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.

Note: 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”).

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