1 Corinthians 1:24

“But unto those [of them] which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.”

The αὐτοῖς δέ forcibly separates the called, Jews and Gentiles, from the mass of their fellow-countrymen, while identifying them with it so far as their past life was concerned: “But unto them, those same Jews and Gentiles, once become believers...” Those Jews and Greeks themselves who saw in the preaching of the cross only the contrary of what they sought, weakness, foolishness, no sooner become believers than they find in it what they asked: power and wisdom.

The term κλητοί, called, here includes the notion of believers. Sometimes calling is put in contrast to the acceptance of faith; thus in the maxim, Matthew 22:14: “Many called, few chosen.” But often also the designation called implies that of accepter; comp. 1 Corinthians 1:1-2, and Romans 8:30; and it is certainly the case here, where the term τοῖς κλητοῖς, the called, stands for τοὺς πιστεύοντας, them that believe (1 Corinthians 1:21). The apostle exalts the Divine act in salvation; he sees God's arm laying hold of certain individuals, drawing them from the midst of those nationalities, Jewish and Gentile, by the call of preaching; then, when they have believed, he sees the Christ preached and received, unveiling Himself to them as containing exactly all that their countrymen are seeking, but the opposite of which they think they see in Him.

The accusative Χριστόν might be regarded as in apposition to the Χριστόν of 1 Corinthians 1:23 (Hofmann); but the phrase, “to preach Christ as Christ,” is unnatural; Χριστόν should therefore be regarded as the direct object of κηρύσσομεν, we preach (1 Corinthians 1:23), and the two substantives, power and wisdom, are not attributes (as power, as wisdom), but cases of simple apposition, in the same category as σκάνδαλον and μωρίαν. The apostle here omits the ἐσταυρωμένον not without purpose. For the two terms, power of God and wisdom of God, embrace not only the Christ of the cross, but also the glorified Christ.

The complement, of God, contrasts with the power and wisdom of the world, that wisdom and power of a wholly different nature, which on that account the world does not recognise. The power of God is the force from above, manifested in those spiritual wonders which transform the heart of the believer; expiation which restores God to him, the renewal of will which restores him to God, and in perspective the final renovation, which is to crown these two miracles of reconciliation and sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). The wisdom of God is the light which breaks on the believer's inward eye, when in the person of Christ he beholds the Divine plan which unites as in a single work of love, creation, incarnation, redemption, the gathering together of all things under one head, the final glorification of the universe. The believer thus finds himself, as Edwards says, in possession of “a salvation which is at once the mightiest miracle in the guise of weakness [this for the Jew], and the highest wisdom in the guise of folly [this for the Greek].”

But how can that which is apparently most feeble and foolish thus contain all that man can legitimately desire of power and light in point of fact? The apostle answers this question by the axiom stated in 1 Corinthians 1:25.