It is the cross which stains the pride of man and puts all his glory in the dust. Hence the Apostle brings Christ crucified before the Corinthians. This to the Jew was a stumbling block, and to the Greek foolishness. These Corinthians were deeply affected by the judgment of both Jews and Greeks. They were under the influence of man. They had not realized the total ruin of nature. They valued those that were wise, scribes, or disputers of this world. They were accustomed to the schools of their age and country. They conceived that if Christianity did such great things when those who possessed it were poor and simple, what might it not do if it could only be backed by the ability and the learning and the philosophy of men! How it must ride triumphantly to victory! How the great must bow, and the wise be brought in! What a glorious change would result, when not the unlettered poor only, but the great and the noble, the wise and the prudent, were all joined in the confession of Jesus!
Their thoughts were fleshly, not of God. The cross writes judgment on man, and folly on his wisdom, as it is itself rejected by man as folly; for what could seem more egregiously unreasonable to a Greek than the God that made heaven and earth becoming a man and, as such, being crucified by the wicked hands of His creatures here below? That God should use His power to bless man was natural; and the Gentile could coalesce as to it with the Jew. Hence too, in the cross, the Jew found his stumbling block, for he expected a Messiah in power and glory. Though the Jew and the Greek seemed opposite as the poles, from different points they agreed thoroughly in slighting the cross, and in desiring the exaltation of man as he is. They both, therefore (whatever their occasional oppositions, and whatever their permanent variety of form), preferred the flesh, and were ignorant of God—the one demanding signs, the other wisdom. It was the pride of nature, whether self-confident or founded on religious claims.
Hence the Apostle Paul, in the latter part of chapter 1, brings in the cross of Christ in contrast with fleshly wisdom, as well as religious pride, urging also God's sovereignty in callings souls as He will. He alludes to the mystery (chap. 2), but does not develop here the blessed privileges that flowed to us from a union with Christ, dead, risen, and ascended, but demonstrates that man has no place whatever, that it is God who chooses and calls, and that He makes nothing of flesh. There is glorying, but it is exclusively in the Lord. "No flesh should glory in His presence."
This is confirmed in chapter 2, where the Apostle reminds them of the manner in which the gospel had entered Corinth. He had come there setting his face against all things that would commend himself. No doubt, to one of such eminent ability and such varied gifts as the Apostle Paul, it was hard, to speak after the manner of men, to be nothing. How much it must have called for self-denial utterly to decline that which he could have handled so well, and which people at Corinth would have hailed with loud acclamation. But what absorbed his soul, in entering the intellectual and dissolute capital of Achaia, was the cross of Christ. He determined therefore, as he says, to know nothing else—not exactly to know the cross alone, but "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." It was emphatically, though not exclusively, the cross. It was not simply redemption, but along with this another line of truth. Redemption supposes, undoubtedly, a suffering Savior, and the shedding of that precious blood which ransoms the captives. It is Jesus who in grace has undergone the judgment of God, and brought in the full delivering power of God for the souls that believe. But the cross is more than this. It is pre-eminently the death of shame. It is utter opposition to the thoughts, feelings, judgments, and ways of men, religious or profane. Accordingly, this is the part that he was led in the wisdom of God to put forward. Hence the feelings of the Apostle were distrust of self and dependence on God according to that cross. As he says, "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." Thus, as Christ Himself is said in 2 Corinthians 13 to be crucified in weakness, such was also the servant here. His speech and his preaching was "not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Accordingly, in this chapter he proceeds to supplement the application of the doctrine of the cross to the state of the Corinthians by bringing in the Holy Spirit; for this again supposes the incapacity of man in divine things.
All is opened out in a manner full of comfort, but at the same time unsparing to human pride. Weigh from the prophecy of Isaiah the remarkable quotation—"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit." There is first the great standing fact before our eyes. Such is the Savior to the saved. Christ crucified is the death knell on all man's wisdom, and power, and righteousness. The cross writes total condemnation on the world. It was here the world had to say to Jesus. All that it gave Him was the cross. On the other hand, to the believer, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God, because he humbly but willingly reads in the cross the truth of the judgment of his own nature as a thing to be delivered from, and finds Him that was crucified, the Lord Himself, undertaking a deliverance just, present, and complete; as he says, "Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Flesh is absolutely put down.
Man cannot go lower for weakness and ignominy than the cross on which hangs all the blessedness God gives the believer. And therein God is glorified as He is nowhere else. This in both its parts is exactly as it should be, and faith sees and receives it in Christ's cross. The state of the
Corinthians did not admit of Christ risen being
brought in—at least here. It might have drawn a halo, as it were, round human nature—this presenting the risen Man in the first instance. But he points to God as the source, and Christ as the channel and means, of all the blessing. "Of Him," says he, "are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." But then, as he shows, there is not only this great source of blessing in Christ, but there is the power that works in us. Never is it the spirit of man that lays hold of this infinite good which God vouchsafes him. Man requires a divine power to work within him, just as he needs the Savior outside himself....
Man is not more capable of fathoming the depths of divine things than a brute can comprehend the works of human wit or science. This doctrine was utterly repulsive to the pride of the Greeks. They might admit man to have need of pardon and of moral improvement. They fully admitted his want of instruction, and refinement, and, so to speak, of spiritualization, if it only might be. Christianity deepens our estimate of every want. Man not only wants a new life or nature, but the Holy Spirit. It is not merely His grace in a general sense, but the power of the Holy Spirit personally dwelling in him. It is this alone which can lead us into the deep things of God. And this, He lets us see, affects not merely this particular or that, but the whole working of divine grace and power in man. The whole and sole means of communicating blessing to us must be the Holy Spirit. Hence he insists that it is the Spirit of God in the first place who reveals the truth to us, so it is the same Spirit who furnishes suitable words, as finally it is through the Holy Spirit that one receives the truth revealed in the words He Himself has given. Thus, from first to last, it is a process begun, carried on, and completed by the Holy Spirit. How little this makes of man!
This introduces the third chapter, and gives point to his rebukes. He taxes them with walking as men. How remarkable is such a reproach! Walking as men! Why, one might ask, how else could they walk? And this very difficulty—as no doubt it would be to many a Christian now (that walking as men should be a reproach)—was no doubt a clap of thunder to the proud but poor spirits at Corinth. Yes, walking as men is a departure from Christianity. It is to give up the distinctive power and place that belongs to us; for does not Christianity show us man judged, condemned, and set aside? On the faith of this, living in Christ, we have to walk. The Holy Spirit, besides, is brought in as working in the believer, and this, of course, in virtue of redemption by our Lord Jesus. And this is what is meant by being not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, which is proved by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.
Here the Apostle does not explain all this, and he gives a very withering reason for his reticence. These Corinthians had an uncommonly good opinion of themselves, and so they must be told plainly the reason why he does not open out these deep things. They themselves were not fit; they were but babes. What! the polished Greek believers no more than babes! This was rather what they would have said of the Apostle or of his teaching. They thought themselves far in advance. The Apostle had dwelt on the elementary truths of the gospel. They yearned after the fire of Peter and the rhetoric of Apollos. No doubt they might easily flatter themselves it was to carry on the work of God. How little many a young convert knows what will best lead him on! How little the Corinthians dreamed of depreciating the second Man, or of exalting the first. Hence the Apostle tells them that he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat." Far from denying, he owns that their insinuation was true—he had brought before them only elementary truths. They were not in a condition to bear more. Now this is full of meaning and importance practically at all times. We may damage souls greatly by presenting high truths to those that want the simples rudiments of divine truth.
The Apostle, as a wise master builder, laid the foundation. The state of the Corinthians was such that he could not build on the foundation as he would have desired. His absence had given occasion of their breaking out of their carnal wishes after the world's wisdom. They were making even the ardor of a Peter and the eloquence of an Apollos to be a reason for dissatisfaction with one that, I need not say, was superior to both of them. But the Apostle meets them in a way most unexpected to their self-satisfaction and pride, and lets them know that their carnality was the real reason why he could not go on with them into deeper things.
Their party spirit, their feeling of narrowness, the disposition to set up this servant of Christ or that, was not only a dishonor to the Master, but a real loss to themselves. Not that there is any ground to suppose it was the fault of Peter or Apollos any more than of Paul. The evil was in the saints themselves, who indulged in their old zeal of the schools, and allowed their natural partiality to work. In point of fact, this never can be without the most grievous impoverishment to the soul, as well as a hindrance to the Holy Spirit. What faith must learn is that "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas;... all things are yours." Thus the subject enlarges, as is his wont, taking in an immense breadth of the Christian's possessions—life, death, things present, and things to come. "All are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."