What does the "foolishness of the message" mean in 1 Corinthians 1:21?

This brings us to verses 18 to 24, a great passage wherein the real force and bearing of the cross of Christ is revealed to us: the cross, that is, as passing the sentence of condemnation upon man, and of destruction upon his wisdom; while at the same time it brings in the power and wisdom of God for the salvation of those who believe. The cross of Christ is the point at which in supreme measure the world took upon itself to join issue with God. It put the Son of God to death, a death of extremes" contempt and shame. God accepted the challenge, and in result the cross also became the supreme proof of the folly of human wisdom, of the disqualification and repudiation by God of even the greatest and wisest of men. Because of this, Paul was sent to preach the Gospel in a way that gave no quarter to human wisdom.

Because of this, also, the cross stands as "the great divide" amongst men whenever it is faithfully preached. On the one side of it stand "them that perish," on the other "us which are saved." To which class any individual belongs may be discerned by observing that individual's attitude toward the preaching of the cross. To the one it is but foolishness, for they adhere to the world and its wisdom. To the other it is the power of God, and that to salvation. God saves by the foolishness of the preaching. The point of this remark in verse 21 is not that preaching appears a foolish method — as compared with working, for instance — but that the actual message preached — the word of the cross — is foolishness according to human notions, but is wisdom and power according to God.

Accordingly it will be noticed by the careful reader that the apostle here speaks not exactly of preaching as a mere instrument, but of the thing preached. Such is the force resulting from the form of the word, which with others I have translated "the preaching." This the Jews derided, as well as the Greeks. It was to them foolishness; nor need we wonder, if they saw not the glory of the person of Christ given to die in God's love to sinners. For what could seem less reasonable to the natural mind, than for a crucified man to be the only Saviour from sins and the wrath of God? Yet this is the truth preached, τὸ κήρυγμα, and salvation is the fruit of believing it. Grace not only gave the Son of God thus to suffer, but it takes care to send out everywhere the proclamation, that souls may hear, believe, and be saved.

Yet now it has pleased God, by the foolishness of the preaching of the cross, to save those who believe. This of course is what men count to be foolishness. It requires no great intellect to understand, but only simplicity of faith in the Son of God. And because of this great wisdom being expressed in terms so simple and clear that a child can understand it, therefore men who pride themselves on their superior wisdom are haughty enough to despise this, and call it foolishness. It is of course not the fact of preaching that is despised, but the subject matter.

As may be seen in the note in the New Translation, "the foolishness of preaching" does not refer to the act of preaching, but to its subject-matter. The apostle thus says in verse 23, "We preach Christ crucified … unto the Greeks foolishness." To those cultured intellectual men it savoured of complete folly to proclaim salvation through One who had been ignominiously put to death on a cross. It offended their pride, because it made nothing of man, and was the means by which God made foolish the wisdom of this world. Alas! the offence of the cross has not yet ceased; and hence every effort is being made to obscure, or to undermine, the character of the work which was wrought out in the death of Christ. That He died as a martyr all will gladly concede; but that He died under the hand of God, and therefore glorified Him on account of our sin, even many of the professed advocates of Christianity absolutely refuse. But "the foolishness of God" is "wiser than men," and the divinely-taught soul rejoices to know that the only foundation on which it can peacefully repose before God is that finished work, which was accomplished on Calvary, and which was testified to by the resurrection of Christ from among the dead.

But the Corinthians were in danger who shrank from the facts of the gospel and desired to hear the philosophy of the christian scheme. "For the word of the cross is to those that perish foolishness, but to us that are to be saved it is God's power." (Ver. 18.) The cross bespeaks the lowest extreme of human shame and suffering. It was the severest penalty for a slave. That the Son of God should stoop not merely to the nature of man but to the death of the cross, and this in atonement for man to God as well as in rejection of God by man, seems the depth of folly to those who, ignorant of their own sinfulness and of the holiness of God, must needs perish, living and dying as they are. That He must suffer in order to save supposes the hopeless ruin of the race.

But it is also irreconcilable with every feeling of the natural heart that He would stoop so low to suffer for His enemies, and that God would give Him up to do so. For philosophy knows nothing truly of love in God, any more than of total ruin in man: the cross proclaims both, and that He who hung there in grace, suffering for our sin, that God might deliver us righteously, was Himself God over all as surely as He was man without sin. For the gospel was no effort or device of man's wit. Yea, the word of the cross is the deepest offence and the sheerest foolishness to him; but it is God's power, not wisdom only, to believers, "to us that are to be saved," for here, to bring it the more home, the apostle treats it as a personal fact instead of continuing his abstract statement. Salvation here, as elsewhere in this Epistle, is regarded as not complete till the Lord comes; it takes in the whole work of bringing us through till we are conformed to Christ in resurrection glory.

(Vv. 18-25). Philosophers prefer their learned dissertations; therefore the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness. The wise of this world do not see the glory of the Person Who was nailed to the Cross, and hence they do not see the love of God that gave Him to suffer, nor the holiness of God that demanded such a sacrifice, nor the utter ruin of man set forth in the Cross. All they see is a Man nailed to a Cross between two thieves; so the preaching of salvation through the Cross appears to them utter folly. Those who think thus are those who perish. To those who are saved the Cross is the power of God to save, for thereby God can righteously save the vilest sinner.

The wisdom of the world is thus exposed and brought to nothing. The world had ample time to develop its wisdom, the result being that all the wisdom of the philosophers was shown to be folly, inasmuch as it left man in complete ignorance of God. The end of all man's wisdom is that “the world by wisdom knew not God”. It was not that the world by its ignorance or stupidity knew not God, but by wisdom it knew not God. The net result of all the wisdom of the ages — the combined efforts of the keenest intellects of the world — is to leave man in utter ignorance of God, and in utter ignorance of himself. When the complete failure of man's wisdom had been demonstrated, then it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

This obstinacy or levity of unbelief did not dishearten the apostle, but rather stimulated him in the work near to his heart. "But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling-block and to Gentiles foolishness." It is not here simply the blood shed that makes atonement; and it is more to say "crucified" than dead; for though both declare the end of man in the flesh, there is the extreme of shame and weakness in the cross beyond elsewhere. That God then should save by virtue of the cross, where the world saw the worst of human suffering and humiliation, was to silence that wisdom, proving it to be folly which dared so to think and speak of His wisdom. Over the stone of stumbling fell the Jews who would only have a Messiah in power and glory. So will He come shortly, but where then will those Jews find themselves who were offended by His stooping to the cross in order to save those that believe? Where the Gentiles who preferred their own ideas and vaunted reasonings to the mighty work then wrought at infinite cost? Like the lightning shall the Son of man shine in His day; but first must He suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. For it was morally impossible for God's kingdom to be till sin was judged in the cross. How senseless and slow of heart were even disciples to see that so it must be if God was to be glorified and man righteously blessed and saved! But "to the called Christ," and Christ thus crucified, "is God's power and God's wisdom; because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (Vers. 24, 25) Any other way had compromised sin or made salvation impossible. The cross of Christ is the fullest display of God's judgment of sin and of His love to the sinner. What men taunted as foolishness and weakness, the incarnate Word suffering on a gibbet, equally proves man's utter ruin and God's saving mercy. So did the Saviour endure the judgment of sin that the believer might be saved. Is it not then wiser and stronger than men? Did not the resurrection prove, does not the gospel proclaim, it to be so?

What use, then, of mere appeals to man, when Christ has Himself appealed, to get no answer but the Cross? The very "word of the Cross is to those that are perishing foolishness;" while indeed to those who are being saved "it is the power of God." Yes, the power of God; but then this alone can be trusted to work in it. The wisdom of the wise is brought to an end; the understanding of the man of understanding set aside: did any of them, with whatever wisdom they might have, excogitate the gospel? or produce any equivalent to the gospel? They had had ample time to do it, if they could. The nations that had once known God, had, in fact, spite of that knowledge, glorified Him not as God, nor been thankful for the knowledge, as the apostle tells the Romans; and this was the secret of the idolatry which covered the earth with hideous forms, the reflection of the lusts which warred in their members. What could be expected of those who had thus turned their backs on God, and conjured up gods not to meet the need of conscience, but to satisfy the impulses of their depravity?

God indeed, as we know, never left Himself without witness, — never meant to leave man to the mere blind gropings of a darkened intellect. Apart from the witness of external nature which is everywhere, somewhere the light was shining all the time. In the midst of the most cultivated nations of antiquity, and at the headquarters of their commercial traffic, — in close intimacy with Egypt, (upon whose bestial gods was executed once a judgment which resounded far and near,) — and in turn with Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, there was a people who held in their hand the revelation of God, progressing with the onward march of the generations that went by. But this was not what they craved or would receive. Thus in the self-chosen darkness their wisdom ripened till in Greece, the land of the typical Gentile, in the midst of those who professedly sought after wisdom, it produced its fairest blossoms and its ripest fruits. The wisdom of God was pleased to give ample time for the development. As in Israel under law it was to be proved that man was without strength and ungodly, so amongst the Gentiles was it to be proved that the world by wisdom knew not God. Then, when the need was fully shown, which could not else be met at all, "it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching" — not of preaching as a method, but of the thing preached in human estimation — "it pleased God to save those that believe."

The Jews looked for a Messiah reigning in power from a throne, One Who would revive the kingdom, put down their enemies, and set Israel at the head of the nations. Christ reigning on a throne they could understand; Christ crucified on a Cross was an offence to them. Having no sense of their need as sinners, they could see no meaning in the Cross. To them in their unbelief it became a stumbling-block.

As for the Gentiles, who looked for something that appealed to reason — some new thing, some scheme of philosophy — to tell them there was salvation through a crucified Man, life through a dying Man, power through One Who was crucified through weakness, was to speak of that which in their sight was utter foolishness. Nevertheless, to them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom. In Him such discover God's power to save, and God's wisdom in carrying out all His purposes.

To the mind of man the preaching is “the foolishness of God” and the Cross “the weakness of God”. Be it so, it will but prove that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men”.

When Paul came to Corinth to preach the Gospel he did not endeavour to present his message in such a way as would naturally appeal to the learned Greeks. He preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified, telling them that the only way of procuring eternal salvation for their souls was to accept that Jesus died for their sins on the cross, and that He rose from the dead. It was foolishness to the learned of this world, asking them to believe in a Man who died upon a malefactor's cross, crucified in weakness. But what was foolishness to man was the wisdom and the power of God; for the cross was the fruit of God's wisdom, the means whereby His glory in regard to sin was secured and it was the power that brought salvation to ruined sinners.