"The Power of the Cross" -- Paul's Declaration in 1 Corinthians 1:17

What follows is an excerpt from episode four of season three of the Blessed Hope Podcast which covers Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

In verse 17 of the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul defines his mission as apostle to the Gentiles. “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

There are a number of points about the cross of Christ we can draw from his declaration.

First, the great commission includes the command from our Lord to make disciples by baptizing them in the name of the triune God (Matthew 28:18-20). But as apostle to the Gentiles, Paul understands that his divinely-appointed mission is to preach the gospel and not to become overly involved in the day to day affairs of church life. The office of apostle was centered in the responsibility of preaching in an evangelistic context (establishing churches), with the day to day responsibility for church life assigned to the successors of the apostles–the ministers of word and sacrament, elders, and deacons. The calling of the first church officers begins with Jesus’s call of the twelve disciples during Jesus’s Galilean ministry, and moves on to the establishment of the office of deacon (as recounted in Acts 6:1-6), then to those who hold the office of elder identified in the book of Acts, throughout the letters of Paul, and with the qualification and duties of the church offices of elder and deacon defined in 1 Timothy 3:1-13.[1]

Second, Paul’s emphasis upon the centrality of preaching contains loud echoes from Isaiah 40, which speaks of the messianic age as one in which the Messiah would establish the preaching of good news. Ciampa and Rosner, citing Dickinson, point out that,

Paul’s usage of gospel-terminology [esp. euangelizomai] was heavily influenced by the particular significations contained in the messenger traditions arising from Isa 40:9, 52:7 and 61:1, wherein ‘secular’ messenger language had been transposed to a higher, eschatological level, depicting the end-time herald(s) commissioned by Israel’s God to announce his salvific reign.[2]

What Paul was witnessing was the fulfillment of that age foreseen by Isaiah in which the good news of the gospel was proclaimed throughout the Gentile world.

Third, in light of such echoes taken from Isaiah, Paul does not place his confidence in the power of “eloquent wisdom” as one would expect in a Greco-Roman context, if he were merely attempting to win them over on their terms. He never uttered challenges like “our God is greater than your philosophers,” but he does make clear that his gospel news (the account of Christ’s doing and dying) confounds his audience because divine wisdom is only so much foolishness to those who are not given ears to ear.

Fourth, Paul is especially concerned that the Corinthians realize that the preaching of the cross does not center in “words of eloquent wisdom” (literally “cleverness in speech”). Calvin reminds us that Paul “had no gift of eloquence . . . was not a born orator . . . but a minister of the Spirit, a servant, who, with unpolished and ordinary speech might bring down the wisdom of the world.”[3] In a place like Corinth, where people often put the philosopher’s rhetorical skill and cleverness ahead of consideration of the message, it was easy for the Corinthians to become preoccupied with “wisdom.” Wisdom in Hellenistic culture (Greek) was a reference to a skilled rhetorician and sage (a storyteller) who could keep an audience in rapt attention by focusing upon the application of such wisdom to the affairs of daily life.[4] There is a big difference between preaching Christ (a message deemed foolish) and impressing people with your “wisdom.”[5]

Fifth, to a Greco-Roman audience, the cross of Christ is an image of shame and degradation centering in a crucified God (a “skandalon”). Christians proclaiming such a message undoubtedly heard the reaction, “why would you preach something so offensive to our sensitivities?” New Testament scholar Martin Hengel points out that Paul’s preaching of a gospel of “good news” grounded in “Christ crucified” was hardly a message the Greeks and Romans would have found compelling. Hengel writes,

to believe that the one pre-existent Son of the one true God, the mediator at creation and the redeemer of the world, had appeared in very recent times in out-of-the-way Galilee as a member of the obscure people of the Jews, and even worse, had died the death of a common criminal on the cross, could only be regarded as a sign of madness.[6]

The cross was known to all in the Greco-Roman world as a sign of utter shame and humiliation. Crucifixion was an unspeakably inhumane way to execute criminals. Many who came to faith during Paul’s Gentile mission had seen those crucified by the Romans along major roads and in town squares. The crucified were utterly humiliated, naked, and left to rot or be eaten by birds and vermin unless and until someone took them down for a proper burial, which was not always the case with the victims often disowned by their families.

Hengel points out that the cross was described by several ancient writers as “the infamous stake,” or the “criminal wood,” or the “terrible cross.” One executed by crucifixion died in shame and was regarded as an outcast from society.[7] Invented by barbarians and adopted by the Romans, the Greeks considered crucifixion too barbaric for their refined sensitivities and abhorred the practice. Crucifixion was considered so awful Roman citizens were usually exempt from this form of capital punishment. Crucifixion was reserved for slaves, anarchists, violent criminals, or robbers. It were as though Paul were preaching the gospel of the firing squad, the hangman’s noose, the electric chair, or the lethal injection, as the “good news” regarding a Savior who died in the most shameful and humiliating way imaginable.

At the same time, the cross is the divinely appointed means by which God saves sinners. It is in this message, and no other, where God’s wisdom and saving power is revealed. But since the cross was such a scandalous and offensive thing, we can see why it would have confounded any and all who heard the philosophers and wise men of the day and found them both entertaining and helpful, when the gospel preached by the unimpressive Paul was anything but. Paul could not have proclaimed a more offensive message. Paul will not preach the wisdom of pagans, instead he preached the crucified Christ through which God confounds all human wisdom.

Sixth, the offensive nature of the gospel message is why the temptation to compromise or avoid the message of a crucified Savior will always be so great. Preaching which softens, weakens, or “spices up,” the cross (as one writer puts it), nullifies the power of the cross by drawing people to the preacher, not to the Savior.[8] The content of Christian preaching grounded in a particular message–the doing and dying of Jesus–however scandalous that message may be to a Greek, a Roman, or an American. The success of the gospel does not depend upon the eloquence and rhetorical skills of the preacher. The success of Christian preaching depends upon the power of the gospel proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit.

__________________________________

[1] Se Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 585-587, for a list of biblical passages and an account of the development of these offices in the New Testament.

[2] Ciampa and Rosner, “1 Corinthians,” 697.

[3] Calvin, The First Epistle of Paul The Apostle to the Corinthians, 31-32.

[4] Garland, 1 Corinthians, 55.

[5] Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 49.

[6] Martin Hengel, The Crucifixion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 7-8.

[7] Hengel, The Crucifixion, 8.

[8] Morris, 1 Corinthians, 42-43.