March 30, 2025

Part 1

1 Corinthians 1:21-24

21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: 23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; 24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

“It may seem surprising that preaching good news to the poor (see 4:18; 6:20; 14:13, 21) is the capstone of his messianic activity because it seems anticlimactic after the more pyrotechnic miracle of raising the dead. Jesus’ activity as Messiah, however, marks the intervention of God’s empire on the world that inverts the categories of life and death, disease and health, and rich and poor.”