Following Paul’s Example of Avoiding Superiority of Speech and Preaching Christ Crucified

All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

According to many Christian apologists today, we need a new way of defending the faith. Often, this new way is called “cultural apologetics,” which is an explanation of the truth and error of secular cultural values, and the Christian alternatives to them. However helpful popular Christian apologetics may be for refuting secular errors, and explaining biblical doctrine, apologists often fall into a dangerous tendency. This danger is the error of thinking that to persuade unbelievers to believe the Christian gospel, we must appeal to their worldly values, thinking, and terminology. In other words, many unbelievers are asking for impressive displays of power, and fine-sounding arguments using their own philosophical concepts, and many Christians have, and are increasingly, trying to tell them what they want to hear.

Sadly, this mistake is exactly what Paul repudiated in his first letter to the Corinthians. In the first and second chapters, he indicts the method of appealing to non-Christians on their own terms by pointing to his own spiritual method of sharing the gospel. In his words, we find that he was arguing against what many apologists are attempting to do today:

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” – 1 Cor. 1:20-24

With those few rhetorical questions at the beginning, Paul was calling to mind the kinds of people that the Corinthians were attempting to imitate and appeal to. They were impressed by the “wise men”, “scribes,” and “debaters,” or rhetoricians of their day and culture. And many believers think that such people in our own day must be persuaded with the kinds of arguments that fit their sensibilities and preferences, or conform somewhat to their standards.

Today, the people often appealed to by Christian apologetics experts are the philosophers, scholars, cultural commentators, and popular public speakers. And even if these aren’t specifically targeted, certainly those who hold to their ways of thinking often are. Many times, theologians and apologists make too much effort to frame their evangelistic arguments in ways that are being sought by unbelievers. But this is exactly what Paul says he refused to do.

While the Jews wanted spectacular signs, and the Greeks wanted eloquent philosophical wisdom, Paul simply preached “Christ crucified”. And this is exactly what unbelievers didn’t want. To the Jews, this message of “the cross” was a “stumbling block,” and it was foolishness to the Greeks. Paul didn’t worry himself with taking great pains to sound impressive, sympathetic, or eloquent. Rather, he trusted in God’s Word revealed in the life Jesus, which he  summed up as “the message of the cross”.

He goes on to describe his simple manner of preaching in the beginning of chapter 2, where he writes,

“And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified . . . my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” – 1 Cor. 2:1-2, 4-5

Before recapping what Paul has just said, what is “the power of God” to which he refers? It’s manifested in “the word of the cross,” which he already stated is experienced as such by “us who are being saved,” or believers. But how did Paul practically demonstrate “the Spirit” and God’s power? As he describes at length in many of his letters, he did so by reasoning “from the Scriptures” about the identity and work of Jesus, and by living according to the example and commands of Jesus.

There’s nothing here of appealing to culture, of carefully articulating high-minded arguments about Christianity, or in any way attempting to dress up the message in garb that would have made the gospel look more appealing to Jewish or pagan minds. Rather, he makes clear that he over and over simply explained the character and redemptive work of God as supremely revealed through Jesus’s death. The question is – is this what our evangelism and apologetics reflect?

It’s true, there is at least one example of Paul using popular philosophers to build a sort of bridge between the gospel and his hearers. This is of course his famous sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17. However, far from attempting to persuade his hearers based on the writings and ideas they delighted, his end goal is to point out the folly of their fundamental beliefs. Some of them recognized that there was a Creator, yet they refused to accept that the Creator didn’t need anything from us, or that He couldn’t be reached through our natural efforts. And so having pointed to their prideful and foolish thinking, he then ended the sermon by proclaiming God’s command of repentance based on His coming judgment through the resurrected Man.

Some might question why he makes no mention of the cross in this message, but he seems to have been cut off by his hearers when he asserted Jesus’s resurrection. And further, Luke records that he had already been sharing the gospel with many in the marketplace “of ideas” in Athens, and many of the philosophers could have heard of the cross.

Nevertheless, even when speaking to philosophers, Paul doesn’t engage in convoluted or unnecessarily lengthy ways of presenting the gospel. He inevitably climaxes his message with man’s judgment through Jesus, the One who was punished by God to save us from final judgment.

Although we may find it helpful to appeal to ideas and unbelieving thinkers that are respected by our non-Christian hearers, it’s the simple cross that must be our focus. We need to avoid falling into the trap of believing that merely the way we explain or defend the gospel will persuade unbelievers. And we also need to be wary of thinking that the gospel can be strengthened in power if we add worldly ideas or vehicles to it. We must recognize that if man has always been unable to know God through his natural wisdom, and has usually been unconvinced of the gospel through miraculous signs, then we can’t persuade them through those same means.

The only message, and the only presentation of that message, that has the power to transform wicked, God-hating, hearts, into humble, worshipful ones is the message of the cross. And this message, as Paul repeatedly demonstrates, is not one list of facts about Jesus’s life, but is the whole “testimony of God” contained in all of Scripture. The whole Bible – all 66 books – testify to the character, work, and demands of the Lord Jesus. So in our apologetics and evangelism, we can do no better than to constantly point to what Scripture says about the Savior of the world. The Scriptures, as Paul says here in 1 Corinthians, constantly demonstrate that in their words and teachings God’s saving power is contained. Specifically, it’s “the gospel [which] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). God’s Word is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword . . . able to judge the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). And it’s through this gospel that God “calls” unbelievers for salvation “through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth,” so they’ll “gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13-14).

So, let us be like Paul, and seek to avoid imitating the “wise men, scribes, and debaters of this age,” but instead seek to nothing among people “except Jesus Christ and Him crucified”.