And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
1 Cor. 2:1-5
These are Paul’s words from 1 Cor. 2:1-5. I want to focus in on verse 2. Paul told the Corinthians, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” This statement is a familiar one in the writings of Paul. He wrote the Galatians: “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.” Similarly, he told the church at Philippi: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
The question which occupies us this morning is the purpose of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians as it pertains to the situation in that particular church, namely its quarreling and disunity. Let’s look at a little context and see if we can’t make sense of that.
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