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The sermon presents the cross as God’s answer to humanity’s inability to discover or achieve salvation through wisdom, religion, morality, or intellectual achievement. Christ crucified is rejected by formal religion and worldly philosophy, but becomes the power and wisdom of God to those whom God calls. Spurgeon emphasizes effectual calling, real spiritual transformation, and the possibility of assurance grounded ultimately in Christ’s hold on the believer. The sermon also warns that rejecting Christ leads to judgment and urges hearers to examine whether the Gospel has reached their hearts.
Theological center: The crucified Christ is simultaneously God’s power for salvation and God’s perfect wisdom, accomplishing atonement and calling sinners effectually to faith.
Applications: Examine your response to Christ · Stop rejecting Christ · Recognize the wisdom of the cross · Rest in Christ’s hold
Primary texts: 1 Corinthians 1:21-25 · Isaiah 55:11 · John 6:37
“But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:23-24 WHAT contempt has God poured upon the wisdom of this world! How has He brought it to nought and made it appear as nothing. He has allowed it to work out its own conclusions and prove its own folly. Men boasted that they were wise, they said that they could find out God to perfection, and in order that their folly might be refuted once and forever, God gave them the opportunity of doing so. He said, “Worldly wisdom, I will try you. You say that you are mighty, that your intellect is vast and comprehensive, that your eye is keen, that you can unravel all secrets, now, behold, I try you. I give you one great problem to solve. Here is the universe—stars make its canopy, fields and flowers adorn it, and the floods roll o’er its surface. My name is written therein. The invisible things of God may be clearly seen in the things which are made. Philosophy, I give you this problem—find Me out. Here are My works—find Me out. Discover in the wondrous world which I have made, the way to worship Me acceptably. I give you space enough to do it—there are data enough. Behold the clouds, the earth, and the stars. I give you time enough. I will give you four thousand years and I will not interfere, but you shall do as you will with your own world. I will give you men in abundance, for I will make great minds and vast, whom you shall call lords of earth. You shall have orators, you shall have philosophers. Find Me out, O reason, find Me out, O wisdom. Discover My nature, if you can, find Me out unto perfection, if you are able, and if you cannot, then shut your mouth forever, and then I will teach you that the wisdom of God is wiser than the wisdom of man. Yea that the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” And how did the reason of man work out the problem? How did wisdom perform her feat? Look upon the heathen nations—there you see the result of wisdom’s researches. In the time of Jesus Christ, you might have beheld the earth covered with the slime of pollution—a Sodom on a large scale, corrupt, filthy, depraved, indulging in vices which we dare not mention, reveling in lusts too abominable even for our imagination to dwell upon for a moment. We find the men prostrating themselves before blocks of wood and stone, adoring ten thousand gods more vicious than themselves. We find, in fact, that reason wrote out her own depravity with a finger covered with…