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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Corinthians 1:22

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For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

22. the Jews require a sign ] The plural, ‘signs’ ‘miracles,’ is the better supported reading here. The Jews (Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Mar 8:11; Luk 11:16; Joh 2:18; Joh 6:30) required external attestations of the power of Christ, and especially that of the subjugation of the world to His kingly authority. The Greeks sought dialectic skill from one who aspired to be their teacher.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

For the Jews require a sign – A miracle, a prodigy, an evidence of divine interposition. This was the characteristic of the Jewish people. God had manifested himself to them by miracles and wonders in a remarkable manner in past times, and they greatly prided themselves on that fact, and always demanded it when any new messenger came to them, professing to be sent from God. This propensity they often evinced in their contact with the Lord Jesus; Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Mar 8:11; Luk 11:16; Luk 12:54-56. Many mss., instead of sign here in the singular, read signs in the plural; and Griesbach has introduced that reading into the text. The sense is nearly the same, and it means that it was a characteristic of the Jews to demand the constant exhibition of miracles and wonders; and it is also implied here, I think, by the reasoning of the apostle, that they believed that the communication of such signs to them as a people, would secure their salvation, and they therefore despised the simple preaching of a crucified Messiah. They expected a Messiah that should come with the exhibition of some stupendous signs and wonders from heaven (Mat 12:38, etc., as above); they looked for the displays of amazing power in his coming, and they anticipated that he would deliver them from their enemies by mere power; and they, therefore, were greatly offended 1Co 1:23, by the simple doctrine of a crucified Messiah.

And the Greeks … – Perhaps this means the pagan in general, in opposition to the Jews; see the note at Rom 1:16. It was, however, especially the characteristic of the Greek philosophers. They seek for schemes of philosophy and religion that shall depend on human wisdom, and they therefore despise the gospel.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

1Co 1:22-24

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

Christianity viewed in three aspects

I. As associated with a great fact. Christ crucified. This maybe looked at–

1. Historically. As an historical fact it is the most–

(1) Famous.

(2) Influential.

(3) Best authenticated.

2. Theologically

(1) It unfolds the Divine, and is a mighty expression of Gods idea, government, and heart.

3. Morally. It is fraught with suggestion the most–

(1) Quickening.

(2) Elevating.

(3) Sanctifying.

II. As associated with popular opinion. It had not sufficient of the gorgeous philosophical ritualism for the speculative and pedantic Greek, nor sufficient of the gorgeous religious ritualism for the sensuous and bigoted Jew. And now to millions it is nothing. To the sceptic it is a fable; to the formalist a creed or a ceremony.

III. As associated with Christian consciousness. But unto them that are called, &c. The Christian sees the highest wisdom in a system which, in saving a sinner–

1. Manifests the righteousness of an insulted sovereign.

2. Augments the influence of moral government.

3. Maintains intact all the principles of moral freedom.

4. Develops, strengthens, and perfects all the powers of the soul. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Jew, Greek, and Christian

The Christian of to-day can but ill-understand the Christian of the year 50. Perhaps if he did, he might feel much more as did the Greek or the Jew, than as did the Christian.

1. Think of Paul in Corinth.

(1) The city was full of Jews, base sometimes, and poor, doing meanest work; rich sometimes, and able to play as it profited him most.

(2) There, too, was the Greek, argumentative in his very commerce, and beating out all questions connected with the principles and profits of trade.

(3) There, too, was the Roman, thinking the world had been made to be conquered, and he the conqueror of the world.

(4) And Paul preached, and the Jew hated and despised; the Greek smiled in his large disdain; the Roman tolerated in his proud indifference; and you might have seen him some evening stealing along the quay, the mean-looking little Hebrew, who still could not be conquered, but resolved that his gospel should conquer men, finding entrance by a main stair to a meaner upper room, where the slave set free for an hour by his master, or the wharfinger escaping from loading and unloading his ship, or, the porter seeking relief from his weary burden by day, met with their small offerings to hear the preacher, great, in spite of his meanness, in dignity and in power. Had Peter gone to Corinth, Peter would have preached and hardly known, and less cared, how people thought and what they felt; but the keen, creative spirit of Paul could insert itself into the brain of the Roman, and look through his eyes; into the intellect of the Greek, and judge with his cynicism; into the imagination of the Hebrew, and feel with his heart, dream with his fancy.

2. Here you have the reminiscence of the older time, and that reminiscence comes out in three series of antitheses.

(1) There are three typical persons–the Jew, the Greek, the Christian.

(2) The three typical persons have three characteristic quests. The Jew requires a sign, the Greek wisdom, the Christian preaches Christ.

(3) There are three typical attitudes of the one subject. Christ is to the Jew a stumbling-block, to the Greek foolishness, to the Christian the power and the wisdom of God. What the Jew demanded was a vision of power; what the Greek sought was a source of wisdom; what the Christian found `was power and wisdom in one. Look, then, at these three persons, with their characteristic quests and attitudes. They are old, they are new; they belong to nineteen centuries distant, they live to-day.

I. The Jew. Illustrious was his ancestry, and he could feel that he was in the face of people that were of yesterday and of earth, while he was of eternity and of God. His founder was Abraham, friend of God, greatest of faithful men; his lawgiver was Moses, author of a law straight come from God. The literature of Greece and Rome was of the earth; his was a book God made. Nay, they worshipped idols; he worshipped the one Creator. And so, proud man was the Jew, proudest for this reason–he owned God rather than God owned him. He so owned God, that he determined the very terms on which God was to be held and known by other men. And so he said, when he stood before the new gospel, Show me a sign: but by the very terms no miracle was possible. The Jew said, I am Gods great work; a greater than I is not in the world: I am the sign; show me a greater.

2. Ah, Jew! if thou hadst been able to see the Christ, thou hadst seen a greater. Think of Him; child He is of thine own proud race, yet lowly in heart, giving rest unto the soul, Thou hast cause for pride, O Jew! yet greater still for humiliation. Out of thy loins He sprung; yet for Him thou only hadst the Cross. See how He broke His births invidious bar; see how, breaking it, He became no local, narrow Jew, but Son of Man, yet Son of God. See how, through Him, God became the new Being for man–Father. He stands manifest God, witness to this–that mans sin is Gods sorrow, mans saving Gods suffering. From millions the cry has risen for the Father. Out of heaven the Father stoops to seek the sons. Here, through His Son, he comes to create a great family of God, and a Greek and Jew become brothers; Roman forgets empire and Hindoo colour; negro loses slavery, male ceases to be man, female ceases to be woman–all become one in Christ. Miracle ye claim and seek, O Jew! to you a miracle I bring!

II. The greek.

1. He, too, had his illustrious ancestry. He made this great discovery: freedom, manhood through freedom. Read the inscriptions of Assyrian kings that tell you how they vanquished empires, but tell you not of the armies they lost and the armies they destroyed without pity or regret. Read the records of Egyptian monuments, and they will tell how a great king, to preserve his very dust, builds a mighty pyramid, throwing thousands of men away in the building of it. The Greek, in creating a free state, created the very idea of manhood. Man free is man reasonable, ordered, a social, joyous, complete life. He, too, discovered for all time art and beauty. Take those colossal figures standing by the Nile–cold, impassive; take those great Assyrian monarchs–massive, insensible to pity, sensible only of power; or look at the Hindoo, with his god–many-headed, many-armed, many-breasted, hideous symbol of a race without beauty; take the Greek discovering the human form is Divine. Can you tell hew much the good man owes to the race that discovered beauty in men? Look at poetry. Pithy speech for deepest emotion. Think, too, what philosophy means–the passion for the true, the search for the good. We owe that to the Greek; but when you spoke to him of Christ, he turned away and said, Where is the wisdom? He is a barbarian, and uses speech that cannot with grace or truth be called language. Think of Him, too, as your later artist pictured Him, crowned with thorns. We love the gracious and we love the great; we love not this.

2. But, O Greek! hast thou thought of the meaning of that Christ? You love freedom–you made it; but see how you bind man still in passion that makes him a very slave. This Christ can take the man bound in the bondage of sin, make him a free man who loves the law of God and loves to obey it, and make him a citizen of an eternal kingdom. You made art; hut think of the beauty that is in Christ–how radiant the goodness that makes Him alone the altogether lovely. He creates the rarer art of holy being, of holy living. You think your poetry is great; but, see, He has made all time, all the universe–nay, the very eternity itself, poetical. Has He not filled every life that is lived with poetic meaning, by bringing Deity into humanity, by lifting humanity into Deity. And is it thy wisdom, O Greek! that thou lovest? See, then, in this Christ is the great mystery of being–God that made the world, the end to which God made it, the means by which He is to reach His end, the glorious method by which the scattered and multitudinous creatures who have estranged themselves from Him may yet, through holy concord, and beautiful love, and perfect devotion, be brought into a saved society in Him. O Greek! in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge; in Him thou hast all things.

III. The Christian. It is said, If thou wouldst know a poet, go and live in the poets land. So, if you would know Christ, make your appeal to Christian experience. Two things are in Him–power, casual, creative; wisdom, adaptive, constructive. Christ brings to the re-making of men power that can take the lost and re-make it until it becomes the holiest; wisdom to take what He has re-made, and shape, develop, guide it, until its early promise becomes richest performance. There is power in Christ, for He is able to save to the uttermost; there is wisdom in Christ, for Christ can sanctify what He has saved. Now you are face to face with the evil and the need of men; what other way can you cure it? You may call to your aid philosophy. Philosophy will make a select and cultured class, scornful of the multitude, and growing cynical through the sense of its own pre-eminence. Call in social theory, that argues that new conditions must be created that men may be made happy and perfect. You may invoke the Act of Parliament; and yet all these together fail to do that which Christ has achieved. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.)

Offensiveness of the gospel to human pride

1. It comes in the form of preaching, and offers its blessings only to faith.

2. It describes the crucified Jesus as the power and wisdom of God.

3. It pronounces all this, which seems to men to be folly and weakness, to be wiser and stronger than all the wisdom and power of the world. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The causes of the rejection of the gospel

I. The Jewish craving for–

1. The ostentatious.

2. The miraculous.

II. The gentile love for–

1. The intellectual.

2. The aesthetic.

III. In both the pride that will not submit to the simplicity of faith. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The gospel and its opponents

Observe–

I. The great hindrances of the gospel in apostolic times.

1. Jewish prejudice.

2. Gentile philosophy.

II. These are general types of human error–e.g., Pharisaism and Sadduceeism; Epicureanism and Stoicism; Ritualism and Rationalism; self-righteousness and self-conceit.

III. Their utter incompatibility with the gospel.

1. The gospel requires humility; these are the offspring of pride.

2. The gospel insists on faith. These demand demonstration. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

How the gospel triumphed

I. Its theme. Christ crucified. His Divinity, sacrifice, offices, redeeming power, universal government.

II. Its difficulties.

1. Jewish prejudice.

2. Gentile wisdom.

III. Its triumphs in them which are called,

1. Christ the power of God–

(1) Surmounting difficulties.

(2) Providing means–His Atonement, Word, Spirit.

(3) Determining conditions.

(4) Counteracting human depravity.

(5) Choosing instruments.

(6) Exposing error and sin.

2. Christ the power of God in–

(1) The Incarnation.

(2) The application of the gospel.

(3) Its successes.

(4) Its results. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The Jews require a sign, the Greeks seek wisdom

In this verse the apostle illustrates and confirms that expression which had passed from him in the verse before, concerning the foolishness of preaching. First, in the demand of the Jews; and secondly in the pursuit of the Gentiles. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. First, we will speak of them jointly, as they agree in one notion, and then severally in what is proper to each. First, jointly, where we must know thus much, the demand of the Jews, The Jews require a sign. Here was an error in both, as concerning their receiving the gospel of Christ: whence we may observe in general then, first this: that the corruption of nature does act and improve itself differently in different ranks and conditions of persons. Here are Jews and Gentiles both, people of a several temper and frame, yet both of them have their censure; the one in the requiring of a sign, and the other in the seeking after wisdom; both of them in a several kind of nature had their weaknesses and failings. This various working of corruption according to the subject wherein it is, may be variously accounted unto us as proceeding from various causes. As first, sometimes from the difference of age and constitution of body: there are some sins which are more proper to one age and temper, and others which are more proper to another. Again, secondly, sometimes it proceeds from a difference of assault and temptation; as there are several tempers and constitutions in regard of men themselves, so there are several drawing out of these constitutions in regard of Satans improving of them. Thirdly, it proceeds from a difference of employment and education, and particular calling, wherein men are set. First, that we should not from hence at any time be secure and presumptuous in ourselves from our freedom from any particular sin or infirmity whatsoever; though thou art not guilty of such a sin, yet it may be thou mayest be guilty of another, which in its kind may be as bad. Again, secondly, observe this: that all men by nature have some quarrel or exception or other against the Word of God, and some pretence to put it off from them. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; neither of them were every way right, and so as they should be. This is that which has always been in all ages and times of the Church. Thirdly, observe in general this: that it is a great matter for the entertainment of any ministry what people have been formerly used and accustomed unto; that has commonly a great sway with them. For see here in this present Scripture how it was now with these two sorts of people, the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews, they had been used to signs heretofore under Moses and the prophets, and therefore nothing would serve their turn now but signs still. And the Gentiles, they had been used to their philosophy and rhetoric. This shows us what cause we have therefore, as to be careful of what principles we admit at any time of ourselves, so to bless God that He has any time in His providence heretofore so well ordered it to us. I come now to them more distinctly in particular, to look upon them in their several propositions, to wit, the demand of the Jews by itself, and the pursuit of the Gentiles again by itself. First, for the demand of the Jews–The Jews require a sign. This the apostle speaks of as some kind of weakness and viciousness in them: and so indeed it was, as may appear in these particulars. First, it does denote unto us that sottishness and stupidity which was in them. A sign it is a thing which is accommodated to the outward sense, and ordained for the teaching of those which are of low understandings, and which cannot attain to the spirituality of Divine mysteries; now thus it was here with these Jews. And this is the disposition of most men else by nature to be thus affected in themselves. Thus it was with the apostle Thomas at Christs resurrection (Joh 20:25). That the more carnal any people are, the more they are carried away after such matters, and do not rest themselves satisfied in that evidence which the Scripture holds out unto them; and it proceeds from hence, because they have not their senses exercised to discern of things that differ. Secondly, here was also their infidelity and unbelief, that is likewise implied in this, that they asked a sign. Signs, says the apostle Paul (1Co 14:22) they are not for them that believe, but for them which believe not; and accordingly they have been still used (as we shall find) upon such occasions as these are, either to begin faith where it has been wanting, or to strengthen it where it has been weak; they are an argument of unbelief where they are given, but especially they are so where they are required. Whilst the Jews demand a sign, they show their infidelity indeed, that they are as yet in a state of unbelieving (Joh 1:11), He came to His own, and His own received Him not. Thus it was with this people: and if we would know whence it came to be so, the apostle tells us, Because the god of this world had blinded their eyes, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ should shine unto them (2Co 4:3-4). Well, let it teach us all for our particulars to take heed lest there be in any of us an heart of unbelief to depart from the living God; yea, let us take heed of admitting any scruples and doubts in the main points of Christianity; for if we begin once, we shall never have done. And that is the second evil in this demand of the Jews in asking for a sign, to wit, their infidelity. The third is their hypocrisy; there was a great deal of false-heartedness and double-dealing in this request of theirs; for why, they intended no such thing as to receive the truth. This is the manner of hypocrites to pretend an unsatisfiableness in the means when they do not relish the thing; when they favour not the conclusion, they call in question the argument. Fourthly, here was their insolency and unworthy behaviour in the laying of this demand; and that as expressing itself also in sundry particulars, which we may briefly take notice of. As first, here was their preposterousness and presumption, in that they would prescribe and limit God to a way of their own–they ask a sign. But here was the miscarriage in these Jews, that they would teach God, and set Him a rule, and point which they would determine Him unto; that when as He would have it done by preaching, they would have it done by miracle. And when the apostles brought them a sermon, they would needs have a sign. This is a sure rule–that in the things of God especially, as in all other things, we must be ruled by God Himself. To ask a sign was here a presumption. Again, as there may be a fault in asking one, so there may be a fault likewise in refusing one, when God offers one to us: observe that this was the miscarriage of Ahaz (Isa 7:11). But now where God sets up a sign, there they pull the sign, down. As for example now in the sacrament of the Lords Supper. Here they throw the sign away. Thus those which are so much for signs at another time, as with the Jews themselves, to require them when themselves please; here, when God offers one to them, they will not have one. Secondly, here was their peremptoriness and importunity, they require a sign; that is, there is no remedy, but have one they must in all haste. If they had asked it modestly and soberly, though they had asked it, there might not perhaps have been so much in it: there have been those of the servants of God which have asked signs, and they have not been blamed for it; Gideon asked one and had it in his wet and dry fleece (Jdg 6:37). Hezekiah, again, asked one (2Ki 20:8-9). Thirdly, here was their malice and perverseness, they require a sign, as if hitherto they had never had any. The Jews had signs of Christ exhibited unto them, both by Himself in His own particular Person, and likewise in His servants the apostles; they had wonders in heaven above, and they had signs in the earth beneath; as it is in Act 2:19, and in verse 22 of the same chapter–Ye men of Israel hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you, &c. And again (verse 43), Many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And (Mar 16:20), The Lord confirmed the Word by signs following. So we see then they wanted not signs, and yet as if they had been altogether destitute, they here require them; this was now an horrible perverseness and maliciousness in them, and a slighting both of the power and goodness of God Himself. The second is the inquiry or pursuit of the Gentiles, The Greeks seek after wisdom. By Greeks here we are to understand all other nations besides the Jews. Now the great learning and eloquence of the Greeks was occasionally and accidently through their corruption, not in the nature of the thing itself, a great hindrance to them for their embracing of the saving knowledge of Christ; they were so taken with the conceits and apprehensions of their own wit and excellent parts, that the preaching of the Cross it seemed no better than foolishness to them; they would believe nothing now in religion without an argument and a demonstration. In brief, there are two things especially which are here by this passage of the apostles prohibited to us. First, a restraining of the truths and doctrines of religion to the apprehensions of carnal reason, the wisdom of the flesh. This was the fault of these Greeks, and we are to take heed it be not ours. And the reason of it is this, because indeed religion is a mystery, and the things which are propounded in the gospel they are above the reach of human wit. Why but then must we lay aside all kind of reason in matters of religion? is Christianity an unreasonable business? and does the gospel deprive us of our wits and ordinary understandings? No, no such matter; religion it is not against reason but it is above it. The sum of all is this, that reason it may be improved in religion, but religion is not to be limited to reason; faith and right reason do not cross, though indeed they do not always meet; nay, indeed, religion is upon the point the greatest reason and wisdom of all, because it is the reason and wisdom of God Himself, who is the highest intelligence. And that is the first thing which was here taxed in these Greeks in the text, their seeking after wisdom, namely, the wisdom of the flesh, in restraining religion to reason, which is a thing here prohibited to us. The second is, the wisdom of words in adulterating the ordinance of preaching with the affectation of human eloquence; this is not to be done by us neither, either in preachers or hearers. This was another thing in these Greeks seeking after wisdom, they refused the doctrine of Christ, because it was not brought to them with the excellency of speech and human wisdom, which the Apostle Paul did of purpose decline, as he tells us (1Co 1:17; 1Co 2:1). For the right understanding of this point, that we may not be mistaken, we do not here prohibit all use of human learning or eloquence in reference to preaching; but–First, that this be not the chief business which is intended by us: we may use these things by the by, but this is not the main to be looked after by us, like children that more regard the cover of the book than they do that which is contained in it. Secondly, we must consider the nature of this eloquence and wisdom, what it is; there is a comeliness of expression suitable to the nature of the matter and argument which is spoken unto, which may very well become a preacher of the gospel; but strong lines and bombast is such as is very uncomely and improper. Thirdly, for the measure of doing it, it must be done very sparingly and moderately; I mean the mixture of wit and human learning in preaching; as sauce, but not as meat. Lastly, a regard is to be had to the nature of the auditory itself, which we have to deal withal, that they be such as are capable of it, and where it may serve as an advantage to the conveyance of the doctrine itself. With these and the like explications there may be a good use of human eloquence and speech; but otherwise in the excess and failing in the manner of it, it is very dangerous and inconvenient. And that especially, as first, it oftentimes takes off the efficacy of the ordinances and makes the Word of God of none effect. Secondly, besides this, it is that which is not so acceptable for the most part to a spiritual heart. Thirdly, God Himself does not commonly so work by them–By the foolishness of preaching He saves them that believe. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)

The reasonableness of the gospel

Evil exists, is the result of sin, which is a want of affection for God, and its cure is by Christ crucified. God is limited in His mode of cure by the capacities and endowments of human nature.

I. The gospel cannot be a system of force. It must be one of motive.

II. Love cannot be transferred at will from one object to another. God must become man to secure mans affection.

III. Hate in the human heart can only be conquered and overcome by manifested self-denying love. Gods first work is to teach men their sinfulness and need of salvation. Without faith it is impossible to please God. There is no other avenue to the human heart than that which God has tried.

IV. The duties and prohibitions of the gospel are demanded by our natures. Social scientists admit this. Prayer, praise, worship, are as necessary to soul-growth as food, exercise, and rest for bodily powers.

V. The rewards and penalties of the gospel are in accordance with nature, with reason, with those principles upon which we act in daily life. This wisdom of God is perfectly adapted to mans wants, and meets mans necessities. (Bp. Fellowes.)

But we preach Christ crucified.—

An orthodox preacher

I. The leaning theme of Pauls ministry.

1. The Person declared in his ministry. Christ, not the patriarchs, prophets, &c. Men of renown in history must not supplant Jesus.

2. The atonement proclaimed in his ministry. We have to speak to the masses–not science, philosophy, &c., but a crucified Lord.

II. The great difficulties in Pauls ministry.

1. The superstition of the Jews. They spurned the gospel because it appealed to their spiritual nature. They did not want a suffering Messiah. If we are seeking signs, we are superstitious. We are rejecting the tidings of Christ crucified.

2. The scepticism of the Greeks. A crucified Christ appeared to them a fable. Many in spirit are still doing the same.

III. The Divine character of Pauls ministry.

1. The universality of the gospel. The glorious gospel is for all mankind.

2. The powerfulness of the gospel. The death of the Cross is the greatest manifestation of the power of God.

3. The knowledge of the gospel. Christ displays Gods highest wisdom. None can instruct us aright but Christ, and we shall never learn the wisdom of God unless we sit at the foot of the Cross.

Conclusion:

1. There is no other way of salvation but what is revealed in the gospel of a crucified Saviour.

2. May we never be of the class who reject and despise Gods method of redemption.

3. Between the conflict of power and wisdom, Christ is the living embodiment of the greatest force in the world.

4. We must believe the gospel before we can experience its saving influence. (A. Buckley.)

Our preaching

I. Its great subject. Christ crucified. We–

1. Declare the nature of His death.

2. Exhibit its benefits.

3. Persuade men to seek an interest in it.

II. Its reception.

1. Some reject it with contempt.

2. Some receive it with respect and advantage. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

St. Pauls preaching at Corinth

I. What St. Paul preached. Christ crucified–i.e., not so much the sufferings of Christ on the Cross as the doctrines connected with the Cross and all the benefits which are secured to us by it. He preached–

1. The dignity of Him who suffered.

2. His humiliation.

3. His willingness.

4. The shamefulness of His death.

5. The intensity of His sufferings. His death was lingering, not sudden. He suffered from men, from devils, from God.

II. Some reasons for his so preaching. There were–

1. Personal reasons. A dispensation was committed unto him. St. Paul preached thus because he was commanded. Woe is unto me, &c.

2. Doctrinal reasons. He preached Christ crucified because by the Cross–

(I) Gods wrath is appeased. God was willing to be appeased; but Gods justice could not be appeased except by the death of Christ.

(2) Gods law is silenced. For every breach of its commands the law thunders forth against us, The soul that sinneth it shall die. But Christ has undergone all the curses of the broken law in our behalf. He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. There is now no condemnation, &c.

(3) Our guilt is removed. If Gods law, which we have broken, has been satisfied by Christ, then must necessarily follow the removal of our guilt.

(4) The devils power is subdued.

(5) Holiness is promoted Dr. Chalmers tells us that, so long as he preached only moral duties, he saw no results of his labours. All the vehemence of his powerful oratory had not the weight of a feather in making the drunkard sober, and the unchaste man clean. But when he began to preach the atonement, he saw in rich abundance the precious fruits of holiness; and so John Berridge tells us that for six years he preached morality to his parishioners at Stapleford till there was hardly a moral man left in the parish; but when he was taught by Gods Spirit to lift up Christ, the people came flocking to the sanctuary in deep concern about their souls.

(6) Heaven is opened.

Conclusion: We hence see the duty of ministers, viz., to walk in the steps of Paul.

1. He was emphatically a preacher. We, too, who are ministers, should aim to be preachers. Our Lords commission ran, Go ye into all the world and preach. Christ sent me, says Paul, not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Others, uninspired men, have said the same. Latimer said, Take away preaching, take away salvation. St. Chrysostom affirms, My whole priesthood is to teach and preach the gospel. This is my sacrifice.

2. But what are we to preach? Christ crucified. The Socinians preach Christ, but only as a bright example, not as a vacarious sacrifice. But we, like St. Paul, preach Christ crucified, because we know that this is the only preaching which God the Holy Ghost will honour. As Cecil says, A philosopher may philosophise his hearers, but the preaching of Christ will alone convert them. Men may preach Christ ignorantly, blunderingly, absurdly, yet God will give that preaching efficacy, because He is determined to magnify His own ordinance. (C. Clayton, M. A.)

Apostolic preaching

I. Its matter. The apostle opposes his theme, on the one hand, to Judaising teachers, who taught converts that they must be circumcised, and keep the laws of Moses; and, on the other hand, to Gentile philosophers, who spent much time in eloquently haranguing on the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice; but who, with all their arts of rhetoric, never could guide one soul to heaven.

II. Its manner They exhibited the Cross of Christ–

1. As the end of the law for righteousness.

2. As the only foundation of a secure hope of acceptance with God.

3. As the only legitimate object of a Christians glory.

4. As the most powerful incentive to obedience.

Conclusion: Let me ask–

1. What think you of Christ?

2. What influence has the subject had on you? (J. Hooper.)

Apostolic preaching

I. Its grand subject. The apostles set forth–

1. The dignity of our Saviours person as the true Messiah of God.

2. The perfection of His atonement. Having laid the foundation in His Divinity, this naturally followed.

3. The plenitude of His redemption. Christ died for all men, and we are therefore enabled to offer salvation to every man. This is a blessing which leads to all others.

II. The reception which this doctrine met with.

1. To the Jews it was a stumbling-block.

2. To the Greeks it was foolishness.

3. Unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. These perfections are admirably discovered if we consider–

(1) The method that God took to make known to the lapsed posterity of man His merciful designs.

(2) The men whom God selected to carry the message of salvation to the world.

(3) The easy terms which the Lord hath fixed upon in order to be benefited by the redemption.

(4) The great effects which have been produced by this doctrine. (E. Oakes.)

Apostolic preaching: its theme and effects

I. The great theme of apostolic preaching. The crucifixion of our Lord was the great centre of their preaching, but its range was much wider. They preached Christ in–

1. The Divinity of His person.

2. The perfection of His atonement.

3. The variety of His offices.

4. The blessings of His redemption.

5. The universality of His government.

II. The diversity of the effects which attend the publication of this gospel.

1. To the Jews it was a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; to them that are called–

(1) The wisdom of God. This wisdom is displayed in–

(a) The wonderful method by which the difficulties were removed which stood in the way of the restoration of fallen man.

(b) The perfect adaptation of the means which it supplies for the attainment of human salvation. First, the sacrifice of Christ. Second, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.

(c) Its direct tendency to counteract one of the most evident manifestations of human depravity–viz., pride.

(d) In the selection of the instruments who were ordained to propagate it.

(e) The period appointed for its proclamation.

(f) The facility of those terms on which the benefits are conferred.

(2) The power of God is displayed in–

(a) The various acts by which the stupendous scheme was accomplished.

(b) The Divine influence which attended the publication of this doctrine.

(c) The triumphant progress which the gospel has made against every opposition.

(d) Its influence on mans present and eternal destinies. (J. Bowers.)

Preaching Christ crucified

1. Preaching is an agency previously unknown, which Christianity has created for itself, and just as the gospel has been truly apprehended has it sought; expression purely through this form. Rationslise it into a philosophy, and the pulpit becomes a tribune to lecture from; mistake it for a magical mystery, and the pulpit is deserted for the altar. But Christianity is neither a wisdom for Greeks, nor a sign for Jews; it is a Divine message for which preaching must ever be the appropriate vehicle.

2. When we set our modern pulpit alongside that of apostolic men there is a pretty wide divergence. Theirs was simple, direct, historic; built itself up on a few facts which clung around a central Person. Ours is elaborate, discursive, theoretical. To some extent such difference is not only natural, but proper. For the apostles were missionary preachers, addressing men to whom everything was new. We who minister among a people moulded by the truths which we preach must traverse an ampler field and cannot decline to use what the Christian past has brought to illustrate or confirm the old message. In accessory helps the pulpit grows yearly richer; yet through this very embarrassing wealth, the preacher is in danger of being beguiled too far from his appointed work.

I. The great pulpit theme.

1. The gospel offers itself as a plan of restoration; and opens with an event which lifts the scheme above parallel–the descent into our race of God Himself. At no other point does creation touch Divinity in such strange fellowship.

2. If we estimate the singular moment of this fact we shall not wonder to find the whole course both of nature and of providence looking towards it.

(1) Thus there were laid in the constitution of nature materials for that rich symbolism which in the light of Holy Scripture it is our business to read. When, e.g., the light diffused through space received a home for us in the sun, there seems to have been present to the thought of God the ultimate gathering up of His omnipresent glory in Christ as the spiritual light of the world. And when, under laws of organic life in animal or plant, many parts were knit together and sustained in corporate action by a force undiscoverable, resident in one part, yet penetrating the whole, He meant to foreshadow the mysterious conjunction of believing souls into one, even Jesus, through the life-giving Spirit who proceedeth from Him.

(2) So also with providence. Those strangely diverging lines which history traces have a reassembling point in the advent of Jesus Christ. To prepare the nations for it in the fulness of time, and to work out its fruits since, must be the key for the intricate movements of providence in all time.

3. If the Christian scheme of salvation through incarnate God is thus the worlds centre of gravity, then its own centre of gravity is the Cross. Modern thought is strong because it recognises the Incarnation; but it is weak because it fails to see the necessary issue of the Advent in the Cross. The event of Golgotha came to complete and to explain the event of Bethlehem. Christ took our nature in order to redeem our souls; was born that He might die. Thus we reach the heart of Christianity. That is a nerveless gospel which glozes over the fact of atonement with vague phrases; that which ignores or denies it is another gospel altogether.

4. But on these facts what is the message which rests? Not merely that the man Jesus was actually the Son of God and become one of our own race; nor that He many centuries ago suffered generously, and for our sakes died; but that the God-Man, who did once at Jerusalem cancel guilt and win deliverance, is here, and able, therefore, to save all who trust Him. He has a pardon which He won as man, yet bestows as God. This acting Christ with His direct access to and contact with men, we must preach. We preach a Christ who, because He was crucified once, is dead no more; but is even now and always breathing power and life into human hearts; and from this central power of Christ to give the Holy Ghost as the fruit of His bitter tree, there branch spiritual works manifold as the miracles of His earthly ministry.

II. The considerations which ought to regulate its delivery from every pulpit. Pentecost gave tongues to the disciples. That was the birthday of preaching. The new message brought new utterance; and times of religious awakening have been signalised by a fresh development of preaching gifts. So it was at the revival of the thirteenth century, of the fifteenth, of the eighteenth. What, then, is this novel voice which Christs gospel has found for itself?

1. As to matter, nothing which is quite foreign can be admitted, and everything which is cognate has a right to be here only in so far as it can serve the preachers main drift, and illustrate or commend his message. This is no rule of narrow exclusion; for there is hardly a department of human thought or knowledge out of connection with Jesus Christ. But the rule is of constant value nevertheless. What ponderous piles of sacred learning have sometimes buried the simple message! What wire-spun theological niceties have perplexed the hearer! The gospel has been more often discussed than preached. Nothing has any right to be in a sermon except because it contributes to the clearness and effect of the message about Christ.

2. As to the form of the message, it must be in the main declarative. If true to its nature it cannot be anything else. It admits, indeed, of embodiment in a creed; it has given to philosophy its richest, deepest principles; before it there goes out the only law of ethics: yet these are none of them the gospel. In its naked essence it is a salvation offered in the person of a Saviour. As such it is to be published. This declarative form implies two subordinate elements. We found wrapped up in the object of preaching two things, a person and a fact. Now these should give to preaching at once a historical and a personal complexion. That Christianity is rooted in the past, and had a birthplace which ties it to one spot of history. All that concerns the life of Christ, with its foreshadowings, its self-manifestations, and each recorded step which conducted to the achievement of redemption–must be prominent in the Christian pulpit. Yet the historical is to be blended with the personal element; and that ministry is best which leads straight to the living helping Saviour. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)

Christ crucified

First, the apostles carriage, as concerning the ordering of his ministry; and secondly, the apostles doctrine, as concerning the nature of those points and truths which were delivered in it. First, for his carriage; this is very much hinted unto us in the adversative particle but, where there are these things further considerable: first, his contrariety of spirit; we see plainly that Paul and the rest of the apostles with him went a quite contrary way to that which was both required by Jews and Gentiles; the one required a sign, and the other sought after wisdom; but they accommodated neither, but instead they preach Christ crucified. What do we learn from hence? That it is the duty and wisdom of a minister to cross mens carnal humours; when people shall affect such kind of preaching as is unprofitable for them, especially to make them fail of their expectation. Physicians, when their patients are immoderate in thirsting after drink, keep it from them the rather. And the reason of it is this, because satisfying of such humours feeds them, and adds strength unto them. This then meets with all such whose carriage is quite contrary hereunto, who make not their hearers necessities, but their affections, to be the rule of their teaching; and if there be any crotchet or humour more than other, which does prevail and abound in them, they will be sure to apply themselves to that in the course of their ministry. Secondly, we have here in this passage the apostles humility and self-denial, in that he did here lay aside those things wherein he might otherwise have gloried and set out himself; he here denied his own wisdom, and learning, and eloquence, and such accomplishments as these are, that so he might the better advance the gospel of Christ. Paul had been caught up into paradise, and been made partaker of such admirable mysteries as were there revealed unto him, that he now should condescend to the preaching of such familiar points, and that after such a familiar manner, as he does here intimate unto us. This I say was a business which was very much to be taken notice of in him. We preach Christ crucified. There was a great matter in that, for such poor creatures as we are. What does this now teach us but this much, that plain and familiar kind of teaching and laying down the mysteries of religion in an easy and perspicuous manner, is that which may well become the greatest and learnedest that are; it is no shame nor disparagement for any teacher. And truly why not, if indeed we consider all? for first, there is a great deal more of art and skill sometimes in it, than otherwise; to preach Christ crucified, and such fundamental truths of religion as these are, and in that manner as they ought to be preached, requires a great deal more of wisdom as belonging unto it than many other points besides, which it may be to some vain kind of minds seem far above them. It is an easier matter to preach fancies and notions, than it is to preach solid truths; it is an easier matter to preach in the enticing words of mans wisdom, than to preach in the powerful evidence and demonstration of the Spirit of God. Secondly, as there is more skill in it, so there is likewise more modesty, and less temptation and danger of miscarriage; the venting of strange speculations, and the preaching plausibly to mens humours and affections in this respect, is not without some hazard of pride and self-applause in those that shall do it. Thirdly, there is also profit and advantage hereby to our hearers, as concerning the good of their souls. Besides, if we speak of human learning and eloquence itself, we must know that this does not cross nor contradict plain kind of preaching. There may be a great deal of learning sometimes in a plain sermon, and in the opening of a plain truth in that sermon. Thirdly, here is his faithfulness and impartiality to either part in the indefiniteness of the subjects which this his doctrine extends unto, to Jew and Gentile both alike; he preaches Christ crucified to either, as a doctrine which might well fit them both. And in particular not only the Jews, which were a people of more low capacities, but likewise as well to the Greeks, which were a people of more raised apprehensions. And a minister does not wrong his hearers with such points whosoever they are. First, because they are such points which are indeed of a very deep reach in religion. Secondly, the wisest and learnedest that are, such points as these may very well become them, forasmuch as they are necessary points, and such as tend to salvation itself. If wise men will be saved they must be glad to hear of saving truths: there being but one way to salvation for them, and all others besides. Those who have the greatest skill in physic, they are glad to take the same potions for their health which others take. Thirdly, again, there is this besides considerable in it, that there is an infinite depth in these matters, which we can never sufficiently reach, or dive into, and those that knew never so much of them, yet they are still capable of knowing more. Besides, further, that we need affections even there where we need not information. This is a special ground for the preaching of plain truths to great wits, thereby to work upon their hearts, and to draw their love and affection to them. Let us not disdain the common doctrines of religion, nor think them too low for us; which as no man is too good to preach of, so no man is too good to hear, nor to have imparted and communicated unto them. Fourthly, there is here one thing more in his practice, and that is this, namely, his wisdom and discretion in the course which he here took for the curing and removing of the distempers of these Jews and Gentiles in reference to preaching; and that is by the very exercise of preaching itself. They counted it the foolishness of preaching. Well, how does the apostle now go about to free them from this mistake? why, he does it no other way than indeed by preaching to them. And this there is good cause for: first, because a great occasion of peoples prejudice against preaching is because indeed they are unacquainted with it. Secondly, because there is an authority in preaching, and an efficacy which goes along with it, which does command respect unto it. But so much of the first particular, viz., the apostles carriage as concerning the ordering of his ministry, which we have seen in four several instances. The second is the apostles doctrine for the points delivered by him, and that is Christ crucified. This was the string which the apostle here harped upon, and the lesson which he principally taught; from whence we may observe this much, that Christ crucified is the main object and matter of our preaching. But why Christ crucified, rather than Christ exhibited in some other consideration? why not rather Christ incarnate, forasmuch as that was the first news of Him? or why not Christ risen again, or Christ ascended, which was a great deal more glorious? Surely there is very good reason to be given for it: first, because he would give them the worst of Christ at first, that he might show he was not ashamed of Him, nor of that gospel which made Him known, but that hereby he might the better prepare them for other truths, and make them the welcomer to them. Christs Cross is the first letter of all in a Christians alphabet. Gods beginnings with us are commonly most tedious. His conclusions and closings are for the most part very sweet and comfortable. Secondly, because Christ crucified, it is virtually and implicitly all the rest; for why was Christ incarnate? it was for this end that He might be crucified. Thirdly, this was that mystery which did most concern us for the good and benefit which comes by it; His death was that which pacified Gods wrath, and paid the debt which was due for our sins. Lastly, Christ crucified, because this was that which these people had a particular hand in as instrumental hereunto; they had been active in the crucifying of Christ themselves. Therefore accordingly we shall find that this was the practice of the apostles in the whole course and way of their ministry. And so it is that which is the chief work of ours, it is the doctrine which is to be chiefly preached by us; and that upon these following considerations. First, as it is a doctrine of the greatest humiliation, it is an humbling and convincing doctrine. If we ask how this is done, I answer by an act of reflection and special consideration to this purpose, namely, as from hence taking notice of this grievous and odious nature of sin; those which make nothing of sin, they may here see what it is now, in the price which was paid for it, and the pain which was endured to expiate it in Christ crucified. This doctrine of Christs Passion, it is thus in this way of proceeding a doctrine of humiliation, and therefore fittest to be urged in the course of our ministry. And that because this is a main part of our ministry, to humble men and convince them of sin. Secondly, this doctrine of Christ crucified, as it has cause to be the chief work of our ministry, forasmuch as it is an humbling doctrine; so it has cause likewise to be so too, because it is a comforting doctrine, and a doctrine of the greatest comfort that can be. First, as Christs death keeps us from the wrath of God and purchases peace to us with God the Father; for that it does, as we may see in Col 1:19-20. Secondly, it obtains to us peace with angels, and all other creatures besides, whether in heaven or earth. Thirdly, it frees us from the power and dominion of sin. Fourthly, it frees us from the power and tyranny of Satan (Col 2:15). Fifthly, from bondage and thraldom to the ceremonial law, Christ crucified flees us from hence (Col 2:14). Sixthly, it frees us from the inordinate fears of death and final dissolution (1Co 15:55; Heb 2:14). Now this doctrine containing so much sweetness and comfortableness in it, what does from hence follow, but that accordingly it should be a principal part of our ministry to dispense it. Thirdly, as it is a doctrine of the richest and most abundant grace; for it contains in it the exceeding love of God towards mankind, and the height of His mercy towards us. In Christ crucified there is a combination of all the riches and mysteries of the gospel: it was His love to be incarnate, to be tempted, to be persecuted for us; yea, but His Passion it was the accomplishment and perfection of all the rest (Joh 15:13). What is it then to preach Christ crucified? For answer hereunto, we must know thus much, that the meaning hereof is not this, that we should preach of no other subject but only of the death of Christ; for there are many other points besides which it is necessary for a minister to speak of, and for a Christian likewise to hear of. First, for the matter of our preaching, that we are to preach this principally, and to make people sensible of this point more especially above any other, because the hinge of the gospel turns upon this point, and we are ministers of the gospel. Secondly, for the order of our preaching, to do all in reference to this; then we preach Christ crucified, not only when we discourse of this argument for the particular subject of it, but likewise when we preach of such points as are introductive and preparatory hereunto, or which are superstructed and founded hereupon. Thirdly, for the manner of our preaching, we then preach Christ crucified, when we preach Christ and the doctrine of Christ in a grave and sober fashion; this is clear by the opposition which the apostle Paul himself there sets (1Co 2:2), where he sets this preaching of Christ crucified as opposite to the excellency of human speech. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)

Preaching Christ

The expression means–

I. To preach his doctrines. If I say that Newton is taught in our universities, I mean his doctrines are taught; and to preach Christ crucified is to preach His doctrines (Act 15:21). For example, the world says, Resent an injury; Christ says, Forgive your enemies. If, therefore, we preach forgiveness, are we not thereby preaching Christ, even though no distinct mention may be made of His Divinity, or of the doctrine of the Atonement? The world says, Indulge your inclinations; Christ says, Be pure in the last recesses of your mind. He, then, who lives a pure life is teaching Christ, even though he may not on every occasion name Him. In the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Epistle of St. James, there is not one word respecting the Atonement; hut if we work out the truths contained in them we preach Christ.

II. Preaching truth in connection with a person; it is not merely purity, but the Pure One; not merely goodness, but the Good One, that we worship. Observe the advantages of this mode of preaching.

1. It makes religion practical.

2. It gives us something to adore, for we can adore a person, but we cannot adore principles.

III. Preaching surrender to the will of God. St. Paul would not preach Christ the conqueror, but Christ the crucified, Christ the humble. You may know a man when once you know what it is he worships. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

Preaching Christ and preaching the times

Archbishop Leighton was once publicly reprimanded for not preaching up the times. Who, he asked, does preach up the times? It was answered that all the brethren did. Then, he rejoined, if all of you preach up the times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach up Christ and eternity. (Principal Edwards.)

Christ crucified

We have here–

I. A gospel rejected.

1. By the Jew. A respectable man the Jew was in his day; all formal religion was concentrated in his person. To him the fact that Jesus was the carpenter of Nazareth was proof positive that He was not the Messiah. He bow to the Nazarine! Accordingly, he turned a deaf ear to Paul. Farewell, old Jew. Alas! that Christ who was thy stumbling block shall be thy Judge. But I am going to find out the Jew here. You, too, have a religion which you love–so far as the outside goes. When I tell you that all your going to the house of God, your singing and praying, all pass for nothing if your heart is not right with God, the Cross becomes a stumbling block. Another specimen of the Jew is thoroughly orthodox; he thinks nothing of forms and ceremonies. Here, up in this dark attic of the head, his religion has taken up its abode; he has a best parlour down in his heart, but his religion never goes there. He has money in there, worldliness, self-love, pride; and accordingly when once you begin to strike home, and let him see what he is by nature, and what he must become by grace, the man cannot stand that.

2. By the Greek. He is a person of quite a different exterior to the Jew. He does not care for the forms of religion. He appreciates eloquence; He admires a smart saying; he likes to read the last new book; and to him the gospel is foolishness. He is thoroughly wise. Ask him anything, and he knows it. If you are a Mahomedan he will hear you very patiently. But if you talk to him of Christ, Stop your cant, he says, I dont want to hear anything about that. This Greek gentleman believes all philosophy except the true one; he studies all wisdom except the wisdom of God. Once when I saw him, he told me he did not believe in any religion at all; and that it was best to live as nature dictated. Another time he spoke welt of all religions, and believed they were all right in their place; and that if a man were sincere, he would be all right at last. I told him I did not think so, and he said I was a bigot. Another time I discussed with him a little about faith. He said, Right; that is true Protestant doctrine. But presently I hinted something about free grace; but that was to him foolishness. Ah, wise man, thy wisdom will stand thee here, but what wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan?

II. The gospel triumphant. Unto us who are called &c. Yonder man rejects the gospel, despises grace, and laughs at it as a delusion. Here is another who laughed at it too; but God brought him to his knees. The Jew and the Greek shall never depopulate heaven. The choirs of glory shall not lose a single songster by all the opposition of Jews and Greeks. John Bunyan says, The hen has two calls, the common cluck, which she gives hourly, and the special one which she means for her little chickens. So there is a general call to every man; the other is the childrens call. You know how the bell sounds over the workshop to call the men to work–that is a general call. The father goes to the door and calls out, John, it is dinner-time!–that is the special call. The call which saves, is like that of Jesus, when He said, Mary, and she said unto Him, Rabboni; when He said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? and Zaccheus, come down. I cannot give the special call; God alone can give it, and I leave it with Him.

III. The gospel admired; unto us who are called of God, it is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. This must be a matter of pure experience. If you are called of God this morning, you will know it. I do not understand how a man can be killed and then made alive again and not know it.

1. The gospel is to the true believer a thing of power. What is it that makes the young man devote himself as a missionary to the cause of God? What is it that constrains yonder minister, in the midst of the cholera, to stand by the bed of one who has that dire disease? And what emboldens that timid female to go through that den of thieves? It is the power of the gospel. But I behold another scene. A martyr is hurried to the stake; the flame is lighted up. What makes him stand unmoved in the flames? The power of the Cross. Behold another scene. There is no crowd there; it is a silent room. There is a poor pallet, and a young girl lying on it, her face blanched by consumption. Joan of Are was not half so mighty as that girl. Hear her sing: Jesus! lover of my soul, &c., as she shuts her eye on earth, and opens it in heaven. What enables her to die like that? The power of Jesus crucified.

2. To a believer the gospel is the perfection of wisdom, and if it appear not so to the ungodly, it is because of the perversion of their judgment. It has been the custom to talk of infidels as men of great intellect. But this is a mistake; for the gospel is the sum of wisdom; a treasure-house of truth. Our meditation upon it enlarges the mind. It confers wisdom on its students. A man who is a lover of the truth, as it is in Jesus, is in a right place to follow with advantage any other branch of science. Once when I read books, I put all my knowledge together in confusion; but ever since I put Christ in the centre, each science has revolved round it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ crucified

The Cross is the preachers theme. In all ages and lands this theme of the apostle has lent to the preachers voice the most thrilling tones, and to his spirit the deepest earnestness. Preaching is mans wisdom as well as Gods. It is the simplest, wisest, most natural, and most effectual way of lodging our beliefs in the hearts and consciences of men. But among all preachers in all ages the preachers of the Cross stand pre-eminent. The Cross stirs the heart, chains the spirit, as no other theme in this universe can do.

I. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. Jews and Greeks. These are not names of the past. The world still divides itself thus in its moral aspects.

1. The Jews require a sign. Two thoughts were ever clashing in the Jewish mind. The earlier splendours of their national history, and their present bondage and shame. The restorer of the kingdom of Israel was the national description of the expected deliverer; but when they saw that the only empire Christ cared for was over the hearts and consciences of men–that there was no chance of a national restoration, they turned from Him. But He knew how little earth would be helped by the establishment of such a society as the Jews were dreaming of. There is many a man in a popular tumult who will throw up his cap and shout Liberty! whose notion of liberty is the grossest licentiousness or the sternest tyranny. And many a Jew would attend a triumphal progress, and rend the air with Hosannas, who, when he heard of an inward moral reformation as the first act of obedience, would change his cry to Crucify Him! I take the Jewish seeking for a sign as the representative of that seeking for an outward regeneration of society which has lived in the hearts of the men of this world in all ages. Socialism is its most modern manifestation. The hope that if society were rearranged, property redivided, and a fair start given to all, man would be blessed. The difficulty lies not there, say the preachers of the gospel: your hearts need the cure, not your circumstances. The Jews sought a sign, a hint even, that Jesus was anything like what their fancies pictured; and when He gave no sign but His shameful Cross, they shouted, Better Caesar than He. And the world is full of sign-seekers. Men looking for redemption, but misconceiving utterly its nature. French republics, New Jerusalems, all mean the same thing. Men expect that God will begin from without instead of from within.

2. The Greeks seek after wisdom. The Greeks represent those who try by searching to find out God. Greek intellect was hopelessly baffled in the search. Blank atheism was the result of it in all the philosophic schools. An altar to the unknown God kept up the memory of the effort in the mind of the populace; but every thinker on earth had been brought, in the absence of revelation, to the bewildered question of Pilate What is truth? Some said, There is such a thing, but man can have no hope of finding it. Some said, Tush! there is no such thing in the universe at all. That a tale of a crucified man in an obscure and dishonoured country should be what they had been fruitlessly seeking for ages was an insult to their understandings. In them was the same radical indisposition to accept a gospel which demanded an inward and spiritual change. It was only after long battles that intellect, with broken wing, fell bleeding on the bosom of revelation, and healed her wounds and renewed her life at the once hated symbol of the Cross. But intellect is essentially restless. In every age the battle is renewed, and has to be fought out with varying success. And in this age the wisdom-seekers are rampant, proclaiming that not from God, but from man must be asked the question, What must I do?–that our own nature, honestly treated, will supply all that is needful; that the Cross is an insult to the wisdom and benignity of the Father; that Jesus is the first of men–an admirable pattern, but that they dream who say, He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Far easier, far pleasanter to the eye is it, to seek after wisdom than to seek after holiness.

II. We preach Christ crucified. Read Rom 3:21; Rom 5:1-11; Rom 6:3-11; Php 2:5-11; Heb 2:9-18; Heb 4:14-16; 1Co 15:45-57. In Christ crucified the following facts are set forth as the gospel–

1. The love of the Father in the sacrifice of the Son. Philip had a much deeper meaning than he was perhaps conscious of when he said, Show us the Father. None of the gods of heathendom contented heathendom, for they could not show the Father, they did not know what fatherhood meant; but those men had a mighty gospel who could say, God so loved the world, &c. We tell you not what God ought to be or do, or may be expected to do, but what God has done. Behold Christ Jesus and Him crucified! There God unveils His character–reveals His heart. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Jew seeking after a sign, Greek groping after wisdom, turn hither–Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us. Is this truth folly or wisdom? Is it weakness or power? Is life worth less to the man who knows that the Father loveth him, or is it worth more? And the world, is it better or worse for the belief that God loves it, and will, by loves sure purpose, redeem it to Himself? Get that belief into the heart of the world, your dream is fulfilled–your golden age is restored!

2. The redemption wrought by the work of the Son. The picture of humanity which God beholds is that of bondsmen, bound to an alien and usurping power. The evidence of this condition, it meets us everywhere. Sin had entered into the world, sin had mastered it; God entered into it to break the bonds of sin and restore the world to itself and to Him. Is it nothing that the preachers of this gospel should cry to souls hopeless of victory, Liberty! a man has conquered, a man has lived free from sin; a man whose spirit can so chain your spirit by its living attraction as to ensure to you the victory too? The public justice of the universe is satisfied, its law illustrated and magnified, and the sinner, conscience-stricken, but beginning to cherish the hope of restoration, is satisfied that a God of holiness, of justice, will still be honoured, while he, the guilty, is saved! Men laughed, and called it folly; but hell trembled, Satan cowered, for they understood the attraction of the Cross. Satans Conqueror cried out, It is finished, and committed to such hands as Pauls the standard of the Cross, who cried, I preach Christ crucified, &c.

3. The glory won by the suffering and Cross of Jesus, which is to illumine heaven eternally (Php 2:6-11). The sun is the centre of the world of nature; the Cross, of the world of spirit. But here is a strange contradiction. The sun is the most glorious object in creation, it fills all heaven with its splendour; but the Cross is to all men naturally an object of dread and aversion, and is associated with shame, agony, and death. But just as the sun has for ages proved itself the centre of our world of nature, the Cross has proved itself the centre of the world of spirit, has chained the most mighty and onward spirits to its orbit (Rev 5:6-10). Here, mark you, is the most splendid picture of heaven which is anywhere painted; yet this must mean that the Cross, far from fading from sight when the veil falls over earths sad history, remains the object of interest, the centre of attraction through eternity. That this must be so will appear to us if we consider–

1. The Cross must remain for ever the manifestation of the depth, the tenderness, the mightiness of the love of God.

2. While the Cross shall be to the saints for ever the bond of fellowship with their risen and glorified Lord, the Lord Himself, while He remembers the Cross as the instrument of His agony, beholds it as the fountain of glory and of bliss. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)

Christ crucified

I. The doctrine. Christ crucified.

1. The light.

2. The hope.

3. The law of the world.

II. Its offensiveness.

1. A stumbling block.

2. Foolishness.

III. Its triumphs–in them that believe.

1. The power of God.

2. The wisdom of God. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Christ crucified

It is a very strange conjunction of words–the Anointed of God crucified. Yet for this very purpose He was anointed, and our preaching is the preaching of Christ, that is the glory of His Person; but it is Christ crucified that is in the ignominy and shame of His suffering. In dividing the text we will take each word.

I. A word of position–But.

1. It is not everybody that does this; others have other things to do.

2. The but seems to suggest opposition, viz., the contentions which prevailed at Corinth. What are we to do when we find people quarrelling? If we are wise we shall let them alone, and say through it all, But we preach Christ crucified. I have known a Church divided into as many divisions as there were members, and there has come a warm-hearted Christian man who has just preached Christ crucified, and somehow before they knew it the members melted into one.

3. The but seems to me, however, to have reference to the very wise people to whom the Cross was foolishness. They were abreast of the times, they kept pace with progress, so they preached Christ so improved that it was no longer the gospel, but another gospel. I like Pauls grand way of teaching the Gnostics, or the knowers; he joined the know-nothings, for he says, I determined not to know anything among you save Christ and Him crucified. Let these Gnostics preach what they like, but we preach Christ crucified.

4. We know some brethren whose religion consists always in mending the religion of others. You may be preaching niceties of doctrine, of theories, of prophecy, &c., while what is wanted is the cure for the souls of men who are perishing for lack of knowledge, and the knowledge that they want is wrapped up in these two words, Christ crucified.

5. And had Paul been here he would have made some remark about the superstitions of this age, for there be some that seem to think God is best honoured by buildings of gorgeous architecture, and by sumptuous services. Our friend has built a reredos, has decorated a holy table, has prepared the chancel, and thinks he has brought back mediaeval Christianity; but we preach Christ crucified.

II. A word of personality–We. Why do we do it? Because–

1. He saved us. We cannot help preaching this, because every day it is the rest and refuge, the joy and the delight of our souls.

2. He inspires us. We preach Christ crucified, because years ago He laid His hand upon us, and said, Go, preach My gospel.

3. It seems the masterpiece of God. Heaven and earth are full of His majesty, and both in nature and providence we learn to adore the ever-present and eternal One. But in Immanuel, God with us, there is most of God.

4. We are fools, as the enemy says.

(1) Any fool can say that which is uppermost; and truly, brethren, I am myself a great fool in that respect, for uppermost with me is Christ crucified.

(2) Fools can always say what they are told. They are not great at invention. There are some that carry with them a touchstone, by which they judge inspiration itself–their inner consciousness, and the general tone of public opinion. Paul, of course, did not know much about that, because he was crucified to the world, and the world to him, and he did not care much about public opinion.

(3) Fools generally talk when they are wonder-struck, and we confess that we have been astounded at the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(4) Fools can generally speak if they are forced, and we do confess that that is exactly one point that accounts for our folly. Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. We cannot take any credit when we preach Christ crucified, because it lies within us like fire, and we cannot help but speak of it.

(5) And surely men may speak when there is a great danger. If there were a house on fire, and a poor soul needed to be delivered, I do not suppose that before a man wheeled the fire-escape up to a window you would stop him to see whether he could pass an examination at Oxford. And so we must be permitted while men are perishing to preach to them that alone which will save them–namely, Christ crucified.

(6) We are determined, as any other sensible fools would do, to stop by what we know till we learn something better. In the State of Massachusetts there was a resolution passed that the State should be guided and governed by the laws of God till they had time to make some better; and we have determined that we will preach Christ crucified till we find something better.

III. A word of action We preach, or proclaim as heralds. We are trumpeters for Christ, we go before Him to prepare His way. Hence, some have said the preacher ought to preach principally the second Advent. Undoubtedly; but first he should be able to say, we preach Christ crucified, not we preach Christ glorified. Because to preach means to proclaim, therefore we proclaim Christ as King. Submit yourselves unto Him. It is not a matter of choice with you. It is not Will you elect some king? but He is King; submit to Him. Neither are we called upon to adorn Christ crucified. I think we are getting into great mistakes about sermons sometimes. Gild gold, and lay your colours on the lily, but let Christ alone, and if you cannot do anything but just tell simply the story of the love of God in providing an atonement, do tell it and leave those fine words at home.

IV. The two last words–Christ crucified.

1. Preach all of Christ. When Paul says, We preach Christ crucified, he seems to me to say, We preach the most objectionable part of Christ. I like a Christian man that preaches all he believes. Now, Paul, this is very unwise of you. There is a Jewish gentleman, a man of large means; if we could get him into the Church he might very likely build a chapel, and you preached Christ. And then there was a Greek gentleman. Now, why did you not preach Christ in His glory, or say little about Him? We cannot expect to get these Jewish and Greek friends converted to us, if we will stiffly remain by the old orthodoxy. The whole current of thought leads you to believe that there is a great deal in Mahomedanism and Brahminism, and it is a great pity to push these distinctive points so very far. I fancy I hear anybody saying that to Paul! Did we come here to please men? I charge you never needlessly offend anybody; but if the truth offend anybody, let them be offended; for it is much better to offend all the world than to offend your Master.

2. As we preach all of Christ, so this is all. But we have some other doctrines. Yes; but they are all relating to this. When you have said that, you have said everything.

3. We preach Him as all. That is all. If you are converted, all your salvation lies in Christ crucified. Oh, but I want a new heart. Go to Him for it. Oh, but I want to feel my need. He gives you this, as well as all the rest.

4. We will all preach Christ. But we are not all ministers, saith one. I hope you all preach Christ, you that are not ministers. A minister once said, Now all of you must teach Jesus, and try to bring others to Christ; you must all tell what you know. There was a black man in the gallery called out, Dat will I do. But his minister stopped, for Sam was the most ignorant member of the Church, and he said, Sam, I do not mean you; because you do not know more than your A B C. Dats right, sar, said he; dere be some niggers dont know A B C–Sam teach them dat. You young converts that do not know much about Christ, you know something other sinners do not know. Go and tell that, and each bit you get go and tell them. You will learn it all the better by teaching it yourself.

5. We preach Christ crucified to all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ crucified

I. We preach, i.e., proclaim, herald. Commonly, however, in the N.T., voice, in contradistinction to other agencies, is usually intended. Faith cometh by hearing. There are additional instrumentalities which have been greatly honoured. For instance, the gospel is printed. The press is a mighty power for good. Again, the gospel may be painted. Sermons have proceeded from studios as well as from studies, and the picture-gallery has illustrated impressively the glorious work of grace. Zinzendorf traced back his deepest convictions to the effect produced upon him by a representation of the crucified Saviour. And this is not marvellous. Look at the Last Supper of Leonardo; the Transfiguration of Raphael; or, the Light of the World by Holman Hunt. Are you unmoved by them? Nevertheless, it is chiefly by speech that the mind is reached and the heart touched. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. An experienced missionary has remarked, I have never seen a Chinaman weep over a book; but I have seen a Chinaman weep under a sermon. We have the sermons of George Whitfield and the orations of Edward Irving, and the reason why you are not affected as others were is because they heard, whereas you only read.

II. We preach christ–Paul habitually called the attention of his hearers to a Person. We preach Christ: Christ as He was, the one perfect and finished offering for human sin: Christ as He is, the Mediator between God and man; Christ as He will be, the Judge of every creature. In adopting such a course the apostles followed the Master Himself. Christ preached Christ. I say, I am, I do, I will: how often did these words fall from His lips! No prophet dared to speak as He spoke. The power of this Christian ministry is in the presentation, not simply of great truths, but of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.

III. We preach Christ crucified. Because–

1. Christ crucified reveals God. Hereby perceive we the love of God. Write the biography of Columbus and say nothing of America, speak of Caxton and be silent about printing, allude to Wyckliffe and ignore the Reformation, then may we preach Christ and forget Christ crucified.

2. Christ crucified restores man. So Paul found. He spoke from experience. A North-American Indian was asked the means by which he and his brethren became Christians. The answer was: A preacher came once, and desiring to instruct us, began by proving that there was a God. On which we said to him, Well! and dost thou think that we are ignorant of that? Now go again whence thou earnest. Another preacher appeared and said, Ye must not steal, ye must not lie, &c. We answered him, Dost thou think that we do not know that? Go and learn it first thyself, and teach the people that thou belongest to not to do these things. Some time after this, Christian Henry, one of the brethren, came to me in my hut, and sat down by me and said: I come to thee in the name of the Lord of heaven and earth. He acquaints thee that He would gladly save thee, and rescue thee from the miserable state in which thou liest. To this end He became Man, hath given His life for mankind, and shed His blood for them! Upon this he lay down on a board in my hut, and fell asleep, being fatigued with his journey. I thought what manner of man is this? There he lies and sleeps so sweetly. I might kill him immediately, and throw him out into the forest, and who would care for it? But he is unconcerned. However, I could not get rid of his words; and though I went to sleep I dreamed of the blood which Christ had shed for us. Thus, through the grace of God, the awakening among us took place. What a lesson to all Christian workers! Behold the secret of power. Christ crucified is the worlds hope. (T. R. Stevenson.)

The crucifixion of Christ

I. Was most bitter and painful.

II. Was most vile and shameful. Never by the Romans legally inflicted upon freemen, but only upon slaves. There is in mans nature an abhorrency of disgraceful abuse no less strong than are the little antipathies to pain. Whence it is not marvellous that as a transcendently good man, Christ was affected by those occurrences so mightily, according to that ejaculation in the Greek liturgies–By Thy unknown sufferings, O Christ, have mercy on us.

III. Had in it some particular advantages conducing to the accomplishment of our Lords principal design.

1. Its being very notorious and lasting a competent time. For if He had been privately made away, or suddenly despatched, no such great notice would have been taken of it, nor would it have been so fully proved to the confirmation of our faith and conviction of infidelity; nor would His excellent deportment under such affliction have so illustriously shone forth; wherefore Divine providence did so manage, that as the course of His life, so also the manner of His death should be most conspicuous and remarkable.

2. By this kind of suffering the nature of that kingdom which He intended to erect was evidently signified–a kingdom purely spiritual, consisting in she government of mens hearts. No other kingdom could He be presumed to design, who submitted to this way of suffering.

3. By such a death Gods special providence was discovered, and His glory illustrated in the propagation of the gospel. Thereby the excellency of Divine power and wisdom was much glorified: by so impotent and improbable means, accomplishing so great effects.

4. This kind of suffering to the devout fathers did seem in many ways significant, or full of instructive and admonitive emblems.

(1) His posture on the Cross might represent unto us that large and comprehensive charity which He bare in His heart toward us, stretching forth His arms of kindness, pity, and mercy, with them, as it were, to embrace the world.

(2) His ascent to the Cross might set forth His discharging that high office of universal High Priest for all ages and all people, the Cross being an altar.

IV. Corresponded to the prophecies and types foreshadowing it.

V. As applicable to our practice. No contemplation is more efficacious towards the sanctification of our hearts and lives than this; for what good affection may not the meditation on it kindle? what virtue may it not breed and cherish in us?

(1) Love.

(2) Gratitude.

(3) Hope.

(4) Obedience.

(5) Penitence.

(6) Fear.

(7) Deterrence from wilful commission of sin.

(8) Joy in contemplation.

(9) Charity toward our neighbour.

(10) Disregard of this world.

(11) The willing inspection and the cheerful sustenance of the Cross.

Since there he such excellent uses and fruits of the Cross borne by our blessed Saviour, we can have no reason to be offended at it or ashamed of it. (I. Barrow, D. D.)

The Cross of Christ

Note–

I. Its simplicity.

1. It was characteristic of the Jews to demand signs or portents. The especial sign which they sought was that of some manifestation of the Shekinah to encompass the Messiah. But the tendency was more general: it was the craving for the marvellous which still characterises Oriental nations, which appears in the licence of Arabian invention and credulity, and which among the Jews reached its highest pitch in the extravagant fictions of Rabbinical writers. The proverb Credat Judaeus shows the character which they had obtained amongst the Romans for readiness to accept the wildest absurdities; and this disposition to seek for signs is expressly commended in the Mishna. To a certain extent this tendency is met by the gospel miracles (Joh 2:11; Act 2:22). Yet on the whole it was discouraged (Mat 16:4; Joh 4:48). And what is thus intimated in the Gospels is here followed out by the apostle. In answer to the demand for signs, he produced the least dazzling, the least miraculous part of Christs career. The more ample we suppose the evidence for the Gospel miracles, or the more portentous their nature, so much more striking is the testimony of Christ and His apostles to the truth that it is not on them that the main structure is to be built.

2. This simplicity was also a rebuke to the intellectual demands of the Greek. The subtlety of discussion which had appeared in the numerous schools of Greek speculation, and which appeared afterwards in the theological divisions of the fourth and fifth centuries, needed not now, as in the time of Socrates, to be put down by a truer philosophy, but by something which should give men fact instead of speculation, flesh and blood instead of words and theories. Such a new starting point was provided by the apostles constant representation of the crucifixion. Its outward form was familiar to them; it was for them now to discover its inward application to themselves.

II. Its humiliation. In order to enter into the force of this, we must picture a state of feeling which, in part from the effect produced on the world by this very passage and the spirit which it describes, is entirely removed from our present experience. Not only is the outward symbol of the Cross glorified in our eyes by the truth of the religion which it represents, but the very fact of the connection between Christianity and humiliation is one of the proofs of its Divine excellence. But at its first propagation, as now in parts of the world external to Christendom, it was far otherwise. The crucifixion was and is a scandal to the Jews as a dishonour to the Messiah. Christ has been called by them in derision Toldi, the man who was hanged; and Christians, the servants of him who was hanged. And in the Koran, the supposed ignominy of the crucifixion is evaded by the story that the Jews, in a judicial blindness, crucified Judas instead of Christ, who ascended from their hands into heaven. The same objection was felt by the educated Greeks and Romans; encumbered as Christianity then was in their eyes with associations so low. Nothing shows the confidence of the apostle more strongly than the prominence he gives to a teaching so unpopular. Php 2:5-8 contains the prophecy of the triumph of Christianity not only in spite, but by means of this great obstacle. And now the Cross is enshrined in our most famous works of art, in our greatest historical recollections, in our deepest feelings of devotion. The society which consisted almost exclusively in the first instance of the lower orders, has now embraced within it all the civilisation of the world. (Dean Stanley.)

The Atonement adapted to all

There is a want in the human mind which nothing but the Atonement can satisfy, though it may he a stumbling block to the Jew, and foolishness to the Greek. In the words of Henry Rogers: It is adapted to human nature, as a hitter medicine may be to a patient. Those who have taken it, tried its efficacy, and recovered spiritual health, gladly proclaim its value. But to those who have not, and will not try it, it is an unpalatable potion still. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

En touto nika

The foolishness of God? The weakness of God? Can God be weak? Can God be foolish? No, says St. Paul. For so strong is God that His very weakness, if He seems weak, is stronger than all mankind. So wise is God, that His very foolishness, if He seems foolish, is wiser than all mankind. Why, then, talk of the weakness of God, of the foolishness of God, if He be neither weak nor foolish? St. Paul did not say these ugly words for himself. The Jews, who sought after a sign, the Greeks, who sought after wisdom, said them. There are men who say them now. Now, how is this?

I. The jews required a sign; a sign from heaven; a sign of Gods power. Thunder and earthquakes, armies of angels, taking vengeance on the heathen; these were the signs of Christ which they expected. And all that St. Paul gave them was a sign of Christs weakness. Then said the Jews–This is no Christ for us. Then answered St. Paul–Weak? I tell you that what seems to you weakness is the very power of God. Weak, shamed, despised, dying, He is still Conqueror; and He will at last draw all men to Himself. What seems to you weakness is the very power of God; the power of suffering all things, that He may do good: and that that will conquer the world, when riches and glory, and armies, aye, the very thunder and the earthquake, have failed utterly.

II. The greeks sought after wisdom. They expected Paul to argue with them on cunning points of philosophy; and all he gave them seemed mere foolishness. He could have argued with these Greeks, for he was a great scholar and a true philosopher, but he would not. What you need, and what they need, is not philosophy, but a new heart and a right spirit. Then know this, that God so loved you that He condescended to become man, and to give Himself up to death, even the death of the Cross, that He might save you from your sins. And to that, those proud Greeks answered–The cross? Tell your tale to slaves, not to us. To give Himself up to the death of the cross is foolishness, and not the wisdom which we want. Then answered St. Paul, True, the cross is a slaves and a wretchs death; and therefore slaves and wretches will hear me, though you will not (verses 26-31). You Greeks, with all your philosophy, have been trying for hundreds of years to find out the laws of heaven and earth, and to set the world right by them; and you have not done it. You have not even set your own hearts and lives right. But what your seeming wisdom cannot do, the seeming foolishness of Christ on His Cross will do. That what seems to you foolishness is the very wisdom of God. Know, that when all your arguments and philosophies have failed to teach men what they ought to do, one earnest, penitent look at Christ upon His Cross will teach them. And out of them shall spring that Church of Christ, which shall reign over all the world, when you and your philosophies have crumbled into dust. Conclusion:

1. Let us learn–

(1) That self-sacrificing love which Christ showed on His Cross is stronger than all pomp and might, all armies, riches, governments; aye, that it is the very power of God, by which all things consist, which holds together heaven and earth and all there is therein.

(2) That that love is wiser than all arguments, doctrines, philosophies, whether they be true or false.

2. Do you wish to be powerful? Then look at Christ upon His Cross; at what seems to men His weakness; and learn from Him how to be strong. Do you wish to be wise? Then look at Christ upon the Cross; and at what seemed to men His folly; and learn from Him how to be wise. For sooner or later, I hope and trust, you will find that true which St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say, That all the learning in the world had never taught.him so much as the sight of Christ upon the Cross. (G. Kingsley, M. A.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 22. For the Jews require a sign] Instead of , a sign, ABCDEFG, several others, both the Syriac, Coptic, Vulgate, and Itala, with many of the fathers, have , signs; which reading, as undoubtedly genuine, Griesbach has admitted into the text. There never was a people in the universe more difficult to be persuaded of the truth than the Jews: and had not their religion been incontestably proved by the most striking and indubitable miracles, they never would have received it. This slowness of heart to believe, added to their fear of being deceived, induced them to require miracles to attest every thing that professed to come from God. They were a wicked and adulterous generation, continually seeking signs, and never saying, It is enough. But the sign which seems particularly referred to here is the assumption of secular power, which they expected in the Messiah; and because this sign did not appear in Christ, therefore they rejected him.

And the Greeks seek after wisdom.] Such wisdom, or philosophy, as they found in the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Plato, &c., which was called philosophy, and which came recommended to them in all the beauties and graces of the Latin and Greek languages.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

The Jews were not without some true Divine revelation, and owned the true God, and only desired some miraculous operation from Christ, Mat 12:38; Joh 4:48, to confirm them that Christ was sent from God: without signs and wonders they would not believe; giving no credit at all to the words of Christ. And the Greeks, (by whom the apostle understands the Gentiles), especially the more learned part of them, (for Greece was at this time very famous for human literature), they sought after the demonstration of all things from natural causes and rational arguments, and despised every thing which could not so be made out unto them.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

22. Forliterally, “Since,”seeing that. This verse illustrates how the “preaching” ofChrist crucified came to be deemed “foolishness” (1Co1:21).

a signThe oldestmanuscripts read “signs.” The singular was a latercorrection from Mat 12:38;Mat 16:1; Joh 2:18.The signs the Jews craved for were not mere miracles, but directtokens from heaven that Jesus was Messiah (Lu11:16).

Greeks seek . . .wisdomnamely, a philosophic demonstration of Christianity.Whereas Christ, instead of demonstrative proof, demands faithon the ground of His word, and of a reasonable amount ofevidence that the alleged revelation is His word. Christianity beginsnot with solving intellectual difficulties, but with satisfying theheart that longs for forgiveness. Hence not the refined Greeks, butthe theocratic Jews were the chosen organ for propagating revelation.Again, intellectual Athens (Ac17:18-21, &c.) received the Gospel less readily thancommercial Corinth.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

For the Jews require a sign,…. The Jews had always been used to miracles, in confirmation of the mission of the prophets sent unto them, and therefore insisted on a sign proving Jesus to be the true Messiah; except signs and wonders were wrought, they would not believe; and though miracles were wrought in great numbers, and such as never man did, they remained incredulous, and persisted in demanding a sign from heaven, and in their own way; and it was told them that no other sign should be given them, but that of the prophet Jonah, by which was signified the resurrection of Christ from the dead; this was given them, and yet they believed not, but went on to require a sign still; nothing but miracles would do with them, and they must be such as they themselves pleased: the Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Vulgate Latin version, read “signs”, in the plural number:

and the Greeks seek after wisdom; the wisdom of the world, natural wisdom, philosophy, the reason of things, the flowers of rhetoric, the ornaments of speech, the beauties of oratory, the justness of style and diction; as for doctrines they regarded none, but such as they could comprehend with, and account for by their carnal reason, everything else they despised and exploded. Hence we often read l of , “the Grecian wisdom”, or wisdom of the Greeks; which, the Jews say m, lay in metaphors and dark sayings, which were not understood but by them that were used to it; the study of it was forbidden by them, though some of their Rabbins were conversant with it n.

l T. Bab Menachot, fol 99. 2. Bava Kama, fol. 82. 2. m Maimon & Bartenora in Misn. Sota, c. 9. sect. 14. n Shalshelet Hakabala, fol. 25. 1. Ganz. Tzemach David, par. 3. fol. 31. 2.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Seeing that (). Resumes from verse 21. The structure is not clear, but probably verses 1Cor 1:23; 1Cor 1:24 form a sort of conclusion or apodosis to verse 22 the protasis. The resumptive, almost inferential, use of like in the apodosis is not unusual.

Ask for signs ( ). The Jews often came to Jesus asking for signs (Matt 12:38; Matt 16:1; John 6:30).

Seek after wisdom ( ). “The Jews claimed to possess the truth: the Greeks were seekers, speculators” (Vincent) as in Ac 17:23.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

The Jews. Omit the article. Among the Jews many had become Christians.

Require (aijtousin). Rev., ask. But it is questionable whether the A. V. is not preferable. The word sometimes takes the sense of demand, as Luk 12:48; 1Pe 3:15; and this sense accords well with the haughty attitude of the Jews, demanding of all apostolic religions their proofs and credentials. See Mt 12:38; Mt 16:1; Joh 6:30.

Greeks. See on Act 6:1.

Seek after (zhtousin). Appropriate to the Greeks in contrast with the Jews. The Jews claimed to possess the truth : the Greeks were seekers, speculators (compare Act 17:23) after what they called by the general name of wisdom.

Christ crucified [ ] . Not the crucified Christ, but Christ as crucified, not a sign – shower nor a philosopher; and consequently a scandal to the Jew and folly to the Gentile.

Unto the Greeks (%Ellhsi). The correct reading is eqnesin to the Gentiles. So Rev. Though %Ellhnev Greeks, is equivalent to Gentiles in the New Testament when used in antithesis to Jews, yet in this passage Paul seems to have in mind the Greeks as representing gentile wisdom and culture.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “For the Jews require a sign.” (Greek epeide kai) “seeing or beholding that both” (Greek ioudaioi semeia aitousin) “Jews signs (many) plead for, request, or require” – they were adamant materialists claiming to believe only the visibly tangible, Joh 6:30-36; Mat 16:1-4; Mar 8:11-12.

2) “And the Greeks seek after wisdom.” (Greek kai hellenes sophian zetousin) “and the Greeks seek after or diligently pursue wisdom.” How vainly many search for wisdom and God, apart from Divine help. Their mind, spirit, eyes, and soul are without Spiritual life, having the sensual life only – being dead in trespasses and sin, blinded by the God of this world. Eph 2:1-5; Eph 2:12; 2Co 4:3-4; Joh 16:7-11.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

22. For the Jews require a sign This is explanatory of the preceding statement — showing in what respects the preaching of the gospel is accounted foolishness At the same time he does not simply explain, but even goes a step farther, by saying that the Jews do not merely despise the gospel, but even abhor it. “The Jews,” says he, “desire through means of miracles to have before their eyes an evidence of divine power: the Greeks are fond of what tends to gratify human intellect by the applause of acuteness. We, on the other hand, preach Christ crucified, wherein there appears at first view nothing but weakness and folly. He is, therefore, a stumblingblock to the Jews, when they see him as it were forsaken by God. To the Greeks it appears like a fable, to be told of such a method of redemption.” By the term Greeks here, in my opinion, he does not mean simply Gentiles, but has in view those who had the polish of the liberal sciences, or were distinguished by superior intelligence. At the same time by synecdoche, all the others come in like manner to be included. Between Jews and Greeks, however, he draws this distinction, that the former, striking against Christ by an unreasonable zeal for the law, raged against the gospel with unbounded fury, as hypocrites are wont to do, when contending for their superstitions; while the Greeks, on the other hand, puffed up with pride, regarded him with contempt as insipid.

When he ascribes it to the Jews as a fault, that they are eagerly desirous of signs, it is not on the ground of its being wrong in itself to demand signs, but he exposes their baseness in the following respects: — that by an incessant demand for miracles, they in a manner sought to bind God to their laws — that, in accordance with the dullness of their apprehension, they sought as it were to feel him out (93) in manifest miracles — that they were taken up with the miracles themselves, and looked upon them with amazement — and, in fine, that no miracles satisfied them, but instead of this, they every day gaped incessantly for new ones. Hezekiah is not reproved for having of his own accord allowed himself to be confirmed by a sign, (2Kg 19:29, and 2Kg 20:8,) nor even Gideon for asking a two-fold sign, (Jud 6:37.) Nay, instead of this, Ahaz is condemned for refusing a sign that the Prophet had offered him, (Isa 7:12.) What fault, then, was there on the part of the Jews in asking miracles? It lay in this, that they did not ask them for a good end, set no bounds to their desire, and did not make a right use of them. For while faith ought to be helped by miracles, their only concern was, how long they might persevere in their unbelief. While it is unlawful to prescribe laws to God, they wantoned with inordinate desire. While miracles should conduct us to an acquaintance with Christ, and the spiritual grace of God, they served as a hindrance in their way. On this account, too, Christ upbraids them, (Mar 8:12.)

A perverse generation seeketh after a sign.

For there were no bounds to their curiosity and inordinate desire, and for all that they had so often obtained miracles, no advantage appeared to arise from them.

(93) There can be no doubt that Calvin refers here to an expression made use of by Paul in his discourse to the Athenians, Act 17:27 Εἰ ἄρα γε ψηλαφήσειαν αὐτὸν καὶ εὔροιεν (if haply they may feel him out and find him.) The allusion is to a blind man feeling his way The same word is employed by Plato, (Phoed. footnote 47, edit. Forster.) ̔Ο δε μοι φαινονται ψηλαφῶντες οἱ πολλοι ὣσπερ εν σκοτει, (In this respect the many seem to me to be feeling their way as it were in the dark.) — Ed

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(22) For.This is a further unfolding of the fact of the simplicity of the preaching of the Cross. It pandered neither to Jewish-minded persons (not in the Greek the Jews, the Gentiles, but simply Jews, Gentiles) who desired visible portents to support the teaching, nor to those of Greek taste who desired an actual and clear philosophic proof of it. (See Mat. 12:38; Mar. 8:11; Luk. 11:16; Joh. 4:48.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

22. A sign Accustomed, under their dispensation, to miracles, the Jews prescribed signs. Christ, indeed, worked miracles was himself a miracle; but they demanded that he should come in Messianic glory, renew the earth, and give to them its supremacy. That is, they required at his first coming the manifestations of his second coming. See note, Mat 12:38. But as instead of the throne he received the cross, this became to them a stumbling-block.

Wisdom As to the Jew miracle was the route to truth and God, so to the Greek philosophy, demonstration, starting from intuition and winding through logic, was the sole guide and test. But though Christ is thus a stumbling-block instead of a sign, and a foolishness instead of a philosophy, yet Paul will soon prove that Christ is, after all, truly and transcendently a sign and a philosophy.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They Are Thus Rather To Look To God’s Wisdom (1:22-25).

‘Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumblingblock, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.’

The problem lay in the nature of man. ‘Jews ask for signs.’ The Jews were a practical people. They wanted to see the divine activity. They wanted ‘signs’ (Joh 2:18; Joh 6:30). They were always looking round for proof that God was about to do something for them. They wanted external verification. The idea arose from their history. Their history was a history of signs, and they looked for more. This was understandable, and yet ironically Paul knew that they had seen such signs. They had seen them in the life of Christ. They had seen His teaching and His continuous flow of miracles. They had even seen evil spirits defeated and the dead raised. But they had closed their eyes to them. The truth was they would only accept signs that came from someone who fell in with their particular viewpoints, someone who acted like the Devil wanted Jesus to do in the temptations (Mat 4:1-11; Luk 4:1-12) and performed spectacularly, someone who favoured them and acknowledged their support, recognising how right they were. They thought that they already had wisdom in the Law. They did not need wisdom.

‘Greeks seek after wisdom.’ ‘Greeks’ means Gentiles influenced by Greek ideas, the main constituents of that part of the Roman Empire. The Greeks were admired for their rationalism, their breadth of thought, their metaphysical ideas. And they were interested in all forms of wisdom teaching, including that which sought the release of the soul from the degraded body of flesh through attaining esoteric knowledge. And they had influenced the world around them. Men thought that such ideas would pierce the curtain that hid them from divine things, and they sought to speculate more and more, thinking that eventually they would hit on the truth. Indeed many thought that they had hit on the truth. But in the end their ideas faded, to be replaced by others. They did not achieve their object. Such knowledge could not bring reconciliation with God, and could not bring life.

‘But we preach Christ crucified (or ‘a crucified Messiah’).’ But although in Christ the Jews were given signs and the Greeks were shown true wisdom, they both rejected what they were given, dismissing it as foolish. To the Jews the preaching of a crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms. For crucifixion was the sign of a cursed man, and they could not and would not accept a cursed Messiah. They could not see that they were in fact under a curse and therefore that the One Who would redeem them must be ready to take their curse upon Himself (Gal 3:10-13). They wanted to be saved, but by something that fitted in with their ideas, something respectable, by obedience to the Law, by submission to the ordinances of the covenant, not by something so radical. (They failed to see that it was what their whole system was pointing to).

And to be saved by a crucified Jew was to Greeks a thought beyond acceptance. To them salvation must come through the Greeks, and through Greek ideas, and through ‘wisdom’, not through something so vulgar as a self-proclaimed Jewish prophet, or even worse a self-proclaimed god, dying like a common slave, a rebel, on a cross. Such a thought was preposterous. Thus the message of the crucified Christ was in general dismissed by both.

‘But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks –’. Once again we have the idea of effectual calling. It does not just mean called by men. It means effectually called by God. They have been called by God through the word and proclamation of the cross and have responded. And it includes both Jews and Greeks, whose eyes have been opened so that they responded to God’s saving action, who have been drawn by the Father (Joh 6:44).

‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ This parallels ‘Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek after wisdom.’ Christ answered both requirements, for to those who had eyes to see He had the power to perform signs, indeed was Himself the sign, and He had the wisdom to reveal truth, for He was Himself the Truth (Joh 14:6). But it means far more than that. It means He has power and wisdom in abundance. Indeed that He is the One through Whom is revealed the fullness of God’s own power and wisdom. That His power is revealed through His saving work, through His death and resurrection, and its results in the lives of men, and His wisdom through the effectiveness of that work in saving all who believe. He is thus the source of all true power and the source of all true wisdom, especially of saving power and saving wisdom. For that Almighty power is revealed through the cross (1Co 1:18), which also reveals His great saving wisdom (1Co 1:21).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

1Co 1:22-24. For the Jews, &c. Whereas the Jews require signs, and the Gentiles seek after wisdom; 1Co 1:23. We, nevertheless, preach Christ crucified,and unto the Gentiles foolishness: 1Co 1:24. But unto them that are called, both Jews and Gentiles, &c. When we consider how many miracles were continually wrought by and upon the first preachers and converts of Christianity, it may seem an astonishing demand which the Jews are said here to make. From a memorable passage in Josephus,in which he speaks of an impostor promising his followers to shew them a sign of their being set at liberty from the Roman yoke,compared with their requiring from Christ, amid the full torrent of his miracles, a sign from heaven, it seems probable that the meaning here is, “The Jews demand a sign from heaven to introduce a Messiah victorious over all their enemies.” See Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1. The Apostle, 1Co 1:23 says, that Christ crucified was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness. Now, I. The Jews were offended at Christ, because he was not received and followed by those of the most learning and authority among them. They were offended at him because he was not a temporal prince, and a conqueror. They were all persuaded that the Messiah would be a great king, under whom they should rule over the Gentiles, and live in wealth and pleasure. When, therefore, they found Christ was poor and despised, and died an ignominious death, and his kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, the cross of Christ proved a stumbling-block to them, and they were displeased with a doctrine that suited neither with their prejudices nor with their inclinations. It is well known that nothing exposed Christianity more to the contempt of the Jews than the doctrine of the cross; they therefore called Christ in derision Tolvi,the man that was hanged, that is, on the cross; and Christians Abde Tolvi, “the disciples of the crucified malefactor;” and by a malignant distortion of the Greek word ‘, they called it Aven Gelon, or “a revelation of vanity.” Yet it is easy to shew that these objections against the person of our Saviour were not sufficient to excuse their unbelief. For though the law promised temporal blessings to the good, yet the Jews knew by long experience, that those promises had not been fulfilled at all times, nor to all persons. Extraordinary interpositions in behalf of the righteous were grown less frequent. They therefore had no reason to judge of the characters of men by their station and circumstances in this life, or to imagine that fortunate and virtuous were synonimous terms, which implied the same thing. They might have found examples of good men, who had undergone much trouble, and had received here below no recompence of their faith and obedience. They might have learned from the prophets, that the Messiah, to whom so much power, prosperity, and splendour was promised, was also to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; that his soul was to be an offering for sin; and they might have seen, in the sufferings of Christ, and his resurrection, the accomplishment of those otherwise irreconcileable predictions. II. The causes of the unbelief of the Greeks and Gentiles were some of them the same as those which occasioned the unbelief of the Jews;a great corruption of manners, the purity of the precepts of the Gospel, the temporal inconveniences which attended the profession of Christianity, and advantages which might be secured by rejecting or opposing it; the poor appearance which Christ had made in the world, and his ignominious death. But yet they ought not to have slighted and rejected the Gospel upon account of the low estate and sufferings of Christ and his apostles. The little light they had, yea, and some of their most approved authors, might have taught them not to value persons according to their greatness and riches; nor to measure the favour of God by temporal happiness, but to love and honour oppressed innocence. They might have remembered, that the best man and the wisest philosopher mentioned in their histories lived all his days in poverty, was exposed to slander and calumny, and at last was accused by false witnesses, and condemned to die by unjust judges. They knew that virtue seldom obtains the respect which it deserves. They knew that virtue, though it be so amiable in itself, has a lustre offensive to the vicious, who will join to obscure and misrepresent it, and to make it contemptible. They knew that he best deserved the name of a wise man, who lived up to the rules of morality which he had prescribed to others; and they ought to have admired the man, who, at the same time that he recommended humility to his followers, was a perfect example of all that he taught. The Gentiles could not conceive how one who seemed forsaken of God, should restore men to the favour of God; and how his sufferings should be serviceable to that end. It is reasonable that the divine mercy should constantly display itself in cases within the reach of compassion, consistently with his moral attributes. Such was the case of mankind: who, though sinful, are weak; though offenders, are within the reach of his almighty grace. It is also reasonable that God should also be displeased at rebellion and transgression, and that he should so grant his pardon, as at the same time to vindicate the honour of his laws. Now this he has accomplished in a most illustrious manner in the death of his Son, shewing thereby his hatred to sin and sinners, in refusing to hear them in their own name, and in bestowinghis favours only through the mediation of one who suffered for our offences. The paternal and tutelary deities worshipped by the Gentiles were dead heroes and kings; they were consequently loth to deify one who appeared in the low circumstances of a carpenter’s son, and was at last executed like the meanest slave. Yet they should have recollected that the inventors of arts, however low, were worshipped by them as gods; and that the husbandman, the gardener, the vintner, and the lowest mechanic, were enrolled among their deities. The Gentiles thought it strange to ascribe such power and authority to a crucified man. But the greatest power that any one can shew, consists in performing such things as no one else can do, unless God assist him. To destroy the peace of mankind, and carry ruin and desolation through populous countries, is no more than what human strength and policy can affect. Many have done this, who have not possessed one commendable quality. To be honoured, admired, reverenced, are advantages which may be attained without any supernatural aid; but no man by his riches, or the eminence of his station, can deliver his brother from death. Therefore he who can heal all sicknesses by speaking a word; who can restore the dead to life; who can confer the same power on others; who can deliver himself from the grave; is as much superior to the rulers and heroes of this world, as the heavens are above the earth. And such was our Saviour, though he was crucified; who was the author of salvation to those who believed his doctrine with the heart unto righteousness, though the Greeks foolishly imaginedthat the doctrine itself was nothing but foolishness. See Jortin’s Discourses, p. 9, &c. Leigh’s Critica Sacra, and Archbishop Tillotson’s Works, vol. 2.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

1Co 1:22 f. [244] Protasis ( ) and apodosis ( ) parallel to the protasis and apodosis in 1Co 1:21 : since as well Jews desire a sign as Hellenes seek after wisdom, we, on the other hand, preach , etc. It is to be observed how exactly the several members of the sentence correspond to what was said in 1Co 1:21 ; for . is just the notion of the broken up; and . is the practical manifestation of the ; and lastly, . . [245] contains the actual way in which the . . [246] was carried into effect. And to this carrying into effect belongs in substance . . [247] down to , 1Co 1:24 , a consideration which disposes of the logical difficulty raised by Hofmann as to the causal relation of protasis and apodosis.

The correlation includes not only the two subjects and , but the two whole affirmations ; as well the one thing, that the Jews demand a sign, as the other, that the Gentiles desire philosophy, takes place.

] This , on the contrary, on the other hand , is the common classical of the apodosis (Act 11:17 ), which sets it in an antithetic relation corresponding to the protasis. See Hartung, Partikell . I. p. 184 f.; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 92 f.; Bornem. Act. ap. I. p. 77. Examples of this usage after and may be seen in Klotz, a [248] Devar. p. 371 f. The parallel relation, which the eye at once detects, between 1Co 1:21 and 1Co 1:22 (and in which a rhetorical emphasis is given by the repetition of the used by Paul only in 1Co 14:16 , 1Co 15:21 ; Phi 2:26 , besides this passage), is opposed not merely to Billroth and Maier’s interpretation, which makes introduce a second protasis after . , but also to Hofmann’s, that 1Co 1:22-24 are meant to explain the emphasis laid on ; as likewise to the view of Rckert and de Wette, that there is here added an explanation of the . . [249] , in connection with which Rckert arbitrarily imagines a supplied after .

and without the article, since the statement is regarding what such as are Jews , etc., are wont, as a rule, to desire.

] Their desire is, that He on whom they are to believe should manifest Himself by miraculous signs , which would demonstrate His Messiahship (Mat 16:4 ). They demand these, therefore, as a ground of faith ; comp Joh 4:48 . That we are not to understand here miracles of the apostles (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Bengel, and others) is clear, both from the nature of the antithesis, and from the consideration that, in point of fact, the apostles did actually perform (Rom 15:18 f.; 2Co 12:12 ). What the Jews desired in place of these were miraculous signs by which the crucified , but, according to the apostles’ teaching, risen and exalted , Jesus, should evince His being the Messiah, seeing that the miracles of His earthly life had for them lost all probative power through His crucifixion (Mat 27:41 f., Mat 27:63 f.). Comp Reiche, Comment. crit. I. p. 123 f. To take, with Hofmann, the . generally, as a universal Jewish characteristic, of the tendency to crave acts of power that should strike the senses and exclude the possibility of doubt, is less suitable to the definite reference of the context to Christ , in whom they were refusing to believe. Were the reading (see the critical remarks) to be adopted, we should have to understand it of some miracle specifically accrediting the Messiahship; not, with Schulz, Valckenaer, Eichhorn, and Pott, of the illustrious person of an earthly ruler . Any such personal reference would need to be suggested by the connection, as in Luk 2:34 ; but this is not at all the case in view of the parallel , nor is it so even by . . in 1Co 1:23 . See on the latter verse.

] is the demand actually uttered (that there be given ); the seeking after and desiring, anquirere (correlative: ).

.] Christ as crucified (1Co 2:2 ; Gal 3:1 ), and therefore neither as one who exhibits miraculous signs, nor as the originator of a new philosophy, such, possibly, as Socrates or Pythagoras.

] in apposition to . . As crucified , He is to them an occasion for unbelief and rejection. Gal 5:11 . For His being put to a shameful death conflicts with the demand to have a Messiah glorified by miracles.

] because philosophy is what they desire as a guide to salvation; therefore to believe in Christ (not as one of the wise of this world, but) as crucified, is to them a folly , an absurdity; whereby, indeed, their own becomes . , 1Co 3:19 .

[244] Ver. 22 f. is the programme of the history of the development of Christianity in its conflict with the perverse fundamental tendencies of the world’s sensualism and spiritualism; ver. 24, the programme of its triumph over both.

[245] . . . .

[246] . . . .

[247] . . . .

[248] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[249] . . . .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

Ver. 22. For the Jews require, &c. ] The reason of their rejecting the gospel is, they are prepossessed against it; they look for that which it affordeth not. A prejudicate opinion bars up the understanding. Intus existens prohibet alienum, like muddy water in a vessel, that causeth the most precious liquor to run over.

And the Greeks seek after wisdom ] Which yet they attained not. For Sapiens est cui res sapiunt prout sunt, saith Bernard, he is a wise man who conceiveth of things as they are; and all the wisdom of man is only in this, that he rightly know and worship God, saith Lactantius. But this these Greeks could never skill of; no, not these Corinthians (till called and sanctified), who yet were famous for their wisdom (Periander, one of the seven wise men, was a Corinthian), and their city be called by the orator (Cicero) lumen Graeciae, the light of Greece. But whereto tended their light but to light them into utter darkness? And what was all their wisdom without Christ, but earthly, sensual, devilish? Jas 3:15 . Earthly, managing the lusts of the eyes unto the ends of gain; sensual, managing the lusts of the flesh unto ends of pleasure; and devilish, managing the pride of life unto ends of power.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

22. ] , not as in 1Co 1:21 , but = ‘siquidem,’ and explains . . .

] see Mar 9:13 , unite (De W.) things resembling each other in this particular, but else unlike. Jews and Gentiles both made false requirements, but of different kinds.

.] see Mat 12:38 ; Mat 16:1 ; Luk 11:16 ; Joh 2:18 ; Joh 6:30 . The correction has probably been made from remembering the of these passages. The sign required was not, as I have observed on Mat 12:38 , a mere miracle, but some token from Heaven, substantiating the word preached.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

1Co 1:22-25 open out the thought of 1Co 1:21 : “the world” is parted into “Jews” and “Greeks”; becomes and ; the is defined as that of ; and the reappear as the . Both Mr [229] and Al [230] make this a new sentence, detached from 1Co 1:20 f., and complete in itself, with . . . for protasis, and . . . for apodosis, as though the mistaken aims of the world supplied Paul’s motive for preaching Christ; the point is rather (in accordance with 20) that his “foolish” message, in contrast with ( , 1Co 1:23 ) the desiderated “signs” and “wisdom,” convicts the world of folly (1Co 1:20 ); thus the whole of 1Co 1:22-24 falls under the regimen of the 2nd , which with its , emphatically resumes the first (1Co 1:21 ) “since indeed”. God turned the world’s wise men into fools (1Co 1:20 ) by bestowing salvation through faith on a ground that they deem folly (1Co 1:21 ) in other words, by revealing His power and wisdom in the person of a crucified Messiah, whom Jews and Greeks unite to despise (1Co 1:22-24 ).

[229] Meyer’s Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).

[230] Alford’s Greek Testament .

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

1Co 1:22 . anarthrous; “Jews” qua Jews, etc.: in this “asking” and “seeking” the characteristics of each race are “hit off to perfection” (Ed [231] : see his interesting note); expresses “the importunity of the Jews,” “the curious, speculative turn of the Greeks” (Lt [232] ). For the Jewish requirement, cf. parls. in the case of Jesus; the app., doubtless, were challenged in the same way P. perhaps publicly at Cor [233] : “non reperias Corinthi signum editum esse per Paulum, Act 18 .” (Bg [234] ). Respecting this demand, see Lt [235] , Biblical Essays , pp. 150 ff. Such dictation Christ never allowed; His miracles were expressions of pity, not concessions to unbelief, a part of the Gospel and not external buttresses to it. Of the Hellenic Philosophy is itself a monument; cf. , amongst many cl [236] parls., Herod., iv., 77, ; also lian, Var. Hist. , xii., 25; Juvenal, Sat. , I., ii., 58 f.

[231] T. C. Edwards’ Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians . 2

[232] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).

[233] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[234] Bengel’s Gnomon Novi Testamenti.

[235] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).

[236] classical.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

the. Omit.

require = ask. App-134.

sign. App-176. The texts read “signs”.

seek after = seek.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

22.] , not as in 1Co 1:21, but = siquidem, and explains . . .

-] see Mar 9:13, unite (De W.) things resembling each other in this particular, but else unlike. Jews and Gentiles both made false requirements, but of different kinds.

.] see Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Luk 11:16; Joh 2:18; Joh 6:30. The correction has probably been made from remembering the of these passages. The sign required was not, as I have observed on Mat 12:38, a mere miracle, but some token from Heaven, substantiating the word preached.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

1Co 1:22. [9], require) from the apostles, as formerly from Christ.-, wisdom) [The Greeks require in] Christ the sublime philosopher, proceeding by demonstrative proofs.[10]

[9] , signs) powerful acts. We do not find any sign given by Paul at Corinth, Acts 18.-V. g.

[10] They are not satisfied because Christ, instead of giving philosophic and demonstrative proofs, demands mans belief, on the ground of His word, and a reasonable amount of evidence.-ED.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

1Co 1:22

Seeing that Jews ask for signs,-The Jews had been trained to accept the revelation of God attested by signs and miracles. It was the test of one claiming to be a teacher of the truth. The Jews repeatedly asked signs of Jesus. (Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Mar 8:11-12; Mar 14:48).

and Greeks seek after wisdom:-The Greeks asked philosophy-wisdom of the world. The religion of the Jews was based on signs and miracles; [but the more they got of them; the less they were satisfied; contrariwise, the Greeks looked with philosophic indifference on the whole field of the supernatural, regarding even the resurrection of Christ as adding but one more of the already plentiful childish fables, fit only for the simple-minded. Give us wisdom was their cry-anything that will carry its own evidence on its face. Nor was this state of things a peculiarity of that time. Every age has its blind devotees of supernatural interposition and its self-sufficient worshipers of human reason.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Power and the Wisdom of God

Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.1Co 1:22-24.

This chapter is full of the tragic pathos of the Apostles life. We can read, as it were between the lines, the emotions, the hopes, the despairs, the fears, the loves, amid which he preached in Corinth, confronted by the hate of the Jew and the scorn of the Greek, and beset by the jealousies, the divisions, the misunderstandings, of his heathen and Hebrew converts.

St. Paul when he arrived in Corinth was not new to the work and the troubles of the missionary. Behind him were years of labour and sorrow. The man of Macedonia who appeared in a vision had cried, Come over and help us; and to St. Paul to hear was to obey. He landed at Philippi, bringing westward and into Europe the gospel of Christ. But love did not leap to answer his love, or faith rise to salute his coming. Instead, he was beaten, smitten with stripes, set in the stocks, made fast in the inner prison, till the virtue of his Roman citizenship opened the door of his prison, and he passed on to Thessalonica. There lewd fellows of the baser sort set the city in an uproar, and he was forced to depart for Bera. In Bera he found men nobler than those of Thessalonica; for they searched the Scriptures to discover whether his words were true. But enmity followed and drove him to Athens, where he felt the wondrous charm of the city and the wondrous indifference of the men. Images of gods were everywhere, but nowhere was the living God or godly peace of soul. The men wanted news, not of the kind he preached, but of the sort that was curious rather than true. So they set him on Mars hill, and as he unrolled his burdentold of their blind quest after God, and Gods ceaseless quest after themthey listened till he came to speak of resurrection and judgment. And then, offended rather than amused, they broke in and said, We will hear thee again of this matter. And so he had to forsake cultured Athens, and make for busy Corinth.

And now, as he writes, the antagonisms and the victories of those early days in Corinth come back to him. His mingled feelings are represented by a series of contrasts. First, he contrasts the hearers who were hostile to his preaching (the Jews and the Greeks) with those who accepted it (the called). Next, he contrasts the message he had to deliver (a crucified Christ) with the expectations of those hearers who asked for signs and sought after wisdom. Then he contrasts the estimates formed of that same messagea stumblingblock and foolishness to those who were asking for signs of power and wisdom; the power and wisdom of God to those who believed. The subject accordingly is St. Pauls preaching, and we have three natural divisions.

I.The Hearers.

II.The Message.

III.The Reception of the Message.

The Hearers

What the city of Corinth was we know; it was rich, luxurious, commercial, lascivious. East and West met in it, and mingled their vices and their faiths. Thither had come the Jew, and built his synagogue, opened his bazaar, made a place for himself on the exchange, and used his knowledge of the Eastern men and markets to bring their wares and their ways to the men of the West. There, too, was found the Greek, subtle, full of the pride of race and intellect and achievement, speculative, argumentative in his very commerce, and beating out in the manner of the Schools the questions connected with the principles and profits of trade. There, too, was the Roman, with the spirit of the soldier who had become sovereign, scornful of the poor civilian and the mean merchant, thinking the world had been made to be conquered, and he to be its conqueror. And in the face of this mixed and divided community St. Paul preached. You can imagine him, after a days hard toil at his handicraft, in the evening stealing along the quay, watched by few, cared for by fewer, a man who could not be conquered, and who had in him vaster ambitions for the good of men than could find room in the mind of imperial Csar. And if you had followed him you might have seen him climb by a mean stair to a meaner upper room, where the slave, set free for an hour by his master, or the wharfinger escaping from loading or unloading his ship, or the porter seeking release from the burden he had carried throughout the day, met to hear this preacher, mean in appearance, but great in dignity and in power.

The education of the human race has been an affair of unconscious co-operation. One department of it has been put out to one race, another to another. For illustration look at Athens and then at Jerusalem. In Greece we find the first-class minds of the ancient world. Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pheidias, Praxiteles, Archimedes, Thucydides are, in their several ways, prophets of the intellect. They stand for philosophy, physics, mathematics, art, music, politics, the whole sphere of things with which the mind can busy itself. They are the pioneers of research, openers of the ways in which truth-seekers have been travelling ever since. When you pass from Greece to Palestine you find yourself in another world. Open on Isaiah or Micah, read the New Testament from cover to cover, and you will find scarce a word about mentality. There is nothing about philosophy, or geometry, or music, or painting, or the science of history, or the science of politics. If you kept to the Bible, you would learn nothing worth knowing about the physical universe; no hint of the methods by which its secrets are to be disclosed. Summing the two up, you may say: Greece is all for knowledge; Palestine is all for character. We are learning to-day the immeasurable debt we owe to both. When you ask, Which is the mightier; which the more important? Huxleys statement (clever men are as common as blackberries; the rare thing is to find a good one), remembering what he stood for, may well set us thinking.1 [Note: 1 J. Brierley, Life and the Ideal, 57.]

The Apostle divides the ancient world into two classes of men: those whom God has taken under His direction and enlightened by a special revelation, the Jews; the others whom He has left to walk in their own ways, the Gentiles, designated here by the name of their most distinguished representatives, the Greeks. Each of these groups has its demands, and the demands are different.

i. Jews

Jews ask for signs.

As proof that God was in their midst and as a revelation of Gods nature, the Jews required a sign, a demonstration of physical power. It was one of Christs temptations to leap from a pinnacle of the Temple, for thus He would have won acceptance as the Christ. The people never ceased to clamour for a sign. They wished Him to bid a mountain be removed and cast into the sea; they wished Him to bid the sun stand still or the Jordan retire to its source. They wished Him to make some demonstration of superhuman power, and so put it beyond a doubt that God was present.

1. Signs were suggested to the Jewish mind whenever that people thought of the past history of their nation. Almost every page of their sacred books spoke of signs either past or to come. Their faith had signs for its surest proof. Their greatest men had exhibited most startling signs. Those epochs to which they looked back with most pride were marked by a greater display of signs. And so it was no wonder that with the advent of the Messiah they expected signs in greater number and of more surpassing brilliancy than ever before.

2. Indeed they had signs in exceeding plenty, and of a character such as, from the past history of their nation, they might have expected. Jesus Christ of Nazareth confined His miracles to no one district, to no one section of the Jewish race above another. Everywhere, before all the people, He did wonders, which in number, power, and beneficence surpassed anything of the kind that had ever occurred in their history. These miracles, indeed, were so many signs from heaven to them, but they were not signs to their mind. They really did not know what they would be at. They wanted signs, and yet more signs! For it is of the nature of this desire to rise higher and higher in proportion as it is satisfied. On the morrow after the multiplication of the loaves the multitudes ask: What signs doest thou then? Every stroke of power must be surpassed by a following one yet more marvellous.

There is in the farther course of some Christians that which is the counterpart of the Slough of Despond at the commencement of it. There were cartloads of Gospel encouragements cast into the Slough of Despond, and yet it was the Slough of Despond still; and so into this there are carted distinctions and marks of saving grace, yet it remains the counterpart of the Slough of Despond still. There is no dealing with such persons; for if you give them signs of grace, they will ask for signs of the signs.1 [Note: Rabbi Duncan, in Browns Memoir of John Duncan, 426.]

3. The Gospel, now as then, has to encounter the demand of those who ask for signs. Do we not see the craving for the signfor the display, that is, of supernatural power to crush and silence all doubt resulting in the superstitious corruptions of Christianity? For what is superstition but an appeal from wisdom to power, an effort to silence the reason by the terrors of the senses? The demand for a religion which shall dispense with the exercise of reason and the discipline of thought is ever punished by belief in a religion which outrages all reason and, at last, silences all thought. Superstition is still the Nemesis, not of faith, but of unbelief. And every such superstition necessarily grows always grosser and darker as it grows older. For the desire of the teacher for power, combining with the desire of the taught for certainty, must tend always to efforts at making the sign, which is to secure both, still more awful and convincing, by still greater and more awful attestations. A fresh miracle must be provided to silence each fresh heresy, a new prodigy to confirm each new dogma.

When Carlyle said of God, the God in whom Christians believe, He does nothing, he gave expression to precisely this mental temper. It is the temper of all to whom it is a religious difficulty that there is a constitution and course of nature and of human life in which things go on according to general laws, and in which there is much that is baffling, mysterious, and unjust. If we are to believe in God, they say, let Him do something.2 [Note: J. Denney, The Way Everlasting, 14.]

The Jews asked for signs, a request which is not necessarily indicative of a thirst; it may be an asking behind which there is no parched and aching spirit. That is the bane and peril of all externalism. It may gratify a feverish curiosity without awakening the energies of a holy life. The Jews asked for signs. Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad, for he hoped to see a sign. It was a restless curiosity, itching for the sensation of some novel entertainment; it is not the pang of a faint and weary heart hungering for bread.He answered him nothing. The Jews asked for signs, a request which is frequently indicative of a life of moral alienation. Externalism abounds in moral gifts, and in externalisms men often discover drugs by which they can benumb the painful sense of their own excesses. An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. They try to resolve into merely physical sensations and sensationalisms what can be apprehended only by the delicate, tender tendrils of a penitent and aspiring heart.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

F. W. Robertson in his diary makes the following resolution: To endeavour to get over the adulterous-generation-habit of seeking a sign. I want a loud voice from Heaven to tell me a thing is wrong, whereas a little experience of its results is enough to prove that God is against it. It does not cohere with the everlasting laws of the universe.2 [Note: Stopford Brookes Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 73.]

And not for signs in heaven above

Or earth below they look,

Who know with John His smile of love,

With Peter His rebuke.

In joy of inward peace, or sense

Of sorrow over sin,

He is His own best evidence,

His witness is within.3 [Note: Whittier.]

ii. Greeks

Greeks seek after wisdom.

The wisdom of which St. Paul speaks appears to have been of two kindsspeculative philosophy and wisdom of words, i.e. eloquence. The Greeks had deified wisdom. They wanted the Divine intellectualized in a system eloquently giving account of the nature of the gods, the origin, course, and end of the universe. This people, with their inquisitive and subtle mind, would get at the essence of things. The man who will satisfy Greek expectation will be, not a miracle-worker, but a Pythagoras or a Socrates of double power,

1. Next to the Jews there was no people in the world that St. Paul knew better than the Greeks. He had in his lifetime come much in contact with them. He had, like all other men, wondered at their genius. There was no feature more distinctive of the whole people than their intellectual aptitudes, which they never lost. Everywhere they kept strong hold of their national traditions. Their language remained through ages uncorrupt and unmutilated. Much of their theology and culture was gathered from the Homeric poems, which were the heirloom of the whole race. They excelled in all the fine arts. They were masters in every branch of literature. The Greeks, above every other people, sought after wisdom. There could be nothing equal to that description in perspicuity and appreciation of national character. For the Greeks from hoar antiquity had been seekers after wisdom.

2. The Greek asked for no sign; he cared nothing for the supernatural, he had ceased to believe in it. He believed only in nature; he sought only for wisdom to understand himself and the world in which he lived; he asked from Christ only light on those problems in external nature, or in himself, on which his subtle mind was ever working. He wanted a perfect philosophy, or, at least, a perfect morality, which could justify itself to his intellect by solving all those difficulties which beset all other philosophies and all other systems of morals. Could Christianity do this? Could it tell him what was mind, and how it differed from matter? Could it tell him whether he was governed by fate or by free-will? Could it tell him whence came evil? If it could, he was willing to listen to it and to believe all that it could prove. But then for such teaching there was no need of miracles any more than there was for the teaching of geometry. All that was true in it he would receive on its own evidence, and he would receive nothing that did not so prove itself to be true.

3. From the earliest days of Christianity to our own, there have been those who, like the Greeks, demand a demonstration of religions truths not to the senses, but to the intellect, who ever seek to divest Christianity of all that is mysterious or supernatural and to reduce it, as much as possible, to a purely natural religion, to something that can be weighed and measured by the understanding, or that approves itself to the feelings; to something, in short, that is self-evident to the natural man.

There is, in our day, a marvellous idolatry of talent; it is a strange and a grievous thing to see how men bow down before genius and success. Draw the distinction sharp and firm between these two thingsgoodness is one thing, talent is another. It is an instructive fact that the Son of Man came not as a scribe, but as a poor working man. He was a teacher, but not a Rabbi. When once the idolatry of talent enters the Church, then farewell to spirituality; when men ask their teachers, not for that which will make them more humble and God-like, but for the excitement of an intellectual banquet, then farewell to Christian progress.1 [Note: F. W. Robertson.]

Artists have united with authors to strengthen this idolatry of intellect. One of the great pictures in the French Academy of Design assembles the immortals of all ages. Having erected a tribunal in the centre of the scene, Delaroche places Intellect upon the throne. And when the sons of genius are assembled about that glowing centre, all are seen to be great thinkers. There stand Democritus, a thinker about invisible atoms; Euclid, a thinker about invisible lines and angles; Newton, a thinker about an invisible force named gravity; La Place, a thinker about the invisible law that sweeps suns and stars forward towards an unseen goal. The artist also remembers the inventors whose useful thoughts blossom into engines and ships; statesmen whose wise thoughts blossom into codes and constitutions; speakers whose true thoughts blossom into orations; and artists whose beautiful thoughts appear as pictures. At this assembly of the immortals great thinkers touch and jostle. But if the great minds are remembered, no chair is made ready for the great hearts. He who lingers long before this painting will believe that brain is king of the world; that great thinkers are the sole architects of civilization; that science is the only providence for the future; that God Himself is simply an infinite brain, an eternal logic engine, cold as steel, weaving endless ideas about life and art, about nature and man. But the throne of the universe is mercy and not marble; the name of the world-ruler is Great Heart, rather than Crystalline Mind, and God is the Eternal Friend who pulsates out through His world those forms of love called reforms, philanthropies, social bounties and benefactions, even as the ocean pulsates its life-giving tides into every bay and creek and river. The springs of civilization are not in the mind. For the individual and the State out of the heart are the issues of life.1 [Note: N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Influence, 133.]

A dour old Scot upon his deathbed was informed by his wife that the minister was coming to pray with him. I dinna want onybody tae pray wi me, said he. Well, then, hell speak words of comfort tae ye. I dont want to hear words o comfort, said the intractable Northcountryman. What do ye want, then? asked his wife. I want, was the characteristic reply, I want tae argue.2 [Note: Arch. Alexander.]

iii. Them that are Called

St. Paul places this class of hearers in sharp contrast to all others. He forcibly separates the called Jews and Gentiles from the mass of their fellow-countrymen; to the called themselves, he says, as opposed to all others. The term called here includes the notion of believers. Sometimes calling is put in contrast to the acceptance of faith, as in Mat 22:14, Many called, few chosen. But often also the description called implies that of acceptor, as it certainly does here.

1. The Apostle exalts the Divine act in salvation; he sees Gods arm laying hold of certain individuals, drawing them from the midst of those nationalities, Jewish and Gentile, by the call of preaching. St. Paul thinks of the constituent elements of which the church of Corinth was actually composed. These Corinthian Christians were of no account, poor, insignificant, outcasts, and slaves, friendless while alive and when dead not missed in any household; but God called them and gave them a new and hopeful life in Christ Jesus. It is plain that it is not by human wisdom, nor by power, nor by anything generally esteemed among men that we hold our place in the Church. The fact is that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. If human wisdom or power held the gates of the Kingdom, we ourselves would not be in it. To be esteemed, and influential, and wise is no passport to this new kingdom. It is not men who by their wisdom find out God and by their nobility of character commend themselves to Him; it is God who chooses and calls men, and the very absence of wisdom and possessions makes men readier to listen to His call.

2. The people that are called are those who have heard the voice of God and responded to it. The old theologians distinguished between a general and an effectual calling. So far they were correct enough, but they erred in laying the cause of the distinction on God. There is no difference in the call. The difference lies in this, that in one case the heart responds to it, and in the other it does not. God never fails in anything He does, so far as His part of the work is concerned. Gods call comes forth clear and strong, a great shout of power to the wide world, but only some respond and are raised to the power of God, and to the enjoyment of His life.

3. In St. Pauls day this argument from the general poverty and insignificance of the members of the Christian Church was readily drawn. Things are changed now; and the Church is filled with the wise, the powerful, the noble. But St. Pauls main proposition remains: whoever is in Christ Jesus is so, not through any wisdom or power of his own, but because God has chosen and called him. The sweetness and humble friendliness of St. Paul sprang from his constant sense that whatever he was he was by Gods grace. He was drawn with compassion towards the most unbelieving because he was ever saying within himself, There, but for the grace of God, goes Paul.

I owned a little boat a while ago,

And sailed a morning sea without a fear,

And whither any breeze might fairly blow

Id steer the little craft afar or near.

Mine was the boat,

And mine the air,

And mine the sea,

Not mine a care.

My boat became my place of nightly toil;

I sailed at sunset to the fishing ground;

At morn the boat was freighted with the spoil

That my all-conquering work and skill had found.

Mine was the boat,

And mine the net,

And mine the skill,

And power to get.

One day there passed along the silent shore,

While I my net was casting in the sea,

A Man, who spoke as never man before;

I followed Himnew life began in me.

Mine was the boat,

But His the voice,

And His the call,

Yet mine the choice.

Ah! twas a fearful night out on the lake,

And all my skill availed not at the helm,

Till Him asleep I wakened, crying, Take,

Take Thou command, lest waters overwhelm!

His was the boat,

And His the sea,

And His the peace,

Oer all and me.

Once from His boat He taught the curious throng,

Then bade me let down nets into the sea;

I murmured, but obeyed, nor was it long,

Before the catch amazed and humbled me.

His was the boat,

And His the skill,

And His the catch,

And His my will.1 [Note: Joseph Richards.]

The Message

1. Preaching.The clear, creative imagination of St. Paul could penetrate into the brain of the Roman and look through his eyes; into the intellect of the Greek and judge with his cynicism; into the spirit of the Hebrew and feel with his heart, or dream with his fancy. And as he looked at the men he could read their thoughts without the help of words, translating the scowl on the Hebrews face into bitter speech, the scorn on the Greeks lip into eloquent reproach. But though he knew the thoughts of the men he did not dare be silent in their presence. For God sent him to preach the Gospel, and he preached it possessed with the passion for souls that is the image in man of grace in God.

(1) But we preach. St. Paul refused to make any compromise. He was very clearly conscious of the two great streams of expectation and wish which he deliberately thwarted and set at naught. The Jews ask for signsbut we preach Christ crucified. The Greeks seek after wisdombut again, we preach Christ crucified. To all their subtleties, whether of outward sign or of inward wisdom he opposed the simple fact of his preaching.

(2) We preach. The word preach is emphatic; it means in its full signification to proclaim as a herald does. St. Paul proclaimed his Gospel simply as a fact. The Jew required a sign; he wanted a man who would do something. The Greek sought after wisdom; he wanted a man who would perorate and argue and dissertate. St. Paul says, No! We have nothing to do. We do not come to philosophize and to argue. We come with a message of fact that has occurred, of a Person that has lived.

Preaching is an institute peculiar to the Gospel. Nothing can be preached but the Gospel, so nothing can be done with the Gospel but preach it. It is not a mere law to be enjoined, or a philosophy to be developed by human thought, or a series of articles to be taught. In its naked essence, it is a fact of Gods doing, a Divine datum, a salvation provided, stored, and offered in the person of a Saviour. As such, it is to be asserted, declared, published, heralded.1 [Note: J. O. Dykes.]

2. Preaching Christ.St. Paul proclaimed a Person, not a system of philosophy. We can adore a person, but we cannot adore principles. It is not merely Purity, but the Pure One; not merely Goodness, but the Good One, that we worship. Some of the Greek teachers were also teaching Purity, Goodness, Truth; they were striving to lead mens minds to the First Good, the First Fair. The Jewish Rabbis were endeavouring to do the same; but it is only in Christ that it is possible to do this effectually, it is only in Christ that we find our ideal realized.

Preaching Christ is not preaching about Christ. There is a well-known passage in the tenth chapter of Romans which gives a balanced account of the reason for the failure of so much preaching to produce any adequate or satisfactory results. The first part of the passage points to causes of failure in the preachers; the second half to causes of failure in the hearers. The great cause of failure in preachers is indicated in one of these opening interrogations as it is translated in the Revised Version. The old version, smoothing over a difficulty of translation, and giving not the actual sense of the words but what it was imagined St. Paul ought to have said and meant to say, reads thus, How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? Now the Revisers give us what St. Paul actually did write. How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? You see there is a whole world of difference in the two phrases. According to the first one the difficulty of belief is that they have not heard about Christ; but according to the second it is that they have not heard Christ. According to the first the function of the preacher is to talk about Christ; but according to the second his function is to be a mouthpiece through whom Christ can speak about Himself. They are not likely to believe, St. Paul says, unless they hear Christ. If it was true when he wrote, it is abundantly true to-day. There are few indeed to-day who have not heard about Christ; but there are multitudes who have never heard Christ.1 [Note: C. Silvester Horne, Relationships of Life, 139.]

3. Preaching Christ crucified.St. Pauls subject was Christ crucified. He would not preach Christ the Conqueror, or Christ the Philosopher (by preaching which he might have won both Jews and Greeks), but Christ the crucified, Christ the humble. There is a distinction between preaching Christ crucified and preaching the Crucifixion of Christ. It is said by some that the Gospel is not preached unless the Crucifixion be named. But the Apostle did not preach that; he preached ChristChrist the ExampleChrist the LifeChrist the Son of ManChrist the Son of GodChrist risenChrist the King of Glory. And ever and unfailingly he preached that Christ as a humble Christ crucified through weakness, yet living by the power of God.

Reason cries, if God were good, He could not look upon the sin and misery of man and live; His heart would break. The Church points to the Crucifixion and says, Gods heart did break. Reason cries, Born and reared in sin and pain as we are, how can we keep from sin? It is the Creator who is responsible; it is God who deserves to be punished. The Church kneels by the cross and whispers, God accepts the responsibility and bears the punishment. Reason cries, Who is God? What is God? The name stands for the unknown. It is blasphemy to say we know Him. The Church kisses the feet of the dying Christ and says, We must worship the majesty we see.

O that Thy Name may be sounded

Afar over earth and sea,

Till the dead awaken and praise Thee,

And the dumb lips sing to Thee!

Sound forth as a song of triumph

Wherever mans foot has trod,

The despised, the derided message,

The foolishness of God.

Jesus, dishonoured and dying,

A felon on either side

Jesus, the song of the drunkards,

Jesus the Crucified!

Name of Gods tender comfort,

Name of His glorious power,

Name that is song and sweetness,

The strong everlasting tower,

Jesus the Lamb accepted,

Jesus the Priest on His throne

Jesus the King who is coming

Jesus Thy Name alone!

III

The Reception of the Message

No two races, no two types of the human mind, could have been more widely different, more directly the opposite of each other, than the Jew and the Greek. The very fact that the Gospel was displeasing to the one might therefore have led us to expect that it would be sure to please the other. And yet Jews and Greeks, who agreed in nothing else, agreed in rejecting Christ.

Widely different as the demands of the Jew and the Greek seemed at first, they were really asking one and the same thing; they were asking for an unspiritual religion; a revelation that should not deal with the heart at all in the way of trial or discipline, that would spare them the great trial of being called on to trust and to love, in spite of doubt and difficulty. What they sought for, in one word, was knowledge without belief. The Jew demanded a demonstration of God to his senses; the Greek demanded a demonstration of God to his intellect. The Jew required a revelation that should compel assent; the Greek required one that should give no occasion for doubt. Both demanded a religion without faith, both asked to see, both refused to believe in an invisible God, and, therefore, both rejected a crucified Christ.1 [Note: W. C. Magee.]

1. To the Jews, the death upon the Cross was a stumbling-block, i.e. it was something which they could not get over, because it was so utterly contrary and so entirely repugnant to their religious ideas. It was a stumblingblock; literally a trap, something that arrests the foot suddenly in walking and causes a fall. Here, in the very forefront of the Gospel, was the stumbling-block, which they could not get over, and which prevented them from making any effort to weigh the evidences and the claims of Christianity.

(1) To the Jew, the Cross meant failure of the most evident and pitiful kind; it meant impotence and weakness; it meant a life of great apparent promise, a career of great and wide-felt influence, ending in the most disastrous, the most humiliating acknowledgment of helplessness.

It was not only incredible, it was disgusting and abominable, this word of the Cross. That men should dare to speak of One crucified, of One hung upon a tree, of One who had suffered the death of the accursed as the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world, the chosen Servant of Jehovahtheir faces reddened with shame or gathered blackness with rage when they heard of it. In the Jewish writings of those ages our Lord is never directly spoken of. His name was to them a thing of nameless horror; He was a thing of darkness so fearful, so shocking, that to speak or write of Him was by tacit consent forbidden. Only in far-fetched figures and suggestions was that object of loathing dimly alluded to as the arch enemy of Israel.2 [Note: R. Winterbotham.]

(2) There are multitudes of Christians who worship success; and these would reject and repudiate Christ as emphatically as the Jews if it were open to them, if they were really free to be consistent. Christ represents failure, weakness, humiliation; and they admire only what is successful in this world, what is strong in mere physical might, what is glorified by itself.

They tell us that there are men of science who stumble at the Cross. There are young men and middle-aged men, and old men, so we are told, who follow us sympathetically until we come to the proclamation of the sacrifice of Christ as the atonement for sin, and there they stumble. Shall we remove the cross that these people may not stumble? If we do we remove the worlds redemption at the same time. Even though it be a stumbling-block to some, we must preach Christ crucified.1 [Note: J. Thomas.]

2. To the Greek-speaking heathens the doctrine was foolishness. The Greeks had been trained to speculation. Everything in their esteem ought to assume the shape of a theory, or a system, or a well-arranged argument, and ought to invite them with subtlety of discussion. The Apostle reduced them to what was in their eyes foolishness; he reduced them to a factChrist crucified.

(1) Men who sought for wisdom had to find it in other quarters than these. Wisdom is of two kinds: theoretical and practical. Theoretical wisdom gives an account and an explanation of all things that are: of the state of the world, of the puzzles and trials of human life, of the nature and character of God and of man. Practical wisdom, again, teaches men how to live so as to make the best of life, to avoid most evil, and to attain most good. Now the doctrine of the Cross failed in every way (as they thought, and not unreasonably) to commend itself to wisdom. To see a man, who is said to be the best, and the prime favourite of heaven, dying a horrible death amidst general detestation does not explain anything; it only makes things very much more dark, and perplexed, and confused than before. Moreover, to point to a man who ended his days in such a wretched way can be no help in the way of practical guidance. No one but an absolute lunatic could desire such a fate, or regard it with anything but horror. Have we not a human nature? Are we not made of flesh and blood? Do we not rightly shrink from suffering, cold, hunger, pain, and all their kindred ills? Do we not instinctively desire to be warm, to be full, to be at ease, to be wrapped in comfort and in peace? The doctrine of the Cross, which is of its very nature opposed to all this, is not wisdom but foolishness; it does not deserve a hearing from sensible people.

(2) The opposition which the Gospel met with in St. Pauls day was not of that day alone. The Jew and the Greek, the seeker after the sign and the seeker after wisdom, exist always. Still, wherever the Gospel is preached, must the preacher expect to hear from each of these the same demand that St. Paul heard; still must be found, with St. Paul, Christ crucified a stumbling-block to the one and foolishness to the other. For these twothe seeker after the sign and the seeker after wisdom; the man who would rest all religion, all philosophy, all social polity, upon authority alone, and the man who would rest them all upon reason alonethis Jew, with his reverence for power, his love of custom and traditionwhich are the power of the pasthis tendency to rest always in outward law and formthe power of the presenthis distaste for all philosophical speculation, his impatience of novelty, his dread of changeleaning always to the side of despotism in religionand, on the other hand this Greek, with his subtle and restless intellect, his taste for speculation, his want of reverence for the past, his desire of change, his love of novelty, his leaning towards licence in society and scepticism in religion; what are theythese twobut the representatives of those two opposite types of mind which divide, and always have divided, all mankind?

3. Those who listened to the call of God found in this preaching of the Apostle exactly what both Jew and Gentile were looking for. It was both a sign and a philosophy. The sign, the proof, which comes closest to us all is a change of heart, an emancipated will, a risen self, a new life. The mind humbled and exalted at once before the Cross of Christ, accepting the message of peace and love, found itself acted on by a new power. All things became new; old habits and corruptions fell off from the believers; they began to walk in newness of life. The great proof of moral regeneration was being exhibited in every Christian Church, and was to every one that felt it a philosophy. The nature of the soul, the character of God, the destiny and hopes of man, were now realized truths. They did not depend on the capacity to follow a well-reasoned system of philosophy, but on the power to lead a new and a holier life.

In the life of David Hill, the Chinese missionary, it is recorded that as time went on Mr. Hill was increasingly impressed by the conviction that something further should be done to reach the literati of the province, the proud Confucian scholars, in their strong antipathy to Christian truth. Frequently meeting these men he could not but be struck by their contemptuous attitude towards the Gospel, their hatred of foreigners, and their prejudice against missionary work. His whole heart went out to them in genuine sympathy.

By offering prizes for essays on subjects taken from the Christian classicsthe Scriptureshe got into touch with Hsi, a Confucian scholar, who carried off three out of four of the prizes. A little later he invited Hsi to be his teacher in studying the Chinese classics. Thus Hsi came to live with Mr. Hill, and became acquainted with the New Testament. Gradually, as he read, the life of Jesus seemed to grow more real and full of interest and wonder, and he began to understand that this mighty Saviour was no mere man, as he once imagined, but God, the very God, taking upon Him mortal flesh. Doubts and difficulties were lost sight of. The old, unquenchable desire for better things, for deliverance from sin, self, and the fear of death, for light upon the dim, mysterious future, came back upon him as in earlier years. And yet the burden of his guilt, the torment of an accusing conscience and bondage to the opium-habit he loathed but could not conquer, grew more and more intolerable. At last, the consciousness of his unworthiness became so over-whelming that he could bear it no longer, and placing the book reverently before him, he fell upon his knees on the ground, and so with many tears followed the sacred story. It was beginning then to dawn upon his soul that this wonderful, Divine, yet human sufferer, in all the anguish of His bitter cross and shame, had something personally to do with him, with his sin and sorrow and need. And so, upon his knees, the once proud, self-satisfied Confucianist read on, until he came to the place called Gethsemane, and the God-man, alone, in that hour of His supreme agony at midnight in the garden. Then the fountains of his long-sealed heart were broken up. The very presence of God overshadowed him. In the silence he seemed to hear the Saviours cry, My soul is exceeding sorrrowful, even unto death; and into his heart there came the wonderful realisation, He loved me, and gave himself for me. Then, suddenly, as he himself records, the Holy Spirit influenced his soul, and with tears that flowed and would not cease, he bowed and yielded himself unreservedly to the worlds Redeemer, as his Saviour and his God.1 [Note: Life of David Hill, 118, 132.]

4. Christ the Power of God.The power of God is the force from above, manifested in those spiritual wonders which transform the heart of the believer; expiation which restores God to him, the renewal of will which restores him to God. We know nowby experience of many ageshow much more powerful that defeat, humiliation, overthrow, of Christ upon the Cross is than any victory which God could have given Him. It would have been a very small and commonplace exercise of power if God had interfered to set Christ free from the Cross. Had He come in darkness and flame; had He fallen upon the murderers of our Lord with sudden destruction; had He slain them as one man with the breath of His mouth, it had been a very poor display of the Divine power. Anybody could have done that (we may say with reverence) if only he possessed the necessary physical power. But to let Christ die, without a sign, without a struggle; to let Him suffer all things; to let Him taste of defeat, disgrace, and death; that was an exercise of power which was, indeed, worthy of God.

(1) Christ crucified is the power of God in self-sacrifice. There is no power among men so great as that which conquers evil by enduring evil. It takes the rage of its enemy and lets him break his malignity across the enduring meekness of its violated love. Just here it is that evil becomes insupportable to itself. It can argue against everything but suffering patience; this disarms it. Looking in the face of suffering patience it sinks exhausted. All its fire is spent. In this view it is that Christ crucified is the power of God. It is because He shows God in self-sacrifice, because He brings out and makes historical in the world Gods passive virtue, which is, in fact, the culminating head of power in His character.

(2) Christ is, in His sacrifice, the mighty power of God for the salvation of men. This is the power that has new-created and sent home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls. It can do for us all that we want done. It can regenerate our habits, settle our disorders, glorify our baseness, and assimilate us perfectly to God. There never yet was a human being delivered from the power of sin, except by the power of God; and the Divine power never was exerted upon any human being with that view, except through the Cross of Christ, that is, in consequence of what Christ has done and suffered in our room and stead.

Christ can take the man at his worst and the woman at her basest, and out of them make saints that can love God and that God has loved; make saints that can cause the very breath of the world to grow fragrant and the very heart of the world to grow tender.1 [Note: A. M. Fairbairn.]

(3) The power of Christ crucified is permanent and universal. Christ addresses Himself to the world; and His influence transcends all external accidents that serve very well for pomps and shows, because He addresses the hearts of men. The power of Christ crucified is this, He works personally in every believer, and is present to strengthen every faithful heart. The power which would have gratified the Jews would have been the demonstration of a momenta sign, a wonder, a triumph; but the power which is to save a world must know no decay; it must exist at this moment in the same fulness in mens hearts as it did of old on the day of Pentecost. The Jew would have degraded and confined the power of the Messiah; the Jew and not St. Paul would have put the stumbling-block in the way of mans salvation; the truth, the simple truth, which was so obnoxious was after all the most complete manifestation of the power of God.

5. The Wisdom of God.While the Cross of Christ, viewed in its bearing upon the condition and character of men, is a most striking manifestation of Divine power, it is no less striking a manifestation of Divine wisdom. Wisdom is shown in the adaptation of means to an end, so as most effectually to accomplish the object intended. The wisdom of God is the light which breaks on the believers inward eye, when in the Person of Christ he beholds the Divine plan which unites as in a single work of love, creation, incarnation, redemption, the gathering together of all things under one head, the final glorification of the universe.

(1) The Cross of Christ affords us a knowledge of the Divine character, which is complete in all its aspects, which shows us at once the just God and the Justifier of the ungodlya knowledge which, as it stands revealed in His own word, and when it is not perverted by the ungodliness of the human heart, brings before our minds the Divine character, in the manner best fitted to mould or transform us into the full resemblance of the moral perfection of God.

(2) Christ crucified is to the Christian the wisdom of God because the Cross explains (so far as they can be explained in this world) the dark mysteries of life and death, and because it is the practical guide to truth and happiness. All the wisdom man needs to take him safely through the perils and perplexities of life is to be learned from the Cross.

St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say that all the learning in the world had never taught him so much as the sight of Christ upon the cross.

(3) The Divine wisdom is such that it comes within the reach of all. The wisdom of man would be offered to the select few. Not everybody can read Plato and understand him. Very few can read Hegel and understand him. There are great thinkers concerning whom we take it for granted that they are great thinkers, but can only say that the little we understand is good, and that we assume that the rest is quite as good. But Gods wisdom comes to all. What if the world were to be saved by the wisdom of man? How many could thus be saved? What if we had to depend for redemption on the utterances of some wise philosopher? Thousands of the poor sons and daughters of men possessing little intellect and less learning would not be able to lay hold of it. But this is a wisdom coming into the hearts of all, and first of all by preference into the hearts of the simple and untutored and childlike.

Away, haunt thou not me

Thou vain Philosophy!

Little hast thou bestead,

Save to perplex the head,

And leave the spirit dead.

Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,

While from the secret treasure-depths below,

Fed by the skiey shower,

And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,

Wisdom at once, and Power,

Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?

Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,

When the fresh breeze is blowing,

And the strong current flowing,

Right onward to the Eternal Shore?1 [Note: Clough, Poems, 24.]

The Power and the Wisdom of God

Literature

Alford (H.), Sermons on Christian Doctrine, 210.

Burrell (D. J.), Christ and Progress, 111.

Bushnell (H.), The New Life, 239.

Candlish (J.), The Gospel of Forgiveness, 301.

Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, iii. 101.

Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 71.

Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 120, 134.

Denney (J.), The Way Everlasting, 13.

Dykes (J. O.), Sermons, 34.

Edger (S.), Sermons preached at Auckland, N.Z., ii. 40.

Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 23.

Foster (J. E.), Pain, 102.

Holland (H. S.), Creed and Character, 191.

Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 141.

Ingram (A. F. W.), The Gospel in Action, 54.

Jowett (J. H.), Apostolic Optimism, 68.

Macleod (A.), A Mans Gift, 23.

Macleod (D.), The Sunday Home Service, 262.

Magee (W.), The Gospel and the Age, 3.

Miller (J.), Sermons Literary and Scientific, ii. 174.

Mills (B. R. V.), The Marks of the Church, 94.

Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 117.

Sclater (J. R. P.), The Enterprise of Life, 244.

Stubbs (W.), in The Anglican Pulpit of To-day, 49.

Taylor (W. M.), Contrary Winds, 116.

Thomas (J.), Sermons: Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 99.

Watt (L. M.), The Communion Table, 322.

Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 156.

British Weekly, Feb. 22, 1912 (Berry).

Christian World Pulpit, xiii. 92 (Beecher); xviii. 246 (Stevenson); xxxiv. 219 (Spurgeon); xxxix. 369 (Fairbairn); xlii. 146 (Snell); lvii. 273 (Jowett); lxii. 151 (Pickett); lxxix. 312 (Fox); lxxx. 296 (Brown).

Church of England Pulpit, xxx. 13 (Panter); lxii. 381 (Payne), 662 (Straton); xliii. 230 (Maturin).

Contemporary Pulpit, ii. 144 (Scott).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

the Jews: Mat 12:38, Mat 12:39, Mat 16:1-4, Mar 8:11, Luk 11:16, Luk 11:20, Joh 2:18, Joh 4:28

the Greeks: Act 17:18-21

Reciprocal: 1Ki 13:3 – General Mat 11:6 – whosoever Luk 11:29 – they Joh 4:48 – Except Joh 6:30 – What Joh 7:48 – General Act 14:1 – Greeks Act 19:10 – both Act 20:21 – to the Jews 1Co 2:2 – not

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

A MESSAGE FOR JEW AND GREEK

The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified.

1Co 1:22-23

St. Paul is here contrasting the expectations which men would naturally form of the Gospel of Christ with what that Gospel really is. He divides the world into two parts. Some, like the Jews, were requiring a sign; and others, like the Greeks, were seeking after wisdom. The same message of the Cross came to both.

I. A sign refused.The Jews require a sign. These words immediately carry our thoughts to those occasions in the Gospels when this very demand was made from our blessed Lord Himself. His answer was, A wicked and an adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it. No sign should be given, because no sign could be given. They were asking for some portentous work of wonder, some startling phenomenon which they might see or hear, bearing testimony to the Lord. It could not be given.

II. Conditions which could not be accepted.And the Greeks seek after wisdom. They did not require a sign, but they had their conditions which they expected to be satisfied. A message from God, they said, must be addressed to the intellect of man and be in accordance with its forms. There must be an orderly system of doctrine, supported by adequate arguments, like the schemes of philosophy to which they were accustomed. Above all things, the intellect must grasp the whole, the chain of reasoning must be complete. Now St. Paul laboured over and over again to make the Corinthians feel that the Gospel which he preached was not addressed to the intellect of man. If it were measured by the mere intellect it must be accounted foolishness. It could not be otherwise. The forms of the intellect might stretch until they broke, but they never could embrace it. It was too high for their measuring-lines to reach, too deep for their plummets to sound. It was addressed to something in man which was far above the understanding.

III. The true sign and the true wisdom.We preach Christ crucified. This was the sign before which St. Paul himself had bowed down to the dust. This was the wisdom before which he had felt his own understanding shrink and dwindle into nothing. He knew that no words of his could make the sign plainer or the wisdom wiser. He was determined that he would not weaken the message of God by mixing it up with that wisdom which he had felt and known to be foolishness. He had nothing to do with any explanations. And the same message comes to you. Gaze steadfastly upon Christ crucified. Ask for no explanations. Ask not how or why this thing should be. Be sure of this, that whatever explanation you may hear, whatever opinion you may form, will be infinitely short of the truth, for His ways are not as your ways, nor His thoughts as your thoughts. Therefore draw near with reverence and awe, and see this great sight. Gaze upon it until it has found its way to your heart and you hear it speaking there. It will speak for itself more mightily than the wisest words of man can speak for it. It is the sign of Gods salvation, for it signifies His grace and truth, His perfect righteousness, His everlasting love. It is the beginning and the end of wisdom, for it fills the heart with fear, and by gazing upon it man learns to know God.

Illustration

In the words of a modern writer, Christ is Christianity. Christianity is a great historical religion, it can be traced back to a founder with whose career and history we are familiar, and there are other great historical religions, e.g. Buddhism and Mohammedanism, which can be traced back to personal founders; but unlike all other religions, Christianity claims to be more than historical, it claims for its founder an abiding presence in the world in every age, its founder is not a being of the past, but a being of the present, and hence Christian preaching in the Apostolic age and in our own is not setting forth a body of divinity, a chain of doctrines, or a code of duty, which owe their origin to Jesus Christ Who lived eighteen centuries ago, but it is preaching Jesus Christ Himself in all that He is revealed to be, Perfect God and Perfect Man, uniting the two natures in One Person, now living, in heaven, in the Church, in the hearts of His children.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

1Co 1:22. The Jews professed to believe in a higher form of knowledge than was possessed by mere human beings, but they were critical of any teaching that claimed such a quality unless accompanied with some direct demonstration from heaven. The Greeks were not interested in anything that did not come up to the standard of their own philosophy. (See the long note and historical quotation at verse 18.)

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

1Co 1:22. Since the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek after wisdom.[2] The Jews, when our Lord was on earth, clamoured for signssupernatural attestation of His claims; but the more they got of them, the less they were satisfied; contrariwise, the Greeks looked with philosophic indifference on the whole field of the supernatural, regarding even the resurrection of Christ as adding but one more to the already plentiful stock of childish fables, fit only for the vulgar. Give us wisdom, was their cryanything that will carry its own evidence on its face. Nor was this state of things a peculiarity of that time. Every age has its Jews and its Greeksits blind devotees of supernatural interposition and its self-sufficient worshippers of human reason.

[2] The absence of the Greek article here denotes the class, but in such cases the insertion of the article is more suited to the English idiom.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe here, 1. How both Jews and Gentiles conspired together in their contempt and rejection of the gospel; the Jews require a sign; that is, besides all the miracles and the resurrection of Christ, the Jews require some sign from heaven to prove that Christ was sent from God: so unreasonable and obstinate was their infidelity, that all the miracles of our Saviour’s life, death, and resurrection, could not remove it. And the Greeks seek after wisdom, that is, they look for profound wisdom, eminent learning and deep philosophy, in the gospel; and scorn it, because they find not there what they expected: The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

Observe, 2. The apostle’s peremptory resolution to preach Christ crucified, though he were to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness.

But how was Christ a stumbling-block to the Jews?

Answer, In regard of his poverty and sufferings, the meanness and misery of his condition in the world. They expected that their Messias should be a victorious prince, one that should rescue them from their enemies; instead of which they find this Jesus to be overcome by his enemies; that he had no power to defend himself, much less to deliver them; that was deserted by God, whom he called his father, forsaken by his followers, whom he styled disciples, scourged with rods, crowned with thorns, ignominiously treated, shamefully crucified; this was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and continues so to be.

But how was Christ to the Greeks foolishness?

Answer, The Gentiles despised the gospel of Christ, as an absurd, ridiculous, and ill-contrived fable; for what appearance could be more unbecoming God, and injurious to his perfections, than to take the frail garment of flesh, to be torn and trampled upon? They concluded the incarnation impossible, that a being infinitely perfect should unite with a nature so inferior to itself; and rejected the doctrine of our Saviour’s death, as an impiety contumelious to God: they could not reconcile servitude with sovereignty, punishment with innocence, the lowest of human miseries with the highest of divine honours; and accordingly they esteemed it foolishness to expect eternal life from him that was put to death, and that he should bring them to the highest glory, who suffered himself in the lowest weakness. Thus was the preaching of Christ crucified to the generality of the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.

But observe, 3. It was not thus unto all; there was a number of both converted and saved by the doctrine of the cross, unto whom Christ was the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Here note, 1. That Christ was the power of God: Isaiah styles him the mighty God, Isa 9:6.

Works of mighty power were performed by him; as the work of creation, By him were all things created in heaven and in earth. Col 1:16.

The work of providence, He upholdeth all things by the word of his power. Heb 1:3.

The work of redemption, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. Gal 3:13.

The curse and wrath of God was a burden that would have broke the back of angels; none could stand under it but Christ, and not he neither as mere man, but as supported by the infinite power of his Godhead.

2. Christ is the wisdom of God: his divine nature had a fullness of infinite and uncreated wisdom found with it; also his human nature had a fullness of infused and created wisdom found in it; and the redemption of man by Jesus Christ was a design of admirable wisdom.

3. He that turns his back upon Christ, rejects the wisdom of God, and renders his ruin both dreadful and certain; they must perish eternally by the hand of strict justice, who will not be saved according to the methods of divine wisdom, which are to save us from hell by saving us from our sins.

Observe, 4. The reason assigned, why the preaching of Christ crucified became the power of God unto salvation: because the weakness of God is stronger than men; that is, the ordinances and institutions of God, though they seem weak and foolish in the eye of the world, yet are more efficacious and powerful than all the wisdom of worldly men.

Learn hence, that the ordinances and institutions of God, and particularly the preaching of the gospel, though despised by the men of the world, yet by the power of God have glorious operations, and produce wonderful effects. The weakness of God is stronger than men, that is, the weakest instruments which God uses, are stronger in their effects than the strongest which men can use: and the foolishness of God is wiser than men; not that there is either foolishness or weakness in God, but that which men account foolishness and weakness, and deride as such, doth yet overcome all their admired wisdom and strength: and if the wisdom of man cannot match the foolishness and weakness, much less before the wisdom and power, of God: The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

The Crucified Christ Displays God’s Wisdom

Instead of gospel preaching, the Jews wanted a sign Jesus was the Messiah. McGarvey and Pendleton mention several examples of the Jews’ demands for signs ( Mat 12:38 ; Mat 16:1 ; Joh 1:18 ; Joh 4:48 ). They looked for a messiah to conquer Rome. So, Jesus’ teaching and the cross was a stumbling block. They did not want to hear his kingdom was not of this world. Certainly, they did not want their messiah to die on a cross.

The Greeks rejected Christ as God’s spokesman for a different reason. They wanted a greater wise man than the world had known. In their wisdom, they considered flesh, in and of itself, to be sinful. So, they could not believe God would take on human form, since that did not match up with their wisdom ( 1Co 1:22-23 ).

God does his calling in the message of the gospel. In his second letter to the brethren at Thessalonica, Paul wrote, “But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” ( 1Co 2:13-14 ). Those who accepted the gospel call saw Christ as a great sign and the Messiah. They saw the great knowledge needed to plan such a means of salvation ( 1Co 1:24 ).

While the death of Christ on Calvary may have seemed foolish to the Greeks, it turned out to be above man’s wisdom. In that death, all men have a means of overcoming the grave. Similarly, Christ’s death on the cross seemed to be a clear sign of weakness to the Jews. “Likewise the chief priests, also mocking with the scribes and elders, said, ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save, If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him'” ( Mat 27:41-42 ). In fact, his death and resurrection from the tomb was the only way to crush the head of Satan and render the grave powerless over his followers ( 1Co 1:25 ; Heb 2:14-18 ).

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

1Co 1:22-25. For the Jews require a sign Demand of the apostles, as they did of their Lord, more signs still, after all they have seen already. And the Greeks Or Gentiles; seek after wisdom The depths of philosophy, and the charms of eloquence. But we preach Christ crucified We proceed to bear our testimony in a plain and historical, not rhetorical or philosophical manner, to the sufferings and death of Christ, endured to expiate the guilt of mankind, and procure for them pardon, holiness, and eternal life: unto the Jews a stumbling-block An occasion of offence, by reason of his mean appearance, his sufferings, and death; they having looked for a glorious and victorious Messiah, who should rescue them from all their enemies, and exalt them to wealth, dignity, and power; and because the profession of Christianity was attended with reproach, and various other sufferings. This doctrine therefore was in direct opposition to the signs which they demanded, and to all their secular expectations; and unto the Greeks foolishness A silly tale, just opposite to the wisdom they seek. But unto them which are called And who obey the call; both Jews and Greeks For the effect is the same on both; Christ With his doctrine, his miracles, his life, his death, his resurrection, &c.; the power of God Creating men anew by his word and Spirit, enabling them to withstand and conquer all their spiritual enemies, and to do with cheerfulness, and suffer with patience, the whole will of God: and the wisdom of God The person by whom God also manifests his infinite wisdom in the contrivance and execution of his plan of redemption and salvation, and the preaching of whom in the gospel, is not such folly as the Greeks count it; but the declaration of that great mystery of godliness, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Because the foolishness of God That preaching of Christ crucified which men account foolishness; is wiser than men Contains more true wisdom than any or all of the apparently wise contrivances of men: or, the lowest expressions of Gods wisdom in those actions and dispensations, which are most contrary to the judgment, wisdom, and experience of carnal persons, are incomparably wiser than all the projects which the wit of men can devise; and the weakness of God Those weak means by which God is wont to accomplish his purposes, or the smallest effects of his power; are stronger than men More available than any human power to bring about their designs. In other words, the weakness of Christian teachers which God makes use of will be found to be stronger than all the efforts which men can make, either to reform the world any other way, or to obstruct the prevalence and success of this.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Vers. 22 and 23. For indeed the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; 23. but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness.

This second , for indeed, should, according to Meyer and Kling, begin a new sentence, the main proposition of which is found in 1Co 1:23 : But as for us, we preach. The , but, would not be irreconcilable with this construction. The is often found in the classics as the sign of the apodosis when this expresses a strong contrast to the preceding proposition (see Meyer); comp. in the New Testament, Col 1:22. But two reasons are opposed to this construction: first, the absence of a proper particle to connect this new sentence with the preceding; then the simple logic; for the idea of 1Co 1:22, that Greeks and Jews ask for wisdom and miracles, cannot form a ground for that of 1Co 1:23 : that preaching presents a Christ who is to them an offence and folly. The object of God, in this mode of preaching, could not have been to scandalize the hearers; in 1Co 1:24 the apostle even expressly adds the opposite thought: to wit, that Christ is to the believers of both peoples power and wisdom. The of 1Co 1:22 does not therefore begin a new sentence, like that which began 1Co 1:21, and which related to , it pleased God. Yet it is not on this account a repetition and amplification of that sentence. The first (1Co 1:21) served to explain the rejection visited by God on human wisdom; the second (1Co 1:22) simply affirms the reality of this judgment: for in reality, as experience may convince you, while men demand wisdom and miracles, we preach to them a Saviour who is quite the contrary, but who nevertheless is to them who receive Him miracle and wisdom. We have not to see, then, in these three verses the development of the words, them that believe…(Hofmann), nor that of the term, foolishness of preaching (Rckert, de Wette); they give the proof of the fact of the decree expressed in 1Co 1:21 : It pleased God to save… (Billroth, Osiander, Beet, Edwards). What a strange dispensation! The world presents itself with its various demands: prodigies, wisdom! The cross answers, and the apparent meaning of the answer is: weakness, foolishness! But to faith its real meaning is: power, wisdom! Thus in the gospel God rejects the demands of the world so far as they are false, but only to satisfy them fully so far as they are legitimate.

The apostle divides the ancient world into two classes of men; those whom God has taken under His direction and enlightened by a special revelation, the Jews; the others whom He has left to walk in their own ways (Act 14:16), the Gentiles, designated here by the name of their most distinguished representatives, the Greeks. The two subjects are named without an article: Jews, Greeks; it is the category which the apostle would designate.

The particle …, both…and, indicates that each of those groups has its demand, but that the demands are different. For the Jew it is miracles, the Divine materialized in external prodigies, in sensible manifestations of omnipotence. The plural , miracles, ought certainly to be read with almost all the Mjj.; the received text reads the singular , a sign, with L only. This last reading is undoubtedly a correction occasioned by Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1, where the Jews ask from Jesus a sign in heaven. Paul’s object is not to refer to a particular fact, but to characterize a tendency; this is indicated by the plural, signs, and yet more signs! For it is of the nature of this desire to rise higher and higher in proportion as it is satisfied. On the morrow after the multiplication of the loaves, says Riggenbach, the multitudes ask: What signs doest thou then? Every stroke of power must be surpassed by a following one yet more marvellous.

The Greek ideal is quite different; it is a masterpiece of wisdom: the Divine intellectualized in a system eloquently giving account of the nature of the gods, the origin, course, and end of the universe. This people, with their inquisitive and subtle mind, would get at the essence of things. The man who will satisfy Greek expectation will be, not a thaumaturge, making the Divine appear grossly in matter, but a Pythagoras or a Socrates of double power.

Thus we have the two great figures of the ancient world ineffaceably engraved. Let us remark, finally, with what delicacy the apostle chooses the two verbs used to characterize the two tendencies: for the Jew, , ask; the miracle comes from Godit is received; for the Greek, , seek; system is the result of labourit is discovered. It is obvious that in this description of the ancient world, from the religious standpoint, the figure of the Jew is placed only for the sake of contrast; the Greeks are and remain, according to the context, the principal figure. It is always wisdom contrasted with the fact of salvation.

Vv. 23. As 1Co 1:22 went back on the first proposition of 1Co 1:21, The world by wisdom knew not God in His wisdom, so 1Co 1:23 (with 1Co 1:24) goes back on the second, It pleased God to save by… The is strongly adversative. By the , we, the subject of these verses is also contrasted with that of the previous verse. I mean the preachers of the crucified Christ with the unbelieving Jews and Greeks. Instead of a series of acts of omnipotence transforming the world, or of a perfect light cast on the universe of being, what does the apostolic preaching offer to the world? A Crucified One, a compact mass of weakness, suffering, ignominy, and incomprehensible absurdity! There is enough there absolutely to bewilder Jewish expectation; in the first place, it is a stone against which it is broken. : what arrests the foot suddenly in walking and causes a fall. And the Greek? The term Christ seems at first sight not to apply to the expectation of this people. But all humanity, as is seen in Greek mythology, aspired after a celestial appearance similar to that which the Jew designated by the name of Christ, after a communication from above capable of binding man to God. So Schelling did not hesitate to say, when paraphrasing 1Co 1:5 of the prologue of John: Christ was the light, Christ was the consolation of the Gentiles. The apostle can therefore speak also of the Christ in relation to the Greeks. But here again, what a contrast between the desired manifestation and the reality! Must not salvation by the Crucified One be to the Greek, instead of the solution of all enigmas, the most sombre of mysteries?

The participle is an attribute, as crucified, otherwise it would be preceded by the article; the two substantives, and , are appositions.

It might be asked, no doubt, in connection with this verse, whether Jesus, by His numerous miracles, did not satisfy the Jewish demand? But His acts of miraculous power had been annulled, so to speak, in the eyes of the Jews by the final catastrophe of the cross, which seemed to have fully justified His adversaries, and did not suffer them to see in Him any other than an impostor or an agent of diabolical power.

And yet as to this preaching which so deeply shocks the aspirations of men, Jews and Gentiles, so far as these are false, it turns outand daily experience demonstrates the factthat received with faith, it contains both for the one and the other the full satisfaction of those same aspirations so far as they are true:

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom:

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

22. Since the Jews ask for miracles. No wonder, for they were born and cradled amid the supernatural the Mosaic history of creation, the flood, the plagues of Egypt, the cleaving of the Red Sea, the burning bush, the brazen serpent, the dividing Jordan, and the shouting down of Jericho, the sun and moon standing still until Joshua ended his battle. So the Jews always demanded miracles. And the Greeks seek wisdom. The Greeks had no patience with miracles, but discarded them all as superstition, while they boasted of their intellectual power, and inflated themselves with the chimera of studying out everything, vainly believing they were so wonderfully smart that they could reach everything by the power of their intellect and education

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Verse 22

A sign; some portentous prodigy as evidence of the Messiahship of Christ.–The Greeks seek wisdom; they are interested in nothing but acutely-defined schemes of philosophy.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

1Co 1:22-24. Develops, and thus confirms 1Co 1:21; 1Co 1:22 develops the world knew not God; 1Co 1:23, the foolishness of the proclamation; 1Co 1:24, to save those who believe.

Ask for etc.: in their disputations with Christians.

For signs: agrees with Joh 4:48; Mat 16:4.

Signs: evidently something different from, and yet as the same word (2Co 12:12; Rom 15:19) implies similar to, the miracles actually wrought by Paul. They probably asked for a visible appearance of Christ in glory and power, such as would dispel all doubt about His Messiahship.

Wisdom: see note below.

Seek wisdom: constant habit of their nation, and specially prominent in their treatment of the Gospel. They demanded, as proof that Christ was worthy to be their teacher, that He should expound the mysteries of being and reveal the great principles underlying the phenomena around.

Proclaim: as heralds.

Snare: see Rom 11:9. That He who claimed to be the Anointed One actually died a criminal’s death, was a trap in which the Jews were caught: i.e. they rejected Jesus because He was crucified. Cp. Rom 9:33; Gal 5:11; Mat 11:6; Mat 13:57; 1Pe 2:8.

Foolishness: as, from the point of view of human intelligence, utterly unsuited to attain any good result. The announcement, as a means of salvation, of that which was to the Jews a reason for rejecting Jesus and to the Greeks seemed altogether unfitted to do any good, was the foolishness of the proclamation.

The called ones: they in whom the proclamation rejected by others has proved itself to be a summons from God. See under Rom 8:28. Cp. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata i. 18: While all men have been called, they who were minded to obey received the name of called ones. Christ is God’s power because through the objective and historic birth and death of Jesus, and through inward subjective spiritual union with Him, God stretched out and stretches out His mighty arm to rescue those who obey the divine summons. Similarly, the word of the cross is the power of God, 1Co 1:18; Rom 1:16 : for through the word the power operates. Christ is God’s wisdom because through Him, objectively and subjectively, God reveals the eternal realities underlying the present life and world, and His own eternal purpose in which with infinite skill the best means are chosen for the best ends. Cp. 1Co 2:7; Col 2:2.

The facts and teaching of 1Co 1:22-24, Paul’s readers admitted. These prove the concise statement of 1Co 1:21, and justify the triumphant statement in 1Co 1:20 that the prophecy quoted in 1Co 1:19 has been fulfilled in the Gospel. Thus, from the facts of his own day, read in the light of an ancient prophecy, Paul has proved the statement of 1Co 1:18, and justified the motive given in 1Co 1:17 b.

Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament

1:22 {25} For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

(25) A declaration of that which he said: that the preaching of the Gospel is foolish. It is foolish, he says, to those whom God has not endued with new light, that is to say, to all men being considered in themselves: for the Jews require miracles, and the Greeks arguments, which they may comprehend by their intellect and wisdom: and therefore they do not believe the Gospel, and also mock it. Nonetheless, in this foolish preaching there is the great power and wisdom of God, but such that only those who are called perceive: God showing most plainly, that even then when mad men think him most foolish, he is far wiser than they are, and that he surmounts all their might and power, when he uses most vile and abject things, as it has appeared in the fruit of the preaching of the Gospel.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The Jews characteristically asked for signs as demonstrations of God’s power (cf. Mat 16:1-4; Mar 8:11-12; Joh 2:18). In contrast, the message of the Cross seemed to be a demonstration of weakness, specifically, Jesus’ inability to save Himself from death.

Likewise the Greeks typically respected wisdom, an explanation of things that was reasonable and made sense. However the message of the Cross did not appear to make sense. How could anyone believe in and submit to One who was apparently not smart enough to save Himself from suffering execution as a criminal when He was not one? Furthermore how could anyone look to such an One as a teacher of wisdom?

". . . the ’Jews’ and ’Greeks’ here illustrate the basic idolatries of humanity. God must function as the all-powerful or the all-wise, but always in terms of our best interests-power in our behalf, wisdom like ours! For both the ultimate idolatry is that of insisting that God conform to our own prior views as to how ’the God who makes sense’ ought to do things." [Note: Fee, The First . . ., p. 74.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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