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.

Notes on 1. Corinthians 1:1-3

Yesterday, by God's grace I had the privilege of hosting a small Bible study in our home. I decided to share my teaching notes on this blog as well, so that the saints that are spread around all over the world may take part of our journey through this epistle, and hopefully be edified and blessed. I will keep doing so for as long as God allows me, maybe even through the entire book. Our first session focused on the three introductory verses to the book. This is a section that we generally just tend to skim through, but keep reading, and you might be surprised how much is in there.

Verse 1

Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

The senders of this letter are Paul and Sosthenes. We'll get back to Sosthenes later on, but first we'll consider Paul

Paul was an apostle:
The word apostle literally means a sent out one. So what Paul is saying is that he is a “sent out one” of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Neither he nor any of the other apostles were shy about calling themselves apostles of Christ, and Paul even spends considerable time in 2. Corinthians defending his apostleship.

By the will of God:
You would think that would be obvious, but Paul still finds it worthwhile to specify it. And not only in this epistle, but several others. (Gal, Eph, Col, 1+2Tim and Tit (bond-servant)) Perhaps this was especially essential for the Corinthians, in view of their unhealthy tendency to takes pride in spiritual gifts and positions. Paul was not an apostle because he wanted to be. He was not in it for the prestige, or to be honored by men. He was not not applying for the Job–in fact he hated everyone who named the name of Christ–but God called him. He struck him down on the way to Damascus and sent his servant Ananias to him. Not to offer him a lucrative job in the apostolic ministry, but to announce that God had chosen him to suffer. “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name's sake” (Acts 9:15-16)

Paul fought against God and lost. God defeated him. But here is the miracle of God's election: Not only does he choose an enemy, and defeat him. But those he defeat come to love him and praise him for doing so. I'm sure there were many that were praying for God to kill Paul. He easily could have done that. But instead he put his power on display by doing something no one else could do. He made Paul a new person. One who counted everything he was and everything he worked so hard for as rubbish, so he could gain what was infinitely more important to him. The object of his absolute and undivided affection, Jesus Christ. (Php 3:8)

Paul knew that he was on the one hand a slave. He says “I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I preach not the Gospel. For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward; but if against my will I have a stewardship entrusted to me” (9:16-17) But on the other hand he's not an unwilling slave. His greatest joy was serving his master. Listen to how Paul talks about the paradox of being elected, both a slave, yet an object of grace, in Galatians 1:10-17:

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant(slave) of Christ. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

How can this be? How can a prisoner of war, held as a slave, speak so affectionately about his captor? When Jesus blinded Paul's physical eyes on his way to Damascus, he also opened his spiritual ones. He had been blinded to his sin, thinking he was doing God a favor in persecuting the church. He took great confidence in his Pharisaical obedience to God's law. (Pharisees would stay obedient to the letter of the law, and still always find loopholes for their own sins) Now he saw that he was an evil man, and and that every breath God had allowed him to take was an act of patience and grace. He saw Gods infinite goodness in extending an offer of full redemption to him, the chief of sinners. He saw the price that God had purchased this redemption at. He sent his son to take human form and die as a sacrifice, bearing Paul's sin and ours. Seeing his own sin in contrast to the goodness God extended to him, he became a Christian. One who lives and breathes Christ. “It is no longer I who live”, he said, “but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)

And so it was that Paul became an apostle “by the will of God”. It was not his own will, he nurtured a deep hatred to those who were apostles and to all who followed them, but God set him apart before he was born, and at the time right time he called him, and then he transformed him and started working through him. At no point was Paul's own will or anyone else's will consulted in these matters. And had they been none of this would probably have ever happened. It was an act of God from one end to the other.

Sosthenes:
Was for a time the leader of the Synagogue in Corinth, probably replacing the previous Synagogue leader, Crispus, after he became a Christian. Apparently Sosthenes himself must have turned to Christ as well, and followed Paul to Ephesus, where Paul wrote this epistle.

Verse 2:

To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:

The church in Corinth:
The church was founded by Paul himself, during his second missionary journey. Here's the story from Acts 18:1-17:

After these things he left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.

He came to them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and they were working, for by trade they were tent-makers. And he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.

But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, "Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles." Then he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God, whose house was next to the synagogue.

Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing and being baptized. And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, "Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city." And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

But while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat, saying, "This man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law." But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, "If it were a matter of wrong or of vicious crime, O Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you; but if there are questions about words and names and your own law, look after it yourselves; I am unwilling to be a judge of these matters." And he drove them away from the judgment seat.

And they all took hold of Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him in front of the judgment seat. But Gallio was not concerned about any of these things.

Paul is writing this letter to the Corinthians about three years after he left the city. And it's in fact not the first one. He says in 5:9, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral people”, so we know that there is to be at least one letter before this one. And the letter we know as 2. Corinthians is actually at least the 4^th one he wrote to them, because in 2. Corinthians he mentions a severe letter that made them sorrowful.

Sanctified in Christ:
It it interesting that he would open his letter with such a description of the church, because the rest of the letter is mostly about all the things they are doing wrong. There were divisions, worldliness, all kinds of sexual sin, abuse of spiritual gifts, disorder in the meetings, and many other things that we will look in to in more detail as we read through the letter. But still he says they are sanctified. How can he say that?

To understand that we need to look into what the word sanctification means. It means to be made holy. Whenever we talk about holiness we need to keep in mind that the word has a much deeper meaning than just living morally. It means to be set apart. It literally means to be separated or divided from something. When we talk about the holiness of God we are not saying that he has high morals, but we are saying that God is something entirely different from everything else that exists. That there is nothing that is like him.

Now in the old testament when there is talk about something or someone being sanctified, it means to be set apart for serving God. The vessels and different tools of the temple were only for serving God. Not for baking bread or carrying water. They were not for common use. And likewise the priests of the old covenant. They had their work in the temple, and there were strict regulations on what they were allowed to do or touch. Because they were to be holy.

Now, in the new covenant, sanctification takes on a whole new meaning. In the old covenant the believers did not have the Holy Spirit living in them. He could “come upon them” and give them power in certain special situations, yet those situations were few and far between. But to the new covenant believers Jesus made an enormous promise in John 14: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” And it should not be any surprise that this has a very significant effect on the believer. Galatians 5 says:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

To the old covenant believers holiness meant being set apart for God. To the new covenant believer, holiness means being set apart like God. The old testament commandment is “You shall be holy, for (because) I the LORD your God am holy”, but the new testament commandment is “but like the Holy One who called you (or 'like he who called you is holy'), be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;” (1Pe 1:15). For us sanctifications means taking on some of the nature of Christ, and becoming like him.

But this is looking less and less like the Corinthian church, isn't it? The problem with sanctification is that while we do have the Holy Spirit living in us, we at the same time have a body and a mind with habits and thought patterns and even somewhat of a natural resistance against the things of God. And we are fighting a spiritual war against the devil and his angels, not to mention that we are under the influence of a world that does not care about God, and that too tends to rub off on us.

Sanctification is not thing that happens once and then we're done with it. It's a process that begins when we are saved and lasts for our entire lives. Not until we stand in heaven and see God face to face will we be completely transformed to his image. But that is where we are heading. And even with all the problems in the Corinthian church, that was where they were heading as well. Paul is not writing them to say that they are not growing, but he is rebuking them for growing so slowly. There is some sanctification in their lives, but they are still infants in Christ even after this time He says in c 3. “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able” They were in Christ, they had the Holy Spirit, and they were being sanctified. But they were letting the world and their flesh hold them back from growing. Three years after the church was founded they were not supposed to still be at the stage of infants, barely being able to drink milk.

Saints by calling:
Contrary to popular belief, a saint is not a dead catholic with a yellow ring around his head. A saint is anyone who is justified in Christ. This is not exclusive to the Corinthian church, but it is for “all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. All of us who are in Christ have been declared righteous, and we are saints. And this verse says we became saints in the same way that Paul became an apostle; by calling. The Bible says in Romans 8:

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

It is all a matter of Gods calling. Jesus said “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (Jn 6:44)

Verse 3:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul starts his letter with this blessing, and I'll end this session with it. We've already seen Gods grace richly in these verses, in electing, calling, justifying, and sanctifying. May his grace do it's work in all of you and produce in you the peace that comes with it.