Nothing But Jesus Crucified
I Corinthians 2:1-16
In the Appalachians where I live, many of the ministers and churches have an aversion to book learning, especially when it comes to the Bible. And I really cannot blame them as I have seen many an aspiring minister ruined by seminary. “Preach the Bible, it’s the only book we need.” Preach the salvation message! Keep it simple!” In this they feel that they are being faithful to what Paul is teaching here. They care to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
We tend here to be suspicious of ministers who want to show off their learning. So many have been led astray by smooth talkers who try to itch the ears of the listeners. They will need to show that they are genuine before they will be accepted. But is Paul saying “We don’t need no education!” Let us see what Paul means by saying that he wished to know anything among them than the crucified Christ.
We must first note that whatever Paul means here, it does not say that he was not formally educated. He went to university in Tarsus as well as sat at the feet of Gamaliel the Pharisee. He had a great deal of formal learning, far more than Peter and the fishermen whom Jesus called. At first, he used his education in the wrong way. He persecuted to death the early Christians. Yet God could use the educated Paul as much as he could the rustic Peter. He needed to have his learning transformed.
So when Paul says that he did not want to know or make known anything among the Corinthians than Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he is not saying that this is all he knew. He made a choice not to make a show of his learning when he preached to the Corinthians. Rather, he was satisfied with the demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power. He was not a philosopher; he was a preacher of the gospel. Whenever he called upon his learning, it was subjected to the message of the cross. Paul had not been converted because Jesus engaged him in a theological and philosophical discussion on the way to Damascus. Rather, Paul was struck down and converted by the demonstration of the Lord’s power. Jesus, who had been crucified in weakness was risen to the ultimate power of the universe. I don’t think Paul could have been converted by a rational argument. His presuppositions were set in stone. If confronted, he would simply have reverted to his foundational beliefs. People will reason in circles and come back to their starting point unless there is a disruption which forces one to challenge their core beliefs. And Paul was thoroughly committed to his core belief. He needed to be shaken to the core to change. We see, then, that Paul would see the way he had been converted as the paradigm of his preaching. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen as Lord was the core of his new way of thinking.
There is a danger that learned people will revert to their “superior” knowledge. They see themselves as “enlightened” and problem solvers. This will lead to elitism and snobbery. Christians are in no means immune from pride. This kind of attitude divides people. It can lead to divisions in the church, which is just what we see here in Corinth. This is not to say that Paul or Apollos intended this division, but people in the church were addicted to philosophy and style. Paul relates that God gave him a thorn in the flesh to keep him humbled and centered on the Gospel. Even though he was a learned man, he was not a gifted speaker. He apparently had fear of public speaking as a whole. He was self-conscious about his appearance, and appearance probably marred by the wounds he had received for preaching Jesus. On this account, he appears no match as an orator in relation to the equally learned Apollos. God apparently did not feel the need to handicap Apollos who had to strongly refute the attacks of unbelieving Jews at Corinth. This difference in roles probably demonstrates the different treatment that Paul and Apollos received. They were both servants of the Gospel, though.
Paul’s decided approach was deliberately not to be sophisticated. It would not have fit him anyway. He knew the emptiness of philosophy. Philosophy amuses the mind for a while, but the next philosophy shows how foolish it ultimately is. Philosophy claims to answer the great questions about life, but in the end ends in disappointment and disillusionment. We see this in our world today. The philosophy that people are autonomous from God and can determine their own future has been demonstrated to be utterly foolish. This is why we have Postmodernism. The world has seen the foolishness of the Enlightenment. They have no answer to replace it, of course. So everyone is free to create his or her own truth. This is also utterly foolish. This void needs to be addressed by the message of the cross, of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the message that has power to transform the world.
Paul’s world was remarkably similar to the Postmodern world of today as Thiselton notes in his commentary on 1 Corinthians. The bored Athenians had given up on their philosophers. They wanted to hear something new. What they heard from Paul did not satisfy them either. One does not come to faith by worldly means of intellectual illumination. They need to be awakened by the Holy Spirit to adopt a message they considered utterly weak and foolish. But the only truly “woke” people are the Christians. This is the true wisdom, that our faith is grounded in the Gospel. It is the perfect wisdom which perfects the believer. It is not the wisdom of the world. Nor does it come from the political rulers or the state which is dissolving. These rulers would never have crucified the Lord of Glory is they had only known this. Since they did not know this, they did not know anything of importance.
The true wisdom comes from God and is revealed in the Gospel, a gospel of a crucified and risen Christ. Paul quotes Isaiah the prophet here. Human eyes and understanding cannot understand the mysetery. God has revealed this mystery by means of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit which convinces us of the truth. It isn’t the preacher. God has indeed chosen preachers, but it is their message that matters. This message had better be centered on the cross. He chooses them from all backgrounds, learned and unlearned. Like the prophets of old, we preach God’s message by the Spirit. And it is the power of the Spirit which enlightens people to the new wisdom and gives them discernment. Paul tells us that the Spirit’s role is to put the mind of Christ in us. And Christ is not divided. If we all have the mind of Christ, then we are all of the same mind.
A good example of the work of God in history can be found in a period called “The First Great Awakening” which started around 1740. It broke out simultaneously in backwoods America, the English countryside, as well as in the cities of England. The thre major evangelist of the awakening were George Whitfield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards. Whitfield and Wesley were Oxford men, so they were very educated men. It is said theat Jonathan Edwards was the greatest theologian that America has ever produced. Edwards was a high Calvinist, Whitfield an evangelical Calvinist, and Wesley and Arminian which goes to show that God does not seem to care about our doctrinal differences as much as we do. Even though these men were educated, this was no the source of the Awakening. One can read Wesley’s sermons from before and after this time. They are difficult even for an educated man to read. Before the awakening, they fell on deaf ears. Afterwards they produced powerful results. It was not because Wesley changed his preaching, other than he left the church doors and preached to the people in the fields. One must wonder how this educated Englishman with his erudite sermons could even be understood by poor Welsh coal miners who were mostly illiterate and knew little English. It was the demonstration of the Spirit and power!
Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes about the great Welsh revival which broke out in the early 20th century, simultaneously with the Azusa Street revival in California. Here again, the Spirit of God transcended geographaphy. It would be hard to imaging any contact between such isolated places. Lloyd-Jones talke about the preacher of the Welsh revival. He had had a long and middling career as a minister. There was nothing to distinguish him. But all of the sudden, the Spirit broke out and the Lord used this man to preach mighty messages which were far above his capacity. The revival died out, and the minister returned to the same minister he was before. It is not about learning or the lack of learning. It is the demonstration od the Spirit and power.
So if I were to make recommendations to ministers about getting education I would say that one should get all the learning one can as cheaply as one can. Wesley was educated. But he also called himself “A man of one book.” That book was the Bible. As Albert Outler mentions, this was certainly not the only book he read. However, this one book was central to his learning. One needs to be grounded in this book before reading other books. We see in Lloyd-Jones an example as well. He said he enjoyed reading history as well as medical journals (He was a surgeon before his call). But he also said he did not have all that much time to read these things because his study in the Word came first.
So when we preach, do people hear Jesus Christ and Him crucified? Or do they hear the polished prattle of a philosopher? Do they hear the Gospel or a storyteller? Do they hear powerful preaching or the humor of a comic? Let us resolve like Paul to make whatever gifts we have been given servants of the powerful Word of God.
