Canter Bridge

John Stott has helpfully observed that ‘(a)ll progress in the Christian life depends upon a recapitulation of the original terms of one’s acceptance with God.’ Indeed, Christian faith does not feed itself upon novelty—though it has a respectable appetite for surprise—but rather is nourished by recurrent turning to the cross of Christ. That place, the apostle Paul is quick to recognize, represents a platform of the utmost foolishness when measured by the logic of this world. Yet he is sure that the cross’ shadow casts itself upon the firmest of ground, anchored as it is in bedrock that undergirds and will eventually loom large over the less enduring landscapes of this age.

So can the apostle describe the community of Jesus’ followers as women and men who do not dazzle their neighbors with astonishing credentials:

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

It is well to remember that Paul himself constitutes the very minority whose diminutive representation in the early gatherings of Christ-followers he is profiling. Paul and a number of his fellow believers in Israel’s crucified messiah present calling cards of remarkable sophistication. Yet Paul finds such qualifications to be almost the opposite of a credential. Training and experience of the kind that equipped him to lead the nascent gentile churches is not to be disparaged. But it hardly deserves the disproportionate value that this world’s admirers of achievement are likely to concede to it.

The fact is, Paul reminds his Corinthian readers, that Jesus’ family gathers itself along far different lines. Its mental rhythms, its perception, its sorting, its comprehension of what is real and what is mere fantasy work themselves out according to a far different scheme.

The apostle explains:

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? … Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 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. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Something remotely like the adrenaline rush that is experienced by the chest-pounding conqueror, sure of his heroic status, occurs in the life of Jesus’ little ones. Yet it is directed entirely away from those people themselves and any confidence they might screw up in their own meritorious stature.

Paul reconfigures boasting so that it finds its substance and its object in a different Strong Man.

‘Therefore, ‘as it is written’, he urges his readers, ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’