Faith in Focus #5

A reflection from Connection Church and other spiritual events from the week

Faith in Focus is a weekly reflection on what God has been teaching me throughout the week regarding my faith. Whether it’s personal interactions, reading, or the Sunday sermon, God speaks through it all, and I hope this helps you focus on His mission.

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Sermon Reflection: When Power Looks Like Weakness, Advent at the Foot of the Cross

Based on Jonathan Land’s sermon, Connection Church Sioux Falls, Nov. 30, 2025.

As Advent begins, Paul’s opening argument in 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:5 confronts our modern hunger for power and wisdom and replaces it with a cross-shaped wisdom strong enough to gather the most diverse location into one family.

The opening week of Advent arrives with its usual invitation to slow down, take stock, and watch for God’s coming. But Paul doesn’t begin slowly. In 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:5, he drives straight into tension, into a confrontation with the way we instinctively make sense of the world. It is the first of the apostle’s “hot topics,” a section Jonathan Land notes will shape the trajectory of everything Paul addresses in the upcoming chapters. I recommend watching the sermon to get a good glimpse of what is to come!

This is not merely an ancient argument. It’s the seasonally appropriate reminder that the God who arrives in a manger, and later hangs from a Roman cross, does not align with our expectations of strength, success, or sophistication. Advent read through Corinth is Advent without sentimentality: God comes, but not on our terms.

The World Behind the Text

Corinth was a city of movement, a transient hub crowded with travelers, merchants, sailors, soldiers, and migrants, where identities shifted and loyalties were loose. One could describe it as one of the most culturally and economically diverse centers of the first century. A place affected by imperial politics, global trade, and constant turnover.

Against that backdrop, the existence of a stable, multiethnic church was nothing short of miraculous. No shared ethnicity. No common social class. No unified professional background. The only unifying factor was Christ Himself.

This is part of Paul’s point: only a crucified and risen Messiah has the gravitational pull to gather such scattered people into one community. Corinth wasn’t designed for lasting relationships, yet the gospel formed them anyway.

For modern readers — Connection Church included — the parallel is obvious. Many of us also believed we were “just passing through.” Yet God plants us, gives us people, and teaches us that real community is something He builds, not something we manufacture.

Walking the Passage

Paul begins sharply:

“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.” (ESV)

There are, he insists, only two kinds of people, those drifting toward destruction and those being rescued. He backs this with Scripture, quoting Isaiah 29:14 to show that God has always overturned human systems of wisdom and power.

Then Paul draws out the cultural divide:

• Jews seek signs of power: proof that God is as strong as they expect

• Greeks seek wisdom: logic that flatters their philosophical confidence

But God refuses both demands. “We preach Christ crucified” (vv. 22–23). A Messiah executed as a criminal? A divine Son humiliated? For many Jews, it’s a scandal. For Greeks, it’s nonsense.

And yet this is the paradox at the heart of the gospel: What the world calls weak is actually God’s strength, and what the world calls foolish is indeed God’s wisdom.

Paul echoes Isaiah 55:8–9: God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. The cross, therefore, is not an obstacle to be explained away. It is the explanation. We do not climb our way to God, not by intelligence, not by power, not by moral achievement. He comes down to us.

God’s Choice of the Unlikely

In verses 26–31, Paul points directly at the Corinthians’ own resume.

• Not powerful

• Not impressive

• Not socially elite

• Yet chosen

God deliberately selects “what is low and despised,” not to shame them, but to empty human boasting. The church’s existence, then and now, is a living exhibit of divine grace. If God saves the unlikely, then no one is beyond His reach. Meaning there are no lost causes. Advent reminds us that the God who arrives in obscurity still builds His kingdom through the overlooked and underestimated.

Jonathan Land’s Four Advent Exhortations

Jonathan’s pastoral reflections capture Paul’s momentum:

1. Reflect on who you are apart from God.
   We do not deserve mercy; therefore, everything we’ve received is a gift.

2. Worship instead of boasting in yourself.
   Spiritual gifts, material blessings, community, skills: none of these are self-earned.

3. Embrace the “foolishness” of the cross.
   Be willing to be a broken record, even unfashionable, about Christ.

4. Come to Jesus with only your sin.
   Grace is not for the impressive; it is for the honest and repentant.

   

A Fair Counter-Reading

Some interpreters propose that Paul is not rejecting wisdom itself, but only the Corinthian obsession with status-producing, self-congratulatory wisdom. In this reading, the apostle is not anti-intellectual; he is anti-elitism. The cross expresses not irrationality but a counter-cultural rationality shaped by divine revelation, and Paul’s argument aims to re-center the church’s identity on Christ rather than on impressive rhetoric.

This view reminds us that scholarship, reason, and education remain gifts of God, so long as they serve the gospel, not try to replace it.

The Turn

Paul shifts in 2:1–5 from theological argument to personal testimony. When he first arrived in Corinth, according to Acts 18, he came exhausted, vulnerable, and unimpressive. No slick presentation. No “celebrity apostle” veneer. He preached “in weakness and in fear,” yet his message carried power because its source was God, not Paul’s charisma.

This is the heart of his appeal…

Faith must rest on the power of God, not the performance of His messengers.

Advent, too, trains us to look past surface-level grandeur. Christ came in weakness, yet it was enough to save the world.

Carry It Into the Week

In a season shaped by marketing campaigns, Christmas lists, and cultural noise, Paul helps re-align our Advent posture:

• Weakness is not failure when it becomes a place for God’s power

• Humility is not self-neglect; it is honesty before the One whose wisdom exceeds our understanding

• The cross is not outdated; it is the daily orientation point for gospel, community, and mission

So let Paul’s closing line shape your Advent prayer:

“That your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

Song of the Week: Scars in Heaven - Casting Crowns

This week has carried a particular heaviness, and a familiar song has helped ease some of that weight. News came that my uncle had passed away. While grief naturally follows the loss of someone loved, there is an even stronger sense of peace in knowing he is now with God. The song’s chorus captures that balance between sorrow and hope:

The only scars in Heaven, they won’t belong to me and you

There’ll be no such thing as broken, and all the old will be made new

And the thought that makes me smile now, even as the tears fall down

Is that the only scars in Heaven are on the hands that hold you now

As I write this, the sadness of his absence is still present, yet it’s tempered by the conviction that he is in heaven, reunited with his parents and, for the first time in years, walking freely. That assurance shifts the grief into something closer to hope, even a quiet sense of longing, knowing he has stepped out of a broken world and into the presence of Jesus. The song echoes this perspective with the line, “Until I’m standing with you in the sun, I’ll fight this fight and this race I’ll run.”

It’s a reminder that God’s purpose continues for those of us who remain. Some are called home earlier than we expected, but those still here are tasked with continuing the work, running the race set before us. And while the farewell is painful, the hope of reunion endures to those in Christ.

Week in Reflection:

In the days following my uncle’s passing, finding words to summarize the spiritual week has been difficult. Yet one theme remains constant: the conviction that God’s goodness persists, even in seasons of sadness. Deuteronomy 31:8 (NIV) affirms that “the Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

For anyone walking through loss or navigating a period of sorrow, that promise offers steady reassurance.

And remember, God loves you, and so do I.