If you have ever preached it to someone who just looks at you like you're crazy, you may wonder why they don't get it when it makes so much sense. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." In essence, to those who have the Holy Spirit within them, the Gospel makes sense; but to those who do not have the Holy Spirit within them, the Gospel sounds stupid. Now, why would this be? There are two reasons to this. 1) God is too big, and 2) man is too small.
We see in 1 Corinthians 1:19, God says "'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.'" We see that God, by whatever action He is going to do, will trump the world's wisdom and the world's idea of intelligent. In order to do that, God has to be wiser and smarter than man, which He is. 1 Corinthians 1:25 says, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength." Basically, when God isn't even trying, He is greater than all of humanity's best. How can one understand the Gospel from THAT God? The Gospel is too big for man's understanding. That is why it sounds like foolishness to man.
We see in 1 Corinthians 1:22-23 it says, "Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greek..." We see that man wants to seek out God in their own way, Jews by works like signs, and Greeks by impressive words that sound like wisdom. When Christ is preached, both can't comprehend. To the Jews, the Gospel involved no sacrifices and no rituals, so they stumble and cannot understand how the relationship with Christ by grace through faith works. To the Greeks (anyone who isn't Jewish), the Gospel does not sound wise, so they count it as foolish. It would be like explaining thermodynamics to a three year old. They would think that you are crazy or weird. It is so beyond their comprehension that they think it sounds foolish.
We have to realize that we were one of these categories before Christ, or maybe we still are. Either we tried to seek God out and do works to find Him and never did, or we didn't understand the Gospel and got prideful, calling God's wisdom foolish. We need to remember that God is too big for our little understanding. He is God. He made all things.
So, you may be asking, how do I explain the Gospel to my friends if they won't be able to understand, or how do I understand the Gospel if it is too big for me? 1 Corinthians 1:24 says, "But to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." We cannot understand the Gospel except through the Holy Spirit, given to us by Christ's crucifixion. All that we can do is pray that God helps us to understand it, preach it to others, and let God do the work. We can't do anything. It is all in God's hands.
-D
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