Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Corinthians 1:21 - 1:21
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
21. ἐπειδὴ γάρ. A.V. ‘for after that.’ But Winer, Gr. Gram. Pt III. § 53 (and Moulton’s note), says that ἐπειδή is not used of time in N. T. Translate therefore for since. The meaning is that since human wisdom could not enlighten the world, it pleased God to enlighten it by what man in his self-conceit regarded as folly, and thus to display man’s folly to himself.
ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ. We have here a contrast drawn between God’s wisdom and that of man. Man’s wisdom could but inquire and argue. God’s wisdom had decreed that by such means man should only learn his weakness.
διὰ τῆς μωρίας τοῦ κηρύγματος. Translate with the Rhemish version, by the foolishness of the preaching, i.e. of the gospel. The word translated preaching should rather be rendered what is preached. It is called foolishness (1) because ‘those who were perishing’ thought it so; (2) because it required no high intellectual gift, but simple faith in a crucified and risen Lord. This abnegation by man of his natural powers was the first step in the road to salvation. But we are not to suppose that after man had thus surrendered those powers to God in a spirit of childlike faith, he was not to receive them hack regenerated and transfigured.
σῶσαι τοὺς πιστεύοντας. The aorist refers back to εὐδόκησεν. From the time when God sent the Gospel into the world, it became a means of salvation to those who believe it. The present πιστεύοντας implies that this faith is to be a continuous condition. It is not ‘to save those who believed,’ πιστεύσαντας, but ‘those who continue believing.’ The present also contemplates the continual addition of new believers to the body—those who at any time are believers in Christ.