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Note —

I. THE ELECTOR Some men are saved and some men are not saved. How is this difference caused? The reason why any sink to hell is their sin, and only their sin. But how is it that others are saved? The text answers the question three times — "God hath chosen." This will be clear if we consider —

1. The facts. God elected fallen man, but not the fallen angels; Abraham, the Jews, David, &c. God is a king. Men may set up a constitutional monarchy, and they are right in so doing; but if you could find a being who was perfection itself, an absolute form of government would be undeniably the best. The absolute position of God as king demands that, especially in the work of salvation, His will should be the great determining force.

2. The figures —

(1) Salvation consists in part of an adoption. Who is to have authority in this matter? The children of wrath? Surely not. It must be God who chooses His own children.

(2) The Church, again, is called —

(a) A building. With whom does the architecture rest? With the building? Do the stones select themselves? No; the Architect alone disposes of His chosen materials according to His own will.(b) Christ's bride. Would any man here agree to have any person forced upon him as his bride?

II. THE ELECTION ITSELF. Now observe —

1. How strange is the choice He makes. "He hath not chosen many wise," &c. If man had received the power of choosing, these are just the persons who would have been selected. "But God hath chosen," &c. If man had governed the selection, these are the very persons who would have been left out.

2. It is directly contrary to human choice. Man chooses those who would be most helpful to him; God chooses those to whom He can be the most helpful. We select those who may give us the best return; God frequently selects those who most need His aid. We select those who are most deserving; He selects those who are least deserving, that so His choice may be more clearly seen to be an act of grace and not of merit.

3. It is very gracious. It is gracious even in its exclusion. It does not say, "Not any," it only says, "Not many"; so that the great are not altogether shut out. Grace is proclaimed to the prince, and in heaven there are those who on earth wore coronets and prayed.

4. It is very encouraging. Some of us cannot boast of any pedigree; we have no great learning, we have no wealth, but He has been pleased to choose just such foolish, despised creatures as ourselves.

III. THE ELECTED. They are described —

1. Negatively.

(1) "Not many wise men after the flesh." God has chosen truly wise men, but the sophoi — the men who pretend to wisdom, the cunning, the metaphysical, the rabbis, the doctors, the men who look down with profound scorn upon the illiterate and call them idiots, these are not chosen in any great number. Strange, is it not? and yet a good reason is given. If they were chosen, why then they would say, "Ah! how much the gospel owes to us! How our wisdom helps it!"(2) "Not many mighty." And you see why — because the mighty might have said, "Christianity spreads because of the good temper of our swords and the strength of our arm." We can all understand the progress of Mahommedanism during its first three centuries.

(3) "Not many noble," for nobility might have been thought to stamp the gospel with its prestige.

2. Positively. "God hath chosen" —

(1) "The foolish things"; as if the Lord's chosen were not by nature good enough to be called men, but were only "things."(2) "The weak things" — not merely weak men, but the world thought them weak things." "Ah!" said Caesar in the ball, if he said anything at all about it, "Who is King Jesus? A poor wretch who was hanged upon a tree I Who is this Paul? A tent-maker! Who are his followers? A few despised women who meet him at the water-side."(3) "The base things" — things without a father, things which cannot trace their descent.

(4) "Things that are despised," sneered at, persecuted, hunted about, or treated with what is worse, with the indifference which is worse than scorn.

(5) "Things that are not" hath God chosen. Nothings, nonentities.

IV. THE REASONS FOR THE ELECTION.

1. The immediate reason.

(1) "To confound the wise." For one wise man to confound another wise man is remarkable; for a wise man to confound a foolish man is very easy; but for a foolish man to confound a wise man — ah! this is the finger of God.

(2) "To confound the mighty." "Oh!" said Caesar, "we will soon root up this Christianity; off with their heads." The different governors hastened one after another of the disciples to death, but the more they persecuted them the more they multiplied. All the swords of the legionaries which had put to rout the armies of all nations, and had overcome the invincible Gaul and the savage Briton, could not withstand the feebleness of Christianity, for the weakness of God is mightier than men.

(3) "To bring to nought the things that are." What were they in the apostle's days? Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Diana. Here comes Paul with "There is no God but God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent." He represents "the things that are not." So contemptible is the heresy of Christianity that if a list were made out of contemporary religions of different countries Christianity would have been left out. But where are Jupiter, &c., now? What was true in Paul's day is true to-day. Existing superstitions, though attacked by those who are things that are not, shall yet cease to be, and the truth as it is in Jesus, and the pure simple faith backed by the Spirit of God, shall bring to nought the things that are.

2. The ultimate reason is "that no flesh may glory in His presence." He does not say "that no man"; no, the text is in no humour to please anybody; it says, "that no flesh." What a word! Here are Solon and Socrates, the wise men. God points at them with His finger and calls them "flesh." There is Caesar, with his imperial purple; how the Praetorian guards shout, "Great is the Emperor! long may he live! Flesh," saith God's Word. Here are men whose sires were of royal lineage. "Flesh," says God. "That no flesh may glory in His presence." God puts this stamp upon us all, that we are nothing but flesh, and He chooses the poorest, the most foolish, and the weakest flesh, that all the other flesh that is only flesh and only grass may see that God pours contempt on it, and will have no flesh glory in His presence.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

WEB: Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.