Nathan E. Lewis

The Power of the Gospel
I Corinthians 1:18 -2:5

Members of the Corinthian Church were engaged in the culture of their day. David Jackman, in the introduction to his book, Let’s Study I Corinthians, identifies four “buzz words” from Corinthian culture impacting the Church. These “buzz words” were factors in the division of the Church. The first “buzz word” is “knowledge.” The second, “wisdom,” the third, “power,” and the fourth, “spiritual.” As Paul addresses the lack of unity in the Church, he addresses these four parts of the Corinthian’s cultural awareness.
Actually, these four parts of Corinthian culture are shared by our present day culture. Knowledge is highly valued by us. Our culture accumulates knowledge and dispenses it at high volume and rate. We feel the pressure to know a little bit about everything. At the same time we demand specialists in every field. Along with knowledge we value wisdom, citing experts, looking for wonks to interpret knowledge for us. It is more and more difficult for us to get pure news. Every show and report showcases talking heads, who spin the news for us, that is apply it for us, supplying us with the correct perspective. Certainly power lies at the center of our culture. At every level of our democratic society, the American way is to jockey for positions of power. A person may have his sights on the Presidency or on the chair of a local committee. Power plays even occur at social gatherings. Our culture also values spirituality. The modern view of humanity has been adjusted in the past 30 years acknowledging that we are more than flesh and blood. We have spirits. We are deeply spiritual. This part of our culture is growing and manifests itself in the hundreds of spiritual paths being blazed in our local communities.
As Christians we must engage the culture. At the same time, we must be aware of how our culture influences our fellowship in the Church. Paul usually encourages us to engage our culture for the sake of the gospel. But in our text Paul shows us how the gospel runs counter to the culture.
First of all we learn that the cross of Christ as the power of God runs counter to our culture. The wisdom of our culture is that the strong survive and succeed. Our culture is filled with published keys to success and vitality. We are a strong culture, but the power of God resides in the cross. First century Jewish culture is visual and prophetic. God communicates through signs to guide and direct his people. His prophets foretell the coming of the Messiah and the promises of God. The gospel presents a crucified Messiah running counter to Jewish expectations. The Hellenistic culture is conceptual and logical. Wisdom is gained through rational process. Write down a persuasive argument and the rest of us will read it. If it makes sense and follows the rules we have agreed upon, then we will agree to it. The gospel presents an innocent man crucified as a criminal. This is absurd failure if not a twist of fate. The gospel runs counter to Hellenistic rationalism.
Secondly we learn that God’s calling of us runs counter to our culture. Our culture chooses the best qualified. The competition is stiff. But the gospel announces that God has called Jews and Greeks, all sorts of people to himself regardless of their qualifications. In (26) Paul writes, “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Thank God some who have been called are wise, powerful and noble. There is hope for the best along with the worst. But Paul’s point is that God does not consider our personal resumes before he chooses us. He chooses so that no one has reason to boast in humanity or in Self. When God chooses, it is clear to all who see the results that God alone has done the work graciously.
Think of those individuals who have influenced the Church throughout the world. One woman has impacted all of our lives, not because she is the most brilliant thinker, eloquent speaker, or cogent writer. When she was 16 she dove off the jetty and suffered a spinal injury and now the whole world knows the sufferings and faith of Joni Eareckson Tada. She paints with a brush in her mouth much better than I can do with a brush in my hand, but it is quite clear that she has been chosen by God, not because of her painting skills but because he has a special calling for her life.
Thirdly, we learn that the presentation of the gospel runs counter to our culture. Our culture values a comprehensive presentation with plenty of options and packages for every different kind of person. The most encouraging presentations in our culture have something for everybody. The more individual choices available, the better. We are also attracted to the better presentations. Form and content go together, undeniably, and so we are impressed by the better presentation. Paul and his gospel presentation run counter to our culture. He purposely presents one choice of God, confident that the gospel freely and powerfully presents one salvation for all of us. Paul did not use the rhetoric of his day or the wisdom of his world. He boldly and bluntly blurted out the gospel in whatever setting he found himself. It is true that he did engage the culture of Athens by making reference to their unknown god. But it is also true that he broached the topic of the resurrection before these erudite men, the best and most refined thinkers of Hellenistic culture.
Paul is not advocating the mediocrity of the Homer Simpson family. Paul is not against our striving for quality and excellence in our presentations in the Church. Rather, Paul is clearly saying that the gospel alone is effective. The Spirit of Christ uses the message of the gospel alone to warm our hearts and to enlighten our minds. Out of gratitude to God we adorn the gospel with excellence, but we do not rely on that excellence to save people.
Finally, we learn that God as the source of our lives and everything good sets him apart, worthy of all glory. God is our Creator and he has united our lives to Christ Jesus. This is his work alone and so we boast in him. Christ Jesus, is our representative before the justice of God. He stands before the perfect demands of God presenting his perfect wisdom. Thus, as our representative, his wisdom becomes our wisdom, acceptable to God. Christ’s righteousness becomes our righteousness. It is Christ’s Spirit who sanctifies us and so graciously through Christ we are made holy. It is also through Christ that we have been redeemed from sin and death and so it can be said that Christ is our redemption. Paul’s main point here is that God the Father in heaven has made Christ Jesus all of this for us. He has sent his Son to redeem and to make holy. He has executed the plan of representation, Christ’s wisdom and righteousness for all. This is God’s plan, his work, his idea, his grace. He is the source and we are the recipients. We boast in God.
The aim of David Jackman’s study on this text is “To Show that God’s message and methods must be the means we use to promote God’s work in the church.” Christ and his gospel are primary and central in the church. All too often the gospel can be lost in the message and life of the Church. Some of us have too many expectations of the Church and thus our demands compete with the pure and simple ministry of the gospel.
Outside of the Church, while we live out the gospel in every field and area of life, we are nevertheless called by God to glorify him through the excellence and depth of service in our particular field. For example, if you were a Chemistry teacher, your primary calling in glorifying God is to teach your students Chemistry. Heaven forbid that you would fill your Chemistry class with lectures against Evolution and lectures in favor of Creation. Heaven forbid that you would take every minute of class time to study the Bible and call your students to respond to the gospel. Your classroom is not the Church, but rather, it is the Chemistry classroom. The way you glorify God in the Chemistry classroom is to teach Chemistry as best you can and to effectively teach it to the level of your students. It is incumbent upon all Christian Chemistry teachers to make the gospel connections, the biblical connections, to place the course in the realm of God’s truth. But your students as citizens in the Kingdom of God need to know the Table of Elements and they need to know their formulas and what happens when one mixes one element with another.
It is equally important that the Church is not converted into a Chemistry classroom. We do not make this distinction of space and purpose to divide Science from Religion – the two are inseparable. We do this to cameo the gospel. The ministry of the Church is the ministry of the gospel. The Church is not primarily an educational institution. It is not primarily a political think tank. It is not primarily a social agency. It is primarily a ministry of the gospel.
All of us have been called by God to not only engage our culture but to contribute to it. As we do so in our respective fields, we need a central place where we come to hear the gospel, to recharge our spirits, to renew our hope and joy, to center our peace. We need to come to Church, to receive the gospel so that we can go out into the world to live according to it.