The wisdom and power of God
The wisdom and power of God
When Paul has finished his magisterial exposition of the gospel in the first eleven chapters of Romans, how God presented Christ as a propitiatory sacrifice, justifies sinners through faith in Christ, transforms them by the inward work of the Spirit and is creating his new community into which Gentiles are admitted on the same terms as Jews, he breaks off into a rapturous doxology: ‘Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!...For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen’ (11:33–36). Earlier the apostle has seen the atoning death of Christ as a demonstration of God’s justice and God’s love; now he is overcome by a sense of God’s wisdom – the wisdom to devise such a costly plan of salvation which both meets our needs and also satisfies his own character.
The cross as the wisdom and power of God is the main theme of 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:5, especially as contrasted with the wisdom and power of the world. It is Paul’s mention of the ‘gospel’ which triggers his meditation, for he knows immediately that he is faced with a decision about its content. The choice is between ‘words of human wisdom’ and ‘the cross of Christ’. If he were to choose human wisdom, the cross would be ‘emptied’, denuded, indeed destroyed (1:17). So he chooses ‘the message of the cross’, which he knows to be foolishness to those who are perishing, but at the same time is the power of God to those who are being saved (1:18). Powerless wisdom or foolish power: it was (and still is) a fateful choice. The one combination which is not an option is the wisdom of the world plus the power of God.
The reason Paul opts for power against wisdom, God’s power against the world’s wisdom, is that God in Old Testament Scripture has already declared his intention to destroy the wisdom of the wise and frustrate the cleverness of the clever (1:19). So, if God has set himself against them, where are the wise, the scholars and the philosophers of this age to be found? Has not God already decided against them by making their wisdom foolish (1:20)? This is how he has done so. In his wisdom God first decreed that the world through its own wisdom should not know him, and then was pleased through the foolishness of the revealed and preached gospel to save believers (1:21). So it is again clear that power (saving power) is not in the world’s wisdom but in God’s foolishness, namely the gospel of Christ crucified.
This principle can be seen operating in the evangelization of Jews and Greeks, for both groups lay down conditions on which the gospel would be acceptable to them. ‘Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom’ (1:22). In other words, they insist that the message must authenticate itself to them by power and wisdom respectively. In total contrast to their demands, however, ‘we preach Christ crucified’ (1:23), who does not even begin to conform to their criteria. On the contrary, the Jews find the cross ‘a stumbling block’ and the Gentiles ‘foolishness’, for it offends instead of impressing them, whereas to those who are called by God, whether Jews or Greeks, it is the exact opposite. Though crucified in weakness Christ is God’s power, and though apparently foolish he is God’s wisdom (1:24). For what men regard as God’s foolishness is wiser than their wisdom, and what they regard as God’s weakness is stronger than their strength (1:25). In brief, divine and human values are completely at variance with one another. And the cross, which as a way of salvation seems the height of impotence and folly, is actually the greatest manifestation of God’s wisdom and power.
Paul caps his argument with two illustrations, the first taken from the Corinthians’ experience of their call and conversion (1:26–31), and the second from his own experience of evangelism (2:1–5). As for them, by human standards not many of them were wise or powerful. In fact God deliberately chose what the world regards as foolish and feeble people, in order to shame the wise and the strong; he chose even the lowly, the despised and the non-existent to nullify what exists. His goal in this was to exclude human boasting. Boasting was entirely out of place, because it was God who had united them to Christ, and Christ who had become their wisdom (revealing God to them) and their power (bringing them justification, holiness and the promise of final redemption). Therefore, as Scripture says, if anybody boasts, he must boast neither in himself, nor in others, but in the Lord alone.
As for Paul the evangelist, when he came to Corinth, he had not come with a message of human wisdom. Nor had he come in his own strength. Instead, he had brought the foolish, revealed message of the cross, and he had come in personal weakness, fear and trembling, relying on the Holy Spirit’s power to confirm the word. His whole purpose in coming to them in such folly and feebleness was that their faith would rest firmly on God’s power, not men’s wisdom.
What we have been hearing throughout this passage is variations on the theme of the wisdom and power of God, his wisdom through human folly and his power through human weakness. The gospel of the cross will never be a popular message, because it humbles the pride of our intellect and character. Yet Christ crucified is both God’s wisdom (1:24) and ours (1:30). For the cross is God’s way to satisfy his love and justice in the salvation of sinners. It therefore manifests his power too, ‘the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’ (Rom. 1:16).
So when we look at the cross we see the justice, love, wisdom and power of God. It is not easy to decide which is the most luminously revealed, whether the justice of God in judging sin, or the love of God in bearing the judgment in our place, or the wisdom of God in perfectly combining the two, or the power of God in saving those who believe. For the cross is equally an act, and therefore a demonstration, of God’s justice, love, wisdom and power. The cross assures us that this God is the reality within, behind and beyond the universe.
In one of his great hymns Isaac Watts brought together God’s self-revelation in the creation and the cross. After speaking of his handiwork in nature, he continues:
But in the grace that rescued man
His brightest form of glory shines.
Here, on the cross, ‘tis fairest drawn
In precious blood and crimson lines.
Here his whole name appears complete:
Nor wit can guess, nor reason prove,
Which of the letters best is writ,
The power, the wisdom or the love.