21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1:21–24
In his wisdom, God chose what is foolishness to man as the only route to him. It’s our inclination to make things more complicated, more difficult. We think it can’t be this easy. We think no man can obtain God but through the self-flagellation call works. But God’s design was to establish one way, one sacrificial act to get to him, requiring only belief in Jesus.
Down through the ages, man has devised ways to get to God, and all have fallen woefully short. With his chosen people, it’s always been about signs. So he sent his son who fulfilled prophecies and performed extraordinary signs. But this was not good enough because God’s way, crucifixion, was an anathema. With the Gentiles, there would have to be some grand philosophy that no one had yet postulated as a pathway to God. But salvation through a dead Jew? Ridiculous!
But God created man not as a Jew or Gentile, but as a thinking being capable of accepting and resigning to his methodology. That in our weakness it is possible to see that only by his calling can we be or do anything, especially to become saved. We desperately need a power both stronger and wiser than we are.
Paul sets out here to explain the wisdom of God, comparing the saved and the unsaved, the Jew and the Greek, the wise and the foolish, the weak and the strong, the things that are and the things that are not. God has no patience with the wise, the mighty, and the noble of this world, if they have not become foolish for him, and weak for him, and debased for him. I wish to be all these lesser things so that I might constantly witness the power and wisdom of God in my life. He is wise who puts no stock in his own capabilities, but everything in his calling from above.
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. 1 Corinthians 1:18
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