The British pop group Take That echoed the Corinthian attitude as they sang, ‘We’ve come so far and we’ve reached so high’. But Paul’s caution here echoes their refrain, ‘Never forget where you’re coming from’. Paul wants the Corinthians to remember that there was nothing innately great about them – they owed everything to God’s wisdom and strength. Can you think of other times Paul gave this message? (2 Corinthians 4:7, 2 Corinthians 12:9 or Philippians 4:13.)

The phrase ‘Christ crucified’ (1:23) would have seemed strange to the early church. ‘Christ’ had connotations of power, greatness and victory. That did not match ‘crucified’ with its associations with criminality, shame and disgrace. But that unlikely combination was Paul’s message to them (2:2).

Although Paul is warning the Corinthians about pride in their achievements, these verses are also an encouragement when we feel inadequate or unworthy – it is not about us, it is about God and he chooses the weak and foolish to show his power and to shame the proud.

‘How deep the wisdom of our God, / how weak, but truly wise, / to risk, to sacrifice, to die, / and from the grave to rise.’¹

We who are ‘in Christ Jesus’ (v 30) have been taken beyond the boundaries of human reason to glimpse the wisdom of God, pervading the physical and spiritual universe. In this eternal wisdom, infinitely greater than human wisdom, we find all that we ever need to know, all that we can ever be. Through Jesus, embodying the wisdom of God, we become right with God. We are made holy. We are redeemed.  

Paul reinforced this incredible assertion by comparing the Corinthian Christians’ new status before God with the status they once held. Many church members were not from rich or powerful backgrounds. Like those with whom Jesus associated, the lepers, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes, they were not people whom the world admired. They were despised people without status or privilege. Yet God called them, they answered and they had become God’s chosen people.

Paul was anxious to point out that in Corinth he did not resort to attractive oratory. He came to them in weakness and fear (2:3). He used no attention-grabbing techniques, no clever presentations. He said he was by nature a stumbling and not very gifted speaker. Later writers, not in the canon of Scripture, describe Paul as physically unattractive.² The message was infinitely more important than the man. That single message was ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (v 2). All of us who would share our faith can take comfort in this. The power of our witness, if it is to have any power whatsoever, is finally God’s power dwelling within us. God chooses to be revealed through all kinds of cracked and damaged vessels.³ If God’s wisdom fills our minds, if our hearts are full of his praises, if God dwells within us, then that is what people will see.

‘Fill thou my life, / O Lord my God, / in every part with praise, / that my whole being may proclaim, / thy being and thy ways.’⁴

¹ Brian Wren, b 1936, ‘When pain and terror strike’ ² Eg Acta Pauli et Theclæ, 3 ³ 2 Cor 4:7 ⁴ Horatius Bonar, 1808–89