Friends in Christ Weekly Message
March 22, 2003

     The message about the cross doesn't make any sense to lost people. But for those of us who are being saved, it is God's power at work. As God says in the Scriptures,

I will destroy the wisdom
of all who claim to be wise.
I will confuse those
who think they know so much.

     What happened to those wise people? What happened to those experts in the Scriptures? What happened to the ones who think they have all the answers? Didn't God show that the wisdom of this world is foolish? God was wise and decided not to let the people of this world use their wisdom to learn about him.
     Instead, God chose to save only those who believe the foolish message we preach. Jews ask for miracles, and Greeks want something that sounds wise. But we preach that Christ was nailed to a cross. Most Jews have problems with this, and most Gentiles think it is foolish. Our message is God's power and wisdom for the Jews and the Greeks that he has chosen. Even when God is foolish, he is wiser than everyone else, and even when God is weak, he is stronger than everyone else.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (CEV*)

This is at the heart of the Gospel message for this Lenten season. It is the always counter cultural message of the way of the cross.

As we see the most militarily powerful nation on earth following the wisdom of this world in how it approaches international problems, the ways being advocated by Christian leaders are being denounced as foolish and naive. The men and women who have sought to follow the way of the cross by going to Iraq and putting themselves in danger of becoming the victims of bombs and missiles are seen by many as foolhardy, yet they feel God's power when they are most vulnerable.

Let us each pray about what it means in our lives to follow the way of the cross, the "foolishness" of God.

Bill Samuel

* Contemporary English Version ©1995 American Bible Society.

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