The Cross - Part 2

We’re thinking through some of the implications and results of Christ’s death on the cross for us. Last time we looked at His victory over Satan and sin. Today we consider the fact that the cross is different things to different people. Paul tells us in I Corinthians 1:18 ff that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Later in verse 23 he says that it is foolishness to the Greeks or Gentiles.

Isn’t that the truth in today’s sophisticated culture? The thought of God becoming a man in the first place seems like foolishness to most people today. To go further then and say that this one man’s death provided salvation for those who would come to Him by faith apart from works seems even more foolish.

Yet Paul quotes from the Old Testament and says that God will destroy the wisdom of the wise. God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. It was in the wisdom of God that He made it so that people could not come to Him through their wisdom, but through the “foolishness” of the message preached.

Besides being foolishness to the Gentiles, the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews. The Jewish nation was looking for a Messiah who would be a conqueror and release them from the Roman oppression and set up a kingdom on earth then and there. They missed what had been written in the Old Testament about the fact that the Messiah must come, suffer and die and be raised to life before any promised kingdom could be established. So for the Jews, the cross was a stumbling block.

“But”, says Paul, “to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” In verse 24 he says it this way, “but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

The cross is the central message we are to preach. So many churches today have abandoned the message of the cross and yet it is the central and most important message that must be preached. There is no other salvation than through Christ and His death, burial and resurrection.