The Deception of Worldly Wisdom
Tom Shrader works through 1 Corinthians 3:18-23, where Paul confronts the Corinthian church's divisions by exposing their root cause: the adoption of worldly wisdom over God's wisdom. Shrader applies this contrast across six areas of everyday life—salvation, the nature of man, self-centeredness, happiness, freedom, and authority—showing how the world's assumptions consistently run opposite to Scripture. The lesson calls believers to renew their minds according to God's Word rather than conforming to cultural patterns, arguing that transformed thinking is the only path to transformed behavior.
“Human wisdom has no way of discovering or understanding divine things.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 1 Corinthians
Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 40 min
Themes: worldly wisdom, deception, division, renewing your mind, cultural pressure, self-centeredness, truth, transformation, struggling with doubt, navigating conflict, new believer, young adult, feeling pulled by culture, church member, questioning faith, dealing with division
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:18-23, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Romans 12:2, Isaiah 55:8-9, 1 John 2:15, Job 5:13, Psalm 94:11, Luke 12, Matthew 16:26
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, biblical wisdom, epistemology, renewing the mind, total depravity, church unity, scripture authority
Full Transcript
Introduction: Paul's Corrective Word to Corinth
Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18. Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, correcting them and at the same time encouraging them. My intent was to go into chapter 4, verse 5, but I am not going to get there. I am going to look at the beginning of verse 18 and the balance of this chapter, because I found myself trying to pull together and apply to our context what Paul has been talking about to this church at Corinth.
The issue, since chapter 1, verse 18, has been the battle that goes on between the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God. Paul is continually making the point that what appears to be wisdom humanly is foolishness to God. And because man is so infected with his own sin and self-centeredness, when he looks at the wisdom of God, he thinks it is foolish.
Paul has been dealing with the behavioral problems in this church at Corinth. The behavioral problem is very simple: there is division, there are factions, and this church is being pulled apart. Not because they lack what they need — they have everything they need. The problem is they are pursuing the world, not the things of God, and the agenda driving them is the world's agenda, the world's thought process, the way the world views things. It manifests itself in what Paul calls, in chapter 3, jealousy and strife.
So here is what Paul says: I want to change the way you think, because when I change the way you think, it will change your behavior.
The Root Cause: Worldly Wisdom Destroying the Church
William Barclay writes this — and he speaks of the church at Corinth: "They split up the church. They literally caused the building of the church to disintegrate. They reduced the church to a series of disconnected ruins. No building can stand firm and foursquare if sections of it are removed. The church's greatest weakness is still her divisions. They too destroy the church." Speaking of the section beginning in verse 18 of chapter 3, Barclay goes on to say that Paul pins down the root cause of this dissension and the consequent destruction of the temple which is in Corinth — the church. The root cause is intellectual, worldly wisdom.
Romans 12, verse 2, Paul says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." The New Living Bible renders that verse this way: "Don't copy the behavior and customs of the world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is." Eugene Peterson in The Message takes that same verse and says: "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out."
That is the battle Paul is talking about — the battle for the way we think.
Don't Deceive Yourself: The Call of 1 Corinthians 3:18
First Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18: "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise." From the New Living Bible: "Stop fooling yourself. If you think you are wise by the world's standards, you will have to become a fool so you can become wise by God's standards."
Paul identifies here the natural fault of man: it is to deceive himself, to kid himself about the way he thinks. It is very easy to be puffed up as I look at my education, my pedigree, or my success in the world and somehow think that success in the world translates into success in God's kingdom — or that my worldly thinking has some value in God's economy. The answer is that it does not, not at all.
In fact, as Christians, you and I do not even have the right to our own opinion — listen closely — in the issues that God has spoken about. Your opinion and my opinion do not matter at all if God has spoken to the issue. Once we start to follow our own opinions, we are destined on that path for division, for divisiveness and dissension, and we will pull right apart, because we are following our own ideas.
Human wisdom is foolishness to God. If you want to be wise, the way to do that is to commit yourself to the study of God's Word. If you look at the culture around you and say, "This is very confusing — these are rough waters, this is a tough time," and you want to navigate your way through, it is very simple: whatever God says to do, you do it; what He says to avoid, you avoid. You will get through them. It will be an exciting time, but you will get through them. Do not deceive yourself.
The Pride That Blinds Us
Plato wrote: "He is the wisest man who knows himself to be very ill-equipped for the study of wisdom." Quintilian, speaking of his students, said: "They would doubtless have become excellent scholars if they had not been so fully persuaded of their own scholarship." They thought they were really smart.
I read a survey recently: ninety percent of high school students think they are above average. There is an old proverb that goes like this: "He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool — avoid him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a wise man — teach him."
The context here is: do not deceive yourself. We so naturally do that. We are prideful people, and it manifests itself in so many subtle little ways.
The Conflict Between Human Wisdom and Godly Wisdom
Our tendency is to deceive ourselves. When we think we're something because of human wisdom and elevate our position and our thinking, our tendency is to have a very low view of scripture. The flip side is also true: if I have an elevated view of scripture, a right view of scripture, I will have a right view of myself.
Now, does that mean scripture is the final word in all areas? Obviously it is in the areas it speaks to, but it does not necessarily address every area. John MacArthur writes this: "Paul's not talking about such things as business and mathematics and science or mechanics. We can be quite knowledgeable about those things without any special enlightenment from God. Where human wisdom becomes foolish and useless is in matters concerning God, salvation, spiritual truth. Human wisdom has no way of discovering or understanding divine things." Even in business, we know there are principles we can take from this book and apply, but what Paul is saying here is primarily about God's view of life and spiritual things.
There is a sense in which we look at all life as spiritual. For the Christian, there is no secular, no division, nothing set apart as merely our own domain. This is where I found myself swept away in preparation for today, caught up in this singular point: the battle, the war that rages by necessity between the ways and thinking of the world and the ways and thinking of God.
It is not as though the world is moving in one direction and we as Christians are a little tributary out there, sometimes moving with it and sometimes not. The world is moving swiftly one way, and we as Christians are almost inevitably coming exactly the other way, because human wisdom and godly wisdom are in conflict. What Paul is saying is: if you really want to be wise, you need to become a fool in the world's estimate. You are going to have to pursue the things the world calls foolish if you want to find true wisdom.
Higher Thoughts, Higher Ways
I think always in this conversation of Isaiah 55: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways," and by implication, His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I focus on the word *higher*. I have limited perspective and limited view as I look horizontally, but as I get above the circumstances, I have new perception and can see clearly.
There used to be a human maze at Knott's Berry Farm — a maze like you see in cartoons, where people would walk in and beat around inside it. There was an observation deck where you could go up and watch the people below. It was a great exercise. You would see all sorts of reactions: some people frustrated, some wanting to cry, some stuck in corners, some determined to get out, all of them trying to figure it out on their own. If someone navigated their way out relying only on themselves, it was pretty much luck. Almost always, someone from the observation deck had to call down: go down here and make a left, go over there and make a right. I think of that image when I read this verse. God is saying: go over here, make a left, make a right, you will be fine.
I want you to see that these two perspectives — God's and man's — are in competition with one another. The central idea to hold onto is this: godly wisdom is different from and superior to human wisdom. When John writes in 1 John 2, "Do not love the world nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him," he is talking about the world system. He is saying that this world sees things differently than God sees them.
Six Areas Where Worldly and Godly Wisdom Conflict
I want to talk about all of those areas. I have made a list of six, though you could make a list of 600 if you had the time, the energy, and enough people in a room. Let me deal with these six.
The first is the issue of salvation. We live in a pluralistic society that essentially believes all ideas are of equal value — that there is a God and a variety of ways to reach Him, and it does not really matter which path you choose. Go talk to fifteen people at work tomorrow and ask what you have to do to go to heaven. The majority will say: be good. Just lead a good life. Ask how good, and ask what *good* means, and they will say it doesn't matter — just be good, do the best you can, this is a hard road, we are all on a journey, just be good. That is the dominant worldview we live in. In theological terms, we would call it justification by death: basically, all you have to do is die and you go to heaven. Everybody gets there, except perhaps Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer and a couple of others somewhere along the way.
Then the Bible comes along with God's view, and it says this: Christ is the only way. Yes, we live in a pluralistic world and a pluralistic nation. Yes, we will defend the right of people to hold all these different religious views. But not for one second do we think they are all of equal value. Not for one second do we think they are all right. There is only one that is right.
The Condition of Man
They cannot, even by definition, all be right, because they stand in contradiction to one another. God comes along and says no — there is only one way. "I am the way, the truth and the life," Jesus said. "No one comes to the Father but through me." If you do not believe that, you are not going to heaven. It is very simple.
Do you feel the tension in that? Take that into the marketplace tomorrow, interject it into a conversation, and you can feel the tension come into the room immediately. I mention this at this time of year because with Good Friday and Easter approaching, you will have many opportunities to be involved in exactly those discussions. You will see very clearly what man considers right and what God considers right.
What the World Believes About Human Nature
Here is the second point of contrast: the condition of man. The world basically says man is good. He gets corrupted by his environment, perhaps by some distortion in the gene pool or other outside forces, but overall man is essentially good — he just needs a chance to shine. You have heard it said that deep down inside, he is a good person.
Scripture comes along and says no — deep down inside, man is even more lost than he appears on the outside. Man is not basically good. Man is evil, man is wicked, man will destroy. Man wants what he wants, when he wants it, and he wants it now.
All you have to do is watch eighteen-month-olds play together for about two minutes to see how quickly they want their toy, their bottle, whatever it is. They want what they want when they want it — and you did not teach them that. This worldview matters enormously, and the reason we spend so much time on it is that the way I view man inevitably affects the way I look at the world we live in.
A Culture Looking for Answers
To illustrate that, I want to walk through a clip from the McLaughlin Group that aired last Friday. They are discussing the school shooting in San Diego the previous week — what happened, what should be done, how we handle it, and how we might prevent such things in the future. As you listen, I want you to notice how the discussion unfolds and what assumptions are driving it.
The conversation opens with the question of whether character education can overcome the cultural tide of violence and immorality. One panelist notes there has often been a relativistic attitude in schools — a posture that says, "Hitler had his way, we have our way; who is to say who is right?" He observes that California already had extensive gun control laws, which were violated in this case, and suggests that practical measures like metal detectors in school buildings may be part of the answer.
Another panelist pushes back on focusing on television, video games, and film, noting First Amendment restrictions make that avenue unpromising. He argues the president was wrong to call the shooting an act of cowardice — it was, in his view, an act of desperation. Most children who carry out these crimes talk about it beforehand, he says. They want to be caught. What is needed, he concludes, is more awareness, more counseling, and an end to building massive suburban high schools that warehouse children and reduce them to anonymous numbers.
A third voice cuts to political reality: gun control and blaming entertainment did not work politically last time, so those arguments have been set aside. His assessment of the fundamental problem is stark — the perpetrators are, in his view, simply insane, because sane people do not commit murder merely because they have been bullied. And his conclusion follows directly from that premise: you cannot educate sanity. A certain percentage of the population is, in his words, simply defective in that sense. He closes by noting that more children die each week from alcohol, drug, and inhalant abuse than in any school shooting, and asks whether the reaction is disproportionate.
The Futility of Secular Solutions
Isn't that interesting? Math — that's the answer. And even then, the goal is to make kids feel good about themselves. Eleanor Clift, who God put on this planet just to annoy me on that show — I guarantee you she lied when she said this. Her quote was: "I'm for anything that compensates for what may be missing in some kids." I guarantee you she is not for us coming on campus with our team and saying it is Jesus Christ.
Do you see that discussion? Do you see the futility of trying to deal with that? When you start from the idea that man is basically good, people like her don't want to give up on that premise. Tony Blankley says some people are simply disturbed. Someone else says, well, I'm not going to give up on that person. But that is a wrong view of man and of who man is. We cannot even see ourselves clearly.
Here is the answer the world keeps returning to: make people feel good about themselves. It wasn't an act of cowardice — it was a cry for help. That idea ties right into the next point, which is that to see ourselves as we really are, the world essentially says it is all about you. Everything points back to you.
The World's Mirror: It's All About You
I was at the gym on Wednesday at three o'clock, so Oprah was on. Oprah was doing a show on menopause, and I thought, well, I may need this someday, so I am going to listen closely. Oprah was interviewing these ladies, and these ladies were saying —
The Selfishness of Living for Yourself
"I just don't know how to go from here. I've raised my kids, I've done my thing, I've done everything, and now I need to take care of the most important person in the world. I need to take care of myself." It was an hour of that. They were just hugging each other and saying, "You'll be okay." It was the most selfish, self-centered, narcissistic discussion I have ever seen. If there is some sort of chemical issue at work, let's go take care of it. But that was not what I saw. What I saw were a group of women sitting around feeling sorry for themselves, who were going to go live for themselves — and we applaud this. She makes $55, $60, $100 million a year pandering to this. That is a totally wrong view.
What does Jesus say about yourself? Go live for yourself? No. Jesus says, deny yourself. Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Me. Don't serve yourself. Serve others.
The Deception of Material Happiness
By and large, man has reached the point where he defines happiness in material terms. Radio Shack ran an ad with this tagline — and it is a great tagline: "You don't even know you needed these things." Not a few, not a couple of dozen, not a hundred — thousands of things you never knew you needed. The reason is that this world says you are going to be happy when you have stuff. If you have a 1995 vehicle, you will be much happier with a 2002.
Here is what Bill O'Reilly writes in his book: "Here's something that really surprises me. The more stuff I have, the more stuff I want. And so I look around and saw everyone else is the same way. It was not until I had a few things that I noticed how this works. The material stuff is addicting." It is addicting because there is no end. There is no ultimate satisfaction there. There is no point at which you stop and say, "I have achieved."
This is the story Jesus tells in the parable in Luke 12, where He talks about a man who has a bumper crop. The man talks to himself — and a fool always goes to himself for counseling. He says, "What should I do? I will build bigger barns and I will stock these barns." I, I, I. And Jesus said, you fool — tonight your life will be demanded of you. So the question becomes, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Make sure you understand what He is saying here. This is not a loser. This is a guy who got it all. But that is not where we find happiness.
Where Real Happiness Is Found
George Beverly Shea was on the other night, singing that song that is so distinctly his. Here are the words:
*I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold. I'd rather have Him than riches untold. I'd rather have Jesus than houses or land. I'd rather be led by His nail-pierced hands. Than to be a king of a vast domain and be held in sin's dread sway. I'd rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today.*
In the Beatitudes, Jesus lays out, "Blessed are." Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. The word "blessed" there could also be translated "happiness" or "happy." In fact, one well-known preacher wrote a book called *The Be Happy Attitudes.* The problem is that the word misses it.
R.C. Sproul writes this: "The word blessing has been almost emptied of its biblical meaning. It's cheapened blessing to refer to it simply as an experience of happiness. To be blessed in the Hebrew mind was to be filled in one's soul with a capacity to experience loveliness and excellence and the sweetness of God Himself. The word happiness falls short of this. Even fulfillment falls short. Indeed, it involves a filling, a fullness, an abundance of joy and peace of stability." That is where we are going to find real happiness.
Freedom in Christ Versus the World's Freedom
I did my video interviews at P.F. Chang's at Fashion Square for this week's talk on contentment. When we talked about happiness, people would say, "Yeah, I'm really happy. I can go anywhere, do anything. I've got enough money to be about anything I'm about. I have no restrictions on me." The world defines freedom as having no restrictions. But that definition falls short of what real freedom is.
The other night, Haley and I rode with Sarah up to visit my mom and dad. I was in the back, and Sarah's journal was there, so I read it. Look at her view of freedom, set against the world's view of freedom. She wrote this on March 21st of last year: "Many feel that to follow Christ is to lose everything and gain nothing, when in all reality, it is to lose nothing and gain everything. Once we've been given this freedom, we as Christians often forfeit that freedom to return again to slavery by pursuing our own desires and obeying and following our own flesh. And we will one day realize that apart from Christ, we aren't free."
She continues: "Our freedom looks nothing like the freedom that the world looks for. The world looks for a freedom to do as it pleases, no matter who they hurt along the way. Our freedom is a freedom to love as Christ loved and to serve as Christ served. Many say this sounds like bondage, but it is following the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
Here is what she is saying. You are really not free if all you do is follow your own animal instincts — doing whatever an animal would do to make themselves happy. We find freedom in taking our rights and setting them aside. In a society that says my rights, my way, my, my, my — we submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is in bondage to Him that we find freedom.
Leadership in the Church, Government, and Family
One last thing before we go. Men are designed for leadership — in the church, in the government, in the family. The world says, and you can see it in worldly churches, "Hey, we have got to get some guys to run..."
The Wisdom of Servant Leadership
This church is led by elders, not by a committee of the most successful, or even the brightest — almost guaranteed, not the brightest men, but the godliest men, who serve in a humble way. Paul says in Acts 20 that they serve with humility and tears and trials. Among that board, the people they work with, the shepherds they oversee, and those they work alongside, there ought to be a sense of yielding and love.
The world says, "Let's get the guys who have run businesses. Let's get the guys who have been successful and put them in charge." But the Bible is very clear: we want men who have a spiritual quality, who are successful in God's kingdom far more than in man's kingdom.
Worldly Thinking Versus God's Design
This contrast between worldly wisdom and God's wisdom shows up everywhere in daily life. When it comes to government, as tax time approaches, you hear people say, "I'm not going to pay," or "I cheat on my taxes — everybody cheats on their taxes." But God comes to us as Christians and says, submit to your government. If they say you owe it, you pay it.
There is no clearer example of this dichotomy than in the family. Here is what the world says as it looks at marriage: 50-50. I have heard that so many times I could spit. "We have a 50-50 marriage." I asked someone once whether they ever had differences, and they said yes. I asked how they resolved them. The answer was: whoever feels the strongest about their position wins. Whoever can yell the loudest is the one who wins — and that does not exactly set the tone for harmony in the house.
God says, "No, I have a plan for the family." Husband, you are the head of the house. Love your wife as Christ loved the church. Nurture her. Wives, submit to your husbands. That word is a military term — it means to line up under. It means that he is the head of the house. Does that open itself to all sorts of abuses? It certainly does, but that is God's plan for marriage.
One time a couple came up after a message on this subject — they had been married 63 or 64 years — and I asked the wife what the secret was. She said, "It's what you talked about. I submit, he leads, he loves me. That's the secret." You could make that list as long as you like, but the point is this: the world looks at something and sees one thing, and God looks at it and sees something totally different. Our reflex is almost always wrong when we think humanly.
Man's Wisdom Cannot Withstand God's Scrutiny
To close out this chapter, Paul writes in verse 19: *"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God."* He then quotes Job 5 and Psalm 94: *"He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness,"* and *"The Lord knows the reasoning of the wise, that it is useless."* What he is saying, literally, is that man's thinking cannot possibly withstand the scrutiny of God's examination.
He concludes by saying, *"So then, let no one boast in men."* That was the Corinthians' problem — they were following certain personalities, certain styles, the appeal that certain men had in the church. Paul reverses it: they were saying, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos." But Paul says that is not true. Whether it is Apollos or Cephas, the world, things present, or things to come — it all belongs to you. As one scholar puts it, in Christ, all good and holy things are the believer's blessing for God's glory. You belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to the church.
The Root of Division
The source of dissension in the Corinthian church was this: they had jealousy and strife because they were following man's ways, not God's ways. And the same is true in your life. I guarantee you that as you look at the division in your life, it will flow from you or someone else acting in a selfish, self-centered, jealous way that leads inevitably to strife.
As you try to understand life — how to make a business work, how to make a family work, how to make a friendship work, how to make anything work — this is where you go. And the key to all of it is to become a servant. It is to say, "You are more important than I am. I am setting aside my rights." It will be in conflict with the world, but it is what God calls us to do.
Closing Prayer
Father, we pray that in our lives we would find true happiness — which means it is in You and You alone that we find a filling, a fullness, and an abundance of joy and peace and stability. God, we pray that we would see the world as You see it, and that we would be men and women and students who are committed to Your wisdom, which is different from and superior to the world's wisdom. Help us not to deceive ourselves, not to be swept away by our credentials, our résumé, our pedigree, or our accomplishments, but to be wise by understanding how little we know and how limited in scope our wisdom truly is. So we submit to Your truth. We pray that we would think differently, which means we would behave differently. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.