God's Glorious Inversion Text: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Introduction: The Logic of the Gospel
The world has a logic, a way of calculating value. It measures everything by a certain standard. It looks for wisdom in the university, power in the halls of government, and nobility in the bloodlines of the elite. The world’s way is to stack the deck. It believes that you win by accumulating the best cards, the highest honors, the most impressive resumes. And the church at Corinth was shot through with this way of thinking. They were carnal. They were dividing into factions based on who had the most eloquent preacher, the most impressive spiritual gifts, or the most sophisticated philosophical take on the gospel. They were trying to make Christianity respectable in the eyes of the world.
Paul’s letter to them is a controlled demolition of this entire way of thinking. He has just finished explaining that the central message of Christianity, a crucified Messiah, is a stumbling block to the Jews and sheer foolishness to the Greeks. It is an offense to the religious and an absurdity to the intellectual. God, in His sovereign wisdom, did not design the gospel to be seeker-friendly. He designed it to save sinners, and to do so in a way that leaves no room for human pride.
In our text today, Paul drives this point home by turning from the message to the messengers. He tells the Corinthians to simply look around the room. Look at who God called. The makeup of the church itself is an object lesson in the logic of the gospel. God did not recruit an all-star team. He did not go to the Ivy League for His wise, to Wall Street for His mighty, or to Buckingham Palace for His noble. He went to the scrap heap of the world. And He did this with a very specific, strategic purpose: to utterly dismantle and humiliate the pride of man, so that all the glory, every last scrap of it, would go to Him and Him alone.
This is not just an encouragement for the humble. It is a declaration of war against the proud. It is God’s glorious inversion. He turns the world’s value system completely upside down. What the world honors, God shames. What the world despises, God chooses. This is the logic of the gospel, and if we do not grasp it, we will never understand Christianity. We will constantly be trying to pretty it up, to make it palatable to the world, and in so doing, we will strip it of its power.
The Text
For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,
and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are,
so that no flesh may boast before God.
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,
so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”
(1 Corinthians 1:26-31 LSB)
God's Recruiting Strategy (vv. 26-28)
Paul begins by asking the Corinthians to perform a simple sociological survey of their own congregation.
"For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble." (1 Corinthians 1:26)
He says, "Look at your calling." The word "calling" here refers to their effectual call, the sovereign summons of God that brought them from death to life. And what was the raw material God worked with? He says to look at who they were "according to the flesh," that is, by worldly standards. Were they the intellectual elite? No, "not many wise." Were they the movers and shakers, the politically powerful? No, "not many mighty." Were they from the upper crust, the blue-bloods of Corinthian society? No, "not many noble."
Notice Paul’s careful qualification: "not many." He doesn't say "not any." God does, on occasion, call the wise, the mighty, and the noble. We can think of Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, or Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy member of the council. But they are the exception that proves the rule. God's standard operating procedure is to bypass the world's A-list. The average church is not a collection of cultural elites. It is a motley crew of ordinary people. And this is by divine design.
In the next verses, Paul explains the strategy behind this.
"But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are," (1 Corinthians 1:27-28 LSB)
Here we see a series of divine choices, a deliberate and calculated strategy of inversion. God doesn't just happen to save a few foolish people; He chooses the foolish things. The word "chosen" is emphatic. This is sovereign election at work. God is not reacting to the world's choices; He is acting to overturn them.
He chooses the "foolish things" to shame the wise. The "wise" here are the philosophers, the intellectuals, the pundits who think they have the world figured out. God takes a fisherman like Peter, uneducated by their standards, and uses him to confound the Sanhedrin. He chooses the "weak things" to shame the strong. The "strong" are the Caesars, the governors, the military powers. God takes a handful of persecuted, marginalized Christians and uses them to conquer the Roman Empire, not with swords, but with the power of the gospel and the blood of the martyrs.
He goes even further. He chooses the "base things" and the "despised." These are the people at the very bottom of the social ladder, the ones considered worthless. And then, the ultimate insult to human pride: He chooses "the things that are not." This refers to people who, in the eyes of the world, do not even exist. They have no status, no influence, no voice. They are nobodies. And God chooses these nobodies to "abolish the things that are," to nullify, to bring to nothing, the people and systems that the world considers to be everything.
This is God's way. He takes a shepherd boy, David, to defeat the giant. He takes Gideon and his three hundred men with torches and clay pots to rout the Midianite army. He takes a virgin from a backwater town called Nazareth to bear the Son of God. He chooses a cross, an instrument of shame and torture, to be the means of salvation. God’s power is perfected in weakness.
The Great Purpose: Silencing All Boasts (v. 29)
Paul now states the ultimate reason for God's upside-down strategy. It is a universal negative with no exceptions.
"so that no flesh may boast before God." (1 Corinthians 1:29 LSB)
This is the goal. This is the divine checkmate. God has structured the entire plan of salvation in such a way as to eliminate the possibility of human boasting. "Flesh" here refers to humanity in its fallen, creaturely state. God will not allow any man to stand before Him and take credit for any part of his salvation.
If God saved the wise, they would boast in their intellect. "I was smart enough to figure it out." If God saved the mighty, they would boast in their strength. "I had the willpower to make the right choice." If God saved the noble, they would boast in their breeding. "My good character contributed to my salvation." But God saves the foolish, the weak, and the base so that when they stand before Him, they have nothing to point to but His sheer, unadulterated grace. Their testimony can only be, "I was a fool, and He made me wise. I was weak, and He made me strong. I was nothing, and He made me something. To God alone be the glory."
This is the great dividing line between true Christianity and all false religions, including the man-centered versions of Christianity so popular today. All other systems leave some room, however small, for man to boast. But the gospel of grace slams the door shut on human pride. Salvation is of the Lord, from beginning to end.
The Divine Provision: Everything in Christ (v. 30)
Having torn down the edifice of human pride, Paul now shows us what God has built in its place.
"But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption," (1 Corinthians 1:30 LSB)
The contrast is stark. You are not what you are because of your doing, but "by His doing." Your position "in Christ Jesus" is entirely a work of God. You were grafted in. You were placed there. And once we are in Christ, we find that He Himself is everything we need. Paul lists a fourfold provision.
First, Christ is our "wisdom from God." The world seeks wisdom in philosophy and education, but true wisdom is a person. In Christ "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). We are fools, but we are united to Him who is Wisdom incarnate.
Second, He is our "righteousness." This is the great doctrine of justification. We have no righteousness of our own. Our record is one of sin and rebellion. But in Christ, we are clothed with His perfect righteousness. God looks at us and sees not our sin, but the perfect obedience of His Son. This is an alien righteousness, credited to our account by faith alone.
Third, He is our "sanctification." This refers to our ongoing growth in holiness. We are not just declared righteous; we are being made righteous. And this too is not our own work. It is Christ living in us by His Spirit, conforming us to His image. He is the one who makes us holy.
Fourth, He is our "redemption." This points to our final deliverance from the presence of sin and death at the resurrection. We will be redeemed from this body of death and given a glorified body like His. From start to finish, from justification to sanctification to glorification, it is all of Christ.
The Only Proper Response: Boasting in the Lord (v. 31)
"so that, just as it is written, 'LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.'" (1 Corinthians 1:31 LSB)
Paul concludes by quoting from Jeremiah 9:23-24. God has not forbidden boasting altogether. He has simply redirected it. We were created to boast, to exult, to glory in something. The problem is that we naturally boast in the wrong things: our wisdom, our might, our riches. God’s purpose in the gospel is to strip us of all these false boasts and give us the one, true, and glorious boast.
We are to boast in the Lord. We are to glory in who He is and what He has done. Our testimony is not "look what I have achieved," but "look what Christ has achieved for me." Our confidence is not in our own abilities, but in His finished work. Our joy is not in our own status, but in our status in Him.
This is true humility. It is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less, and thinking of Christ more. It is to be so overwhelmed by the grace of God in Christ that all thought of personal merit is incinerated. This is the goal of the Christian life: to decrease, so that He might increase. To have our mouths filled, not with our own praises, but with His.
Conclusion
So what does this mean for us? It means, first, that we must abandon all attempts to make the gospel respectable to the world. The church is not a club for the successful. It is a hospital for the sick. It is a refuge for the weak. It is a family for the nobodies. When we start measuring our church's success by the world's metrics, how many important people we have, how much money is in the bank, how culturally sophisticated we are, we are falling right back into the Corinthian error.
Second, it means that there is hope for every one of us. Your past failures, your lack of education, your social standing, your personal weaknesses, none of these disqualify you from the grace of God. In fact, they qualify you. God is in the business of using broken, foolish, weak things. He is not looking for your ability, but your availability. He is not looking for your strength, but for your weakness, in which His strength can be displayed.
Finally, it means our entire lives should be reoriented around one central activity: boasting in the Lord. In our work, in our families, in our evangelism, our goal should be to make much of Christ. When we are tempted to despair over our sin, we boast in His righteousness. When we feel foolish and confused, we boast in His wisdom. When we are confronted with our weakness, we boast in His power. For it is by His doing that we are in Christ Jesus. And because it is all of Him, all the glory must go to Him.