Christ and Him crucified is the foundation of the church and we must be very, very careful to build upon that foundation and no other. It is sadly possible for a Christian to work very diligently, perhaps even effecting huge "results," when at the Day of the Lord it all goes up in smoke.
Paul continues to admonish the Corinthians for their arrogance which had produced quarreling and factions in the church.
The unsaved man, the man Paul calls the "natural man," has no ability to understand spiritual things. Devoid of the Spirit of Christ, the natural man can only conclude that God's Word is foolishness. By the Spirit alone, through the new birth, is a person enabled to understand the things of God.
Consistently from Genesis to Revelation the Lord tells us that there are just two categories of human beings, and that it is the Word of the Cross, Christ Himself, that is the source of this Great Divide.
Christ is ascended and crowned as the Father's King. The Church triumphant is with Him and He will return in glory one day to judge the kings of the earth and all His enemies.
The wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God are opposites. The Corinthians had remained infantile spiritually and as a result were still thinking like the world. This mindset leads to hell.
The wisdom of the world vs the wisdom of God is a theme that is found all through Scripture. It is a vital topic for us to understand and with which we can examine ourselves to see if we really are born again.
The natural man cannot understand nor accept the things of the Spirit of God. The Word of the Cross is just foolishness to him.
The Lord leaves us no room for boasting. We are in Christ only because He has elected and saved us. It is by His doing alone that we have the gift of faith and repentance.
Many professing Christian churches are changing biblical terms in an attempt to make sinners not feel like "outsiders." Paul's sermon on Mars Hill shows us that we must never alter the gospel in some attempt to make it less scandalous to the sinner.
