Sunday, Feb 5, 2023

Chris Bennett

1 Corinthians 1:18–25

The people of Corinth emphasized beautiful rhetoric. It awed and inspired them. But it was futile in bringing about a knowledge of God. When Paul arrived there, he proclaimed the irreducible power of the cross of Christ rather than fluff. The cross was not only brutal, but the most humiliating form of capital punishment in the ancient world. It was repulsive to both Jews and Greeks (Corinth is in Greece). But Paul insisted that the cross is the power of God — the means by which we are transformed and saved. The Corinthian believers had strayed from the cross with their selfish rivalries, their boasting, and their scandalous sinfulness. They had drifted from the glory and love of God revealed in the cross and, consequently, they lost sight of the priority of orienting their lives according to the cross. Paul wrote to call them back to the cross. May we also answer this call.