Christ and his cross
The gospel is good news of freedom, as we saw in the last chapter. Yet this on its own is a one-sided emphasis. For what the gospel announces, according to the New Testament, is not just what Christ offers people today, but what he once did to make this offer possible. The apostolic gospel brings together the past and the present, the once and the now, the historical event and the contemporary experience. It declares not only that Jesus saves, but also that he died for our sins, and was raised from death to accomplish that salvation. The gospel is not preached if the saving power is proclaimed and the saving events omitted, especially the cross.
In this chapter we will reflect on one of Paul’s greatest statements about the origin, content and power of the gospel, and in particular about the centrality of Christ’s cross.
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
From this essentially trinitarian text, three major lessons about evangelism stand out. They concern the Word of God, the cross of Christ and the power of the Spirit.
The Word of God
The gospel is truth from God. What Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians, he said, was not human wisdom, the wisdom of the world, but the Word of God or the wisdom of God, which he here calls either God’s ‘testimony’ or God’s ‘mystery’. In other words, Paul’s message came from God. The apostle’s gospel is God’s truth.
This is where all true evangelism must begin. We have not invented our message. We do not come to people with our own human speculations. Instead, we are bearers of God’s Word, trustees of God’s gospel, stewards of God’s revealed secrets.
Moreover, Paul’s delivery matched his message. He came to the Corinthians neither with ‘eloquence’ nor with ‘human wisdom’ (verse 1). As to content, he renounced proud human wisdom, humbly submitting instead to the Word of God about Christ (verse 2). As to delivery, he renounced proud human rhetoric, humbly relying instead on the Holy Spirit’s power (verses 3–5). As C. H. Hodge put it in his commentary, he came ‘neither as a rhetorician nor as a philosopher’.
Please do not misinterpret this. There is no possible justification here either for a gospel without content or for a style without form. What Paul was renouncing was neither doctrinal substance nor rational argument, but only the wisdom and the rhetoric of the world. We know this because Luke tells us in Acts 18 what Paul’s evangelistic ministry in Corinth had been like. First, ‘Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks’ (verse 4). Then he stayed on for eighteen months ‘teaching them the word of God’ (verse 11). Paul’s own summary of his preaching was this: ‘we try to persuade others.’ He both taught the truth and convinced people of the truth.
So we cannot invite people to come to Christ by closing, stifling or suspending their minds. No. Since God has made them rational beings, he expects them to use their minds. It is true that they will never believe apart from the illumination of the Spirit. Without the Spirit, all our arguments will be fruitless. ‘But,’ wrote Gresham Machen, ‘because argument is insufficient, it does not follow that it is unnecessary. What the Holy Spirit does in the new birth is not to make a person a Christian regardless of the evidence, but on the contrary, to clear away the mists from his eyes and enable him to attend to the evidence.’
So, then, the gospel is truth from God which has been committed to our trust. Our responsibility is to present it as clearly, coherently and cogently as we can and, like the apostles, to argue it as persuasively as we can. And all the time, as we do this, we will be trusting the Holy Spirit of truth to dispel people’s ignorance, overcome their prejudices and convince them about Christ.
The cross of Christ
We come now to verse 2: ‘I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ Some people misread this, as if Paul had written ‘except Jesus Christ crucified’, and conclude that his sole topic was the cross. What Paul actually wrote, however, was that he determined to know nothing ‘except Jesus Christ’ (his message focused on him) ‘and [especially though not exclusively] him crucified’. It is this emphasis which is consistent with Luke’s description in the Acts of Paul’s evangelistic work. What about Christ’s resurrection? It certainly loomed large in the preaching of the apostles. Yet they understood and proclaimed it, not as an isolated or independent event, but in relation to the cross. For the resurrection was not only the sequel to the death of Jesus; it was the reversal of the human verdict on him and the public vindication of the divine purpose in his death.
Before Paul arrived in Corinth, he made a decision to concentrate in his preaching on Christ, and especially on the cross. ‘I decided’ (rsv), he wrote, ‘I determined’ (av), ‘I resolved’ (neb, niv) to do so. It is this decision which we have to investigate. Why did he need to make it?
The popular reconstruction of what happened is well known. Paul arrived in Corinth from Athens. His sermon to the Athenian philosophers (so the theory goes) had been a flop. Not only had it been too intellectual, but Paul had not preached the gospel. He had focused on creation instead of the cross. As a result, there had been no conversions. So, on his way from Athens to Corinth, Paul repented of the distorted gospel he had preached in Athens and resolved in Corinth to limit his message to the cross.
I confess that when I first heard this theory many years ago now, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Since then, however, I have come to reject it, for it does not stand up to examination. First, Paul’s Athens mission had not been a failure. On the contrary, ‘Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.’ Second, Luke in his account in Acts gives no hint that he thinks Paul’s Athenian sermon was a mistake. On the contrary, he records it as a model of the apostle’s preaching to Gentile intellectuals. Third, Paul almost certainly did preach the cross in Athens, since he proclaimed ‘Jesus and the resurrection’, and you cannot preach the resurrection without the death which preceded it. It is true that, because of his Gentile audience, Paul began with idolatry and creation, rather than with Old Testament Scripture, but he did not stop there. The sermon Luke records would have taken only two minutes to preach; Paul must have elaborated this outline considerably. Fourth, Paul did not in fact change his tactics in Corinth. As in Athens, so in Corinth, Luke portrays him continuing to argue, to teach and to persuade.
What was Paul’s decision, then? Behind every resolute decision there lies some previous indecision, a situation in which various options present themselves and we are obliged to choose, deciding for one over against the alternatives. Evidently, then, behind Paul’s decision to preach only Christ, and especially the cross, there lay a temptation, either to preach Christ without the cross, or not to preach Christ at all, but rather the wisdom of the world. So why was this a temptation to Paul as he travelled from Athens to Corinth? It was not surely his supposed failure in Athens, but rather his fear of the reception waiting for him in Corinth. So who were these Corinthians? Why was Paul so intimidated by them and so apprehensive as he approached them (‘in weakness with great fear and trembling’, verse 3)? Why did he need to make a firm decision as he prepared to engage with them?
As we answer these questions, we shall also uncover the chief contemporary objections to the message of Christ and his cross. Indeed, we shall see why we ourselves need to make the same resolute decision today.
(a) The intellectual objection, or the foolishness of the cross. Paul had already encountered intellectual scorn in Athens. The philosophers had insulted him by calling him a spermologos or ‘seed-picker’. The word was applied literally to scavenging birds, and so to vagrants who lived on the scraps they could find in the gutter. Metaphorically, it denoted teachers who trade only in second-hand ideas. The Athenians worshipped at the shrine of originality. They despised the old-fashioned and the obsolete.
The philosophers scoffed when the resurrection was mentioned. ‘They made fun of him’ (gnt). I think that means they burst out laughing. How they reacted when Paul preached the cross, Luke does not say. But Paul knew that it was ‘a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’. To the unbelieving Jew it was inconceivable that the Messiah should die ‘on a tree’, that is, under the curse of God. To the unbelieving Gentile it was ludicrous to suppose that a god, one of the immortals, should die. Celsus, the second-century cynic, was scathing in criticizing Christians for this. He imagined that in worshipping the one who, as Celsus put it, ‘was taken prisoner and put to death’, Christians are like people who worship the dead.
Corinth had not escaped the intellectual arrogance of Athens. The two cities were only about fifty miles apart, as the crow flies. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians provides plenty of evidence that intellectual pride was one of the chief sins of the Corinthian church. This was the background against which Paul made his decision to renounce the wisdom of the world in favour of ‘the foolishness of the cross’. Sneers and jeers awaited him. But he knew that ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom’.
Still today the message of the cross is deeply despised. The biblical, evangelical doctrine of the atonement (that Christ died the death we deserved to die instead of us as our substitute) is opposed and even mocked. It is said to be ‘primitive’, ‘forensic’, ‘unjust’, ‘immoral’ and ‘barbaric’. A. J. Ayer called the allied Christian doctrines of sin and atonement ‘intellectually contemptible and morally outrageous’. A liberal theologian has described aspects of my own presentation in The Cross of Christ as ‘untenable’, ‘unintelligible’, ‘not only inexplicable but also incomprehensible’, and so ‘incommunicable’. How are we to respond to this battery of negative epithets? We do not deny that some evangelical formulations have been unbalanced and unbiblical. Whenever we have cast Jesus Christ in the role of a third party who intervened to rescue us from an angry God, we have been guilty of a travesty which stands condemned. For it is God who loved the world and God who took the initiative to send his Son to die for us. Yet the initiative he took led to Christ being made to be ‘sin’ and ‘a curse’ for us, and such language often arouses extraordinary hostility. Hence the temptation to trim the gospel of Christ crucified, to eliminate its more objectionable features, and to try to make it more palatable to sensitive modern palates. No wonder the apostle sounds almost fierce in expressing his decision to know only Jesus Christ and especially his cross. It was a choice between faithfulness and popularity.
(b) The religious objection, or the exclusiveness of the gospel. If Paul found Athens ‘full of idols’, he is not likely to have found Corinth less idolatrous. It is known to have had at least two dozen temples, each dedicated to a different deity. At the time of writing, seven massive pillars survive from the temple of Apollo in Corinth. And behind the city the rocky Acrocorinth rises nearly 2,000 feet (610 metres), on which the temple of Aphrodite once stood. So the Corinthians, like the Athenians, were ‘very religious’. They honoured many gods, who tolerated one another in amicable co-existence.
The Corinthians would not have raised any objection if the Christian evangelists were content to add Jesus to their already well-stocked pantheon of gods. But the apostle Paul had a very different object in view when he visited the city. He wanted Corinth, with all its inhabitants and all its gods, to bow down and worship Jesus. He came to Corinth with the firm intention of knowing nothing ‘except Jesus Christ and him crucified’. He knew very well, as he wrote to them later, that there were ‘many “gods” and many “lords”’ who were competing for their allegiance. But, as far as he was concerned, ‘there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live’. On this he was not prepared to compromise. He thought of his visit as having brought about their engagement to Christ, and he felt a godly jealousy for them. ‘I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him,’ he wrote. ‘But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the snake’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.’ For Jesus Christ would not share his glory with Apollo or Aphrodite or anybody else.
The world’s religious situation has not greatly changed. True, the old gods of Greece and Rome have long since been discredited and discarded. But new gods have arisen in their place, and other ancient faiths have experienced a resurgence. As a result of the internet, social media and ease of travel, many countries are increasingly pluralistic. What people want is an easy-going syncretism, a truce in inter-religious competition, a mishmash of the best from all religions. But we Christians cannot surrender either the finality or the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. There is simply nobody else like him. His incarnation, atonement and resurrection have no parallels. As a result, he is the one and only mediator between God and humanity. This exclusive affirmation is strongly, even bitterly, resented. It is regarded by many as intolerably intolerant. Yet the claims of truth compel us to maintain it, however much offence it may cause.
(c) The personal objection, or the humbling of human pride. Common to all religions except Christianity is the flattering notion (expressed in different ways) that we are capable, if not of achieving our salvation, at least of contributing substantially to it. This doctrine of self-salvation is exceedingly conducive to our self-esteem. It appeals to our proud ego. It saves us from the ultimate embarrassment of being humbled before the cross.
The Corinthians were no exception – they were a proud people. They were proud of their city, which had been beautifully rebuilt by Julius Caesar in 46 bc, following its destruction a century before. They were proud that Augustus had promoted Corinth over Athens as the capital of the new province of Achaia. They were proud of their trade, their affluence, their culture, their Isthmian games and their religious zeal.
Then along came this brash Christian missionary, this whippersnapper, this ugly little fellow with a bald head, bandy legs and heavy brows, who appeared to have no respect for their distinguished city. He presumed to tell them that neither their wisdom, nor their wealth, nor their religion could save them. There was nothing they could do to save themselves from the judgment of God – or even help towards their salvation. This was why Jesus Christ had died for them, and apart from him they would perish. Who did he think he was to insult them in this way? It was a stunning humiliation to a proud people. The message of the cross was a stumbling-block to proud Jews and proud Gentiles alike. No wonder the main response to the gospel in Corinth came from the lower ranks of society: ‘Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.’ Instead, it was the foolish, the weak, the lowly and the despised, who knew they had nothing to offer, whom God chose and called.
Still today nothing keeps people out of the kingdom of God more than pride. As Emil Brunner put it, in all other religions ‘man is spared the final humiliation of knowing that the Mediator (Jesus Christ) must bear the punishment instead of him . . . He is not stripped absolutely naked.’ But the gospel strips us naked (we have no clothing in which to appear before God), and declares us bankrupt (we have no currency with which to buy the favour of heaven).
(d) The moral objection, or the call to repentance and holiness. Corinth was a flourishing commercial centre, with trade routes both north and south by land, and east and west by sea. So the city was full of merchants, travellers and sailors. Being strangers in a strange city, they exercised little moral restraint. Besides, Aphrodite, the goddess of love who held court in her temple above the city, encouraged sexual promiscuity among her devotees, and provided a thousand prostitutes to roam the city’s streets by night. Corinth was the Vanity Fair of the ancient world. The Greeks even turned the name of the city into a verb, ‘to corinthianize’ (korinthiazomai). It meant ‘to practise immorality’.
A brazenly immoral city like Corinth could hardly be expected to welcome the gospel, with its summons to repentance, its warnings that the sexually depraved will not inherit God’s kingdom, and its insistence that after justification comes sanctification (growth in holiness), and after sanctification glorification (when evil will be abolished).
The modern world has no more time for the gospel’s call to self-control than had the ancient world. It likes to say that there are no such things as moral absolutes any longer, that sexual morality is only a matter of social custom, that restraint is bad while permissiveness is good, and that Christianity with its prohibitions is the enemy of freedom.
(e) The political objection, or the lordship of Jesus Christ. There was a lot of political fervour – even fanaticism – in the Roman Empire. Loyal Roman procurators tended to encourage it, and acted ruthlessly to put down any attempt at rebellion. We need to remember that Jesus himself was condemned in a Roman court for the political offence of sedition, for claiming to be a king and rival to Caesar. Similarly, Paul and Silas were accused in Philippi of ‘advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practise’, while in Thessalonica they were said to be ‘defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus’.
Were these charges true or untrue? They were both. Of course, neither Jesus nor the apostles ever stirred up armed rebellion against Rome. They were not zealots, the first-century equivalent of terrorists. But they did proclaim that Jesus had ushered in God’s kingdom, that his kingdom took precedence over all lesser loyalties, that it would spread throughout the world, and that the king was coming back to take his power and reign. It sounded positively seditious. Indeed, it was seditious if ‘sedition’ means denying undisputed authority to the state by according it to God’s Christ.
Still today the one thing a totalitarian regime cannot endure is for people to refuse to give it the total allegiance which it covets. Christians submit conscientiously to the state, insofar as its God-given authority is used to promote good and punish evil. But we will not worship it. It is Christ we worship, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given. Christ died and rose in order to be Lord of all.
Here, then, are five objections which are levelled against the gospel of Christ and his cross, and which Paul expected to encounter in Corinth. He knew that his message of Christ crucified would be regarded as
No wonder Paul felt weak and nervous so that he trembled with fear. No wonder he recognized that he had to make a decision. On the one hand, it was a negative decision to renounce the wisdom of the world, namely every system that is offered as an alternative to the gospel. On the other hand, it was a positive decision to proclaim nothing but Jesus Christ, and especially his cross. The same alternative faces us today. It is the choice between the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness to God, and the foolishness of the cross, which is the wisdom of God.
The power of the Spirit
Some contemporary Christians, hearing Paul’s confession of weakness, fear and trembling, would doubtless have rebuked him. ‘Paul,’ they might have said, ‘you’ve no business to feel nervous or afraid. Pull yourself together! Don’t you know what it is to be filled with the Spirit? You ought to be strong, confident and bold.’
But Paul was not afraid to admit that he was afraid. To be sure, he had a mighty intellect and a strong personality, and these powers he had dedicated to Christ. But he was also physically weak and emotionally vulnerable. According to tradition, his appearance was unprepossessing. His critics said that ‘in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing’. So he was nothing much to look at or to listen to. In addition, disease of some kind (his so-called ‘thorn in the flesh’) seems to have affected his eyesight and even disfigured his face. And he knew the unpopularity of his gospel, the opposition it would arouse in Corinth, and so the cost of being faithful to it.
In what, then, did he put his trust? He tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:4–5. His confidence was not in ‘wise and persuasive words’ (niv) or ‘plausible words of wisdom’ (rsv). That is, he relied neither on the wisdom nor on the eloquence of the world. Instead of the world’s wisdom, he preached Christ and his cross (verses 1–2), and instead of the world’s rhetoric, he trusted in the powerful demonstration which the Holy Spirit gives to the Word. For only the Holy Spirit can convince people of their sin and need, open their eyes to see the truth of Christ crucified, bend their proud wills to submit to him, set them free to believe in him, and bring them to new birth. This is the powerful ‘demonstration’ which the Holy Spirit gives to words spoken in human weakness.
This theme of ‘power through weakness’ is a vital element in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. In both letters the apostle emphasizes that it is through human weakness that divine power operates best. He hints that God deliberately makes and keeps his people weak in order to show that the power is his. Paul even adds that this principle applies to God himself, for it is through his own weakness in the cross that he puts forth his power to save.
In 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, the same theme of power through weakness is repeated in three variations:
Thus, God chose a weak instrument (Paul) to bring a weak message (the cross) to weak people (the Corinthian working classes). Why? It was ‘so that no one may boast before him’, and so that he who does boast will ‘boast in the Lord’ alone.
The first five verses of 1 Corinthians 2 are perhaps the noblest and richest statement on evangelism in the New Testament. They tell us that the gospel is truth from God about Christ and his cross in the power of the Spirit. Thus, the gospel is not human speculation, but divine revelation; not popular wisdom, but Christ and his despised cross; not by the pressures of advertisement or personality, but by the Holy Spirit. The gospel comes from God, focuses on Christ and him crucified, and is authenticated by the Holy Spirit. This is the trinitarian evangelism of the New Testament.