When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).

Is the gospel something you only need to hear once?

Do you hear it, believe it, get saved, and move on to greater things?

Not at all!

The message of Christ crucified is something you need to hear over and over again to transform your thinking continually.

Paul’s statement that he decided to know nothing among the Corinthians other than “Jesus Christ and him crucified” was hyperbole. Paul didn’t literally only teach about the cross and nothing else. First Corinthians covers many subjects, especially life in the church. He was exaggerating to make a point. His point is that Christ crucified is the center of his teaching and preaching.

Why is that?

Paul contrasts the preaching of the cross with “brilliance of speech or wisdom.” In other words, Paul kept the cross central because it contradicts human wisdom. Paul was not just another itinerant teacher, coaching people on how to improve their lives. He was a herald of counter-cultural good news that contradicted merely human wisdom.

Preachers should continue to know nothing among us except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

In your old way of thinking—in the whole world’s way of thinking—a relationship with God is conditional, transactional, and something you earn and maintain by doing good, religious behavior. When you do good, you think God loves you more; when you do wrong, you think God hates you. That’s how the old self thinks, and it has to change.

How?

God puts that thinking to death with the preaching of the cross.

The cross contradicts human expectations. Instead of pointing to how we must earn our salvation, it points to a God who loved us, came down to us, and died for us so He could shower us with His promises and gifts, especially the gift of salvation (cf. Eph 2:8-9).

The cross is the message of God’s one-way love.

And as you hear all that Christ has done for you—all He did freely for you on the cross, in His resurrection, and through the sending of the Spirit—your perspective changes.

When a grace preacher proclaims the gospel week after week, telling you the 52+ benefits of salvation (see here), your old way of thinking begins to die of God’s goodness. You start to realize,

“God really loves me just as I am! I don’t have to prove to Him that I can care for myself. I can count on Him to keep His word. I can rest in His promises. I can trust Him to be my light, my strength, and my God. Lord, I give up trying to do things my way—do what you think is best!”

That realization doesn’t come all at once. It takes time to click and even longer to sink in. When you finally begin to understand, you’ll still need to hear it for the rest of your life because the world will always tell you something different.

Paul began by preaching Christ crucified to the Corinthians, and he continued to preach Christ crucified because every believer needs to learn in their bones that Christ is sufficient for all their needs.

Through God’s constant, gentle kindness, your moralistic striving will give way to trust, you fear to faith, you’ll die to merely human wisdom and be renewed by the message of His grace.

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Send your questions or comments to shawn@freegrace.in.

Read his latest book, The Five Points of Free Grace for free, buy it from us, or from Amazon.