God’s Choice is for Christ-Boasting

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

A seldom-considered criteria for our doctrine of salvation is whether our idea of the gospel glorifies God entirely, or whether it reserves a share in the glory to ourselves or to other mere mortals. The biblical teaching is clear enough: God alone is to be glorified in salvation. The specific way that God saved sinners has a care toward bringing Him all that glory. No part of salvation is neutral to obtaining that glory.

What we have in verses 26 through 31 is a continuous thought from the previous verses. Paul is offering this truth about how God calls people like us, and puts people like us into Christ, as a further emphasis on how God’s message totally conflicts with the world’s way of greatness. 

Doctrine. Since God’s work is what makes us special, we boast in Christ alone.

We will see this with respect to the work of the Father and the work of the Son, yet there is also a clear implication in terms of what we do. It is a kind of test: Does what we do (what we boast in) glorify God, like what God does tends to do?

• Election Glorifies God in Calling Special What is Common

• Redemption Glorifies God in Making Special What is Profane 

Election Glorifies God in Calling Special What is Common

The doctrine of election is for considering something above and beyond ourselves: ‘For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth’ (v. 26). Paul had been talking about how the word of the cross is God’s power to divide and defeat and so forth, and that put the focus on those who do not accept the message. Jews find it a stumbling block. Greeks find it foolish. The reader has already been set up to know that there is a third class of people in the world. That is assumed in Paul’s contrast. Unbelieving, dying Jews are like this; unbelieving, dying Greeks are like this. So what made us like this? And the first part of Paul’s answer is “negative,” just as when God calls us sheep. There is an unavoidable insult there. But we might call this a “sanctified insult.” He literally means, “Look back at your sorry self before God got a hold of you!” And the three attributes of a glorious life in the world that he focuses on are wisdom, power, and noble birth. 

Paul does this same sort of looking back in some other places—to the Ephesians, these same Corinthians, as well as to Titus.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph. 2:1-3)

neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:9-11)

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another (Titus 3:3).

The look back is for a look up. This is not rubbing their nose in anything. He is building in them a new boast. Notice also that he says ‘not many of you.’ Not that there were not also some of you. God can save people of rank and charm and ability. Paul himself was, at least in Jewish society, someone of standing. He had great learning and social status. However, typically God’s preference is toward the lowly. We cannot look to natural wisdom and might and respectability and say, “She is a perfect candidate to become a Christian.” Or, “God can certainly use him.” Of course He can, since God has all power, but He prefers to go much lower, “[in]to the main roads” (Mat. 22:9).

Paul does not leave us to fill in the blanks by means of other Scriptures, such as those I have already cited. He completes the contrast right here:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are (vv. 27-28).

Notice first the threefold repetition: God chose … God chose … God chose. It would seem to be a very deliberate emphasis. Paul says, “God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved” (2 Thess. 2:13). These words about what God chose obviously presuppose that God chose. We cannot benefit from the lesson of election if we will not believe in the reality of election. There are many Christians who will speak of being “chosen,” by which they mean to highlight God’s special, personal love for them. Indeed God’s choice would be a good anchor for this. Yet these same believers do not consider how this divine decision for their salvation is what caused them to be born again rather than their own choice.

Now we talked about the “sanctified insult,” but in another sense Paul is deliberately gentle. Notice that when he contrasts what God is choosing with what God is passing over, he switches from the neuter to the masculine each time.1 One does not have to know any Greek to see this because the English catches it by the use of the words “what is” or “things.” In other words Paul does not say, “God chose the fools … the weaklings … the detestable” (which he could have). Rather, he says that foolish things are shaming the wise people, weak things are upending strong people, and so forth. Let us simple remember how election functioned throughout the whole Old Testament story. There was this thing that God’s choice kept doing,

This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring … though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of thim who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger” (Rom. 9:8, 11-12).

Election kills elitism. It overturns the naturalistic apple-cart. Predestination obliterates the world’s pecking order. And then in the strongest way, the contrast becomes NOTHING versus GREAT THINGS. In God’s sovereign grace, He is creating something out of nothingto bring those who think they are something special to nothing. As Paul says in the case of choosing Abraham and his seed Isaac: “[God] gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17). God creates Christians in the same way as He created the world to begin with: ex nihilo. He does not need to borrow. 

The last part to see here is crucial. God invented unconditional election to annihilate human boasting. Said one more way, in God’s design, predestination kills pride. He says it was ‘So that no human being might boast in the presence of God’ (v. 29). Moreover the word used in the threefold contrast for ‘shame’ or ‘confound’ (kataischune) is a force that upsets one’s whole confident outlook on things. It means that God has taken aim at pride and God won. If you ever catch yourself associating this doctrine with pride, you need to know two things: 1. You disagree with God’s word about what opposes pride and therefore you disagree with God; 2. You may want to start looking for other explanations for the presence of pride that you detect in some human. No doubt it is there. But we can be sure that God is more offended at that pride than we ever could be, and He is more determined to stop it than we ever could be. He is giving you His remedy for confounding pride right here. This was essentially Jonathan Edwards’ big idea when he famously preached on this text in 1731. The sermon was called “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” and the title there says it all.2 

Redemption Glorifies God in Making Special What is Profane

Paul continues, ‘And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ (v. 30). First off, another signal of sovereign grace: ‘because of him you are in Christ Jesus’. Different translations render this differently for a good reason. The exact Greek is ex autou. But in the English, “out of him” might be awkward, so it is appropriate to say “because of him” [ESV] or simply “of him” [KJV] or even “by His doing” [NASB]. The new reality that has been caused is both a new creation and a new relationship. We are given the new birth and we are united to Christ. It is like saying that “It is God’s doing that you exist in the new world,” since to be “in Christ” is to be in the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). So back to Romans 4:17, God has called into existence you whereas before he did that, you were nothing in Christ. In the world that lasts forever, you did not yet exist. 

Four things Jesus is said to be to us. But since Jesus is more than even these four things, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It is rather to make the point, initially, that Christ is everything to us.3 However, these four things are very significant: the first for the obvious reason that it is what Paul has been talking about — “Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3). These other three pertain to salvation. In other words, we see the same contrast already made, between trying to know God through our old natures, as if nothing is fundamentally wrong; as if right standing and moral improvement were things we could do on our own apart from Christ. Even when many “turn to Jesus,” they do not want Jesus to be these things for them. They would rather say, “Tell me more, O wise Rabbi, about being right and doing right.” But that is foolish. What is really wise is knowing that Jesus is these things for us. In this way, Paul’s word also exclude the modern liberal notion of Jesus as merely moral teacher and example.

This is relevant for the so-called Seeker Church of the past generation. Though such churchgoers may not see themselves as modern liberals, their own reduction of Jesus to the “life-coach” is a suburban composite of moral teacher and example. He is neither Lord nor Savior in this model.

Yet if Christ would make holy what is naturally profane, such cannot be done by a little nipping and tucking of our natural morality. A sanctification that comes from Christ will mean suffering the loss of one’s sinful treasures.

At any rate, Paul does not just cool these Corinthians down with a reminder of their depravity — God chose you in spite of you! He also does not leave them as nobodies and nothings that God has no reason to love. No, He gives them Christ, in whom God now has the perfectly infinite reason to love. These are all moral attributes Paul lists because they have to do with a right record (justification), a right living (sanctification), and then a purchase that usually bought slaves (redemption) who had gotten in that place because of an immoral lifestyle or being a captive in war. God has made us special by the only way we could be.

I said that Paul is really just replacing one kind of boasting with another; and they are boasting of two kingdoms, two worlds at war: so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (v. 31). So there is an evil boast and a good boast. And there is good context for what this good kind of boasting means in the prophet Jeremiah.

Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD” (Jer. 9:23-24).

To boast is not only an action using exact words. Another word has been used in translations (glory-ing) and Calvin describes it in this way: “In short, man, brought to nothing in his own estimation, and acknowledging that there is nothing good anywhere but in God alone, must renounce all desire for his own glory, and with all his might aspire and aim at the glory of God exclusively.”4

THE LORD (ho kurios) here most specifically terminates on Christ, the Son of God. And that marks the perfect exclamation point on this whole section, because what has the contrast been? Jesus prayed for this clear sight: “glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (Jn. 17:1). God receives all the glory, but he focuses our glory-giving immediately on his Son, which is good for us because we cannot see God favorably beyond the view toward Christ. So to glory only in “the Lord” is to make much of God as he has chosen to reveal himself in Christ. This is when it is virtuous to be loud or passionate or transfixed: “There is room for a real expression of our delight in what Christ has done for us. But all glorying must be in what He has done, and not in the puny things that we, at best, can achieve.”5

Practical Use of the Doctrine

The application is built into the passage itself. Verses 29 and 31 both treat the Father calling us and what the Son is to us in terms of eliminating human boasting and creating a different boasting. 

Use 1. Instruction. How can children who grow up in a Christian home do this “considering” that Paul commends? At first glance, it might appear that you cannot. Here Paul is asking first generation Christians to think back to a time when they lived like the devil in the world. At first glance it would seem that you cannot do this. But let me ask you this. Is the chief quality of this pre-Christian life the amount of time it took, or even their state of being full-grown adults, or else living “out on their own”? None of those are the real essence of being a sinner, or “living like a devil in the world.” Many a Christian parent can attest to it even if the child cannot. At any rate, there is a good “considering verse” that you might think cannot be read by the child of a Christian home. It is where Paul wanted his Roman readers to do a little reflection on what is means to be truly free. In one sense, he could say, Sure, you were “free” of God’s righteous commands when you lived for sin: “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death” (Rom. 6:21). Therefore, consider your internal condition, young person. You might also consider your parents’ calling, so as to grasp what a miracle it is that God would call you (and your line) out of the world. 

Use 2. Instruction. There is good news for the proud, if only we read it that way. To understand the gospel in this, I think it may help to compare a wrong way to read this to the right way. One way to read this is that since “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jam. 4:6), therefore what Paul is saying here is that God is choosing those “humble enough” to believe in Jesus and not those who rely on their own wisdom. Well, certainly that is the contrast — worldly wisdom versus Christ-trusting humility — but what is the problem with that interpretation?

If we look at Paul’s getting us to consider this, we will notice that God’s choice is the cause of our humbling and not the effect of our natural humility. We have none by our sinful nature.

Two problems would emerge if Paul were merely getting us to see how our humility caused God’s choice: (1) Our humility would turn to pride, because something virtuous about us earned God’s choice, and so would not be humility at all.6 (2) There would be no good news of hope for the haughty. But there is good news for the proud. All of us can be humbled by the consideration of God’s sovereign grace. 

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1. cf. Morris, First Corinthians, 48-49.

2. Edwards’ “big idea” (or what a Puritan sermon simply called ‘Doctrine’) was: “God is glorified in the work of redemption in this, that there appears in it so absolute and universal a dependence of the redeemed on him” - The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two. 3.

3. Prior remarks, “The grammar of the Greek in verse 30 indicates that Paul is saying, ‘wisdom equals righteousness, sanctification and redemption’: to know those three is to be truly wise” (47).

4.  Calvin, Commentaries, XX:94-95

5. Morris, First Corinthians, 50.

6. Calvin warns against the interpretation that “the great and noble might be shut out from the hope of salvation” (Commentaries, XX:90). In the past century, this has taken the form of liberation theology. It gives the impression that being well-off is the unforgivable sin and that being materially poor is such a virtue that is basically constitutes being among God’s children by itself. The poor need no salvation and the rich have no hope of it. That is the Marxist formula for Christian soteriology. But this is far from Paul’s point.