The Biggest Winner
Picking up up from the prior post, and as a continuation of the implausibility the world grants The Biggest Loser deserved glory, let’s consider the following from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 1:
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
The revolution through redemption brought about by Christ has its analogs today. Yes indeed, the Jews were first sought by Christ himself with His disciples, and then they advanced to gentiles. When the work was finished, the magnitude of the defeat of death remained a tough pill to swallow. It did then, it does now. Jews still wanted the earthly messiah triumph and Greeks wanted to stick with the polytheistic industrial complex as the status quo.
Today can’t similar doubt and folly be seen even if the roles are somewhat reversed?
Traditions present as stumbling blocks amongst believers who otherwise ostensibly ascribe to Christ. But there’s no winning here on earth without the Biggest Winner and in fact, losing happens for a time particularly if we grieve the Spirit which tears so many rote routines like temple curtains.
But how foolish the modern, post-Christian culture tells us it is to take Him at His Word (which is Him)? It’s contradictory, it’s out of touch, out of date, out of step. Best you pick and choose your truth. The world will tell you, best that you love yourself first so that you can properly love God or properly love others. In fact, that’s the folly of the Greeks transposed to today, and presents as a terrible misapplication of the Greatest Commandment.
Stumbling blocks and foolishness were somehow absent in the life of Christ. And He wasn’t the only one hung on a cross, but He was the one in which its power ceased to have terminal effect.
It was said He’d come and do it, He arrived and did it, and returned, proclaimed and proved it — to hundreds of eyewitnesses no less at the testimony of Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
Therein, we encounter the Biggest Winner. And He won for you and me so that God may be glorified.