November 4
No One’s Fool
For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! 1Corinthians 4:9-10
Paul was no stranger to rhetoric. As a highly trained Pharisee, he studied under the renowned rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and then furthered his studies in the city of Tarsus. Though there were no official degrees or timelines for education in the first century AD, we know that Paul spent decades honing his religious craft.
Paul’s rhetorical skills are seen throughout his letters, including the ones he wrote to the Corinthians. With them he saw believers who had been influenced by the sophistication and wealth of Corinth, and who had become prideful, and had devolved into bickering, factionalism, and fleshly behavior. That’s the context for today’s passage, in which Paul uses sarcasm to drive home a critical point: “You see me as a fool because I do not pursue the wealth of this world, but the Kingdom operates according to an entirely different set of values.”
To live in 21st century America is to live in a culture not unlike that of Corinth 2,000 years ago: full of sexual perversion, decadence, pride, factionalism, and wealth. So who is the fool in the books written to the Corinthians? Not Paul, because he has chosen the way of the Kingdom—and lives a lifestyle of simplicity and austerity, emulating Christ.
The thing is, all of us play the fool. The question is, will we be Christ’s fool or the world’s? To be a fool for Christ means that in the world’s eyes, we look strange, even weak. We choose people over possessions, empathy over pride, respect over power, and mercy over might. It makes no sense—outside God’s Kingdom; but within the Kingdom, it makes all the sense in the world. Paul knew he was not the world’s fool, but played the fool to drive home a critical point: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (1 Corinthians 3:19).
Whose fool are you?
Father, let me be a fool for Christ, even if it means I’m rejected or dismissed by friends and co-workers. To be a fool for Christ is to be no fool at all.