1 Corinthians 1:19 Commentary and Bible Study

This is quoted from Isaiah 29. God will destroy the wisdom of the wise in two ways. The gospel of Christ owes nothing to human wisdom. When you hear the gospel and the work of Christ and the appeals of God, that message contains nothing of human wisdom. It cannot contribute. Human wisdom says, if there is a God, the only way to know him is to earn it and to be righteous, but that is impossible. You need a free salvation achieved by Christ alone. I will abolish the wisdom of the wise: it will owe nothing, the gospel, to human wisdom. Human wisdom will bring no one to know the Lord.Then also the wisdom of the wise will be progressively destroyed. As the ages proceed, human wisdom in some viewpoint or political ideology will arise, and then as time goes on its weaknesses will be seen, and it will fall out of fashion and it will soon be no more, and will be replaced by some other human theory. That goes on constantly throughout human history. The things people believed 500 years ago are gone. Even 100 years ago, even 50 years ago. All groups, political parties are evolving and changing, and rubbishing and throwing away the things they hold dear, and substituting new ideas for them. ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise’, says the Lord. Each generation of wisdom in turn falls and become seen as ridiculous. And at the end of time, human wisdom will finally fall completely. Does this mean all human wisdom? No, God has given us the power of reason and observation and investigation, and there is a lot of human wisdom which accumulates and does not die, and is to be respected; much learning is to be respected. But as soon as human wisdom begins to talk about God and what he is like and how to find him and how to live, and as soon as it tries to solve behavioural problems, it fails and falls. It is worthless in those areas, and that is what is in view here. Human wisdom will be abolished. Man's feeble attempts to understand the origin of life, whether or not there is a God, the purposes of ways of God; he is hopeless when it comes to that, because he is deeply prejudiced and antagonistic against God. So not all learning will perish, but human learning is no good for behaviour, and spiritual enquiry. God must reveal himself.