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3 – Jesus Christ and Him Crucified - I Corinthians 2:1-5
Welcome back to a series I have been enjoying called Cross Purposes. It is based on 1 Corinthians
1:18-2:16. In this passage we have revealed to us the reason that the world holds such animosity toward
the church and such antagonism to our message.
Let’s begin today with verse 2. "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus
Christ and Him crucified.” (I Corinthians 2:2).
We have a phrase for people like Paul. We call a person like him a “one trick pony.” He was a
man of one message. If you heard him in Thessalonica or Athens or Rome, it was always the same—Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. He never strayed from his basic message.
Someone once asked the great British preacher Charles Spurgeon (many think he was the greatest
preacher since the Apostle Paul) why all his sermons sounded alike. “That’s simple,” he replied. “I take
my text wherever I can find it, and then I make a bee-line for the cross.” He and Paul were cut from the
same piece of cloth.
In our text we discover the pastor’s life work. If a man could come to the end of his ministry and
have someone say of him, “He spoke to us only of Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” his ministry would
not have been in vain.
Dr. W. A Criswell pointed out, if people want to know about sports or the latest news, they can
read the paper or turn on the TV. These days you can watch Fox or CNN or MSNBC or you can surf the
Net or watch 500 channels or listen to the radio. If it’s news or sports or the weather or the latest world
crisis, there are plenty of ways to follow the story. But if you want to know how to be right with God, if
you want to know how to have your sins forgiven, if you want to know how to go to heaven, then you
need the message Paul preached: Jesus Christ and him crucified.
This is my 42nd year as a pastor and my 46th preaching the Gospel. I find myself in a stage of life
where I am trying to get back to basics in every area. I want to find those things that are true and that
matter eternally, and that’s where I want to spend the bulk of my time in the next few years. I pray, “Lord,
strip away the things that don’t matter, even the good things, so that what is left are the things that will
still matter 10,000 years from now if you tarry that long.”
As a pastor, I have seen a lot of fads and trends and movements in the last 35-40 years. I’ve lived
through the bus ministry, small group ministry, body life, Bill Gothard seminars, sharing services, the
Charismatic renewal, church renewal, church growth, the balanced church, contemporary worship,
renewal worship, liturgical worship, concerts of prayer, prayer and fasting, the Willow Creek movement,
Experiencing God, the Prayer of Jabez, the Purpose-Driven Church and the 40 Days of Purpose. Not to
mention the Puritan revival, Christian hedonism, Gen X worship, and preaching to the postmodern mind.
I hasten to say that there is much that is good and useful in all those things. You can find valuable
truth in each one of those trends and movements if you look for it. But sooner or later, all those
movements are destined to be forgotten. They will be one more addition to the stack of dusty seminar
notebooks that I’ve lugged around from place to place for the last 45 years. The grass withers, the flower
fades, and only the Word of the Lord lasts forever. And that’s why Paul labored as he did: “that your faith
should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (v. 5) All that comes from man must perish
with man; what comes from God lasts forever.
Two weeks ago we saw how the world views the preaching of the cross as foolishness (I
Corinthians 1:18-25). Last week we discovered that God delights to choose weak and foolish things (like
us!) to make up His family so that no one can boast in His presence (I Corinthians 1:26-31).
Today we will see that the message of the cross must stand at the center of all we do. In this
passage we see Paul’s message (v. 1-2), his method (v. 3-4), and his motive (v. 5). It’s the answer to the
question, “Paul, why do you do what you do?” If we want a ministry with a world-changing impact, then
we need to heed his answer.
I. His Message v. 1-2
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“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom
declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus
Christ and Him crucified.” (I Corinthians 2:1-2)
Note that Paul begins not with the positive, but with the negative—"I did not come.” The terms
“excellence or eloquence” and “superior wisdom” describe a certain oratorical style commonly associated
with a philosophical group known as the sophists. They were the greatest public speakers of their day.
Great crowds flocked to hear them because they spoke in the style of traditional Greek rhetoric, with
extensive quotations, with literary allusions, and with a refined style that made them seem brilliant, witty,
charming and entertaining.
Evidently some early Christian preachers felt the need to emulate their style. They crafted their
sermons into eloquent, stylized, highly polished discourses. Paul utterly rejected that approach to
preaching although he could have done it himself. As a well-educated rabbi, he knew Greek, Hebrew,
Aramaic, and no doubt he also knew Latin. Trained at the feet of Gamaliel, he could hold his own in any
argument. If Paul wanted to show off his intellect, he certainly knew how to do it. But he rejected that
intellectual, ear-appealing approach.
The phrase “I determined or I resolved” means he made a conscious choice to do things a certain
way. He didn’t fall into it by chance or by force of habit. Paul preached as he did because he chose to do it
that way.
That same choice confronts every minister of the gospel. We need to be relevant to our society,
but we run a great risk when we emulate their methodology. The essence of the message is the Cross of
Christ! Let nothing take away from that central focus!
It’s so easy to be sidetracked by good and worthwhile things. We can preach about social issues,
the political debates of our day, the crisis in the Middle East or the decline of the family. We can tackle
Bible prophecy or we can major on predestination or we can spend our days arguing about some aspect of
church government.
There is a place for all those things, but that place is never at the center. For Paul the choice was
clear: “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He started there and that became the center of his preaching.
Once the center was in place, every other truth could be arranged around it. But Jesus must be in the
middle of all things and all things must be properly related to Him.
Here are three words to summarize Paul’s preaching: clarity, simplicity, and boldness. Paul was so
clear that no one could miss his message. I say simplicity because he spoke plainly about what Jesus
Christ accomplished in His death on the cross. And he was bold in stating that truth over and over again.
He was a man of one message, a preacher with a one-track mind, a one-note Johnny who would not be
silent. He focused on the cross because that was the one part of the Christian message the world could not
duplicate.
We have some wonderful civic organizations here in Union County they do wonderful works for
our community. I know many of the members and I appreciate what they do, but it is not given to the
civic clubs to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is the role of the Church and her members!
We have the Republicans and the Democrats and they think they have it all figured out. They
don’t, but God bless them anyway. They have their politics, but it is not given to them to preach Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. That is the role of the Church and her members!
We have a fantastic public school system here that labors valiantly to educate the children of
America. They do the best they can, and God bless them in their efforts, but it is not given to the public
school system to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is the role of the Church and her members!
To us—and only to us—did God vouchsafe the message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is
our message, our only message. We are to tell it because if we don’t no one else will.
Paul knew that you can impress people with your intellect or you can impress them with Jesus, but
you can’t do both.
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It is not enough for us to say that Jesus was a great moral teacher. He was, but the world largely
believes that already.
And it is not enough to say that He came down from heaven. Many already believe that.
It’s not even enough to say that He was born of a virgin, though He undoubtedly was.
We must go all the way and declare that God Himself came down to earth in the person of His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We must say that when He died on the cross, God laid on Him all our sins. He took our place,
dying where we should have died, bearing our punishment, standing as our substitute, taking our sin and
its punishment upon Himself.
He died that He might be our Savior and bring us home to God. He was the just dying for the
unjust, the good dying for the bad, the righteous dying for the unrighteousness, the holy dying for the
sinful. And in His death He won our salvation. Then He rose from the dead on the third day, proving all
his claims to be true, and winning for us eternal life.
This is the message unbelievers need to hear. What good will it do to say to an unbeliever, “Be
nice” or “Try harder” or “Clean yourself up” or even “Give your money to the church.” That advice is
both dangerous and misleading. Unbelievers can never really be nice or try harder or clean themselves up
apart from God. They don’t need to give money to the church. They need to be born again.
So Paul preached a simple sermon of ten words: Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead.
That’s the whole gospel right there. There is enough truth in those ten words to save the whole world.
Stop right now and say those words to yourself. Go ahead. Say them out loud: Christ died for our
sins and rose from the dead. That’s good. Now do it again: Christ died for our sins and rose from the
dead. Say it out loud so that those ten words will burn into your soul. This is the heart of the gospel. This
is our message. This is what we must preach to the world.
Paul regarded preaching as nothing less than the forceful declaration of the truth of God. True
preaching is not sharing. It is not dialogue or discussion. When I stand behind the pulpit, I’m not having a
dialogue with the congregation. This isn’t a large-group discussion. If you want to discuss something, we
can go out for a Coke and we’ll talk for a while. If you buy me dessert, I’ll stay an extra 45 minutes.
Preaching is not dialogue because God is not negotiating with the human race. He has declared the
terms of salvation (they couldn’t be better since He made it free for the asking) on the basis of the death
of His Son.
Let us then be gospel-centered in all that we do. We have no other message, and if we substitute
anything for the message of the cross, we have taken away the one message the world needs to hear. And
when the preacher preaches, let him not labor for applause but for the souls of men. This was Paul’s
approach—may it be ours as well.
II. His Method v. 3-4
Here is Paul’s evangelistic plan. It’s called “fear and trembling.” Paul may have had in mind the
chilly reception he received when he first came to Corinth (Acts 18:1-11). At one point he felt so
abandoned and alone that the Lord came to him in a vision with these words, “Do not be afraid, but
speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many
people in this city.” (Acts 18:9-10).
Corinth was a hard city to begin with, and Paul’s reception there had discouraged him to the point
that preaching was difficult because of the inner doubts and uncertainty he faced. He wasn’t the picture of
confident self-assurance that many of us may associate with the Apostle Paul.
He responded in a totally human fashion, which I find greatly encouraging. We’ve all had his
experience when trying to share Christ with others. Have you ever tried to witness to someone only to
find that your “tang” gets all “tongueled” up? Or have you tried to quote John 3:16 to a lost person only to
discover that you’ve forgotten everything after “For God so loved the world"? Certainly all of us have had
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seemingly disastrous witnessing experiences where everything we said ended up sounding like nonsense
even to us. It happens. Paul certainly knew what that was like.
Occasionally someone asks me if I get scared or nervous before I preach. The answer is
“absolutely,” and it happens every single time. No matter how many times I’ve preached or how well
prepared I am, there is always a sense of “fear and trembling” that comes just before I stand up. I hope I
never lose that, because if I do, I need to get out of the pulpit. I have told my sons and those who I am
blessed to mentor, if speaking for Christ ever becomes routine, then something has gone wrong inside
your heart. We need “holy nervousness” when we witness to others lest we fail the Lord or fail the person
to whom we are speaking.
I am comforted by the thought that Paul was a man like I am. As I consider his life, I realize that
nothing in Paul could explain his success—except God! The New Testament doesn’t give us any
descriptions of Paul’s appearance, but Paul himself quoted his opponents who said of him, “For his
letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech
contemptible.” (II Corinthians 10:10)
We do have this early description of Paul that comes from outside the New Testament: He was “a
man of middling size, and his hair was scanty, and his legs were a little crooked, and his knees were far
apart; he had large eyes, and his eyebrows met, and his nose was somewhat long.”
If that is anywhere near accurate, then Paul was no first-century male model. He wasn’t much to
look at and he didn’t cut an impressive figure in the pulpit. But when Holy Spirit fell upon him and he
preached Christ crucified and raised again, souls were transformed by the power of God.
So if you feel a bit afraid and unqualified to witness for Christ, if you sometimes get worried about
what others will think, join the club. There are plenty of people in that club, and Paul is the president.
What we need can be summed up in one old-fashioned word: unction. We need the unction of the
Holy Spirit that will take our feeble human words and fill them with supernatural power. When that
happens, lives will be radically changed.
III. His Motive v. 5
Note the striking contrast—the wisdom of men versus the power of God. If you build on one, you
cannot have the other.
Ministries built primarily on human personality do not last. Sometimes people talk about “Rick
Warren’s church” or “Charles Stanley’s church or “Bill Hybels’ church.” I know what they mean when
they say that, but the phrase is unsettling all the same. This church is not “Fred Lodge’s church,” and in
the deepest and truest sense, you are not my disciples. You may follow me and listen to me and look to
me for guidance, but in the end this church belongs to Jesus Christ.
So while it is good and even vital to love and respect your spiritual leaders, you must not build
your spiritual life around them. Build your life on Jesus Christ. He will still be here after all the pastors
have come and gone. What this church needs—what every church needs—is a demonstration of God’s
power through the preaching of the cross.
Listen to the words of Charles Spurgeon: “The power that is in the Gospel does not lie in
eloquence of the preacher, otherwise men would be the converters of souls, nor does it lie in the
preacher’s learning, otherwise it would consist of the wisdom of men.” Paul knew he depended totally on
Holy Spirit to accomplish anything in his life.
This was Paul’s strategy and it ought to be ours as well:
Take the Word of God.
Preach it boldly and accurately.
Pray for the power of God to bless the Word of God.
Trust God for changed lives as a result.
The Word of God, preached in the power of God, always results in lives changed by God. This
was how the tiny band of believers turned the world upside down in the first century. We must pray for
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God to do that again in our day. The world has no answer to a life radically changed by Jesus Christ. The
world may answer our arguments, but it cannot answer the power of God let loose in the human heart.
Only God can take a person trapped in sin and set him free.
Only God can take a person chained to alcohol and set him free.
Only God can take a person living in the hell of sexual addiction and set him free.
Only God can do it. Only he can take a heart of stone and replace with a heart of flesh.
Only he can give life in the place of death.
And he does it as His people faithfully respond to the preaching of the message of the cross.
So we ask God to do it again in our day—to use us to preach the message of the cross wherever
we go, and then to pour out His Spirit so that our preaching results in changed lives. Pray for this. Ask
God to do it in your witness to others. Ask God to do it when the congregation gathers for worship.
The Jews said, “Show us a sign.” Paul said, “I give you the sign of the cross.” The Greeks said,
“Show us wisdom.” Paul said, “I will show you Jesus, the very wisdom of God.”
What the world needs is not reformation or education but true and lasting deliverance from sin.
Such deliverance can be found only in the cross.
Where sin is the problem, the cross is God’s answer—God’s only answer. Only the gospel itself
meets the deepest needs of the human heart. It is only the gospel of Jesus Christ—Christ and Him
crucified—that gives life to sinners who are dead in their transgressions and sins.
Billy Graham tells the story of a police officer on night duty in a city in northern England. As he
walked the streets, he heard a quivering sob. Shining his flashlight into the darkness, he saw a little boy in
the shadows sitting on a doorstep with tears running down his cheeks. The child said, “I’m lost. Please
take me home.” “I’ll be glad to take you home. Where do you live?” the officer replied. But the little boy
was so tired and so scared that he couldn’t remember his address. The policeman began naming street
after street, trying to help the boy remember where he lived. He named the shops and the hotels in the area
but the little boy could give him no clue.
Then he remembered that at the center of the town stood a church with a large white cross that
towered high above the rest of the city. The policeman pointed to the cross and said, “Do you live
anywhere near that place?”
The little boy’s face immediately brightened up. He said, “Yes, sir. Take me to the cross and I can
find my way home.”
That is the mission of the church. We are to point people to the cross, and the cross will lead them
safely home to God.
This is our message to the world today, and it is God’s message to you. The cross is God’s
provision for your sin. If you go to the cross, you will find your way home to God. Many people are lost
and confused and the cross of Christ beckons you to come, repent of your sin and receive Christ. Come to
the cross and you will find your way home to God.
The church stands today with an utterly unique message that is given to us and to no one else. In a
world of hurting people, to those who are angry and to those who are in despair, to those who have lost
their way, to every man and woman, to every boy and girl, the church of Jesus Christ says to everyone
who will listen, “Go to the cross and the cross will lead you home.” May we never be ashamed of the
cross but preach it boldly as the only hope of the world. Amen.
INVITATION
There is no greater reminder of the power of the Cross than the Lord’s Supper. It was given that
we might celebrate Jesus death and resurrection until the day He returns.