The cross wins.
That sentence is easy to say. It’s familiar. It sounds settled. But if we pause long enough to let it register, we begin to feel how strange it really is. Because nothing about the cross looks like winning. Nothing about it fits our instincts about power, success, or effectiveness. The cross does not look like victory; it looks like collapse. It looks like weakness exposed, control lost, and strength humiliated in public.
Paul begins this passage by insisting that the cross is not merely related to God’s power. He says it is the power of God.
That claim alone forces a question on us before we go any further:
What do we mean when we talk about power?
Most of us carry an unexamined definition. Power is the ability to act, to influence outcomes, to protect what matters, to stay upright when pressure comes. Power is competence. Stability. Self-possession. And when we speak about faith, we often assume that following God should make us more secure, more capable, more internally consistent. We expect faith to strengthen the self.
Paul does not share that assumption.
The Corinthians believed the gospel. They affirmed Christ. They gathered as a church. And yet Paul saw something forming among them that alarmed him. They were dividing. Comparing. Ranking leaders. Aligning themselves with personalities and styles. Measuring spiritual life by eloquence, intellect, and perceived strength.
What they were doing looks familiar because it is familiar. It is what happens whenever the church quietly absorbs the values of its surrounding culture. The Corinthians lived in a world that prized rhetoric, philosophy, public honor, and visible success. And without realizing it, they began to carry those measurements into the church.
So Paul does not start by scolding behavior. He does not begin with church politics or conflict resolution. He goes straight to the cross.
Because the issue is not disagreement.
The issue is what is shaping them.
This is important: Paul is not writing to people who reject the cross. He is writing to people who confess it—but are being formed by something else. They believe the gospel, but their instincts still orbit around the self. Around competence. Around recognition. Around strength as the world defines it.
That’s why this passage is not primarily explanatory. It is formational. Paul is not just telling them what the cross means; he is showing them what the cross does when it is allowed to sit at the center of a community.
“The message of the cross,” Paul says, “is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Notice the present tense. No one is standing still. Humanity is always moving in a direction—either perishing or being saved. And the cross stands in the middle of that movement, exposing what kind of power we trust.
The cross does not flatter human wisdom. It contradicts it. It does not confirm our strength; it unmasks it. And that is why it feels foolish to some and life-giving to others. The difference is not intelligence. The difference is where the self is centered.
This passage is not asking whether we admire the cross. It is asking whether the cross has been allowed to re-center us.
Because the self always needs a center. It always needs something to lean on, something to boast in, something that feels solid enough to carry the weight of identity and hope. And if Christ does not occupy that place, something else will—usually something that looks like strength, competence, or wisdom.
Paul is going to argue that the cross overturns all of that—not by shaming us for being weak, but by showing us that what we thought was strength was never strong enough to begin with.
And here is where the passage becomes deeply personal. Most of us do not think of ourselves as boastful people. We are not loud. We are not arrogant. But Paul is not talking about loud boasting. He is talking about functional boasting—where the heart naturally goes for reassurance.
What do you trust when you are tired?
What do you reach for when you feel exposed?
What steadies you when things begin to wobble?
Those answers tell us where the self is centered.
The cross does not destroy the self. It relocates it. It takes the self out of the center and places Christ there instead. And once that relocation happens, something surprising occurs: boasting does not disappear. It simply changes direction. Boasting in the Lord becomes natural, not forced—because the self is no longer carrying what it was never meant to carry.
That is the work Paul is doing in this passage. He is not attacking weakness. He is exposing false strength. And he is inviting the church into a different kind of formation—one where power looks like dependence, wisdom looks like trust, and victory looks like a cross.
The cross wins.
But the question Paul presses on us is: What does that victory do to us?
---000--- PART I — Two Wisdoms, Two Directions
Paul’s first move in this passage is not to explain the cross, but to locate it. He places it in the middle of human movement. He says that the message of the cross divides the world not into religious and irreligious, but into those who are perishing and those who are being saved.
Paul does not allow for a static humanity. No one is standing still. Everyone is moving—always—in one direction or the other.
This is important for formation, because formation is about trajectory, not perfection.
Paul is not asking the Corinthians whether they believe the right things. He is asking what direction their lives are being shaped toward. The cross, he says, is not neutral. It exerts force. It pulls. It exposes. It reveals.
“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.”
That word foolishness does not mean silly or childish. It means fundamentally misjudged. The cross is dismissed because it does not fit the categories people already trust. It does not look like power. It does not operate by leverage. It does not reward competence or display superiority. So it is rejected not because it lacks meaning, but because it threatens existing definitions of strength.
Then Paul says something equally striking: “but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” He does not say the cross points to God’s power. He does not say it illustrates God’s power. He says it is the power of God.
That claim forces a recalibration. If the cross is God’s power, then power must be redefined. And that redefinition is the beginning of formation.
Paul immediately anchors this claim in Scripture by quoting Isaiah: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” God is not impressed by human wisdom when it is used as a substitute for trust. He does not negotiate with it. He dismantles it.
This is where people often misunderstand Paul. He is not attacking learning, education, or intellectual rigor. He is attacking self-grounded wisdom—wisdom that begins and ends with human capacity. Wisdom that assumes we can reason our way into God’s presence, or construct a stable life without surrender.
Paul presses this home with three sharp questions: “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?” These are not insults. They are summonses. Paul is calling forward the very people his culture admired—the thinkers, the experts, the eloquent speakers—and asking them to account for their results.
Then he gives the verdict: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”
How? Not by argument. By outcome.
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God…” That sentence is devastating. It tells us that human wisdom, left to itself, cannot cross the gap between humanity and God. It can explain the world. It can refine ethics. It can produce systems. But it cannot reconcile sinners to their Creator.
And this is not a failure of intelligence. It is a feature of God’s design.
“It pleased God,” Paul says, “through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”
That word pleased should stop us. God was not cornered into this method. He was not forced into it because nothing else worked. He chose it. He delighted in it. He selected a form of salvation that would not flatter the self or reinforce human pride.
Why? Because salvation is not merely about forgiveness. It is about re-centering. It is about moving the self out of the place it was never meant to occupy.
This is where formation begins to become visible. The Corinthians were forming around admired leaders. They were aligning themselves with personalities. They were measuring spiritual life by eloquence and intellectual polish. In other words, they were forming around human wisdom—not rejecting Christ outright, but quietly subordinating Him to cultural values they already trusted.
Paul does not say they are false believers. He says they are being shaped in the wrong direction.
This is a critical insight for us. Formation is rarely about outright rebellion. It is usually about quiet drift. About allowing something other than Christ to define what counts as strength, wisdom, and success.
Paul is showing us that the cross interrupts that drift. It refuses to cooperate with self-centered wisdom. It does not reward eloquence. It does not privilege status. It does not validate superiority. Instead, it exposes how fragile those things really are.
The cross does not argue with human wisdom. It outlives it.
That is why Paul can say that God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. Not because it is unintelligent, but because it cannot deliver what it promises. It cannot save. It cannot reconcile. It cannot hold the weight of ultimate meaning.
Here is the formational turn: when the cross is allowed to define power, it begins to retrain instinct. We stop reaching for what looks impressive. We stop trusting what feels secure. We begin—slowly, often reluctantly—to let go of the need to justify ourselves.
This is not an emotional shift. It is a reorientation of trust.
The Corinthians were not wrong because they wanted wisdom. They were wrong because they wanted a wisdom that left the self intact at the center. Paul insists that God’s wisdom does something more disruptive: it displaces the self entirely.
And that displacement is not punishment. It is mercy.
Because as long as the self remains the center, boasting will be anxious, competitive, and defensive. But once the cross moves the center elsewhere, boasting loses its edge. It becomes gratitude rather than self-assertion.
This is where the passage is taking us. Paul is not finished yet. He has not yet named Christ crucified. He has not yet turned the mirror fully on the church. But he has already begun the work of formation by undermining the wisdom that quietly shapes us when we are not paying attention.
The cross wins first by redefining what power is.
Once power is redefined, everything else—identity, confidence, community—begins to change.
---000--- PART II — Christ Crucified and the Collapse of False Strength
Having dismantled the wisdom of the world in principle, Paul now brings the argument into sharp focus. He moves from abstract categories to a concrete proclamation:
“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified.”
This is where the passage tightens. Paul names two very different cultures with two very different expectations, and yet he treats them the same way. Both groups are searching for something they believe will secure them. Both are looking for a form of power that makes sense to them. And both are ultimately disappointed by the cross.
The Jews request a sign. They are looking for visible, undeniable demonstrations of divine authority—acts that confirm God’s favor and establish control over enemies. Their desire is not random. It grows out of a long history of God’s mighty acts: the exodus, the plagues, the crossing of the sea, the defeat of enemies. Power, for them, is something God does in history, something that changes circumstances decisively and publicly.
The problem is not their desire for deliverance. The problem is the shape they expect that deliverance to take. They want a Messiah who will act on their behalf in a way that preserves their sense of strength and identity. They want a sign that confirms they are on the winning side.
The Greeks, on the other hand, seek wisdom. They want coherence, explanation, intellectual satisfaction. Their culture prizes philosophy, rhetoric, and the pursuit of insight. Wisdom, for them, is the highest good—the thing that separates the mature from the foolish, the enlightened from the ignorant.
Again, the problem is not the desire for understanding. The problem is that this kind of wisdom allows the self to remain central. It flatters intelligence. It rewards mastery. It gives the impression that those who know more are more.
So when Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified,” he is not offering a compromise between these two expectations. He is rejecting both.
To the Jews, Christ crucified is a stumbling block. The word Paul uses refers to something that causes offense, something that trips a person who expected a clear path forward. A crucified Messiah is not just unexpected; it is disqualifying. It contradicts their assumptions about how God should act.
To the Greeks, Christ crucified is foolishness. Not merely wrong, but embarrassing. A message centered on execution, weakness, and surrender has no place in a worldview that prizes rational mastery and philosophical elevation.
Paul does not soften this reaction. He leans into it. The cross is meant to offend these expectations because those expectations are rooted in false strength.
This is where formation becomes uncomfortable. False strength is not always obvious. It often looks like responsibility, competence, and self-control. It shows up as the quiet confidence that says, I can handle this. It is the instinct to stabilize ourselves before we trust God. It is the belief that if we are wise enough, strong enough, or careful enough, we can secure our lives.
The cross dismantles that instinct.
A crucified Messiah does not reinforce the self. He empties it. He does not confirm our capacity; He exposes our limits. He does not reward mastery; He invites surrender.
And that is why Paul says that to those who are called—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Notice what changes. The expectations do not change first. The center changes first.
Those who are called begin to see power differently. Power is no longer the ability to dominate or control outcomes. Power becomes the ability to give oneself without fear. Wisdom is no longer the accumulation of insight. Wisdom becomes trust in a God who acts beyond human calculation.
Paul then delivers one of the most provocative lines in the passage:
“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Paul is not saying God is foolish or weak. He is speaking from the perspective of human judgment. What looks foolish by human standards outperforms our best wisdom. What appears weak accomplishes what our strength never could.
This is the collapse of false strength. Human strength always operates by comparison. It is only strong in relation to something weaker. There is always someone stronger, more intelligent, more capable. Which means strength rooted in the self is always provisional. Always anxious. Always under threat.
The cross steps outside that competition entirely. It does not try to win by being stronger on the same terms. It wins by redefining the terms.
This is why the cross feels like loss before it feels like victory. It requires us to let go of the very things we use to reassure ourselves. It asks us to trust a God who saves not by overpowering His enemies, but by absorbing their violence and rendering it powerless.
That kind of power does not make sense until the self has been displaced from the center.
This is where the Corinthians were stuck. They believed in Christ, but they still evaluated one another by worldly measures. They admired eloquence. They aligned with strong leaders. They boasted in association. In other words, they were still relying on forms of strength that left the self intact.
Paul is pressing them toward something deeper. He is not asking them to reject wisdom or strength outright. He is asking them to see that any strength that competes with the cross must be surrendered.
The cross does not coexist with false strength. It exposes it, collapses it, and replaces it with something entirely different.
And that replacement is not emptiness. It is Christ Himself.
Paul is moving us toward a realization that will become explicit in the next section: if Christ is truly the power and wisdom of God, then everything we rely on apart from Him is provisional at best—and deceptive at worst.
The cross wins here not by argument, but by outlasting every alternative source of confidence. It reveals that what we thought was strength was actually fear in disguise. Fear of being exposed. Fear of being weak. Fear of losing control.
By preaching Christ crucified, Paul is not simply proclaiming a doctrine. He is inviting the church into a different formation—one where the self no longer has to carry what it cannot sustain.
Once that happens, the ground is prepared for the final and most personal turn of the passage: Paul will now ask the Corinthians to look at themselves.
---000--- PART III — Re-centering the Self and the End of Anxious Boasting
At this point in the passage, Paul has dismantled the world’s wisdom and exposed the failure of false strength. Now he does something even more unsettling: he turns the argument back on the church itself.
He does not do this to shame them, but to show them how deeply this issue runs.
“Consider your calling, brothers and sisters,” Paul says.
That word consider matters. Paul is asking them to look carefully, honestly, and without defensiveness. He is not asking them to imagine an ideal church or a future version of themselves. He is asking them to look at who they are right now.
“Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.”
This is not sarcasm. It is not dismissal. It is reality. Paul is reminding them that the church did not begin as a gathering of cultural elites. It was not built on advantage. It was built on grace.
Rhen he explains why that matters.
“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.”
Chosen. Intentionally. Purposefully.
This is not God making the best of limited options. This is God acting with design. He chooses what the world overlooks not because it is impressive, but because it makes something else unmistakably clear.
“So that no one may boast before Him.”
That phrase is the hinge of the entire passage.
Paul is not primarily concerned with humility as a moral trait. He is concerned with where the self is anchored. Boasting is simply the outward expression of that anchoring. It reveals what we rely on to justify ourselves.
Boasting does not have to be loud to be real. It can be subtle. Quiet. Even religious.
We boast when we reassure ourselves with competence.
We boast when we measure our faith by comparison.
We boast when we trust our own discernment more than God’s mercy.
We boast when our confidence rises and falls with our performance.
Paul’s point is not that these instincts make us bad Christians. His point is that they reveal a self still sitting at the center.
So God does something radical. He chooses people, means, and methods that make self-centered boasting impossible to sustain.
Weakness cannot boast in itself for long.
Failure cannot prop itself up indefinitely.
Limitation eventually exposes the illusion of control.
This is not cruelty. It is mercy.
Because as long as the self remains the center, faith will always feel fragile. It will depend on how well we are doing, how confident we feel, how coherent life seems. And when pressure comes—as it always does—the self will collapse under weight it was never meant to carry.
Paul now delivers one of the most concentrated Christ-centered statements in all of Scripture:
“But because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.”
Notice what Paul does not say.
He does not say Christ helps us become wise.
He does not say Christ assists our righteousness.
He does not say Christ supports our redemption.
He says Christ became these things for us.
This is not improvement language. It is replacement language.
Christ does not enhance the self; He relocates it. He becomes the place where wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption are found. Not as achievements we manage, but as realities we receive.
This is where formation reaches its deepest level. The issue is no longer what we do, or even what we believe. The issue is where we live.
“Because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus.”
That phrase quietly undoes self-centered faith. To be “in Christ” means the self is no longer the reference point. Identity, worth, and security are no longer measured internally. They are held elsewhere.
This is why boasting changes.
When the self is the center, boasting is anxious. It has to be. It must constantly defend itself against exposure, failure, and comparison. It is always provisional, always at risk.
When Christ becomes the center, boasting loses its desperation. It no longer has to prove anything. It no longer has to compete. It no longer has to secure itself.
Boasting in the Lord becomes natural—not because we have been commanded to do it, but because the self has finally been relieved of its impossible task.
This is the paradox Paul is pressing on the Corinthians. God does not shame the strong by making them weaker. He shames false strength by revealing how unnecessary it was all along.
When Christ becomes wisdom, we no longer have to pretend we understand everything.
When Christ becomes righteousness, we no longer have to justify ourselves.
When Christ becomes sanctification, we no longer have to manufacture growth.
When Christ becomes redemption, we no longer have to save ourselves.
This is not passivity. It is trust.
This trust reshapes community. It dissolves comparison. It weakens rivalry. It frees us to honor one another without fear. Because when the self is no longer fighting for center stage, there is room for grace to work.
Paul is preparing the Corinthians—and us—for his final conclusion. He is about to quote Scripture one last time, and when he does, it will sound less like a command and more like a description of a healed heart.
The cross has done its work. The self has been re-centered. And now boasting, once anxious and defensive, finds its proper home.
---000--- Conclusion — Let the One Who Boasts, Boast in the Lord
Paul ends this passage with a line that sounds deceptively simple: “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
It sounds like a command. It sounds like instruction. It sounds like something we are supposed to do. But by the time Paul reaches this sentence, he has already shown us that it is not primarily an imperative. It is a description of what happens when the self has finally been re-centered.
Paul has not spent this chapter telling the Corinthians to stop boasting. He knows better than that. Boasting is not a behavior problem first; it is a center-of-gravity problem. The heart always leans somewhere. It always finds something to rest on, something to trust, something to quietly point to when it needs reassurance. Boasting simply reveals where that leaning is happening.
As long as the self is at the center, boasting will be anxious. It may be subtle. It may be polite. It may even sound spiritual. But it will always be fragile. It will always need reinforcement. It will always be threatened by comparison, by weakness, by failure, by the presence of someone who seems stronger or wiser.
That is why human wisdom never delivers what it promises. It can impress. It can stabilize for a while. It can even inspire. But it cannot hold the weight of identity. It cannot reconcile us to God. And it cannot free us from the burden of having to justify ourselves.
This is why Paul keeps returning to the cross. The cross does not improve the self. It does not polish it. It does not strengthen it so that it can finally succeed. The cross displaces it.
The cross takes the self out of the center and places Christ there instead.
That is what Paul means when he says, “Because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus.” Identity is no longer something we generate or defend. It is something we inhabit. Christ becomes wisdom for us. Christ becomes righteousness for us. Christ becomes sanctification for us. Christ becomes redemption for us.
Once that relocation happens, boasting changes its tone. It loses its desperation. It no longer needs to announce itself or protect itself. It becomes quieter, steadier, more grateful. Not because we have learned better manners, but because the self is no longer carrying what it was never meant to carry.
This is the triumph of weakness Paul is describing. Not weakness as an end in itself, but weakness as the place where false strength finally collapses and true power can be known.
The world tells us, When I am strong, then I am strong.
The cross tells us, When I stop pretending to be strong, I am finally free.
The world tells us to build our lives on competence, stability, and self-mastery.
The cross tells us that anything built on the self is a house on sand.
And yet, this is not a call to despair. It is not an invitation to self-loathing or passivity. The cross does not leave us empty. It fills the space the self once occupied with Christ Himself.
This is why boasting in the Lord is not forced. It is not artificial. It is not performative. It is what happens when the heart finally rests.
When Christ is the center:
weakness no longer feels like disqualification
limitation no longer feels like failure
dependence no longer feels like shame
They become places of encounter. Places where God’s power is not merely believed in, but experienced.
This is why Paul can say without irony that the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. Because human strength always runs out. It always meets its limits. There is always someone stronger. Always a moment when control slips. Always a realization—sometimes gentle, sometimes painful—that what we trusted was never as solid as it seemed.
The cross prepares us for that moment. It trains us not to panic when strength fails, because our lives are no longer anchored there.
And this is what makes the church different—at least when it is healthy. A church formed by the cross does not need to compete. It does not need to impress. It does not need to prove itself relevant or powerful by the world’s standards. It can afford to be honest. It can afford to be patient. It can afford to be gentle.
Because its center is not itself.
Paul’s final word is not condemnation. It is release.
“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Not because boasting is dangerous, but because boasting in the wrong place is exhausting.
The cross wins because it frees us from ourselves.
It frees us from the burden of being strong enough, wise enough, righteous enough.
It frees us to trust a Savior who has already carried what we could not.
That is the wisdom of God.
That is the power of God.
And that is the formation Paul longs to see take root in the church—then and now.
The cross wins.
And when it does, boasting finally finds its home.
