CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED
“I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul’s words are not the sigh of a tired preacher who has given up on deeper things; they are the clear-eyed confession of a man who has found the deepest thing of all. After brilliance, after learning, after revelation, after suffering—this is where Paul plants his flag. Not in clever speech, not in philosophical systems, not in religious performance, but in a Person; and that Person nailed to a cross.
Paul preached Christ because Christ had first taken hold of him. The cross was not merely his message; it was his life’s axis. He could speak of justification, adoption, sanctification, resurrection hope—but never apart from the crucified Lord. The early church did not grow because it mastered technique; it burned because it clung to Christ. Their power was not novelty but fidelity; not innovation but incarnation—God made flesh, crucified, risen, reigning (Acts 2:22-24).
This is why the cross never becomes elementary in the Christian life. We do not move past it; we move deeper into it. At the cross, pride is silenced, guilt is answered, love is revealed, and God is known. There, the wisdom of God overturns the wisdom of the world, and the weakness of God proves stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1:18, 24). Paul knew that if Christ were removed from the center, everything else—however impressive—would drift into emptiness.
Yet Paul’s confession does not end in history alone; it presses inward. The Christ who was crucified outside Jerusalem now desires to dwell within His people. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The Christian life is not imitation alone but participation. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The same cross that saves us also reshapes us, until His life breathes through our obedience, our love, our suffering, our hope.
This is the heart of the early church—and the heart the church must never lose. When Christ is central, the gospel remains living, worship remains honest, and love remains costly. When Christ is peripheral, even orthodoxy can become hollow. Paul determined to know Christ crucified because he knew that everything God intends to do in us and through us flows from there—life out of death, glory out of surrender, resurrection out of the cross.
Lord Jesus, keep us near Your cross. Strip away everything that distracts us from You, and make Your life our life. Dwell within us, live through us, and let all we know be shaped by knowing You—Christ and Him crucified. Amen.
BDD
