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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Corinthians 1:26 - 1:26
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
26. βλέπετε γὰρ τὴν κλῆσιν ὑμῶν. Perhaps, Behold your calling. So Vulgate, Wiclif and Tyndale. The Apostle adds an illustration of his paradox in 1Co 1:25. The truth is exemplified in the growth of the Christian Church. Its law of progress is the very opposite to that of all ordinary bodies. Not the powerful in rank, authority, and intellect, but the poor, the uneducated, the uninfluential, were first attracted to Christ, until by ‘a progressive victory of the ignorant over the learned, the lowly over the lofty, the emperor himself laid down his crown before the Cross of Christ.’—Olshausen. Thus the real weakness of man and his incapacity unaided to attain to God were demonstrated, and God’s object, the depriving humanity, as such, of all cause of self-satisfaction (1Co 1:29), attained. It is necessary to add here that κλῆσιν does not mean what we usually understand by the words vocation in life, but rather ‘the principle God has followed in calling you’ (Beza); cf. Eph 4:1, where the same Greek word is translated vocation, and is followed by wherewith.
δυνατοί. Powerful, or we should now say influential. See Thuc. II. 65, where it is explained by τῷ ἀξιώματι καὶ τῇ γνώμῃ.
εὐγενεῖς. Lit. well-born. Winer and Meyer prefer to complete the sentence with εἰσί here instead of with the ‘are called’ of the A.V.