Dear Friends,
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was one of the greatest men of his times. Today’s devotional gives the fact regarding his death – something which will come to us all. Seeing his may help prepare us for ours. God bless you.
Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• I Corinthians 1:18-25

  I Corinthians 1:18-25   ESV

  Christ the Wisdom and Power of God

  ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ For it is written,

  “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
      and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

  ²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach^[a] to save those who believe. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

I Corinthians 1:18-25

“A minister named Winstanley was the means of comforting and edifying the great Dr. Johnson on his deathbed. In a letter to a friend, Hannah More, alluding to this, says: ‘I cannot conclude without remarking what honor God has thereby put upon the doctrine of faith in a crucified Savior. The man whose intellectual powers had awed all around him, was in his turn, made to tremble when the period arrived at which all knowledge appears useless, and vanished away, except the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Effectually to attain this knowledge, this giant in literature must become a little child. The man looked up to as a prodigy of wisdom must become a fool that he might be wise.’”
[Old Testament Anecdotes in Gray & Adams Bible Commentary III, (Grand Rapids Zondervan Publishing House, n.d.), p. 93]