Stumbling Block and Folly

1 Corinthians 1:22-25 - "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

Read 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 slowly, and notice the categories. Paul names two great streams of human searching. The Jews demand signs. They want miraculous proof, visible evidence, a heavenly authentication of the Messiah's claim. The Greeks seek wisdom. They want philosophical coherence, rational beauty, an idea that satisfies the mind. The Jewish hunger for signs and the Greek hunger for wisdom are deep human longings. We want to see what is true. We want what is true to make sense.

Paul says the cross doesn’t satisfy either hunger on its own terms. To the Jew it’s a stumbling block. The Greek word is skandalon, a trap that trips the foot. A Messiah crucified by the Romans was, to a first-century Jew, theologically impossible. Deuteronomy 21:23 had said it plainly: "cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." A crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms. Worse, it was a scandal.

To the Greek the cross was something else. It was foolishness, mōria, the root of our English word moronic. The Greek mind looked at a Jewish carpenter executed as a common criminal and saw nothing worth examining. Greek philosophers respected the contemplation of beautiful ideas. They didn’t respect a public execution on a Roman cross.

This is what we so easily miss when we read these verses. The cross has been smoothed out for us. We’ve worn it as jewelry for a thousand years. We’ve embroidered it on banners. We’ve tattooed it on our forearms and used it as a graphic motif on greeting cards. By the time we get to 1 Corinthians 1, the cross has lost most of its first-century edges. We don’t feel its scandal.

It’s worth knowing how the Romans themselves felt about it. The orator Cicero, writing about a hundred years before Paul, called crucifixion "the cruelest and most disgusting punishment." He said the very word cross should never even pass a Roman citizen's lips. It was the death reserved for slaves, traitors, and the worst criminals. A respectable person wasn’t supposed to discuss it in polite company.

This is what Paul is preaching. Not a sentiment dressed up in respectable theological language, but the scandalous death of a Jewish nobody on a Roman instrument of state torture. Paul is preaching this with his eyes open, knowing full well what it sounds like to the Jew and the Greek. He’s intentionally leaning into the offense, not around it.

See, the very thing that scandalizes the religious mind and embarrasses the philosophical mind is, to those whom God has called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. The cross doesn’t satisfy the demand for signs by becoming a sign. It doesn’t satisfy the search for wisdom by becoming a philosophy. It becomes, in the calling of the Spirit, the deepest sign and the deepest wisdom by being itself. The thing that looked like a contradiction is, in the calling, the resolution of every contradiction.

What looks like weakness in God is stronger than men. What looks like foolishness in God is wiser than men. The cross is the gospel's apologetic answer precisely because it stands where every human apologetic would never put it.

And here’s where this verse leads us into the kind of people we’re meant to be. The Winsome Witness is the believer who has stopped trying to dress up the cross for the world's approval. The Winsome Witness names the scandal honestly. Yes, a crucified Messiah does sound foolish. Yes, He died a death the ancient world considered shameful. Yes, His salvation requires the renunciation of self-rule that no philosophy will admire. And at the same time, the Winsome Witness loves the offended person without condition. The Winsome Witness is winsome because the love of Christ is in the messenger, not because the message has been edited.

It’s possible to spend a lifetime trying to make the gospel less offensive to our neighbors and end up with a gospel that has lost its power. Paul refuses to do this. He preaches Christ crucified. To the Jew it stumbles them; to the Greek it sounds moronic; and to the person God is calling, it’s the only thing in the world worth dying for!

Today: Sit with two verses side by side.

Read 1 Corinthians 1:23-24: "but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

Read Galatians 6:14: "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

Ask the Lord whether you have, in the quiet places, been embarrassed by the cross. Whether you have softened it to be acceptable to people. Whether you have boasted in things that are easier to boast in. Let the verses do their honest work.

Prayer: "Father, I adore You for a cross that still stops the mouths of the wise and trips the feet of the religious. Thank You for calling me through what the world has called foolish, into the only wisdom that has ever told me the truth. Make me entirely unashamed of Christ crucified, quick to love the people who find Him offensive. In Jesus' name, Amen."

-PK