First Corinthians/Chapter 1:11-31/Commentary

First Corinthians Chapter 1:11-31

1Corinthians 1:11 “For it hath been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe, that there are contentions among you” “Signified”: “I have been informed” (NASV). “Implies definite information, the disclosure of facts” (Gr. Ex. N.T. p. 763). “By them that are of the household of Chloe”: “Chloe's people” (NASV). Either household slaves or members of her family (Romans 16:10). “Children, companions, or possibly slaves” (Gr. Ex. N.T. p. 763). “Chloe”: The name is pronounced (KLOH ee). “It may have been tough on those who brought the report to be named in this way; but Paul laid it right out there, and he does not accuse them of gossip. So it is possible to speak of the misconduct of others without indulging in gossip”. 1 “Contentions”: “Quarrels” (NASV). “Unseemly wranglings (as opposed to discussing) that were leading to the divisions. Listed in the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19) and catalogues of vices (2 Corinthians 12:20; Romans 1:19f; 1 Timothy 6:4)” (Robertson p. 73).

The Corinthian church had sent a letter to Paul (7:1), but apparently that letter had failed to mention the "divisions". He had learned about their divisions from either insiders or outsiders. Fee takes this to mean, that the letter sent to Paul (7:1), was not a letter asking Paul's advice about certain topics, but rather, a letter than was against the positions that Paul preached.

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McGuiggan p. 28 1

“The very nature of their slogans (1:12), including the existence of those who ‘follow Paul’--but without his blessing--implies that such a community would scarcely be asking him to arbitrate their internal differences. Rather, the community in general (or many within the community) stands over against its apostle on those various issues”. 2 1Corinthians 1:12 “Now this I mean, that each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos: and I of Cephas; and I of Christ” “Now this I mean”: Defining the divisions of 1:10-11. “Each one of you saith”: Indicating that the vast majority in the Corinthian church were involved in this division. “I am of”: “I belong to” (RSV). “I am a follower of” (Gspd). “Paul certainly is my leader” (Ber). “I am Paul's person” (Fee).

“Apollos”: He had preached here after Paul's departure (Acts 18:27; 1 Corinthians 16:12). “Cephas”: The Aramaic name given Simon by Jesus (John 1:42). We must realize that Paul, Peter and Apollos had nothing to do with this division. They all preached the same gospel (Galatians 1:9; 2:1-10; Acts 15:7-12). There existed no rift between any of them (1 Corinthians 16:12; 2 Peter 3:15-16 "our beloved brother Paul"). “It is to be noted that the great figures of the church who are named had nothing to do with these divisions.

There were no dissensions between them. Without their knowledge and without their consent their names had been appropriated by these Corinthian factions. It not infrequently happens that a man's so-called supporters are a bigger problem than his open enemies”. 3 “The views of many commentators which describe Peter as preaching for Judasitic faction, Apollos as preaching a doctrine of philosophy and Alexandrian fanciful interpretations, and Paul as preaching a universal gospel conflicts with the facts. One must not forget that Peter was the first to preach to the Gentiles (Acts 10) and that Apollos was mighty in the Scriptures (Acts 18:24-28). Furthermore, the position which puts these men as leaders of different, warring parties would destroy what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3:4-9.

The problem was one caused by the Corinthians and not by the different preachers”. 4 2

Fee p. 55

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Barclay p. 16 2

“The Corinthians were childish (3:1ff). They had to have their own "gang".

There had to be someone or something that "belonged to them", seeing they had been affected by their environment. On every corner in Corinth there was a school of someone or other. They had become accustomed to picking and choosing between philosophers or gurus. When they came into the body of Christ they brought their background with them”. 5 “The Corinthians had been used to witnessing itinerant philosophers come and go in their cities, who built up small bands of students who adopted and propagated their views. They had simply viewed the gospel as a new type of wisdom philosophy and the preachers as competitive philosophers”. 6 Considering the line of reasoning in Chapter 3:1-10, where Paul narrows down the issue between just the "Paul party" and the "Apollos party", we could infer that the "Peter party" was very small in Corinth.

“And I of Christ”: This expression has generated quite a bit of discussion among commentators. The best suggestions seem to be: Paul's own response. “And I (Paul, in contrast to your following men) a follower of Christ”. “But I belong to Christ” (Barclay p. 17). It could have described a group that properly used the right designation, but with the wrong motives.

“Their real fault was not in saying that they belonged to Christ, but in acting as if Christ belonged to them. It may well describe a little, intolerant, selfrighteous group” (Barclay p. 17). “Here are some people who form no distinct group at all, but who in their own attempt to rise above the rest have fallen into their own brand of spiritual elitism that makes them no better than the others” (Fee p. 59).

1Corinthians 1:13 “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized into the name of Paul?”

“Is Christ divided?”: “Is there more than one Christ?” (Phi) “Divided: so portioned up that one party may claim Him more than another” (Vincent p.

190). The term Christ here may also stand for the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12). Such groups are dividing the church. This may be a 4

Willis p. 32

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McGuiggan p. 30

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Willis p. 31 3

response to the last group mentioned, “Absurd! Can Christ be made a party in the same breath as the others? Or do you mean to say that Christ has been apportioned out so that only one group has Him?” (Fee p. 60). “Was Paul crucified for you?”: Tactfully Paul chooses to use his own name, and yet the same line of reasoning would apply to any name-Apollos, Peter, Luther and so on. “Call yourself a Paulite? Why, that would require that Paul was crucified for you! That would require that you were immersed into the name of Paul.

Would anyone have been fool enough to believe or practice that?” 7 “If Christians remember who died for them, and to whom they belong, they will be slow to say that they belong to Paul (or any other man)” (Erdman p.

30).

Paul gives us a good test. So you are religious. What do you call yourself?

Did it he or they die for you? Now, if God condemned the religious sects based on the names of Apostles (inspired men), how much more is He against all other names? Was a Method crucified for you? Was Luther? Was the Presyberty? Was Baptism? Was the Seventh Day? Was Moroni? Martin Luther said, “In the first place, I pray you to leave my name alone, and not to call yourselves Lutherans but Christians. Who is Luther? My doctrine is not mine! I have not been crucified for any one. St. Paul would not that any one should call themselves of Paul, nor of Peter, but of Christ. How then does it befit me, a miserable bag of dust and ashes, to give my name to the children of Christ. Cease, my dear friends, to cling to the party names and distinctions; away with them all; and let us call ourselves only Christians, after him from whom our doctrine comes”. 8 1Corinthians 1:14 “I thank God that I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gaius” 1Corinthians 1:15 “lest any man should say that ye were baptized into my name” This may have been a deliberate practice on Paul's part. He may have purposely had others (like Timothy and Silas) do the bulk of the baptizing.

“Had he immersed a lot of the Corinthians, he says, some might have claimed 7

McGuiggan p. 30

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M. Michelet, The Life of Martin Luther. p. 262 4

he was making Paulites by immersing them into his own name” (McGuiggan p. 31). These verses are also a rebuke to modern day preachers who boast in the number of people they have baptized. Notice, Paul did not keep score.

1Corinthians 1:16 “And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other” “I know not whether”: “It's nice to know that one so brilliant forgets some things” (McGuiggan p. 31).

1Corinthians 1:17 “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void” “For Christ sent me not to baptize”: This phrase has been used by some as proof that baptism is not necessary for salvation. Yet consider the following: If Paul did not believe in the necessity of baptism, then why did he baptize people (1:14,16)? If baptism was not important, then Paul should have said, “I thank God that I never demanded baptism of any believer”. “If Christ didn't send him to immerse people, wouldn't he have been disobeying Christ in immersing Crispus, Gaius and Stephanas and his household?” (McGuiggan p. 31). In addition, why did he allow others to be baptized? (Acts 18:8) Why did he submit to baptism, especially when it was presented to him as being necessary for the remission of his sins? (Acts 22:16) Why did he stress it's importance in other letters? (Romans 6:3-5; Ephesians 2:5-6; 4:5 “one baptism”—one unimportant baptism? Look at the subjects that Paul places baptism among in Ephesians 4:4-6! Equally note Colossians 2:12-13 and Galatians 3:26-27.

Actually this context points out the necessity of baptism: In order for a man to be "of Paul," two things had to occur. First Paul had to die for them and secondly the Corinthians had to be baptized in the name of Paul. The necessary conclusion includes the fact, that in order to be "of Christ", you must be baptized into the name of Christ! “It is not to be thought that Paul is belittling baptism. The people he did baptize were very special converts. The point is this--baptism was into the name of Jesus. That phrase

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in Greek implies the closest possible connection. To give money into a man's name was to pay it into his account, into his personal possession. This phrase into the name of implied absolute and utter possession. All that Paul is saying is, ‘I am glad that I was so busy preaching (and others doing the baptizing Acts 18:8), because if I had baptized it would have given some of you the excuse to say that you were baptized into my possession instead of into Christ's’ He is not making little of baptism; he is simply glad that no act of his could be misconstrued as annexing men for himself and not for Christ”. 9 “In discussions with Baptists, the argument has been made from these verses to prove that baptism is not essential for salvation. The Baptists teach that one becomes a member of the Baptist Church through baptism. Whatever argument they use with reference to this verse must also be applied to their own practice. If (1:17) proves that baptism is unimportant, we have Paul saying (for the Baptists at least), ‘I thank God that I did not make any of you Baptists’ because ‘Christ sent me not to baptize’”. 10 “But to preach the gospel”: Which included the condition of baptism (Mark 16:15-16; Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38). “Not in wisdom of words”: ‘Cleverness of speech” (NASV). “Not with an orator's cleverness” (Knox). “Paul regards himself as a sent one, a ‘message boy’ for the Lord and so not only does he avoid immersing a lot of people (personally, though he has someone else do it Acts 18:5), he avoids trying to impress people with ‘wise’ and eloquent speech” (McGuiggan p. 31). Barclay reminds us, that by first century times the wise man among the Greeks: “It came to mean a man with a clever mind and cunning tongue, a mental acrobat, a man who with glittering and persuasive rhetoric could make the worse appear the better reason. It meant a man who would spend endless hours discussing hair-splitting trifles, a man who had no real interest in solutions but simply gloried in the stimulus of ‘the mental hike’. It meant a man who gloried in a nimble and cunning brain and in a silver tongue and in an admiring audience” (p. 21). “It was Paul's claim that he set before men the cross of Christ in its simplest terms. To decorate the story of the cross with rhetoric and cleverness would have been to make men think more of the language than of the facts, more the speaker than of the message” (Barclay p. 18).

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Barclay pp. 17-18 Willis pp. 37-38 6

“Lest the cross of Christ should be made void”: “Might seem an empty thing” (Gspd). Considering this verse and the context that follows, apparently there existed a tendency at Corinth to make the gospel into just another philosophical system of thought. “There have been several attempts to make Christianity agree with philosophies of the world; indeed, almost every philosophy will quote the Bible to substantiate its claims and ignore the Bible wherein they differ” (Willis p. 38). The cross of Christ is made void when Christianity is seen as merely something that stimulates the mind, and as merely one view among many. If one refuses to accept that man is a sinner, that all have sinned, that heaven and hell exist, that Jesus is the only way to God, one has just made the cross of Christ void. One has just said that His death was meaningless. Admit that anyone can be saved outside of Christ, and one has just said that Jesus died for nothing.

Paul believed that the death of Christ was central, but the message of the cross carries some necessary conclusions: All other religious systems fail to atone for sin. All other faiths are void of saving power. Man is a sinner. All are accountable to God. Man cannot save himself. Sins cannot be atoned for my human effort or good works. Sin is serious. Hell exists. If not, from what did Jesus die to save us? Sin demands punishment. God will punish the unrepentant sinner. All outside of Christ are lost. He is the only way to God. Christ has the final say and is the final authority in all spiritual and moral matters.

The Gospel and Human Wisdom In these verses Paul shows the Corinthians, who seem to have been so impressed with the human philosophies surrounding them, “Look at the message of the gospel! Would human wisdom have dreamed up the story of a crucified deliverer? Furthermore, look at yourselves! Who in the name of human wisdom would have chosen you to be the new people of God?” See 1 Corinthians 1:26-31.

1Corinthians 1:18 “For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God”

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“Word of the cross”: “Message of the cross” (Knox). “To them that perish”: People are perishing. “The present participle denotes process: who are on the way to destruction” (Vincent p. 191). “Foolishness”: “Sheer folly” (Mof).

“The Corinthians had embraced the message of redemption through a crucified Christ. What did the world think of that? They thought such a message was crass stupidity. What, then, made the Corinthians respect the wisdom of the world? Why were the Corinthians impressed with and trying to impress the world? The Corinthians romance with the world's wisdom and philosophical schools, in part, has led them to this divided state. Paul's aim in this whole section is to expose the world's wisdom as foolishness (see Romans 1:22). Whom are the Corinthians trying to impress? Fools!” 11 Who are these people that think the gospel message is silly? They are perishing people! Lost people! Does not that tell us something about the value of their opinions? Listen young people (and old). Why in the world are we admiring the spiritually blind? Why are we impressed with someone on the road to eternal destruction? Why are we trying to emulate someone that can't even find God? Why are we drooling over someone that can't even give the right answer for their origin and the purpose for their existence? “But unto us who are saved”: Only two paths exist (Matthew 7:13-14). Being saved, in the process of salvation.

“It is the power of God”: (Romans 1:16). This is the voice of experience.

“You and I know that the cross is God's saving power” (Gr. Ex. N.T. p. 767).

The Christian realizes the impotence found in all human attempts to procure deliverance. What are we doing listening to perishing man! Listen to the voice of experience and listen to a saved man! Human wisdom can stimulate the mind, it can entertain, it can amuse, but saving one's soul, that takes "power"! All the scheming in the world cannot remove one sin. All the rationalizing hasn't been able to save one soul! Salvation requires the power of God! 1Corinthians 1:19 “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought” “For it is written”: Isaiah 29:14. The gospel message is simply one more example of where trying to match wits with God ends in utter failure and 11

McGuiggan p. 33 8

where mere human wisdom is seen to be bankrupt (Isaiah 40: 12-14; 25; Job 38-42). “Yet it is the folly of our human machinations that we think we can outwit God, or lets us think that God ought to be a least as smart as we are” (Fee p. 70). It's not the first time that human wisdom has been seen to fail and neither will it be the last.

“Will I bring to nought”: “And ignore the best ideas of men, even the most brilliant of them” (Tay). McGuiggan describes the background of Isaiah 29:14: “The political advisors urged alliances with foreigners to preserve Jerusalem.

It all sounded so smart. Pay Assyria and secretly ally with Egypt in case Assyria isn't faithful to his word. His wise, how brilliant; and they didn't need God. How stupid! And the Grecian philosophers didn't need God either” (p.

33).

1Corinthians 1:20 “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

“Where is the wise?”: “Philosopher'” (Gspd). The man "wise" in the eyes of other men, rather than being wise according to God’s standards (1:26). This verse is an echo of Isaiah 33:18, where the collapse of the Assyrian plans against Jerusalem were celebrated. “Scribe”: The Jewish experts in the Law. Of course the term would also include the professional, the lawyer, and the theologian. “Disputer of this world?”: “Logician” (Wms). “Subtle debater” (NEB). A regular term for a disputant in the Greek philosophic schools. “And what of the ‘critic’ of the age? What of the one who thinks he has the whole thing worked out? Where did their ‘wisdom’ end? Did it bring redemption to a perishing world? Did pagan cunning or Jewish critical ability really get them anywhere?” 12 “Of this world”: “This passing age” (NEB). A wisdom that is limited to a very short period of time, a wisdom that is worldly, and rises no higher than the physical plane. “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world”: Many considered the message of the cross foolishness (1:18); and yet it is this message of salvation that really shows how the folly of all human systems of self-deliverance! How does a crucified Messiah make the following look: Reincarnation? Humanism? “Everyone is on the same road to heaven”? Evolution? Pleasure as the chief aim in life? Pain and suffering 12

McGuiggan p. 34 9

disprove the existence of God? Pain and suffering are only illusions? “I'm a good moral person, and I don't need to be religious”?

1Corinthians 1:21 “For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe” “For seeing”: “For since” (NASV). “In the wisdom of God”: “For God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never find God through human brilliance” (Tay). “As God in His wisdom ordained, the world failed to find Him by its wisdom” (NEB). “Through its wisdom”: Relying on pure human wisdom (Jeremiah 10:23; Proverbs 16:25). “Knew not God”: The classic example of this is the city of Athens. One of the major centers of learning in the ancient world, and yet a city full of idols and ignorant of the true God (Acts 17:16,23).

All human schools of thought had failed to find access to God (Acts 17:30; Romans 1:21-23). A point to remember: Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Druidism, Spiritism, Animism, and Polytheism were all in existence when Paul wrote these verses, and thus all of them are human attempts that end in failure. None of them get one any closer to God. “God's good pleasure”: “God, instead of dumping mankind, was pleased to work for its salvation. It pleased God to save people! God delights in saving people!”

(McGuiggan p. 34). See John 3:16; Luke 15:7,10. “Through the foolishness of the preaching”: As the world viewed the message preached (1:18). Again, salvation comes from hearing a message (Romans 10:17). The message is not foolishness to God, but rather men often view the gospel as being foolish.

“To save them that believe”: “Not the cunning, the debaters, and the signseekers” (McGuiggan p. 34).

1Corinthians 1:22 “Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom” “Neither Jews nor Greeks are ready to receive this message. Both are blinded by their own preconceptions. The ‘Jews ask for signs’, for some strange and starling portents in the heavens (Matthew 16:1,4). The ‘Greeks seek after wisdom’; they believe that the way of the highest life must lie along the line of mental culture” (Erdman p. 33). No matter how many miracles Jesus performed, the Jews kept asking for more (Matthew 12:38; John 6:30). “Both of these types of worldly wisdom still persist but now in modernized form.

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Some want the church to heal all social and even all physical evils. They demand an imposing, outward ecclesiastical organization that will sweep the world before it. They look for a millennium and the outward triumph of the gospel over all the world. Signs, signs, big tangible, overpowering results!

Others bank on their reason; they assume that their intellect is able to penetrate into everything. So they follow philosophy in its latest forms” (Lenski p. 65).

1Corinthians 1:23 “but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness” “Unto Jews a stumbling-block”: “To the Jews it was incredible that one who had ended His life upon a cross could possibly be God's chosen one. They pointed to their own law and the law unmistakably said, ‘He that is hanged is accursed of God’ (Deuteronomy 21:23). To the Jew the fact of the crucifixion, so far from proving that Jesus was the Son of God, disproved it finally”. 13 Yet they never thought that Jesus might have been accursed of God, because He was dying for ”our sins" (Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 2:24), and they overlooked the clear passages that described the future Messiah, as a suffering servant (Isaiah 53) and being crucified (Psalm 22).

“Unto Gentiles foolishness”: “To the Greek idea the first characteristic of God was the total inability to feel. The Greeks argued that God cannot feel. If God can feel joy or sorrow or anger or grief it means that some man has for that moment moved and affected God. If that is so they concluded that for that moment that man has influenced God and is therefore greater than He is. A God who suffered was to the Greek a contradiction in terms” (Barclay pp. 2021).

1Corinthians 1:24 “but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” “Called”: Christians. “But such a message was no insult to the called ones. To those who embraced that message it isn't an insult or foolishness. To them is demonstrates the consummate wisdom of God (in exposing the world's ineptitude and still bringing about redemption)” (McGuiggan pp. 34-35).

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Barclay pp. 19-20 11

Therefore if we are embarrassed about what we believe, it reveals that we really have not accepted that the gospel is the wisdom of God. Remember, any embarrassment expressed towards the gospel is an embarrassment toward the God that we claim to serve.

1Corinthians 1:25 “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” “Because”: This way what seems foolish to men (1:18,23) is more effective than any idea of man. Paul is not saying that foolishness or weakness is found in the character of God. “He adds a pertinent example of the false judgments of men in this very connection. He reminds the Corinthian Christians of the world's false estimate of them, and so of the fact that God can achieve great results by means which the world despises” (Erdman p. 34). The world is not only wrong about the gospel it is equally wrong concerning the Corinthian Christians. Why were the Corinthians so impressed with the world? Seeing that the very world that they were impressed with despised and looked down on the Corinthian believers? What are we doing admiring someone who thinks we are ignorant and intolerant? How can one say that the world cannot be wrong about the gospel message, when it is wrong about them!

1Corinthians 1:26 “For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called” “Behold your calling”: Look at the type of people who have accepted the gospel call. “How many wise, powerful or noble ones are among you? He wants to know” (McGuiggan p. 35). “Wise after the flesh”: “As men reckon wisdom” (TCNT). “Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard” (NEB). “Mighty”: “Nor many of the ruling class” (Phi). “Not many in positions of power” (Beck). “Noble”: “From the noblest families” (Phi). “Noble, high birth, the three claims to aristocracy (culture, power, birth)” (Robertson p.

80). “Are called”: Since all are called by the gospel (Mark 16:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:15), the inference is that few are called because few accept this universal call.

“I agree with Earl Jabay that, in the main or almost exclusively, the problem with man is not that he feels too weak to do any better. The problem is that

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man thinks he is a god. And not only is he his own adoring servant he has ‘become like God’. He's a marvel, a titan, an unstoppable genius, an allpowerful manipulator of the universe. Man, as you hear man tell it, is able to wipe out all signs of want and wickedness. Man has been telling us since the Enlightenment that it is simply a matter of education and breeding and we'll have a world utopia. Poor deluded mankind. By the time he's potty-trained or wipes the dirt off his knee where he was playing down with marbles, it's time for him to hobble on a stick or drool out senile mutterings. Poor man!

One of the lessons God has been continuously teaching him since the Garden of Eden is that he is neither powerful nor wise. Nor is he noble!” 14 1Corinthians 1:27 “but God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that He might put to shame the things that are strong” 1Corinthians 1:28 “and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that He might bring to nought the things that are” “Things”: This term apparently refers to groups of people, categories or conditions upon which the world looks. The things in the gospel (the cross, a suffering Messiah) matches the type of people that often accept it, that is, the world despises both. “What God did in the cross and in calling lowly Corinthians not only exhibits His own character, that He is gracious, but also illustrates that He is not beholden to the world. Thus He is not accountable to the ‘wise’ of this world” (Fee p. 83). “Put to shame”: Eternal shame is reserved for those that reject the gospel. “Base”: Literally the word means without kin, or unknown descent and thus ignoble. “Of no family, the reverse of noble” (Vincent p. 194). “That are despised”: “Not merely despised, but expressly branded with contempt” (Vincent p. 194). “God has chosen what the world holds base and contemptible” (Knox).

“The things that are not”: “And what it thinks does not exist” (Wms). “Things that to it are unreal” (TCNT). This could also refer to people that the world considers to be nobody (Matthew 11:25-26).

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McGuiggan p. 35 13

1Corinthians 1:29 “that no flesh should glory before God” “There is no place for human pride in the presence of God” (NEB). “So that in His presence no human being might have anything to boast of” (Gspd).

“That”; Here is the purpose that God set it up this way. In the gospel message there is no room for “I did it my way”. Everything that the world places it's confidence in, that it boast's about, and that it takes pride in, God rejects.

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