Paul turned from the content of the gospel to the Corinthian believers to strengthen his argument that the gospel he preached contradicted human expectations. God had chosen "nobodies"rather than the "beautiful people"of Corinth. They themselves were evidence that God's "foolishness"confounds the wise. Jeremiah 9:23-24, with its emphasis on boasting in one proper thing or another improper thing, lies behind this pericope.
1:26 This verse reflects that there were few in the Corinthian assembly who came from the higher intellectual and influential levels of their society. This characteristic has marked most local churches throughout history.
1:27-28 The Old Testament is full of illustrations of God choosing less than promising material for His instruments. His method did not change with the coming of Christ nor has it changed since then.
"Things that are not"are things that are nothing. They are non-entities in the eyes of the world. The "things that are"are those things and individuals that the world values highly. Paul did not mean that God cannot or will not save the affluent, but the glory of the gospel is that God's mercy extends to those whom the affluent tend to write off.
1:29 God has chosen this method so the glory might be His and His alone. How wrong then to glorify His messengers! Glorying here has the idea of putting one's full confidence in some inappropriate object to secure ourselves.
1:30 God is the source of the believer's life in Christ (cf. v. 2). Righteousness, sanctification, and redemption are metaphors of salvation, the result of the wisdom we find in Christ (cf. 6:11). Righteousness focuses on our right standing in the sight of God, sanctification on His making us more holy, and redemption on our liberation from sin.
1:31 This loose quotation from Jeremiah 9:24 summarizes Paul's point. Instead of emphasizing the Lord's servants and what they have done we should focus on what the Lord Himself has done in providing wisdom and power in Christ.
God's purpose was not to make a superficial splash but to transform lives, something the Corinthians could see in their own experience.
"The issue of election is particularly strong in 1 Corinthians. Paul opens the letter by affirming not only his call (called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God') but also that of the Corinthians (called to be saints,' 1:2). This conviction reappears in the final verse of the thanksgiving, functioning there as part of the ultimate ground for Paul's confidence (1:9): God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.' When the issue surfaces again a few verses later with renewed rhetorical emphasis (1:24, 26-30), it becomes clear that the concept of election or call no longer merely undergirds Paul's argument; it has instead become the focus of this argument. The Corinthians, it seems, have not grasped what election means."38
