Body Building Daily Devotional- 75

1 CORINTHIANS 18:21-23 | ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³ but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

The world did not “know God through wisdom.” This is a keen and crucial observation. Until Jesus and His cross, God was, in His best representatives, a glorious and powerful heavenly ruler. Never was divinity associated with suffering and rejection, with ignominy and death. For God to choose and even plan to undergo privation and humiliation was inconceivable. The God who renounces His power to serve and save is a new and radical idea, overturning and upsetting prior religious and philosophical conceptions of God. Greek philosophy and Jewish expectation are confounded by the shape of Jesus’ life and the character of His death. Christians see His life and teaching as the true revelation of God’s nature and purpose.

Meditate today on how the cross defied expectations and ran counter to existing conceptions.

Tags: cross, expectations, defied