1 Corinthians 3:18

“Let no man deceive himself; if any man thinketh that he is wise among you, let him become a fool in this world, that he may become wise.”

Again an asyndeton, testifying to the emotion which fills the apostle's heart.

The illusion, to which he points in the first words of the verse, according to some, is the security in which those teachers live, not suspecting the danger which they run (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). But the words εἴ τις δοκεῖ, if any man thinketh, imagines, claims, lead us rather to connect the idea of self-deceiving with what follows. There are people who have claims to wisdom, and who display their eloquence within the Church. Edwards concludes from the ἐν ὑμῖν, among you, that if they were among them, they were not of them; otherwise Paul would have said, τίς ὑμῶν. The fact that those people were strangers may be true, but the term used does not necessarily say so. Its meaning is rather this: “If any individual whatever, Corinthian or other, while preaching the gospel in your assemblies, assumes the part of the wise man and the reputation of a profound thinker (1 Corinthians 4:10), let him assure himself that he will not attain to true wisdom till he has passed through a crisis in which that wisdom of his with which he is puffed up will perish, and after which only he will receive the wisdom which is from above.” This crisis of death to false wisdom is what the apostle characterizes by the words: let him become a fool! To renounce this imaginary wisdom, which is only a human conception, to own his ignorance in what concerns the great matter of salvation, and, after taking hold of Christ crucified, who is foolishness to the wise of this world, to draw from Him the Divine wisdom which He has revealed to the world, such is the only way of realizing the claim expressed in the words, “thinketh he is wise.”

Does the phrase, ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, in this world, belong to the preceding or the succeeding proposition? in other words, does this adjunct qualify the idea of being wise in the Church, or that of becoming a fool? In the former case the words would characterize a preacher who tries to gain the reputation of wisdom among Christians by putting himself forward in the midst of them as the representative of the wisdom of the world. In the latter case Paul would say: “If thou claimest to be a wise man in the Church, well! But in that case begin with humbling thy reason, accepting the foolishness of the cross, and with thus becoming a fool in the eyes of the wise of the world, and then thou shalt be able to become really the organ of Divine wisdom in the Church.” Notwithstanding the able pleading of Rückert in favour of the former meaning, we think, with Hofmann, that the second deserves the preference. The antithesis between the among you and the in this world stands out more precisely, and the sense is simpler. The following verses justify the necessity of dying to the wisdom of the world. Of old has not God, the only wise, charged it with foolishness? Two scriptural declarations are alleged in proof.