1 Corinthians 1:18-2:2
“For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” this passage opens with. And, for those who are not of the faith, it is indeed foolishness. John Chrysostom writes, “the power of the cross is not recognized by those who are perishing, because they are out of their minds and act like madmen, complaining and rejecting the medicines which bring them salvation.” This is a very interesting view on the salvation that the Lord brings. In much the same way as one would go and visit a doctor, and then reject the necessary means prescribed by the doctor to achieve health, so to Jesus, who offers the prescription necessary for salvation, is often shunned by those who think that they know better. And yet, it is those who are most sick and deranged in their lives that most need it. In Luke 5:31, Jesus declares, “they that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.” See, if we were not in need of the “great physician,” He never would have come to heal us, to give to us the means of our salvation. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who do not believe because it is the denial of the worldly desires and lusts that our nature seeks to gratify. It is a form of abstinence, self control, aided by the Holy Spirit, to resist the temptation to indulge in appetites or desires, desires of the flesh. And to those who are not being saved, that is an undesirable sacrifice. In an era of “you be you,” the idea of denying yourself certain vices seems foolish. And even worse, not only do they not embrace that mentality, but they actually mock and, sometimes, even attack those who do. In Matthew 10:22, Jesus warns us that “you will be hated for my name’s sake.” And in the age of the internet, that has unfortunately become even more and more the case. Peopl are insulted and threatened for adhering to certain doctrines, predominantly because politics have grown to oppose Scriptural ideologies. It seems foolish to be opposed to anything that can bring someone physical pleasure and superficial happiness. And yet, if you look at the numbers, the more society embraces this mentality of physical pleasure and superficial happiness, the higher the suicide rates have grown. In 2022, more than 49.5 thousand people died from suicide, which is 14.2 people per 100,000. To put this in perspective, during the great recession in 2009, that same rate was 11.8 per 100,000. So what happened, where is the joy and happiness of indulging in desires and lusts?
“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” And yet, as we move away from that foolishness, it seems people are less and less content with their lives. It’s because the problem is that people are looking the wrong way. They are seeking physical healing for spiritual wounds. There is “something missing” in their souls and they are seeking to fill that hole with worldly passions. It’s like having a hole in your back yard and trying to fill it with water. The water just seeps through the cracks until the ground around it becomes muddy and then you end up with a pool of water surrounded by sludge. And if you try to walk across this hole that’s now filled, you end up drowning.
“But to those who are being saved.” This is of vital importance to note. This statement is written in a present tense. It does not say “to those who are saved.” “To those who are being saved.” This is the process by which the cross transforms us. Currently. It is the process through which Jesus takes us and guides us towards our salvation. Not a one time event. It is the power of God working in us to make us more like Him, thereby leading us into the salvation which He has promised us. All too often, I hear comments like “I’m not perfect, just saved” as an excuse to give in to carnal pleasures. Or, “oh well, I’m forgiven,” to justify taking actions opposed to His guidance. Make no mistake, I am in no way insinuating that any of us is perfect. One is holy, One is pure. However, our goal must be to be as like Him as possible, through His guidance. We are to strive for that, to aim high and miss, instead of aiming low and hitting. If we’re aiming for 100 and only get an 80, that’s much preferable than aiming for a 60 and getting it.
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” This was a quote taken from Isaiah 29, wherein the people were going and praying before God with merely words, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men. It was a reference to false teachings, wherein the teachers, the “wise men,” were teaching only what they desired to teach. They would take a line or two out of context, and make it to mean whatever they desired it to mean. We see this happen all too often, where a pastor grabs one line out of context and warps it to mean what they chose for it to mean, and as educated as they sound in so doing, they are actually the very people that the Lord is referencing here. “Destroy the wisdom of the wise teaching the doctrines of men.” We see this so often in, again, political debates and arguments, but also in homilies where anything political gets brought into it. We see it all throughout the history of the Church, with various doctrines of people who thought that they knew better what the Church was than the Church. It serves as a great warning against Arianism, against, Lutheranism, against Calvinism, against a myriad of heresies which have entered into the Church through a doctrine of man.
“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.” The Jews demanded a sign to know that the Messiah had come, and were given one, the cross, which they denied. The Greeks, on the other hand, thought it foolish. “Christ crucified.” The Jews considered it a stumbling block because Christ called Himself the Son of God, and yet refused to observe the Sabbath, heling on the Sabbath day. And to the Greeks, they hear of a virgin birth, the resurrection, and the actual death of God…consider this, God, the all-knowing, all-powerful, assumed human form with human frailties and allowed Himself to be killed on Earth for the salvation of all. None would ever consider that to be a possibility, the death of the All-Powerful. They considered this to be utter foolishness, and yet, He allowed it to happen; showing that He had power even over death itself during the Resurrection, which He in turn offers to all. Using death to overcome death. St Paul write in his letter to the Corinthians, “the natural man does not receive the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The knowledge of the Cross consists in the understand of Christ, which St Paul terms the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery that natural man, of his own accord, could not understand. The cross laid bare, the tomb empty, and the direction of how to achieve these things for all who follow Him and believe in Him and His Word. It all seems foolish to those who do not understand.
And yet, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” St Paul is in no way referring to God as foolish, merely that God’s way of reasoning is in accord with things of the spirit, therefore confounding the reasoning of the world. It is wiser than the wisest of human reasoning because it is dealing directly with the spirit, thus seeming foolish to those who are bound to human wisdom. Similarly, when God appeared in human form and allowed Himself to be killed, it appeared to be a weakness, and yet, as He emerges victorious over death, He shows that even in what appeared to be a weakness, He was stronger than the strongest man. Man can defeat man, only God can defeat death. The two most foolish things in the world refer directly to the virgin birth and the resurrection, two things which seem completely foolish to those of the world. Even the wisest of men and women could never comprehend either of these things, so they deny them instead.
The internet is full of theories of how Mary wasn’t a virgin, of how Jesus wasn’t truly dead, even theories of Jesus never truly existing. Except, even by today’s standards, we have eyewitness testimony. We have eyewitness testimony in writing of His existence, of His miracles, of His resurrection. So how do we know it’s true? Faith. They didn’t have an internet database in Jesus’ time. They didn’t have digital cameras. The only had writing and scribes to keep track of events. They had paintings, instead of photographs. We have, historically speaking, the most up-to-date methods of keeping track of historical events that they had available to them at that time. If we can find a femur and reconstruct an entire animal based on it and use that as proof of the existence of a particular animal, then surely we are bound to accept eyewitness testimony preserved throughout the ages, paintings preserved throughout the ages, as proof of the existence and miracles performed by Jesus. And yet, it’s the wisdom of man that tells us that Dinosaurs did exist, but there’s no way any of the accounts of Jesus are true. It’s that wisdom of something beyond our capability of understanding that we can’t bring ourselves to believe in.
This passage tells us many things. The most important of them all goes back to the first part. It is vital that we believe in Jesus, and that we look to Him as our teacher, our doctor, our role model. Faith is imperative, but it’s a faith that evokes change. We believe that He existed, we believe that He was crucified, we believe that He died for our sins. And we believe that He gave us the “formula” for our salvation. Let us look past the “wisdom of the world” which declares the Gospel to be foolishness, and instead focus on what His teachings taught us. He has given us the key to salvation, to true eternal happiness instead of superficial carnal happiness. We have to remember that “the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.” It is the power to overcome the temptations of the world, and instead find our true sanctuary in Him. It is the power to look at all the world has to offer and say, by His grace, “no, this is what He says, and I’m trusting Him.”
As we go into Pascha (Easter, for my Western brethern), let us fully embrace that fact. The fact that He assumed human form so that He could die and display that even death has no power over Him, that He is greater than death itself. And He offers that to us. Through His ways, through His sacrifice on the cross for our salvation. May we strive to live as He lived, looking to Him as what we were meant to be originally.
Glory to Jesus Christ.