Boasting in the Lord

Sunday Sermons

Mark Dunagan
07/31/05 - Sunday Morning

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

“To further his argument that the gospel he preached stands in direct contradiction to human expectations about God, Paul turns from the content of the gospel to the existence of the Corinthians themselves as believers. Not from the world’s ‘beautiful people’, but from lower classes, the ‘nobodies’, God chose those who for the most part would make up His people. God’s choosing people like them is asserted to have the same design as the cross itself---to save them, but at the same time to ‘shame’ and ‘nullify’ the very values in which they are currently boasting” (1 Corinthians, Fee, pp. 78,79). “He adds a pertinent example of the false judgments of men in this very connection. He reminds the Corinthian Christians of the world's false estimate of them, and so of the fact that God can achieve great results by means which the world despises” (Erdman p. 34).

1:26 “ For consider your calling, brethren”: Take a good look at the type of people in Corinth who have accepted the gospel message. “His point in getting them so to consider themselves is that in calling out a people for His name God showed no regard for their present values—worldly wisdom or merit” (Fee p. 79). “That there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble”: “How many wise, powerful or noble ones are among you?” (McGuiggan p. 35). “According to the flesh”: “As men reckon wisdom” (TCNT). “Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard” (NEB). The phrase “according to the flesh” modifies all three terms in this sentence, and reflects the perspective of “current thinking” of men. “Mighty”: “Not many in positions in power” (Beck). “Prominent and influential, those who carry the clout in any sociological setting” (Fee p. 80). “Noble”: “High birth, the three claims of aristocracy (culture, power, and birth)” (Robertson p. 80).

“I agree with Earl Jabay that, in the main or almost exclusively, the problem with man is not that he feels too weak to do any better. The problem is that man thinks he is a god and not only is he his own adoring servant he has ‘become like God’. He's a marvel, a titan, an unstoppable genius, an all-powerful manipulator of the universe. Man, as you hear man tell it, is able to wipe out all signs of want and wickedness. Man has been telling us since the Enlightenment that it is simply a matter of education and breeding and we'll have a world utopia”. If the Corinthians were tempted by the culture around them to think that the gospel message is not complicated or sophisticated enough, they need to realize that the same culture that ridicules the gospel and the true God equally would ridicule them. Carefully note the attitude that that only someone ignorant or poorly breed or educated would be a Christian is not a new perspective. “The apostle’s enunciation of the former lack of worldly prestige of these Corinthians is mild compared to his reminder of what a few others had been before becoming Christians (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). The gospel not only has the power to create a kingdom of love and peace and goodness out of the unsophisticated and powerless people---it also has divine power to bring into this same kingdom, by conversion, people who were formerly the dregs of humanity” (1 Corinthians, Butler p. 27).

1:27 “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world”: The Corinthians had not stumbled upon the gospel by accident, and neither did they invent it, but rather God “chose” what would comprise this message. “Things”: What is in the gospel (the suffering Messiah, unselfishness, considering others more important than self, and so on) are often ridiculed by the world as being foolish and weak. What this means is that the gospel was never designed to appeal to people who were full of themselves, and we must never try to market the gospel as being trendy because God purposefully designed it to shame people who are superficial. “What God did in the cross and in calling ‘lowly’ Corinthians not only exhibits His own character, that He is gracious, but also illustrates that He is not beholden to the world. Thus He is not accountable to the ‘wise’ of this world” (Fee p. 83). In other words, the gospel will always be out of step with what the world considers to be “cutting edge” thinking. In the gospel, God annuls and rejects what the world considers to be valuable, important, wise and powerful. “To shame the wise”:Which would include the hope of saving those who are wise in their own eyes. “The world, with all its science, philosophy and psychology has never done what the gospel has done. The world calls the atonement of Christ ‘sick’. But the change wrought in the lives of those who believe Christ proves that the world is wrong in what it depends on for power” (Butler p. 27). “The weak things”: What the world views as unimportant and powerless and this is one reason why even professed Christians are tempted to tinker with the organization of the church, because God’s plan for evangelism or benevolence does not harmonize with human thinking concerning how to get things done. 1:28 “And the base things”: “Not merely despised, but expressly branded with contempt” (Vincent p. 194). “God has chosen what the world holds base and contemptible” (Knox). “The things that have nothing whatever in their birth or origin to distinguish them, the commonest of the common. These God chose. This is an astounding fact when we think of the claims, honors, and pride of the people who deem themselves ‘well born’” (Lenski pp. 75-76). “The things that are not”: “And what it thinks does not exist” (Wms). “ Things that to it are unreal” (TCNT). This could equally refer to people that the world views as being nobody important as well that what the world confidently asserts does not exist. From time to time the world expresses its doubts concerning the existence of God, heaven, hell, Jesus being the Messiah, the resurrection, the Second Coming, the validity of conversion to Christianity, the objective existence of truth, the soul, sin or guilt. It may ridicule male headship, female subjection, or the institution of marriage. “The things that were at one time set down as being nothing at all by the world and continue to be thus rated as nil” (Lenski p. 76). Which means that in what the world considers “foolish”, there is wisdom, in what the world thinks is “weak” there is incredible strength, in what the world considers as “common” or “nothing” there is value and honor, and what the world confidently claims does not exist---does!

Application: Have we adopted or been influenced by what our world says is important, wise, important and powerful? Do we tend to glorify and admire what the world admires and do we tend to despise what the world despises?

1:29 “So that”: “And so there is no place for human pride in the presence of God” (NEB). “So that in his presence no human being might have anything to boast of” (Gspd). This is the purpose why God set it up this way. In the gospel message is there is room for “I did it my way”. “The ground is level at the foot of the cross; not a single thing that any of us possess will advantage him or her before the living God—not brilliance, clout, achievement, money, or prestige. God declared that He has forever ruled out every imaginable human system of gaining His favor. It is all trust Him completely (1:31) or nothing” (Fee p. 84). “No man”:God is not impressed with any prideful human being, no matter what they have accomplished or who they are. The world is often impressed by the boaster, yet God has made it clear on numerous occasions that He absolutely despises human arrogance(James 4:5 “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble”). “Boast”: The word here can mean to take pride in or to glory in. “But at times, especially here, it comes very close to the concept of ‘trust’, that is, ‘to put one’s full confidence in’. We boast in that in which we have risked everything in order to secure ourselves” (Fee p. 84). “Before God”: Especially when man stands before God in judgment. We need to realize that all of us have sinned and thus have come short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), therefore all human glorying and boasting is inappropriate and a lie. In fact, we are only deceiving ourselves and cheating ourselves of true glorying if we insist on tooting our own horn. We are not the greatest—God is the greatest. Many people cannot believe in God because their problem is that all their faith is in themselves, or in others words, they cannot see God because they are standing in the way.

1:30 “But by His doing you are in Christ”: Now there are some things that a man must do to become a Christian, such as believe, repent and be baptized (Acts 2:37-38; 16:30-34; 9:6 “and it will be told you what you must do”; 22:16). Yet this verse is making the point that human wisdom did not get them into Christ and neither did all the planning and networking of the wise, powerful and noble of this world. “Who became to us wisdom from God”: “Thus there is wisdom with God, to be sure. But it is of another kind from what the Corinthians currently delight in and squabble over. Wisdom does not have to do with ‘getting smart’, nor with status or rhetoric. God’s wisdom---the real thing has to do with salvation through Christ Jesus. In a community where ‘wisdom’ was part of a higher spirituality divorced from ethical consequences (the same type of world that we live in today), Paul says that God has made Christ to become wisdom for us all right, but that means He has made Him to become for us one who redeems from sin and leads to holiness—ethical behavior that is consonant with the gospel” (Fee p. 87). “And righteousness and sanctification, and redemption”: As previously noted, the “wisdom” that so often is touted in the world frequently is divorced from such things as righteousness, holiness or any sense of salvation. “Sanctification”: This means that we could never become “good enough” on our own or even with the help of other men. Various clinics and treatment centers may be able to help someone stop drinking or using drugs but they cannot “sanctify” one, only Christ can do that. Only the gospel and the blood of Christ can cleanse one on the inside as well as the outside. “Redemption”: Going to Woodstock did not make anyone a child of God, and there is only one way that one can enter into God’s family (John 3:5). The world’s wisdom is often very limited in application and only appears to be wise when the trend is hot. Modern applications of such limited wisdom would be:

· The unborn child is only a mass of tissue.

· Children quickly recover when their parents divorce.

· God would not want me to be unhappy.

· The church must change with the culture in order to survive.

1:31 “So that, just as it is written”: This Old Testament citation is from Jeremiah 9:24. “Jeremiah faced the same problem with God’s people 600 years before Paul. Men basked in their own self-glory. The glory of other men was what they thought was the ultimate meaning of life (9:23). As a result they conducted their lives on the basis of falsehood, hypocrisy, treachery, slander and deceit (9:1ff)” (Butler p. 29). “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord”: God is not against glorying, but rather He is opposed to boasting in things and people who are not worthy of our trust. This is a simple verse, but do we practice it? When it comes to our own boasting, what do we talk up? Ourselves or someone that the world boasts in or our God who has saved us? When was the last time we boasted in the Lord to others and even more importantly, are we living as if we really do have all our confidence in the Lord and not in ourselves? How would our day to day lives be different if we fully trusted Christ? If we wanted Him to get all the glory? If we were concerned about Him getting all the praise and credit? If we wanted Him to be praised by men? If we cared nothing for the praise of men but only desired His praise? How would our families, our congregations, and our community be changed if we wanted Christ to be the center of attention and not ourselves? Boasting in the Lord also means that we want Christ, His cause and His people to win!

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017