1 Corinthians 1:17

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void.

Christ sent me not to baptize ... Some have been diligent to make this passage an excuse for denying the necessity of the believer's baptism into Christ, as for example, Metz, who said, "The gospel of grace and faith that he proclaimed was as free from outer ritual and ceremony as it was devoid of legal observances."[18] If such a view is tenable, how can Paul's baptism of Stephanas, Gaius, and Crispus be explained? Of course, what Paul referred to here was the ADMINISTRATION OF THE RITE OF BAPTISM, there being nothing here to the effect that Paul preached salvation without baptism. He like all the apostles had been commanded to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them" (Matthew 28:19).

Not in wisdom of words ... The great apostle renounced the pretentious rhetorical flourishes so dear to the Greek intellectuals, deliberately rejecting the complicated elocutionary devices which were the stock in trade of the philosophers. The Greek word "sophist" (wise man) had fallen from its glory, and in Paul's day had come to denote a nimble tongue and an empty brain. Dio Chrysostom described the Greek wise men thus:

They croak like frogs in a marsh; they are the most wretched of men, because, though ignorant, they think themselves wise; they are like peacocks, showing off their reputation and the number of their pupils as peacocks do their tails.[19]

It is clear, then, that Paul used the word "wisdom" in a sarcastic sense in this phrase having the meaning of "gobbledegook" as now used. See more on this under 2 Corinthians 11:5.

So-called intellectuals of our own times are by no means exempt from the conceited shallowness of the Greek philosophers. Even a sermon may be well organized, rhetorically excellent, stylishly delivered, "beautiful" and worthless.

Lest the cross of Christ should be made void ... Digressions are frequent in Paul's works; and this word "cross," mentioned as the antithesis of the philosophers' so-called wisdom, was made the subject of a characteristic Pauline digression.

[18] Donald S. Metz, op. cit., p. 316.

[19] William Barclay, quotation from Chrysostom, op. cit., p. 22.