Paul, Pt. 4: “The Paradox of the Cross”

THE PARADOX OF THE CROSS (1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31)
The cross took a major political beating since 2004. In May, 2004, the ACLU gave Los Angeles County two weeks to eliminate the 1957-designed seal that appears on most official county property: walls, documents, uniforms, vehicles and even business cards – all because of a cross. After four months of debate, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors caved in and stripped a tiny miniature gold cross from the Los Angeles County seal to avoid a lawsuit. By a 3-2 partisan vote, the three Democrats on the board voted in favor of removing the cross while the two Republicans voted retain it. (Los Angeles Times 9/15/04 “Officials Vote to Replace County Seal”)

In June the same year, more than 700 people packed a board meeting in Redlands, the city 50 miles east of Los Angeles, to decry the removal of the cross. Thousands more wrote or called supervisors to complain, but the board refused to budge. It will cost the county an estimated $800,000 to replace the seal. Redlands city attorney, Dan McHugh, said, “The city council has a budget crunch, it could run up to 50 to 60 thousand dollars in costs so the city council made the decision that the manager ought to continue removing the cross. It was just not worth the money or the effort.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,119035,00.html

In a sense, the cross receives the same treatment as Jesus, who was spit in the face, struck with fists and slapped (Matt 26:67), then flogged (Matt 27:26), struck on the head (Matt 27:30), mocked (Matt 27:29), blasphemed (Matt 27:39) and
insulted (Matt 27:44).

What is the message of the cross? Why is it so offensive and reviled? How is the cross a threat?

The Cross of Christ is the Wisdom Left Untried
18 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. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor 1:18-21)

An atheist was sitting under a tree one day thinking. “God,” he said, “you know I don’t believe in you, but if you exist, you must be stupid. Look at this huge oak tree. It has little teeny acorns on it. And look at this huge pumpkin growing on this weak, puny little vine. Now, if I had been you, I would have put the acorn on the little vine, and the pumpkin on the huge, strong oak tree.”

While the man was reflecting on his great wisdom and wishing that he had a mirror to see how wise he looked, an acorn fell on his head. “Thank God it wasn’t a pumpkin,” he cried out.

The wisdom of man is laughable. The hippies say all we need is love. The pacifists say all we need is peace, not war. The romanticists say all we need is one another. The fortune tellers say all we need is luck and the progressives say all we need is change.

Paul states man’s real need is the cross because his greatest need is salvation. However, the cross is foolishness to those who are not merely “perishing,” but those destined for “total destruction” (apollumi) in Greek (v 18). He labels the cross for what unbelievers call it – foolishness, or moria from moros. The cross is a comedy to unbelievers - a trick and a joke. In the eyes of the world, there is no greater fool than a Christian and no greater foolishness than the cross. Critics consider Christianity a crutch for losers and failures. Besides “those perishing,” those destroyed in the Bible include the body (Matt 5:29), one’s life (Matt 10:39), wicked people (Matt 21:41), evil spirits (Mark 1:23-24), the unrepentant (Luke 13:3), the sinful (Rom 2:12). Interestingly, the targets of God’s destruction are people, not things or animals.

Christians, on the other hand, vouch that the cross is more than just a piece of wood or jewelry. It is the power (dunamis) of God to save, forgive and change lives. Three words have the same connotation as “power” in Greek. One is “strong,” another is “mighty” and the most popular is “power/dynamite,” the popular word for describing “the power of God” (Rom 1:16, 2 Tim 1:9, Matt 22:29, Mark 12:24, Luke 5:17, Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 1:24, 2 Cor 6:7, 2 Tim 1:8). The power of God is more than just the regular word for “strong” or “mighty,” words describing physical attributes.

According to verse 18, 21 and two other passages (Rom 1:16, 2 Tim 1:9), the Bible tells us what man needs is the cross, because is the power of God for salvation, man’s most precious gift. Why do we need salvation? Salvation because man’s doom, downfall, destiny, demise and destruction are certain. The cross is not popular because it points out man’s sinful condition, selfish choices and stiff judgment.

While man is “totally destroyed” or “perishing” (v 18), the wisdom (sophos) and the intelligence of man are “destroyed,” a milder form of the word. Wisdom is sophos, the precursor for the words sophisticated, sophist (a teacher or philosopher), sopho-more (wise + moron!). Intelligence (sun-esis) is the cognitive and intellectual ability to put and pull thoughts together. They are the synthesizers and organizers of thought. The scholar (grammateus) is the scribe or secretary, people who put thoughts into writing, in contrast to the wise who is good at thinking and the intelligent who is strong in analysis. The philosopher (suzetetes), on the other hand, is the seeker, the root word from the word “seek.” He is the inquirer of his generation.

If you ask any four of them – the wise, the intelligent, the scholar and the philosopher, none of them will tell you they know the truth of they know. They will not pretend to know about man’s salvation. The truth, to them, is in the process, never the proposition. They are interested in seeking the truth, not finding the truth. They really do not deny the truth of sin, wrongdoing and transgression, but they will tell us nobody knows. They are more interested in the question, not the answer; the search and not the solution.

For all the great thinking and the collected brains of the world, they could only know about Him, not know Him. They do not reject religion – just revelation. I always say religion is man seeking God, but revelation is God seeking man.

The Cross of Christ is Weakness in Disguise
22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. (1 Cor 1:22-25)

Elisabeth Elliot, wife of slain missionary Jim Elliot, whose story was the subject of the movie “The End of the Spear,” says what the cross means to her:
Number one: To take up the cross means to shoulder what will be the means of your death.
Number two: To take up the cross means to give energy to a seemingly hopeless task.
Number three: Submit to unsympathetic authorities.
Number four: Obey commands that you would not have chosen.
Number five: Face public mocking and ridicule.
Number six: Be rejected by those you have loved and served.
Number seven: Have your motives and actions misjudged.
Number eight: Experience pain and discomfort.
Number nine: To take up the cross means to see those you care about reject God.
http://www.backtothebible.org/gateway/today/8233

The cross is a paradox the world cannot understand. A paradox is a statement or proposition that seems to contradict itself but in reality expresses a possible truth. For example, Jesus says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 10:38), “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14), “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10:31) and “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matt 20:26)

The message of the cross is the greatest paradox: by His death we have life, by His forgiveness we have freedom, by His sacrifice we are saved, by His death we have deliverance, by His blood we are blameless, by repenting we are reconciled, His affliction for our atonement, His curse for our crime, His mortality for our immortality, His end for our eternity, His oppression for our offense, His suffering for our salvation, His grace for our guilt, His pain for our pardon.

In fact, the Jews and the Greeks thinkers and intellectuals looks for something far less than what God is giving. God is offering them divine wisdom and power, but they settle for logic and miracles. Instead of choosing the miracle of salvation, they were chasing supernatural visions, dreams and phenomena.

Human intelligence should rightly be called artificial intelligence because they can only study about the brain and the mind, but not man’s heart and soul. The cross offends and stumbles learned people, because Christianity makes no sense to them. Not only so, it is a scandal, an offence, a stumbling block to the Jews. The mission of Christ is not to save himself, but to save us. If wisdom could solve everything, Solomon’s kingdom would never end and he would not say “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless!” (Eccl 1:2) The cross is power, not merely strength and might, because only God’s power can save man’s soul.

The Cross of Christ is Worth the Boast
26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things-and the things that are not-to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God-that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor 1:26-31)

Ten years after finishing law school, Chuck Colson found himself working in the White House, appointed as Special Counsel to President Nixon in 1969, responsible for inviting influential private special interest groups into the White House policy-making process and winning their support on specific issues. For four glorious years he was known as Nixon’s hatchet man. He dispensed favors and issued orders in the name of the President. Colson confessed he was “valuable to the President ... because I was willing ... to be ruthless in getting things done.” Then came Watergate and he was implicated along with other Nixon aides. In 1974, Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. He was given a one-to-three year sentence, fined $5,000 and disbarred.

In prison, a dramatic thing happened. A proud man, he accepted Jesus Christ into his life. After he was released, he went back into prison. This time, to start a ministry called Prison Fellowship to reach out to other prison inmates. Colson has received fifteen honorary doctorates, but he said: “All my achievements meant nothing in God’s economy. My greatest humiliation - being sent to prison-was the beginning of God’s greatest use of my life. Now I could see, after I lose everything I thought made Chuck Colson a great guy, what God intended for me to be and the true purpose of my life. God does not want our success. He wants us.”

Three verbs describe the fate of the wise, the influential (dunatos), the noble (eu-genes) and the strong (ischuros) at the hands of God: shame, nullify and boast. The Greek for “shame” appears twice in verse 27 and altogether 13 times in the Bible, its lesser translations are humiliate (Luke), disappoint (Rom 5:5), dishonor (1 Cor 11:4), embarrass (2 Cor 7:14), be ashamed (2 Cor 9:4). Its original word has a “down” (kata) preposition attached, meaning “shame down,” by implication utterly shameful, making one red faced, making one lose face and making one face downward.

The second verb “nullify” also has the same preposition (kata) attached to the verb. It’s other translations in the Bible are “cut down” (Luke 13:7), no value (Rom 4:14), done away with (Rom 6:6), release (Rom 7:2), coming to nothing (1 Cor 2:6), destroy (1 Cor 6:13), cease (1 Cor 13:8), pass away (1 Cor 13:8), disappears (1 Cor 13:10), put behind me (1 Cor 13:11), fading (2 Cor 3:7), taken away (2 Cor 3:14), do away (Gal 3:17), abolished (Gal 5:11). The range of meanings taken from the passage on love in 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 includes “But where there are prophecies, they will CEASE … where there is knowledge, it will PASS AWAY ... but when perfection comes, the imperfect DISAPPEARS… When I became a man, I PUT childish ways BEHIND me.”

“Shame” refers to how man “feels,” but nullify refers to who he “is” – nothing, non-existent, disintegrate before God’s presence. The list of things God “nullify” in the Bible includes food and the stomach (1 Cor 6:13), the last enemy, which is death (1 Cor 15:26, 2 Tim 1:10) and, of course, him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil (Heb 2:14).

Finally “boast” refer to what man “says.” The last verb “boast” is less frequently translated in the Bible as brag (Rom 2:17), rejoice (Rom 5:3), take pride (2 Cor 5:12), glory in (Phil 3:3). At first, in my zeal, I wanted to say all boasting is wrong, but boasting in itself, in the Bible, is not wrong. There is a right way to boast and a wrong way to it in the Bible. Good boasting/rejoicing includes boasting in the hope of the glory of God (Rom 5:2), suffering - which produces perseverance (Rom 5:3), reconciliation with God (Rom 5:11), in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31), others’ eagerness to help (2 Cor 9:2), things that show my weakness (2 Cor 11:30), power that is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9), the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal 6:14), others’ perseverance and faith in persecutions and trials (2 Thess 1:4), the humble brother in his exaltation (James 1:9). Of course, the most often mentioned is to boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31, 2 Cor 10:17)

The wrong thing to boast is about oneself (2 Cor 12:5), observing the law (Rom 2:23), work done in another man’s territory (2 Cor 10:16), circumcision
(Gal 6:14), works (Eph 2:9) and the certainty of tomorrow (James 4:16).

Conclusion: Are you relying on God’s wisdom or man’s wisdom? Do you boast in your strength or God’s strength in your weakness? Are you ashamed of the cross or do you glory in the cross?

Questions and applications

1. Who would you consider as “the wise in the world”? Name a few individuals.
Who would you consider as “the wise in the Lord?” Name a few individuals.
Compare and contrast to identify similarities and differences.

2. Why would the Gospel of “Christ crucified” be a stumbling block to many?

3. Have you ever shared the gospel with others and they find what you shared to be foolish (or irrational, unscientific, illogical, a fable)? How do you respond?

4. Who were the Corinthian Christians? What was their social status? How did the Lord change their lives? How about you and other RCAC brothers and sisters? How are we perceived by non-believers? How has God transformed you?

5. Read Isaiah 29:14 in its context to understand God’s reason for “destroying the wisdom of the wise.” Reflect on our attitude towards God. Read Jeremiah 9:24 in its context to understand what believers should take pride in. Reflect on where your personal pride lies.