Everlasting October 31, 2025 Devotional

1 CORINTHIANS 1:23-24 | ²³ but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

I’ve already mentioned the difficulty educated Greeks had with a God who chooses to redeem by suffering. The Greek philosophical tradition saw God as detached and immovable and thought emotion and suffering degraded Him. The God revealed in the New Testament is not “caught in His own divinity,” but can come alongside us in our need and struggle. He can bear our weakness and shame, and this makes the cross an unexpected and glorious act of love, as well as a public humiliation.

Paul here adds another dimension to God’s wisdom as we see it in the cross—it generates a dynamic power. We not only understand God and ourselves in a new and true way, but we are freed from guilt. The event of the cross has a power to cleanse and heal us, to make us new.

What have you learned about divine and human wisdom this week?

Gracious God,

Put Your sacrifice on the cross at the center of my thinking about You and about myself. May its power make me new, again and again.

Amen.