¹⁷ This is the point, you see: the Messiah didn’t send me to baptize; he sent me to announce the gospel! Not with words of wisdom, either, otherwise the Messiah’s cross would lose its power.

God’s folly

¹⁸ The word of the cross, you see, is madness to people who are being destroyed. But to us—those who are being saved—it is God’s power. ¹⁹ This is what the Bible says, after all:

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the educated person? Where is the debater of this present age? Don’t you see that God has turned the world’s wisdom into folly? ²¹ This is how it’s happened: in God’s wisdom, the world didn’t know God through wisdom, so it gave God pleasure, through the folly of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²² Jews look for signs, you see, and Greeks search for wisdom; ²³ but we announce the crucified Messiah, a scandal to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, the Messiah—God’s power and God’s wisdom. ²⁵ God’s folly is wiser than humans, you see, and God’s weakness is stronger than humans.

Boasting in the Lord

²⁶ Think back to your own call, my brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise in human terms. Not many of you were powerful. Not many were nobly born. ²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong; ²⁸ God chose the insignificant and despised things of the world—yes, even things that don’t exist!—to abolish the power of the things that do exist, ²⁹ so that no creature could boast in God’s presence. ³⁰ Who and what you now are is a gift from God in Messiah Jesus, who has become for us God’s wisdom—and righteousness, sanctification and redemption as well; ³¹ so that, as the Bible puts it, “Anyone who boasts should boast in the Lord.”