Paul has been on the road for a long time.  He has traveled from Macedonia down the whole of Greece, into the Peloponnesus to Athens, preaching and planting churches.  Along the way, he has been beaten, imprisoned and opposed, but the work of the kingdom has gone forward.  There are new Christians in Greece, new churches in Greek cities.  By now, Paul’s companions are scattered across the country, teaching and encouraging the new believers, while Paul, sometimes by choice and sometimes in flight, carries the message forward.  By the time he reaches Corinth, Paul is alone, his funds depleted, his friends not yet arrived.  And he is weary.

His last stop had been Athens, the city of orators, the center of philosophy.  Paul had been invited to the agora to address the assembled thinkers, to bring the message of this new Way.  He was eloquent.  His great learning, which Governor Festus would later opine was driving him mad (Acts 26:24), was on full display.  The philosophers of Athens were rapt – until the compelling story of Jesus came to the resurrection.  For most, it was too much.  Paul was not just talking philosophy, he was telling the story of a man who was crucified to death, who lay three days in the grave and yet who lived.  It was not a legend or a myth.  They were used to those stories.  Paul spoke it as fact – contemporary truth – as real as a newspaper report, as credible as an eyewitness account. A few wanted to hear more later, but most just laughed.  Who had ever heard of such a thing?  It was too fantastical to believe.  We have no record of Paul planting a church in Athens.

So Paul arrives in Corinth, one of the most sinful cities of the ancient world, alone, broke, weary and defeated.  The message of Christ, he had discovered, was pleasant, powerful and popular… except for the ending.  The life of Christ had great appeal, especially in the hands of a genius like Paul.  The crucifixion and resurrection, even when described with great eloquence, were a stumbling block.  Paul would later describe it as “the offense of the cross.”  (Galatians 5:11)

So Paul arrives in Corinth and makes an astonishing decision.  His vision has been refined in the fire of Athens, through the long journey and the increasing persecution.  Paul comes to the Corinthians ready to abandon his education and erudition, content in his poverty, empty of eloquence, reduced to a simple working man, a tent maker by day, a quavering preacher by night.  Paul describes it this way, “When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (1 Corinthians 2: 1-5)

If all he had to offer was Jesus the philosopher, or the miracle worker, or the activist, or the founder of a new religious sect, or even Jesus the martyr, then it was worth nothing, no matter how eager the Athenian thinkers and everyone else might be to agree and applaud.  “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith,” he will later write to the Corinthian church. ^“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins ….  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17, 19)

All of history points to Christ.  And it all comes together in those three awful/wonderful days of crucifixion and resurrection.  There alone our faith rests, in that demonstration of God’s power. And if not, then our faith is empty, futile and useless.  Let us resolve to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.