📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 1:21
What does 1 Corinthians 1:21 mean?
"For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn’t know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe."
— 1 Corinthians 1:21 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing.”
Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn’t know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe.
For Jews ask for signs, Greeks seek after wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Greeks,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Explanation
1 Corinthians 1:21 says that God, in his wisdom, arranged things so that the world's own wisdom would never be sufficient to find or know him. Human philosophy, reasoning, and intellectual achievement — however impressive — could not arrive at a true knowledge of God on their own. Instead, God chose a different path: he decided to save people through something the world regards as foolish, namely the preaching of the gospel, and he does this for those who respond in faith. The verse draws a deliberate contrast between two kinds of wisdom — the wisdom the world prizes and the wisdom of God's own plan, which looks like foolishness to human eyes but accomplishes what human wisdom never could.
Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth, a city famous for its love of rhetoric, philosophy, and intellectual sophistication. The Corinthian believers were tempted to evaluate the gospel and even church leaders by the standards of eloquence and worldly wisdom, causing division and pride (see 1 Corinthians 1:10-17). In this section of the letter, Paul confronts that mindset head-on. He points out that the message of Christ crucified — a message about a condemned criminal dying on a cross — sounded absurd or shameful to both Jews looking for miraculous signs and Greeks looking for philosophical wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:22-23). Yet this "foolish" message was precisely the means God chose to save people.
Theologically, this verse teaches that salvation does not come through human intellectual effort or achievement
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