers in Athens, on his way to Corinth.

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, "What would this idle babbler wish to say?" Others, "He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,"--because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean." (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) (Acts 17:16-21)

So why, out of all places, did Paul not preach with cleverness of speech here in Corinth? The city where cleverness of speech was alpha and omega?

What is the one thing everybody knows about evangelism? We need to put the message in a cultural context if we want the culture to listen. We need to make it appealing to them. If the culture you're trying to reach listens to a certain type of music, you need to make that kind of music with Christian lyrics. If the culture likes dance, you need to have Christian dance performances in church. If the culture likes to watch TV, you make Christian TV programs or start a Christian TV channel, and so on. So following this logic, if the culture likes cleverness of speech, than you need to preach the Gospel with cleverness of speech. If that current paradigm for gospel preaching is correct, than we're witnessing a monumental failure on Paul's part. How could he get something this simple wrong?

He gives us the reason: So that the cross of Christ would not be made void. You see, true faith is not something that you can be persuaded into. It is a gift given from God.

That's not to say that it's impossible to persuade someone to become a Christian by natural means. I'm sure Paul would have been able to convince many of the truthfulness of the Gospel if he had used cleverness of speech. Likewise, in our cultural context, multitudes make a profession of faith after Christian concerts, after watching Christian TV programs, and so on. So the problem isn't that it lacks the power to persuade. Rather the problem is that it indeed has this power.

You see if anyone is persuaded to come to Christ by any other power than God's calling, he will still go to hell when he dies. If he came because the preaching made sense to him or because he liked the music, and not because he has been born again by the power of God, then he may be religious, but he's still spiritually dead.
We can not afford to let the power of how we preach replace the power of what we preach.

If Paul had done that, he would be in danger of voiding the Gospel of it's power—the Gospel would have no life-changing effect on them—and producing many false converts, who would add dead weight to the church and eventually fall away. Potentially becoming very deadly weapons in Satan's hands as the persecution of the church was increasing.

Verse 18

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Are perishing … are being saved

Notice how Paul here uses the present tense of perishing and being saved. He did not say us who have been saved, or will be saved, although the Bible speaks of salvation both as a past and a future event in other places. Here he choses to speak about it as something present and ongoing. He sees two types of people: Those who are in the process of being saved and those who are in the process of perishing.

It's like a man who has fallen into a deep hole, and is in the process of being pulled out. He could say that he was saved when someone threw him a rope and started pulling him up. He could say that he is being saved, because after all he is still in the hole. And he could say that he will be saved once he reach the top of the hole and has solid ground under his feet again.

We need to be careful that we never think of our salvation as a past event that we're done with. It is a past event, but it's also an ongoing present event, and a future event. And we can never say that we got saved at a time in the past if we're not today holding on to the rope that is pulling us up.

This is all much clearer from Gods perspective. After all he sees our past, present and future all at the same time. He will never be confused by someone who seem for a time to be heading in the right direction, yet end up perishing, or someone who seems for a time to be on a highway to hell and ends up being saved.

To us humans, experiencing the world one moment at a time, can not speak definitively about who is perishing and who is being saved. We can only speak about what direction someone appear to be traveling in at those moments when we have observed them. Over time we can make qualified assumptions about which category they belong in, based on experience and our limited knowledge of God's plan. But only God has the full picture.

The power

Notice how this verse does not say the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but wisdom to us. It says wisdom later on, in verse 24, so it wouldn't by any means be wrong to say wisdom. But before this message will be wisdom, it is power. The word of the Cross is the Power of God. And this power opens our minds to the wisdom of God.

It might not be a completely impossible task to use natural wisdom to persuade someone of the truthfulness of the gospel, but it can never lead anyone to it's power. It is not the method that God has prescribed. To the contrary he says in the next verse:

For it is written, "I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE." 

God has rejected the wisdom of the world as a means to salvation. He's given us a message that the world will generally find foolish. Yet combined with God's calling it becomes a power that bypasses our natural intellect and reveals a different kind of wisdom. We'll look more into that next time, which is why you need to come back.