I Corinthians 1

I Corinthians 1:1:
Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

Sosthenes may have been Paul's secretary who had written this letter as Paul dictated it. He was probably the Jewish synagogue leader in Corinth (Acts 18:17) who had been beaten during an attack on Paul and then later became a believer. Paul is writing with the authority of "an apostle." Any minister should speak with authority. There is no use trying to teach God's word unless the speaker is convinced of the truth of it himself.

I Corinthians 1:2:
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours

Corinth, a giant cultural melting pot with a great diversity of wealth, religions, and moral standards, had a reputation for being fiercely independent and as decadent as any city in the world. The Romans had destroyed Corinth in 146 BC after a rebellion, but Julius Caesaer had it rebuilt in 46 BC because of its strategic seaport. By Paul's day (AD 50), the Romans had made Corinth the capital of Achaia (present day Greece).

The Church at Corinth was a church of converted and delivered fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, and drunkards. And why not? That is what the church was meant to be: a bunch of sinners saved by the grace of God. God's grace is greater than man's sin.

I Corinthians 1:9:
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead

By ourselves we should have been sentenced to death for our sins and transgressions. God changed that.

II Cor 1:10:
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you: but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment

Paul was telling the brothers and sisters of the church to stop arguing about the factions and divisions that were arising. To be perfectly united does not mean Paul required everyone to be exactly the same. Instead, he wanted them to set aside their arguments and focus on what truly mattered: Jesus Christ. The word “divisions” is the word schizo. It’s the word that means to rend or to tear something in half, to rip something in half, to divide something. Divisions arise due to lack of focus on Jesus. The world, void of spiritual insight, can only see this and in many cases is correct in their observation of the “religion” of Christianity being schizophrenic. Their view of the church can only be changed in one of two ways: 1) their conversion (recommended), or 2) our focus (the ability that we have control over now).

I Corinthians 1:3-17:
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus,
5 that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge,
6 even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you,
7 so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
8 who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
10 Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
11 For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you.
12 Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.”
13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15 lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name.
16 Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Besides, I do not know whether I baptized any other.
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.

I Corinthians 1:17:
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.

JC Ryle Files

Let it be a settled principle in our minds that the first and chief business of the Church of Christ is to preach the Gospel. The words of Paul ought to be constantly remembered – “Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel” (1 Cor. 1:17). When the Gospel of Christ is faithfully and fully preached we need not fear that the sacraments will be undervalued. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper will always be most truly reverenced in those churches where the truth of Jesus is most fully taught and known.
--JC Ryle: Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John

I Corinthians 1:18:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For those who reject the Gospel, the idea of being saved through the work of a crucified man is moronic – which is precisely the word here for ‘foolishness.’ It’s nonsense to the lost. They scoff, “How can the death of a Jewish carpenter on a Roman cross in an obscure corner of the world 2000 years ago be the answer to the issues & problems of my modern life?” As foolish as it seems to the lost in our day, it was even worse in Paul’s time because while the words, “message of the cross” sound almost poetic to us, in the days of the Roman Empire it was equivalent to saying the “message of the hangman’s noose” or “lethal injection.” Who would draw any hope or meaning from the capital punishment of a condemned criminal? To the perishing, the cross means no more than that. It’s painful for the saved to realize the lost see the cross that way because for us it’s nothing less than the power & love of God in all their glory! The cross reveals how much God loves & yearns for our restoration to wholeness. It exhibits the value God puts on each of us. Someone once said, “I asked God how much He loved me. He said, 'This much.' stretched out His hands, & died.”

Wachman Nee

“When one tries to increase his knowledge by doing mental gymnastics over books without waiting upon God and looking to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, his soul is plainly in full swing. This will deplete his spiritual life. Because the fall of man was occasioned by seeking knowledge, God uses the foolishness of the cross to "destroy the wisdom of the wise.”
― Watchman Nee

Paul takes the language of “wisdom” and subjects it to the cross, which now has become the criterion, the benchmark, for understanding and for grasping reality. The “foolishness of the cross” redefines nothing less than the ordering of the world. One can imagine the response: “You mean to say that the way we’ve been doing things, the lens through which we’ve been interpreting the world around us is … NOT wisdom?” Yes. Paul means just that. Through the human-devised world’s “wisdom” God revealed in Christ is unknowable. -Alan R Bevere: Foolishness of the Christian Life

I Corinthians 1:18-24:
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
  19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
  21 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.
  22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;
23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,
  24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

A man must be sinking into the blackness of final despair who thinks Gods methods of salvation is “foolishness.” He might as well call it foolishness to expect light from the sun.

Paul writes that the wisdom of man is foolishness to the wisdom of God. It will be destroyed. The "foolish" who try and defy God or proclaim that God is not true or that the Bible is not true will be proven false. If not in this life, then in the judgment. That will be a terrible day for the person who waits to that day. Man at his very wisest, yet void of the truth about God, will likely be the most surprised of all.

What would have become of us if Jesus had died before he reached the cross? What would have happened if he had died in Gethsemane, or anywhere else for that matter, other than on a cross?
If he had, the true significance of his death would not have been apparent. Something more than merely dying was needed. It needed to be made perfectly clear that he was altogether innocent and righteous and was unjustly condemned by a human court. It was essential that he be subjected to a public judicial process in which he was condemned as a common criminal, although plainly innocent. His death was the sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty, or as Peter put it in 1 Peter 3:18, “the righteous for the unrighteous.”
It was essential that his death be more than merely a physical expiration. He had to be hung on a cross and exposed to public humiliation and made the object of human taunting and slander and mocking. In this way he took upon himself the shame of our sin and suffered to the full the wrath of God that we deserved. --Sam Storms

I Corinthians 1:25:
25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

I Corinthians 1:26-31:
26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;
28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are,
29 that no flesh should glory in His presence.
30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption--
31 that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”

Herman Bavinck

Christ is our holiness in the same sense in which he is our righteousness. He is a complete and all-sufficient Saviour. He does not accomplish his work halfway but saves us really and completely. He does not rest until, after pronouncing his acquittal in our conscience, he has also imparted full holiness and glory to us. By his righteousness, accordingly, he does not just restore us to the state of the just who will go scot-free in the judgment of God, in order then to leave us to ourselves to reform ourselves after God’s image and to merit eternal life. But Christ has accomplished everything. He bore for us the guilt and punishment of sin, placed himself under the law to secure eternal life for us, and then arose from the grave to communicate himself to us in all his fullness for both our righteousness and sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). The holiness that must completely become ours therefore fully awaits us in Christ.
— Herman Bavinck Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Academic, 2008), 4:248

JC Ryle

“He who supposes that Jesus Christ only lived and died and rose again in order to provide justification and forgiveness of sins for His people, has yet much to learn. Whether he knows it or not, he is dishonouring our blessed Lord, and making Him only a half Saviour. The Lord Jesus has undertaken everything that His people’s souls require; not only to deliver them from the guilt of their sins by His atoning death, but from the dominion of their sins, by placing in their hearts the Holy Spirit; not only to justify them, but also to sanctify them. He is, thus, not only their ‘righteousness,’ but their ‘sanctification.’ (1 Cor. 1:30.)”
--JC Ryle

Remember where you came from. You weren’t on the spiritual a-team either. You’re still not. And yet you don’t want to be “associated” with those people because you’re name is such a big deal? Paul says to us here, “if your name is anything, it’s only because ‘in Christ’ you have gained wisdom, righteousness, and so forth. It is because holy Jesus was willing to identify himself with what is low, foolish, sinful and broken”–you know, you and I. If you have any great shame, any great disgust at the sin of your fellow believer, make sure it is because you care about his Name, not yours.
And then praise his Name when you remember he’s willing to share it with all sorts. --Derek Roshmawry