What the Cross Refuses to Prove

Why Paul Called the Gospel Foolishness

I was a sign guy. For years, if I needed to know what God wanted, I'd put a fleece out, and mine were usually car-related. If three red cars pass my window in the next ten minutes, I'll take that as a yes. My wife and I can look at the same cloud and I'll see a dragon and she'll see a pig, which should've told me something about how much weight a sign can hold. But I wanted something I could point to before I trusted, and I don't think I was unusual. Show me something that confirms it, or hand me an argument sturdy enough to survive the one that comes back at it. Then I'll believe.

Paul met both of those requests in one church, and he didn't grant either one.

For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. (1 Corinthians 1:22-23)

Two Kinds of People Were Sitting in That Church

Corinth was a port city, and the church there had Jews and Greeks sitting in the same room, and Paul names what each group wanted before it would trust him. Watch the two groups, because he's going to keep them in view for the rest of the chapter.

The Jews wanted a sign. That's not a slur on them; it was their history. God had split a sea for them, fed them in a desert, and answered Gideon's fleece twice. So their posture toward any new claim about God was reasonable on its face. "Show me something." If this Jesus is the Messiah, where's the display of power that proves it?

The Greeks wanted wisdom. Corinth sat a short trip from Athens, and the whole culture prized the man who could make an idea hold together. Their question was different but the posture was the same. "Make it make sense." If this is the truth about God, it ought to be the most reasonable thing in the room.

Paul's answer to both is the same seven words. We preach Christ crucified. Not a sign. Not a system. A man executed on a Roman cross, announced as the power and wisdom of God to a room that had asked for anything but that.

Doesn't God Give Signs?

Somebody who knows their Bible will push back here, because John tells you why he wrote his gospel:

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. (John 20:30-31)

So God does give signs, and they're meant to lead to belief. That's true, and Paul isn't denying it. Jesus did the signs. But Jesus also said something to the people who came demanding one: an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah (Matthew 12:39). Three days in the belly of the earth. The one sign He promised the sign-seekers was the cross and what came after it, which is exactly the thing they found unimpressive. John's signs pointed at who Jesus was for the people already looking at Him. They were never a way to make God prove Himself before you'd give Him your trust.

Why Paul Called It Foolishness

Why would Paul use that word for the gospel he'd given his life to? Here's why. The Greek is moria, the root of our word moron. Paul is saying that to a mind that wants proof, or a mind that wants a logic it can follow, the cross reads as stupid. And he's right, because look at what the cross claims about a person who trusts it.

A friend in our church is a fire battalion chief, and he's built like one. Imagine I stood beside him and did push-ups, and his arms got bigger. Nobody would believe their eyes. His body can't get stronger off my work. That's not how strength moves. But that's precisely what the cross claims. One Man did the work, and you got the strength. Another Man's obedience, and you're 100% right with God. Your mind hears that and files it under too good to be true, because the flesh has spent your whole life learning that you get what you earn.

Paul knows the claim sounds like that. He calls it foolishness on purpose, and then he tells you why God did it that way:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21)

It pleased God. The cross didn't come out looking foolish by accident, as if God tried to build a convincing case and fell short. It looks foolish because God chose a way to save people that no sign-seeker could verify first and no philosopher could reason his way to, and that was the point rather than the flaw.

Where the Boasting Went

So why would God do it this way? Paul answers in verse 29. God chose the foolish things and the weak things for one stated reason, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

Suppose God had proven the gospel to you first, and then you believed. Part of the credit for your faith would sit with the proof, and part of it with you for evaluating it correctly. If the gospel had made airtight sense and then you believed, your intelligence would hold a share. Either way, some flesh would get to glory. A little bit of you would be in the ground your righteousness stands on, and Paul had already told the Galatians what a little bit of you does to the gospel. Jesus plus Moses equals nothing. Jesus plus my good judgment equals the same.

So God arranged it so the only thing left to boast in is Him. He who glories, let him glory in the LORD (1 Corinthians 1:31). Faith, in this chapter, is the empty hand rather than the good judgment. You receive what Christ did because of what Jesus did, and for no reason under that. The cross refuses to prove itself to you for the same reason a gift refuses to be earned. The moment it did, it would stop being a gift.

That's why the gospel still sounds absurd to the flesh two thousand years later. If the way somebody explains it to you fits neatly inside your reasoning, they've made it smaller than Paul preached it. The real thing is preposterous. Perfectly right with God, right now, on another Man's work.

I still notice red cars. Old habits. But I've stopped counting them, because the thing I was asking them to confirm was settled at a cross outside Jerusalem, and it wasn't waiting on my window.