1 Corinthians 1:25: how human judgment reverses God’s
25For what is foolishness to God is considered wise by men, and that which is weakness to God is considered strong by men.
Two parallel statements about how human judgment inverts God’s. In this edition the sentence runs the way most readers do not expect: what God counts as foolish, people count as wise; what God counts as weak, people count as strong.
Short answer
In this edition, 1 Corinthians 1:25 says that whatever God counts as folly is what people reckon wise, and whatever he counts as weak is what they reckon strong. It closes Paul’s argument about preaching a crucified Christ — a message that struck one audience as scandal and the other as nonsense.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
This verse only works inside the argument that produced it. Standing alone it reads as word-play; in context it is the conclusion of a very concrete comparison between what that culture found respectable and what these Christians were announcing.
Where this verse appears
Paul writes to a congregation split into factions, in a Greek city where rhetoric and philosophy conferred status. In the preceding verses he observes that Jews ask for signs and Greeks look for wisdom, and that the message of a crucified Messiah offends both — a scandal to the first group, foolishness to the second. Verse 25 draws the conclusion.
What it says
Read this verse carefully before comparing it with another Bible, because editions diverge here. The wording used on this site runs one way: what God treats as foolishness is what men esteem as wisdom, and what God treats as weakness is what men esteem as strength. Many other English versions run the opposite way, saying that God’s foolishness is wiser than men and God’s weakness stronger than men. This page comments on the sentence printed above it.
Taken as it stands here, the line is an indictment of human measurement. It says the two scales do not merely differ in degree — they point in opposite directions. The things people rank at the top are precisely the things God has been dismissing throughout the chapter, where he is said to undo whatever the wise call wisdom.
The concrete matter behind it is the cross. A messiah executed as a criminal was, by the standards of that world, the clearest possible demonstration of failure. Paul does not soften that; he insists it is where God acts, which only makes sense if the ruler used to measure success is the wrong one. Two verses later he draws the practical consequence, reminding the Corinthians that their own congregation was not made up of influential people.
What to do with it today
This speaks to anyone who feels inadequate in rooms that rate people by competence, fluency or results. The text does not call those things bad; it denies that they are the final measure, and points out that the Christian community started with people who had none of them.
It also works as an internal warning. Whenever a church or a group starts prizing exactly what the surrounding culture prizes — eloquence, numbers, influence — this verse is addressed to that group, not to outsiders.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, I measure my worth by the scales I was taught to respect, and I almost always come up short. Teach me to look at the cross, which undoes that arithmetic. And give me peace where I have nothing impressive to show. Amen.