God’s Word for You
1 Corinthians 1:26-27 The weak things
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, November 7, 2022
26 Consider your call, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
The average Christian church has fewer than a hundred members, often closer to 75. Imagine that’s about the size of some of the Corinthian churches. How many of them knew any Greek philosophy? How many were wealthy? How many were nobles? We know a little of this equation, because Paul scolds the wealthy for their practices at the Lord’s Supper (11:21). So some of them, a few, were rich, or powerful. Erastus, the city treasurer, was among them (Romans 16:23). Someone may even have known a little Greek philosophy. But most of them didn’t. Most of them weren’t. Most of them fit very neatly into Paul’s grouping: “the weak things of the world.” But the call to believe in Jesus, the call to faith, changes us all.
The call to faith shows how putrid, puny, and truly powerless worldly power is. Paul modifies all of these human pinnacles of greatness—wisdom, power, nobility—with the words “according to the flesh” (or, “by human standards”). The flesh is nothing but sin.
A man can become great and powerful, own businesses, buildings, achieve the highest offices, and yet he is nothing without Christ. On judgment day, all his achievements will be meaningless, his fame will be nothing but ashes before his Creator, and his Judge will say, “I never knew you” (Mark 7:23).
A man can descend from the greatest nobility, be one of the distant sons of kings, kings who won their titles through the people they defended without murder, without intrigue, without terror, but with honor and courage. But if their sons do not know Christ, they are nothing. On Judgment Day, the Master will say, “I don’t know you” (Matthew 25:12).
A woman can have the highest learning, degrees and letters to make her parents proud. But if she does not know Christ, what good does her learning do? Who does she serve in the end but Satan himself, doing his will to twist and destroy God’s creation, to murder the living and condemn human souls to hell? The terrible words of Jesus apply to her: “It would be better for (her) to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around (her) neck than for (her) to cause one of these little ones to sin” (Luke 17:2).
And while we are considering the weak, what weaker thing is there than an infant, and especially a baby who is still in the womb? Such a baby cannot defend herself, cannot speak up for her rights, cannot plead with her mother not to destroy her. In the early church, the question of abortion was often raised. What would have been unthinkable for Moses or Paul even to mention became more of an issue as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. In the middle of the second century (about a hundred years after Paul wrote to the Corinthians), a document called the Didache (“The Teaching”) was in circulation among the churches. It was more of a how-to manual than an epistle. In one place it says: “Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not be intimate with any man. Do not be a prostitute. Do not steal. Do not practice witchcraft. Do not use drugs. Do not murder a child in the womb nor after he is born” (Didache 2:2).
A little later, the same document says: “(The wicked) love what is worthless, chasing reward, being merciless to the poor, not working for the one burdened with toil, not knowing the One who made them. They are abortionists, corrupting God’s creatures, turning away the needy, oppressing the distressed, advocating the rich, unjustly judging the poor—altogether sinful” (Didache 5:2). Later on, lawlessness in general is condemned: “In the Last Days there will be more and more false prophets and abortionists. Love will be turned to hate” (Didache 16:4). And in another place, much the same thing is repeated: “They are reckless with evil speech… They are abortionists, corrupting God’s creatures, turning away the needy, oppressing the distressed” (Barnabas 20:2).
Another early sermon has this to say: “It is commonplace for a woman… having conceived by the adulterer while her husband is absent, to attempt the destruction of that which is in her womb, ashamed (for her adultery) to be found out, and so to become a child-murderer; or even, while destroying it, to be destroyed along with it.” Surely the life of the weak thing brings shame to the strong.
Let’s return from the Fifth Commandment to the more central doctrine of this passage: Election. God, according to his purpose for man in eternity, has elected certain persons out of the multitude of all the lot so that they are to obtain eternal life. He also brings these chosen, elect ones to faith and keeps them in faith unto the end. When God calls us to be his dear children, he provides the faith we need to put our trust in him. He did not choose us “in view of faith,” but in spite of our disbelief, for he chose us before we ever were believers. One of our Lutheran Fathers said: “Forseen faith cannot be the cause of eternal election, whose result and effect is as it were faith, and in time it (faith) also ceases when we die.”
God chose you, helpless though you were, to be his own. He supplied the means and manner for you to come to faith. In your wicked sinfulness, you had the free will to do only one thing, which was reject his call and turn away from Christ. Those who do will be condemned. But you did not. The washing of your baptism removed the guilt of all your sin and brought you into God’s kingdom as a new little believer. God overcame your unbelief with his mercy and grace. This faith of yours has been strengthened by the gospel and the sacraments, for “the sacraments are received in faith and for the purpose of strengthening faith” (Augsburg Confession XIII,2). Praise God for your faith, for the little church you call home, and for the gospel of forgiveness in Jesus your Lord.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.