Summary
The Crux
The English words crucial and cross both descend from the same Latin root, crux. That linguistic kinship is no accident: for the Christian, the cross of Jesus Christ is the crux—the decisive matter, the heart of everything. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" 1 Corinthians 2:2, he was naming what stands at the center of the Christian faith and proclamation.
Paul wrote those words against a particular backdrop. In the ancient world, traveling speakers called sophists drew crowds in towns across the Greco-Roman world. People threw out a topic—politics, philosophy, relationships—and the sophist would dazzle the audience with eloquent, polished rhetoric. Listeners walked away impressed not so much with what was said but with how it was said. Paul deliberately distinguished his ministry from theirs: "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom" 1 Corinthians 2:1. His preaching was not a performance to be admired but a message to be believed.
Paul was candid about his own limitations as a speaker. He told the Corinthians, "I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge" 2 Corinthians 11:6, and others observed that while his letters were weighty, "his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account" 2 Corinthians 10:10. He preached without "eloquent wisdom" precisely so "that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power" 1 Corinthians 1:17. Conversion is never the fruit of human eloquence; it is the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word.
Paul's resolve to "know nothing" but Christ crucified is, of course, a kind of holy hyperbole—he plainly taught "the whole counsel of God" Acts 20:27 and spent eighteen months in Corinth "teaching the word of God among them" Acts 18:11. The point is one of focus and priority. Everything else in Christian teaching radiates from, and returns to, the cross.
A parable from an English village chapel illustrates the danger when this focus erodes. Above the entrance the founders had carved the words, "We preach Christ crucified." Over the years, ivy crept up the stone and gradually obscured the last word, leaving only "We preach Christ." And so it went on the inside as well: Christ was still proclaimed, but now as humanitarian, moral example, ethical teacher—no longer as the crucified Savior. More years passed and the ivy covered "Christ" too. The sign now read simply, "We preach." Inside, the sermons had become politics, personal anecdotes, positive thinking, psychological self-help. The cross had been quietly replaced. Whenever anything in our lives or our preaching crowds out the crucified Christ, that ivy must be pulled back—and by His grace, God Himself does the pulling, exposing again the cross that gives the gospel its power.
This is the heart of the Christian message and mission: Jesus on the cross bore the sin of the world, including every false "crux" we erect in His place; raised from the tomb, He stands declared as the Father's accepted sacrifice and our living Lord. The proclamation entrusted to the Church is repentance and forgiveness in His name. At the end of the day, the crux is the cross—and the Church has nothing greater, and nothing else, to give the world.
Video citations
- "The Crux" October 21, 2018 — Would you open your Bible, please, with me to first Corinthians, the 6-second chapter? There are several phrases that over the years seem to be used. If someone says, that person gave 110%. Why…