1 Corinthians 1:22

1Co_1:22-24

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

Christianity viewed in three aspects

I. As associated with a great fact. Christ crucified. This maybe looked at--

1. Historically. As an historical fact it is the most--

(1) Famous.

(2) Influential.

(3) Best authenticated.

2. Theologically

(1) It unfolds the Divine, and is a mighty expression of Gods idea, government, and heart.

3. Morally. It is fraught with suggestion the most--

(1) Quickening.

(2) Elevating.

(3) Sanctifying.

II. As associated with popular opinion. It had not sufficient of the gorgeous philosophical ritualism for the speculative and pedantic Greek, nor sufficient of the gorgeous religious ritualism for the sensuous and bigoted Jew. And now to millions it is nothing. To the sceptic it is a fable; to the formalist a creed or a ceremony.

III. As associated with Christian consciousness. But unto them that are called, &c. The Christian sees the highest wisdom in a system which, in saving a sinner--

1. Manifests the righteousness of an insulted sovereign.

2. Augments the influence of moral government.

3. Maintains intact all the principles of moral freedom.

4. Develops, strengthens, and perfects all the powers of the soul. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Jew, Greek, and Christian

The Christian of to-day can but ill-understand the Christian of the year 50. Perhaps if he did, he might feel much more as did the Greek or the Jew, than as did the Christian.

1. Think of Paul in Corinth.

(1) The city was full of Jews, base sometimes, and poor, doing meanest work; rich sometimes, and able to play as it profited him most.

(2) There, too, was the Greek, argumentative in his very commerce, and beating out all questions connected with the principles and profits of trade.

(3) There, too, was the Roman, thinking the world had been made to be conquered, and he the conqueror of the world.

(4) And Paul preached, and the Jew hated and despised; the Greek smiled in his large disdain; the Roman tolerated in his proud indifference; and you might have seen him some evening stealing along the quay, the mean-looking little Hebrew, who still could not be conquered, but resolved that his gospel should conquer men, finding entrance by a main stair to a meaner upper room, where the slave set free for an hour by his master, or the wharfinger escaping from loading and unloading his ship, or, the porter seeking relief from his weary burden by day, met with their small offerings to hear the preacher, great, in spite of his meanness, in dignity and in power. Had Peter gone to Corinth, Peter would have preached and hardly known, and less cared, how people thought and what they felt; but the keen, creative spirit of Paul could insert itself into the brain of the Roman, and look through his eyes; into the intellect of the Greek, and judge with his cynicism; into the imagination of the Hebrew, and feel with his heart, dream with his fancy.

2. Here you have the reminiscence of the older time, and that reminiscence comes out in three series of antitheses.

(1) There are three typical persons--the Jew, the Greek, the Christian.

(2) The three typical persons have three characteristic quests. The Jew requires a sign, the Greek wisdom, the Christian preaches Christ.

(3) There are three typical attitudes of the one subject. Christ is to the Jew a stumbling-block, to the Greek foolishness, to the Christian the power and the wisdom of God. What the Jew demanded was a vision of power; what the Greek sought was a source of wisdom; what the Christian found `was power and wisdom in one. Look, then, at these three persons, with their characteristic quests and attitudes. They are old, they are new; they belong to nineteen centuries distant, they live to-day.

I. The Jew. Illustrious was his ancestry, and he could feel that he was in the face of people that were of yesterday and of earth, while he was of eternity and of God. His founder was Abraham, friend of God, greatest of faithful men; his lawgiver was Moses, author of a law straight come from God. The literature of Greece and Rome was of the earth; his was a book God made. Nay, they worshipped idols; he worshipped the one Creator. And so, proud man was the Jew, proudest for this reason--he owned God rather than God owned him. He so owned God, that he determined the very terms on which God was to be held and known by other men. And so he said, when he stood before the new gospel, Show me a sign: but by the very terms no miracle was possible. The Jew said, I am Gods great work; a greater than I is not in the world: I am the sign; show me a greater.

2. Ah, Jew! if thou hadst been able to see the Christ, thou hadst seen a greater. Think of Him; child He is of thine own proud race, yet lowly in heart, giving rest unto the soul, Thou hast cause for pride, O Jew! yet greater still for humiliation. Out of thy loins He sprung; yet for Him thou only hadst the Cross. See how He broke His births invidious bar; see how, breaking it, He became no local, narrow Jew, but Son of Man, yet Son of God. See how, through Him, God became the new Being for man--Father. He stands manifest God, witness to this--that mans sin is Gods sorrow, mans saving Gods suffering. From millions the cry has risen for the Father. Out of heaven the Father stoops to seek the sons. Here, through His Son, he comes to create a great family of God, and a Greek and Jew become brothers; Roman forgets empire and Hindoo colour; negro loses slavery, male ceases to be man, female ceases to be woman--all become one in Christ. Miracle ye claim and seek, O Jew! to you a miracle I bring!

II. The greek.

1. He, too, had his illustrious ancestry. He made this great discovery: freedom, manhood through freedom. Read the inscriptions of Assyrian kings that tell you how they vanquished empires, but tell you not of the armies they lost and the armies they destroyed without pity or regret. Read the records of Egyptian monuments, and they will tell how a great king, to preserve his very dust, builds a mighty pyramid, throwing thousands of men away in the building of it. The Greek, in creating a free state, created the very idea of manhood. Man free is man reasonable, ordered, a social, joyous, complete life. He, too, discovered for all time art and beauty. Take those colossal figures standing by the Nile--cold, impassive; take those great Assyrian monarchs--massive, insensible to pity, sensible only of power; or look at the Hindoo, with his god--many-headed, many-armed, many-breasted, hideous symbol of a race without beauty; take the Greek discovering the human form is Divine. Can you tell hew much the good man owes to the race that discovered beauty in men? Look at poetry. Pithy speech for deepest emotion. Think, too, what philosophy means--the passion for the true, the search for the good. We owe that to the Greek; but when you spoke to him of Christ, he turned away and said, Where is the wisdom? He is a barbarian, and uses speech that cannot with grace or truth be called language. Think of Him, too, as your later artist pictured Him, crowned with thorns. We love the gracious and we love the great; we love not this.

2. But, O Greek! hast thou thought of the meaning of that Christ? You love freedom--you made it; but see how you bind man still in passion that makes him a very slave. This Christ can take the man bound in the bondage of sin, make him a free man who loves the law of God and loves to obey it, and make him a citizen of an eternal kingdom. You made art; hut think of the beauty that is in Christ--how radiant the goodness that makes Him alone the altogether lovely. He creates the rarer art of holy being, of holy living. You think your poetry is great; but, see, He has made all time, all the universe--nay, the very eternity itself, poetical. Has He not filled every life that is lived with poetic meaning, by bringing Deity into humanity, by lifting humanity into Deity. And is it thy wisdom, O Greek! that thou lovest? See, then, in this Christ is the great mystery of being--God that made the world, the end to which God made it, the means by which He is to reach His end, the glorious method by which the scattered and multitudinous creatures who have estranged themselves from Him may yet, through holy concord, and beautiful love, and perfect devotion, be brought into a saved society in Him. O Greek! in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge; in Him thou hast all things.

III. The Christian. It is said, If thou wouldst know a poet, go and live in the poets land. So, if you would know Christ, make your appeal to Christian experience. Two things are in Him--power, casual, creative; wisdom, adaptive, constructive. Christ brings to the re-making of men power that can take the lost and re-make it until it becomes the holiest; wisdom to take what He has re-made, and shape, develop, guide it, until its early promise becomes richest performance. There is power in Christ, for He is able to save to the uttermost; there is wisdom in Christ, for Christ can sanctify what He has saved. Now you are face to face with the evil and the need of men; what other way can you cure it? You may call to your aid philosophy. Philosophy will make a select and cultured class, scornful of the multitude, and growing cynical through the sense of its own pre-eminence. Call in social theory, that argues that new conditions must be created that men may be made happy and perfect. You may invoke the Act of Parliament; and yet all these together fail to do that which Christ has achieved. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.)

Offensiveness of the gospel to human pride

1. It comes in the form of preaching, and offers its blessings only to faith.

2. It describes the crucified Jesus as the power and wisdom of God.

3. It pronounces all this, which seems to men to be folly and weakness, to be wiser and stronger than all the wisdom and power of the world. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The causes of the rejection of the gospel

I. The Jewish craving for--

1. The ostentatious.

2. The miraculous.

II. The gentile love for--

1. The intellectual.

2. The aesthetic.

III. In both the pride that will not submit to the simplicity of faith. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The gospel and its opponents

Observe--

I. The great hindrances of the gospel in apostolic times.

1. Jewish prejudice.

2. Gentile philosophy.

II. These are general types of human error--e.g., Pharisaism and Sadduceeism; Epicureanism and Stoicism; Ritualism and Rationalism; self-righteousness and self-conceit.

III. Their utter incompatibility with the gospel.

1. The gospel requires humility; these are the offspring of pride.

2. The gospel insists on faith. These demand demonstration. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

How the gospel triumphed

I. Its theme. Christ crucified. His Divinity, sacrifice, offices, redeeming power, universal government.

II. Its difficulties.

1. Jewish prejudice.

2. Gentile wisdom.

III. Its triumphs in them which are called,

1. Christ the power of God--

(1) Surmounting difficulties.

(2) Providing means--His Atonement, Word, Spirit.

(3) Determining conditions.

(4) Counteracting human depravity.

(5) Choosing instruments.

(6) Exposing error and sin.

2. Christ the power of God in--

(1) The Incarnation.

(2) The application of the gospel.

(3) Its successes.

(4) Its results. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The Jews require a sign, the Greeks seek wisdom

In this verse the apostle illustrates and confirms that expression which had passed from him in the verse before, concerning the foolishness of preaching. First, in the demand of the Jews; and secondly in the pursuit of the Gentiles. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. First, we will speak of them jointly, as they agree in one notion, and then severally in what is proper to each. First, jointly, where we must know thus much, the demand of the Jews, The Jews require a sign. Here was an error in both, as concerning their receiving the gospel of Christ: whence we may observe in general then, first this: that the corruption of nature does act and improve itself differently in different ranks and conditions of persons. Here are Jews and Gentiles both, people of a several temper and frame, yet both of them have their censure; the one in the requiring of a sign, and the other in the seeking after wisdom; both of them in a several kind of nature had their weaknesses and failings. This various working of corruption according to the subject wherein it is, may be variously accounted unto us as proceeding from various causes. As first, sometimes from the difference of age and constitution of body: there are some sins which are more proper to one age and temper, and others which are more proper to another. Again, secondly, sometimes it proceeds from a difference of assault and temptation; as there are several tempers and constitutions in regard of men themselves, so there are several drawing out of these constitutions in regard of Satans improving of them. Thirdly, it proceeds from a difference of employment and education, and particular calling, wherein men are set. First, that we should not from hence at any time be secure and presumptuous in ourselves from our freedom from any particular sin or infirmity whatsoever; though thou art not guilty of such a sin, yet it may be thou mayest be guilty of another, which in its kind may be as bad. Again, secondly, observe this: that all men by nature have some quarrel or exception or other against the Word of God, and some pretence to put it off from them. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; neither of them were every way right, and so as they should be. This is that which has always been in all ages and times of the Church. Thirdly, observe in general this: that it is a great matter for the entertainment of any ministry what people have been formerly used and accustomed unto; that has commonly a great sway with them. For see here in this present Scripture how it was now with these two sorts of people, the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews, they had been used to signs heretofore under Moses and the prophets, and therefore nothing would serve their turn now but signs still. And the Gentiles, they had been used to their philosophy and rhetoric. This shows us what cause we have therefore, as to be careful of what principles we admit at any time of ourselves, so to bless God that He has any time in His providence heretofore so well ordered it to us. I come now to them more distinctly in particular, to look upon them in their several propositions, to wit, the demand of the Jews by itself, and the pursuit of the Gentiles again by itself. First, for the demand of the Jews--The Jews require a sign. This the apostle speaks of as some kind of weakness and viciousness in them: and so indeed it was, as may appear in these particulars. First, it does denote unto us that sottishness and stupidity which was in them. A sign it is a thing which is accommodated to the outward sense, and ordained for the teaching of those which are of low understandings, and which cannot attain to the spirituality of Divine mysteries; now thus it was here with these Jews. And this is the disposition of most men else by nature to be thus affected in themselves. Thus it was with the apostle Thomas at Christs resurrection (Joh_20:25). That the more carnal any people are, the more they are carried away after such matters, and do not rest themselves satisfied in that evidence which the Scripture holds out unto them; and it proceeds from hence, because they have not their senses exercised to discern of things that differ. Secondly, here was also their infidelity and unbelief, that is likewise implied in this, that they asked a sign. Signs, says the apostle Paul (1Co_14:22) they are not for them that believe, but for them which believe not; and accordingly they have been still used (as we shall find) upon such occasions as these are, either to begin faith where it has been wanting, or to strengthen it where it has been weak; they are an argument of unbelief where they are given, but especially they are so where they are required. Whilst the Jews demand a sign, they show their infidelity indeed, that they are as yet in a state of unbelieving (Joh_1:11), He came to His own, and His own received Him not. Thus it was with this people: and if we would know whence it came to be so, the apostle tells us, Because the god of this world had blinded their eyes, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ should shine unto them (2Co_4:3-4). Well, let it teach us all for our particulars to take heed lest there be in any of us an heart of unbelief to depart from the living God; yea, let us take heed of admitting any scruples and doubts in the main points of Christianity; for if we begin once, we shall never have done. And that is the second evil in this demand of the Jews in asking for a sign, to wit, their infidelity. The third is their hypocrisy; there was a great deal of false-heartedness and double-dealing in this request of theirs; for why, they intended no such thing as to receive the truth. This is the manner of hypocrites to pretend an unsatisfiableness in the means when they do not relish the thing; when they favour not the conclusion, they call in question the argument. Fourthly, here was their insolency and unworthy behaviour in the laying of this demand; and that as expressing itself also in sundry particulars, which we may briefly take notice of. As first, here was their preposterousness and presumption, in that they would prescribe and limit God to a way of their own--they ask a sign. But here was the miscarriage in these Jews, that they would teach God, and set Him a rule, and point which they would determine Him unto; that when as He would have it done by preaching, they would have it done by miracle. And when the apostles brought them a sermon, they would needs have a sign. This is a sure rule--that in the things of God especially, as in all other things, we must be ruled by God Himself. To ask a sign was here a presumption. Again, as there may be a fault in asking one, so there may be a fault likewise in refusing one, when God offers one to us: observe that this was the miscarriage of Ahaz (Isa_7:11). But now where God sets up a sign, there they pull the sign, down. As for example now in the sacrament of the Lords Supper. Here they throw the sign away. Thus those which are so much for signs at another time, as with the Jews themselves, to require them when themselves please; here, when God offers one to them, they will not have one. Secondly, here was their peremptoriness and importunity, they require a sign; that is, there is no remedy, but have one they must in all haste. If they had asked it modestly and soberly, though they had asked it, there might not perhaps have been so much in it: there have been those of the servants of God which have asked signs, and they have not been blamed for it; Gideon asked one and had it in his wet and dry fleece (Jdg_6:37). Hezekiah, again, asked one (2Ki_20:8-9). Thirdly, here was their malice and perverseness, they require a sign, as if hitherto they had never had any. The Jews had signs of Christ exhibited unto them, both by Himself in His own particular Person, and likewise in His servants the apostles; they had wonders in heaven above, and they had signs in the earth beneath; as it is in Act_2:19, and in verse 22 of the same chapter--Ye men of Israel hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you, &c. And again (verse 43), Many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And (Mar_16:20), The Lord confirmed the Word by signs following. So we see then they wanted not signs, and yet as if they had been altogether destitute, they here require them; this was now an horrible perverseness and maliciousness in them, and a slighting both of the power and goodness of God Himself. The second is the inquiry or pursuit of the Gentiles, The Greeks seek after wisdom. By Greeks here we are to understand all other nations besides the Jews. Now the great learning and eloquence of the Greeks was occasionally and accidently through their corruption, not in the nature of the thing itself, a great hindrance to them for their embracing of the saving knowledge of Christ; they were so taken with the conceits and apprehensions of their own wit and excellent parts, that the preaching of the Cross it seemed no better than foolishness to them; they would believe nothing now in religion without an argument and a demonstration. In brief, there are two things especially which are here by this passage of the apostles prohibited to us. First, a restraining of the truths and doctrines of religion to the apprehensions of carnal reason, the wisdom of the flesh. This was the fault of these Greeks, and we are to take heed it be not ours. And the reason of it is this, because indeed religion is a mystery, and the things which are propounded in the gospel they are above the reach of human wit. Why but then must we lay aside all kind of reason in matters of religion? is Christianity an unreasonable business? and does the gospel deprive us of our wits and ordinary understandings? No, no such matter; religion it is not against reason but it is above it. The sum of all is this, that reason it may be improved in religion, but religion is not to be limited to reason; faith and right reason do not cross, though indeed they do not always meet; nay, indeed, religion is upon the point the greatest reason and wisdom of all, because it is the reason and wisdom of God Himself, who is the highest intelligence. And that is the first thing which was here taxed in these Greeks in the text, their seeking after wisdom, namely, the wisdom of the flesh, in restraining religion to reason, which is a thing here prohibited to us. The second is, the wisdom of words in adulterating the ordinance of preaching with the affectation of human eloquence; this is not to be done by us neither, either in preachers or hearers. This was another thing in these Greeks seeking after wisdom, they refused the doctrine of Christ, because it was not brought to them with the excellency of speech and human wisdom, which the Apostle Paul did of purpose decline, as he tells us (1Co_1:17; 1Co_2:1). For the right understanding of this point, that we may not be mistaken, we do not here prohibit all use of human learning or eloquence in reference to preaching; but--First, that this be not the chief business which is intended by us: we may use these things by the by, but this is not the main to be looked after by us, like children that more regard the cover of the book than they do that which is contained in it. Secondly, we must consider the nature of this eloquence and wisdom, what it is; there is a comeliness of expression suitable to the nature of the matter and argument which is spoken unto, which may very well become a preacher of the gospel; but strong lines and bombast is such as is very uncomely and improper. Thirdly, for the measure of doing it, it must be done very sparingly and moderately; I mean the mixture of wit and human learning in preaching; as sauce, but not as meat. Lastly, a regard is to be had to the nature of the auditory itself, which we have to deal withal, that they be such as are capable of it, and where it may serve as an advantage to the conveyance of the doctrine itself. With these and the like explications there may be a good use of human eloquence and speech; but otherwise in the excess and failing in the manner of it, it is very dangerous and inconvenient. And that especially, as first, it oftentimes takes off the efficacy of the ordinances and makes the Word of God of none effect. Secondly, besides this, it is that which is not so acceptable for the most part to a spiritual heart. Thirdly, God Himself does not commonly so work by them--By the foolishness of preaching He saves them that believe. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)

The reasonableness of the gospel

Evil exists, is the result of sin, which is a want of affection for God, and its cure is by Christ crucified. God is limited in His mode of cure by the capacities and endowments of human nature.

I. The gospel cannot be a system of force. It must be one of motive.

II. Love cannot be transferred at will from one object to another. God must become man to secure mans affection.

III. Hate in the human heart can only be conquered and overcome by manifested self-denying love. Gods first work is to teach men their sinfulness and need of salvation. Without faith it is impossible to please God. There is no other avenue to the human heart than that which God has tried.

IV. The duties and prohibitions of the gospel are demanded by our natures. Social scientists admit this. Prayer, praise, worship, are as necessary to soul-growth as food, exercise, and rest for bodily powers.

V. The rewards and penalties of the gospel are in accordance with nature, with reason, with those principles upon which we act in daily life. This wisdom of God is perfectly adapted to mans wants, and meets mans necessities. (Bp. Fellowes.)

But we preach Christ crucified.--

An orthodox preacher

I. The leaning theme of Pauls ministry.

1. The Person declared in his ministry. Christ, not the patriarchs, prophets, &c. Men of renown in history must not supplant Jesus.

2. The atonement proclaimed in his ministry. We have to speak to the masses--not science, philosophy, &c., but a crucified Lord.

II. The great difficulties in Pauls ministry.

1. The superstition of the Jews. They spurned the gospel because it appealed to their spiritual nature. They did not want a suffering Messiah. If we are seeking signs, we are superstitious. We are rejecting the tidings of Christ crucified.

2. The scepticism of the Greeks. A crucified Christ appeared to them a fable. Many in spirit are still doing the same.

III. The Divine character of Pauls ministry.

1. The universality of the gospel. The glorious gospel is for all mankind.

2. The powerfulness of the gospel. The death of the Cross is the greatest manifestation of the power of God.

3. The knowledge of the gospel. Christ displays Gods highest wisdom. None can instruct us aright but Christ, and we shall never learn the wisdom of God unless we sit at the foot of the Cross.

Conclusion:

1. There is no other way of salvation but what is revealed in the gospel of a crucified Saviour.

2. May we never be of the class who reject and despise Gods method of redemption.

3. Between the conflict of power and wisdom, Christ is the living embodiment of the greatest force in the world.

4. We must believe the gospel before we can experience its saving influence. (A. Buckley.)

Our preaching

I. Its great subject. Christ crucified. We--

1. Declare the nature of His death.

2. Exhibit its benefits.

3. Persuade men to seek an interest in it.

II. Its reception.

1. Some reject it with contempt.

2. Some receive it with respect and advantage. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

St. Pauls preaching at Corinth

I. What St. Paul preached. Christ crucified--i.e., not so much the sufferings of Christ on the Cross as the doctrines connected with the Cross and all the benefits which are secured to us by it. He preached--

1. The dignity of Him who suffered.

2. His humiliation.

3. His willingness.

4. The shamefulness of His death.

5. The intensity of His sufferings. His death was lingering, not sudden. He suffered from men, from devils, from God.

II. Some reasons for his so preaching. There were--

1. Personal reasons. A dispensation was committed unto him. St. Paul preached thus because he was commanded. Woe is unto me, &c.

2. Doctrinal reasons. He preached Christ crucified because by the Cross--

(I) Gods wrath is appeased. God was willing to be appeased; but Gods justice could not be appeased except by the death of Christ.

(2) Gods law is silenced. For every breach of its commands the law thunders forth against us, The soul that sinneth it shall die. But Christ has undergone all the curses of the broken law in our behalf. He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. There is now no condemnation, &c.

(3) Our guilt is removed. If Gods law, which we have broken, has been satisfied by Christ, then must necessarily follow the removal of our guilt.

(4) The devils power is subdued.

(5) Holiness is promoted Dr. Chalmers tells us that, so long as he preached only moral duties, he saw no results of his labours. All the vehemence of his powerful oratory had not the weight of a feather in making the drunkard sober, and the unchaste man clean. But when he began to preach the atonement, he saw in rich abundance the precious fruits of holiness; and so John Berridge tells us that for six years he preached morality to his parishioners at Stapleford till there was hardly a moral man left in the parish; but when he was taught by Gods Spirit to lift up Christ, the people came flocking to the sanctuary in deep concern about their souls.

(6) Heaven is opened.

Conclusion: We hence see the duty of ministers, viz., to walk in the steps of Paul.

1. He was emphatically a preacher. We, too, who are ministers, should aim to be preachers. Our Lords commission ran, Go ye into all the world and preach. Christ sent me, says Paul, not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Others, uninspired men, have said the same. Latimer said, Take away preaching, take away salvation. St. Chrysostom affirms, My whole priesthood is to teach and preach the gospel. This is my sacrifice.

2. But what are we to preach? Christ crucified. The Socinians preach Christ, but only as a bright example, not as a vacarious sacrifice. But we, like St. Paul, preach Christ crucified, because we know that this is the only preaching which God the Holy Ghost will honour. As Cecil says, A philosopher may philosophise his hearers, but the preaching of Christ will alone convert them. Men may preach Christ ignorantly, blunderingly, absurdly, yet God will give that preaching efficacy, because He is determined to magnify His own ordinance. (C. Clayton, M. A.)

Apostolic preaching

I. Its matter. The apostle opposes his theme, on the one hand, to Judaising teachers, who taught converts that they must be circumcised, and keep the laws of Moses; and, on the other hand, to Gentile philosophers, who spent much time in eloquently haranguing on the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice; but who, with all their arts of rhetoric, never could guide one soul to heaven.

II. Its manner They exhibited the Cross of Christ--

1. As the end of the law for righteousness.

2. As the only foundation of a secure hope of acceptance with God.

3. As the only legitimate object of a Christians glory.

4. As the most powerful incentive to obedience.

Conclusion: Let me ask--

1. What think you of Christ?

2. What influence has the subject had on you? (J. Hooper.)

Apostolic preaching

I. Its grand subject. The apostles set forth--

1. The dignity of our Saviours person as the true Messiah of God.

2. The perfection of His atonement. Having laid the foundation in His Divinity, this naturally followed.

3. The plenitude of His redemption. Christ died for all men, and we are therefore enabled to offer salvation to every man. This is a blessing which leads to all others.

II. The reception which this doctrine met with.

1. To the Jews it was a stumbling-block.

2. To the Greeks it was foolishness.

3. Unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. These perfections are admirably discovered if we consider--

(1) The method that God took to make known to the lapsed posterity of man His merciful designs.

(2) The men whom God selected to carry the message of salvation to the world.

(3) The easy terms which the Lord hath fixed upon in order to be benefited by the redemption.

(4) The great effects which have been produced by this doctrine. (E. Oakes.)

Apostolic preaching: its theme and effects

I. The great theme of apostolic preaching. The crucifixion of our Lord was the great centre of their preaching, but its range was much wider. They preached Christ in--

1. The Divinity of His person.

2. The perfection of His atonement.

3. The variety of His offices.

4. The blessings of His redemption.

5. The universality of His government.

II. The diversity of the effects which attend the publication of this gospel.

1. To the Jews it was a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; to them that are called--

(1) The wisdom of God. This wisdom is displayed in--

(a) The wonderful method by which the difficulties were removed which stood in the way of the restoration of fallen man.

(b) The perfect adaptation of the means which it supplies for the attainment of human salvation. First, the sacrifice of Christ. Second, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.

(c) Its direct tendency to counteract one of the most evident manifestations of human depravity--viz., pride.

(d) In the selection of the instruments who were ordained to propagate it.

(e) The period appointed for its proclamation.

(f) The facility of those terms on which the benefits are conferred.

(2) The power of God is displayed in--

(a) The various acts by which the stupendous scheme was accomplished.

(b) The Divine influence which attended the publication of this doctrine.

(c) The triumphant progress which the gospel has made against every opposition.

(d) Its influence on mans present and eternal destinies. (J. Bowers.)

Preaching Christ crucified

1. Preaching is an agency previously unknown, which Christianity has created for itself, and just as the gospel has been truly apprehended has it sought; expression purely through this form. Rationslise it into a philosophy, and the pulpit becomes a tribune to lecture from; mistake it for a magical mystery, and the pulpit is deserted for the altar. But Christianity is neither a wisdom for Greeks, nor a sign for Jews; it is a Divine message for which preaching must ever be the appropriate vehicle.

2. When we set our modern pulpit alongside that of apostolic men there is a pretty wide divergence. Theirs was simple, direct, historic; built itself up on a few facts which clung around a central Person. Ours is elaborate, discursive, theoretical. To some extent such difference is not only natural, but proper. For the apostles were missionary preachers, addressing men to whom everything was new. We who minister among a people moulded by the truths which we preach must traverse an ampler field and cannot decline to use what the Christian past has brought to illustrate or confirm the old message. In accessory helps the pulpit grows yearly richer; yet through this very embarrassing wealth, the preacher is in danger of being beguiled too far from his appointed work.

I. The great pulpit theme.

1. The gospel offers itself as a plan of restoration; and opens with an event which lifts the scheme above parallel--the descent into our race of God Himself. At no other point does creation touch Divinity in such strange fellowship.

2. If we estimate the singular moment of this fact we shall not wonder to find the whole course both of nature and of providence looking towards it.

(1) Thus there were laid in the constitution of nature materials for that rich symbolism which in the light of Holy Scripture it is our business to read. When, e.g., the light diffused through space received a home for us in the sun, there seems to have been present to the thought of God the ultimate gathering up of His omnipresent glory in Christ as the spiritual light of the world. And when, under laws of organic life in animal or plant, many parts were knit together and sustained in corporate action by a force undiscoverable, resident in one part, yet penetrating the whole, He meant to foreshadow the mysterious conjunction of believing souls into one, even Jesus, through the life-giving Spirit who proceedeth from Him.

(2) So also with providence. Those strangely diverging lines which history traces have a reassembling point in the advent of Jesus Christ. To prepare the nations for it in the fulness of time, and to work out its fruits since, must be the key for the intricate movements of providence in all time.

3. If the Christian scheme of salvation through incarnate God is thus the worlds centre of gravity, then its own centre of gravity is the Cross. Modern thought is strong because it recognises the Incarnation; but it is weak because it fails to see the necessary issue of the Advent in the Cross. The event of Golgotha came to complete and to explain the event of Bethlehem. Christ took our nature in order to redeem our souls; was born that He might die. Thus we reach the heart of Christianity. That is a nerveless gospel which glozes over the fact of atonement with vague phrases; that which ignores or denies it is another gospel altogether.

4. But on these facts what is the message which rests? Not merely that the man Jesus was actually the Son of God and become one of our own race; nor that He many centuries ago suffered generously, and for our sakes died; but that the God-Man, who did once at Jerusalem cancel guilt and win deliverance, is here, and able, therefore, to save all who trust Him. He has a pardon which He won as man, yet bestows as God. This acting Christ with His direct access to and contact with men, we must preach. We preach a Christ who, because He was crucified once, is dead no more; but is even now and always breathing power and life into human hearts; and from this central power of Christ to give the Holy Ghost as the fruit of His bitter tree, there branch spiritual works manifold as the miracles of His earthly ministry.

II. The considerations which ought to regulate its delivery from every pulpit. Pentecost gave tongues to the disciples. That was the birthday of preaching. The new message brought new utterance; and times of religious awakening have been signalised by a fresh development of preaching gifts. So it was at the revival of the thirteenth century, of the fifteenth, of the eighteenth. What, then, is this novel voice which Christs gospel has found for itself?

1. As to matter, nothing which is quite foreign can be admitted, and everything which is cognate has a right to be here only in so far as it can serve the preachers main drift, and illustrate or commend his message. This is no rule of narrow exclusion; for there is hardly a department of human thought or knowledge out of connection with Jesus Christ. But the rule is of constant value nevertheless. What ponderous piles of sacred learning have sometimes buried the simple message! What wire-spun theological niceties have perplexed the hearer! The gospel has been more often discussed than preached. Nothing has any right to be in a sermon except because it contributes to the clearness and effect of the message about Christ.

2. As to the form of the message, it must be in the main declarative. If true to its nature it cannot be anything else. It admits, indeed, of embodiment in a creed; it has given to philosophy its richest, deepest principles; before it there goes out the only law of ethics: yet these are none of them the gospel. In its naked essence it is a salvation offered in the person of a Saviour. As such it is to be published. This declarative form implies two subordinate elements. We found wrapped up in the object of preaching two things, a person and a fact. Now these should give to preaching at once a historical and a personal complexion. That Christianity is rooted in the past, and had a birthplace which ties it to one spot of history. All that concerns the life of Christ, with its foreshadowings, its self-manifestations, and each recorded step which conducted to the achievement of redemption--must be prominent in the Christian pulpit. Yet the historical is to be blended with the personal element; and that ministry is best which leads straight to the living helping Saviour. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)

Christ crucified

First, the apostles carriage, as concerning the ordering of his ministry; and secondly, the apostles doctrine, as concerning the nature of those points and truths which were delivered in it. First, for his carriage; this is very much hinted unto us in the adversative particle but, where there are these things further considerable: first, his contrariety of spirit; we see plainly that Paul and the rest of the apostles with him went a quite contrary way to that which was both required by Jews and Gentiles; the one required a sign, and the other sought after wisdom; but they accommodated neither, but instead they preach Christ crucified. What do we learn from hence? That it is the duty and wisdom of a minister to cross mens carnal humours; when people shall affect such kind of preaching as is unprofitable for them, especially to make them fail of their expectation. Physicians, when their patients are immoderate in thirsting after drink, keep it from them the rather. And the reason of it is this, because satisfying of such humours feeds them, and adds strength unto them. This then meets with all such whose carriage is quite contrary hereunto, who make not their hearers necessities, but their affections, to be the rule of their teaching; and if there be any crotchet or humour more than other, which does prevail and abound in them, they will be sure to apply themselves to that in the course of their ministry. Secondly, we have here in this passage the apostles humility and self-denial, in that he did here lay aside those things wherein he might otherwise have gloried and set out himself; he here denied his own wisdom, and learning, and eloquence, and such accomplishments as these are, that so he might the better advance the gospel of Christ. Paul had been caught up into paradise, and been made partaker of such admirable mysteries as were there revealed unto him, that he now should condescend to the preaching of such familiar points, and that after such a familiar manner, as he does here intimate unto us. This I say was a business which was very much to be taken notice of in him. We preach Christ crucified. There was a great matter in that, for such poor creatures as we are. What does this now teach us but this much, that plain and familiar kind of teaching and laying down the mysteries of religion in an easy and perspicuous manner, is that which may well become the greatest and learnedest that are; it is no shame nor disparagement for any teacher. And truly why not, if indeed we consider all? for first, there is a great deal more of art and skill sometimes in it, than otherwise; to preach Christ crucified, and such fundamental truths of religion as these are, and in that manner as they ought to be preached, requires a great deal more of wisdom as belonging unto it than many other points besides, which it may be to some vain kind of minds seem far above them. It is an easier matter to preach fancies and notions, than it is to preach solid truths; it is an easier matter to preach in the enticing words of mans wisdom, than to preach in the powerful evidence and demonstration of the Spirit of God. Secondly, as there is more skill in it, so there is likewise more modesty, and less temptation and danger of miscarriage; the venting of strange speculations, and the preaching plausibly to mens humours and affections in this respect, is not without some hazard of pride and self-applause in those that shall do it. Thirdly, there is also profit and advantage hereby to our hearers, as concerning the good of their souls. Besides, if we speak of human learning and eloquence itself, we must know that this does not cross nor contradict plain kind of preaching. There may be a great deal of learning sometimes in a plain sermon, and in the opening of a plain truth in that sermon. Thirdly, here is his faithfulness and impartiality to either part in the indefiniteness of the subjects which this his doctrine extends unto, to Jew and Gentile both alike; he preaches Christ crucified to either, as a doctrine which might well fit them both. And in particular not only the Jews, which were a people of more low capacities, but likewise as well to the Greeks, which were a people of more raised apprehensions. And a minister does not wrong his hearers with such points whosoever they are. First, because they are such points which are indeed of a very deep reach in religion. Secondly, the wisest and learnedest that are, such points as these may very well become them, forasmuch as they are necessary points, and such as tend to salvation itself. If wise men will be saved they must be glad to hear of saving truths: there being but one way to salvation for them, and all others besides. Those who have the greatest skill in physic, they are glad to take the same potions for their health which others take. Thirdly, again, there is this besides considerable in it, that there is an infinite depth in these matters, which we can never sufficiently reach, or dive into, and those that knew never so much of them, yet they are still capable of knowing more. Besides, further, that we need affections even there where we need not information. This is a special ground for the preaching of plain truths to great wits, thereby to work upon their hearts, and to draw their love and affection to them. Let us not disdain the common doctrines of religion, nor think them too low for us; which as no man is too good to preach of, so no man is too good to hear, nor to have imparted and communicated unto them. Fourthly, there is here one thing more in his practice, and that is this, namely, his wisdom and discretion in the course which he here took for the curing and removing of the distempers of these Jews and Gentiles in reference to preaching; and that is by the very exercise of preaching itself. They counted it the foolishness of preaching. Well, how does the apostle now go about to free them from this mistake? why, he does it no other way than indeed by preaching to them. And this there is good cause for: first, because a great occasion of peoples prejudice against preaching is because indeed they are unacquainted with it. Secondly, because there is an authority in preaching, and an efficacy which goes along with it, which does command respect unto it. But so much of the first particular, viz., the apostles carriage as concerning the ordering of his ministry, which we have seen in four several instances. The second is the apostles doctrine for the points delivered by him, and that is Christ crucified. This was the string which the apostle here harped upon, and the lesson which he principally taught; from whence we may observe this much, that Christ crucified is the main object and matter of our preaching. But why Christ crucified, rather than Christ exhibited in some other consideration? why not rather Christ incarnate, forasmuch as that was the first news of Him? or why not Christ risen again, or Christ ascended, which was a great deal more glorious? Surely there is very good reason to be given for it: first, because he would give them the worst of Christ at first, that he might show he was not ashamed of Him, nor of that gospel which made Him known, but that hereby he might the better prepare them for other truths, and make them the welcomer to them. Christs Cross is the first letter of all in a Christians alphabet. Gods beginnings with us are commonly most tedious. His conclusions and closings are for the most part very sweet and comfortable. Secondly, because Christ crucified, it is virtually and implicitly all the rest; for why was Christ incarnate? it was for this end that He might be crucified. Thirdly, this was that mystery which did most concern us for the good and benefit which comes by it; His death was that which pacified Gods wrath, and paid the debt which was due for our sins. Lastly, Christ crucified, because this was that which these people had a particular hand in as instrumental hereunto; they had been active in the crucifying of Christ themselves. Therefore accordingly we shall find that this was the practice of the apostles in the whole course and way of their ministry. And so it is that which is the chief work of ours, it is the doctrine which is to be chiefly preached by us; and that upon these following considerations. First, as it is a doctrine of the greatest humiliation, it is an humbling and convincing doctrine. If we ask how this is done, I answer by an act of reflection and special consideration to this purpose, namely, as from hence taking notice of this grievous and odious nature of sin; those which make nothing of sin, they may here see what it is now, in the price which was paid for it, and the pain which was endured to expiate it in Christ crucified. This doctrine of Christs Passion, it is thus in this way of proceeding a doctrine of humiliation, and therefore fittest to be urged in the course of our ministry. And that because this is a main part of our ministry, to humble men and convince them of sin. Secondly, this doctrine of Christ crucified, as it has cause to be the chief work of our ministry, forasmuch as it is an humbling doctrine; so it has cause likewise to be so too, because it is a comforting doctrine, and a doctrine of the greatest comfort that can be. First, as Christs death keeps us from the wrath of God and purchases peace to us with God the Father; for that it does, as we may see in Col_1:19-20. Secondly, it obtains to us peace with angels, and all other creatures besides, whether in heaven or earth. Thirdly, it frees us from the power and dominion of sin. Fourthly, it frees us from the power and tyranny of Satan (Col_2:15). Fifthly, from bondage and thraldom to the ceremonial law, Christ crucified flees us from hence (Col_2:14). Sixthly, it frees us from the inordinate fears of death and final dissolution (1Co_15:55; Heb_2:14). Now this doctrine containing so much sweetness and comfortableness in it, what does from hence follow, but that accordingly it should be a principal part of our ministry to dispense it. Thirdly, as it is a doctrine of the richest and most abundant grace; for it contains in it the exceeding love of God towards mankind, and the height of His mercy towards us. In Christ crucified there is a combination of all the riches and mysteries of the gospel: it was His love to be incarnate, to be tempted, to be persecuted for us; yea, but His Passion it was the accomplishment and perfection of all the rest (Joh_15:13). What is it then to preach Christ crucified? For answer hereunto, we must know thus much, that the meaning hereof is not this, that we should preach of no other subject but only of the death of Christ; for there are many other points besides which it is necessary for a minister to speak of, and for a Christian likewise to hear of. First, for the matter of our preaching, that we are to preach this principally, and to make people sensible of this point more especially above any other, because the hinge of the gospel turns upon this point, and we are ministers of the gospel. Secondly, for the order of our preaching, to do all in reference to this; then we preach Christ crucified, not only when we discourse of this argument for the particular subject of it, but likewise when we preach of such points as are introductive and preparatory hereunto, or which are superstructed and founded hereupon. Thirdly, for the manner of our preaching, we then preach Christ crucified, when we preach Christ and the doctrine of Christ in a grave and sober fashion; this is clear by the opposition which the apostle Paul himself there sets (1Co_2:2), where he sets this preaching of Christ crucified as opposite to the excellency of human speech. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)

Preaching Christ

The expression means--

I. To preach his doctrines. If I say that Newton is taught in our universities, I mean his doctrines are taught; and to preach Christ crucified is to preach His doctrines (Act_15:21). For example, the world says, Resent an injury; Christ says, Forgive your enemies. If, therefore, we preach forgiveness, are we not thereby preaching Christ, even though no distinct mention may be made of His Divinity, or of the doctrine of the Atonement? The world says, Indulge your inclinations; Christ says, Be pure in the last recesses of your mind. He, then, who lives a pure life is teaching Christ, even though he may not on every occasion name Him. In the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Epistle of St. James, there is not one word respecting the Atonement; hut if we work out the truths contained in them we preach Christ.

II. Preaching truth in connection with a person; it is not merely purity, but the Pure One; not merely goodness, but the Good One, that we worship. Observe the advantages of this mode of preaching.

1. It makes religion practical.

2. It gives us something to adore, for we can adore a person, but we cannot adore principles.

III. Preaching surrender to the will of God. St. Paul would not preach Christ the conqueror, but Christ the crucified, Christ the humble. You may know a man when once you know what it is he worships. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

Preaching Christ and preaching the times

Archbishop Leighton was once publicly reprimanded for not preaching up the times. Who, he asked, does preach up the times? It was answered that all the brethren did. Then, he rejoined, if all of you preach up the times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach up Christ and eternity. (Principal Edwards.)

Christ crucified

We have here--

I. A gospel rejected.

1. By the Jew. A respectable man the Jew was in his day; all formal religion was concentrated in his person. To him the fact that Jesus was the carpenter of Nazareth was proof positive that He was not the Messiah. He bow to the Nazarine! Accordingly, he turned a deaf ear to Paul. Farewell, old Jew. Alas! that Christ who was thy stumbling block shall be thy Judge. But I am going to find out the Jew here. You, too, have a religion which you love--so far as the outside goes. When I tell you that all your going to the house of God, your singing and praying, all pass for nothing if your heart is not right with God, the Cross becomes a stumbling block. Another specimen of the Jew is thoroughly orthodox; he thinks nothing of forms and ceremonies. Here, up in this dark attic of the head, his religion has taken up its abode; he has a best parlour down in his heart, but his religion never goes there. He has money in there, worldliness, self-love, pride; and accordingly when once you begin to strike home, and let him see what he is by nature, and what he must become by grace, the man cannot stand that.

2. By the Greek. He is a person of quite a different exterior to the Jew. He does not care for the forms of religion. He appreciates eloquence; He admires a smart saying; he likes to read the last new book; and to him the gospel is foolishness. He is thoroughly wise. Ask him anything, and he knows it. If you are a Mahomedan he will hear you very patiently. But if you talk to him of Christ, Stop your cant, he says, I dont want to hear anything about that. This Greek gentleman believes all philosophy except the true one; he studies all wisdom except the wisdom of God. Once when I saw him, he told me he did not believe in any religion at all; and that it was best to live as nature dictated. Another time he spoke welt of all religions, and believed they were all right in their place; and that if a man were sincere, he would be all right at last. I told him I did not think so, and he said I was a bigot. Another time I discussed with him a little about faith. He said, Right; that is true Protestant doctrine. But presently I hinted something about free grace; but that was to him foolishness. Ah, wise man, thy wisdom will stand thee here, but what wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan?

II. The gospel triumphant. Unto us who are called &c. Yonder man rejects the gospel, despises grace, and laughs at it as a delusion. Here is another who laughed at it too; but God brought him to his knees. The Jew and the Greek shall never depopulate heaven. The choirs of glory shall not lose a single songster by all the opposition of Jews and Greeks. John Bunyan says, The hen has two calls, the common cluck, which she gives hourly, and the special one which she means for her little chickens. So there is a general call to every man; the other is the childrens call. You know how the bell sounds over the workshop to call the men to work--that is a general call. The father goes to the door and calls out, John, it is dinner-time!--that is the special call. The call which saves, is like that of Jesus, when He said, Mary, and she said unto Him, Rabboni; when He said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? and Zaccheus, come down. I cannot give the special call; God alone can give it, and I leave it with Him.

III. The gospel admired; unto us who are called of God, it is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. This must be a matter of pure experience. If you are called of God this morning, you will know it. I do not understand how a man can be killed and then made alive again and not know it.

1. The gospel is to the true believer a thing of power. What is it that makes the young man devote himself as a missionary to the cause of God? What is it that constrains yonder minister, in the midst of the cholera, to stand by the bed of one who has that dire disease? And what emboldens that timid female to go through that den of thieves? It is the power of the gospel. But I behold another scene. A martyr is hurried to the stake; the flame is lighted up. What makes him stand unmoved in the flames? The power of the Cross. Behold another scene. There is no crowd there; it is a silent room. There is a poor pallet, and a young girl lying on it, her face blanched by consumption. Joan of Are was not half so mighty as that girl. Hear her sing: Jesus! lover of my soul, &c., as she shuts her eye on earth, and opens it in heaven. What enables her to die like that? The power of Jesus crucified.

2. To a believer the gospel is the perfection of wisdom, and if it appear not so to the ungodly, it is because of the perversion of their judgment. It has been the custom to talk of infidels as men of great intellect. But this is a mistake; for the gospel is the sum of wisdom; a treasure-house of truth. Our meditation upon it enlarges the mind. It confers wisdom on its students. A man who is a lover of the truth, as it is in Jesus, is in a right place to follow with advantage any other branch of science. Once when I read books, I put all my knowledge together in confusion; but ever since I put Christ in the centre, each science has revolved round it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ crucified

The Cross is the preachers theme. In all ages and lands this theme of the apostle has lent to the preachers voice the most thrilling tones, and to his spirit the deepest earnestness. Preaching is mans wisdom as well as Gods. It is the simplest, wisest, most natural, and most effectual way of lodging our beliefs in the hearts and consciences of men. But among all preachers in all ages the preachers of the Cross stand pre-eminent. The Cross stirs the heart, chains the spirit, as no other theme in this universe can do.

I. The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. Jews and Greeks. These are not names of the past. The world still divides itself thus in its moral aspects.

1. The Jews require a sign. Two thoughts were ever clashing in the Jewish mind. The earlier splendours of their national history, and their present bondage and shame. The restorer of the kingdom of Israel was the national description of the expected deliverer; but when they saw that the only empire Christ cared for was over the hearts and consciences of men--that there was no chance of a national restoration, they turned from Him. But He knew how little earth would be helped by the establishment of such a society as the Jews were dreaming of. There is many a man in a popular tumult who will throw up his cap and shout Liberty! whose notion of liberty is the grossest licentiousness or the sternest tyranny. And many a Jew would attend a triumphal progress, and rend the air with Hosannas, who, when he heard of an inward moral reformation as the first act of obedience, would change his cry to Crucify Him! I take the Jewish seeking for a sign as the representative of that seeking for an outward regeneration of society which has lived in the hearts of the men of this world in all ages. Socialism is its most modern manifestation. The hope that if society were rearranged, property redivided, and a fair start given to all, man would be blessed. The difficulty lies not there, say the preachers of the gospel: your hearts need the cure, not your circumstances. The Jews sought a sign, a hint even, that Jesus was anything like what their fancies pictured; and when He gave no sign but His shameful Cross, they shouted, Better Caesar than He. And the world is full of sign-seekers. Men looking for redemption, but misconceiving utterly its nature. French republics, New Jerusalems, all mean the same thing. Men expect that God will begin from without instead of from within.

2. The Greeks seek after wisdom. The Greeks represent those who try by searching to find out God. Greek intellect was hopelessly baffled in the search. Blank atheism was the result of it in all the philosophic schools. An altar to the unknown God kept up the memory of the effort in the mind of the populace; but every thinker on earth had been brought, in the absence of revelation, to the bewildered question of Pilate What is truth? Some said, There is such a thing, but man can have no hope of finding it. Some said, Tush! there is no such thing in the universe at all. That a tale of a crucified man in an obscure and dishonoured country should be what they had been fruitlessly seeking for ages was an insult to their understandings. In them was the same radical indisposition to accept a gospel which demanded an inward and spiritual change. It was only after long battles that intellect, with broken wing, fell bleeding on the bosom of revelation, and healed her wounds and renewed her life at the once hated symbol of the Cross. But intellect is essentially restless. In every age the battle is renewed, and has to be fought out with varying success. And in this age the wisdom-seekers are rampant, proclaiming that not from God, but from man must be asked the question, What must I do?--that our own nature, honestly treated, will supply all that is needful; that the Cross is an insult to the wisdom and benignity of the Father; that Jesus is the first of men--an admirable pattern, but that they dream who say, He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Far easier, far pleasanter to the eye is it, to seek after wisdom than to seek after holiness.

II. We preach Christ crucified. Read Rom_3:21; Rom_5:1-11; Rom_6:3-11; Php_2:5-11; Heb_2:9-18; Heb_4:14-16; 1Co_15:45-57. In Christ crucified the following facts are set forth as the gospel--

1. The love of the Father in the sacrifice of the Son. Philip had a much deeper meaning than he was perhaps conscious of when he said, Show us the Father. None of the gods of heathendom contented heathendom, for they could not show the Father, they did not know what fatherhood meant; but those men had a mighty gospel who could say, God so loved the world, &c. We tell you not what God ought to be or do, or may be expected to do, but what God has done. Behold Christ Jesus and Him crucified! There God unveils His character--reveals His heart. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Jew seeking after a sign, Greek groping after wisdom, turn hither--Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us. Is this truth folly or wisdom? Is it weakness or power? Is life worth less to the man who knows that the Father loveth him, or is it worth more? And the world, is it better or worse for the belief that God loves it, and will, by loves sure purpose, redeem it to Himself? Get that belief into the heart of the world, your dream is fulfilled--your golden age is restored!

2. The redemption wrought by the work of the Son. The picture of humanity which God beholds is that of bondsmen, bound to an alien and usurping power. The evidence of this condition, it meets us everywhere. Sin had entered into the world, sin had mastered it; God entered into it to break the bonds of sin and restore the world to itself and to Him. Is it nothing that the preachers of this gospel should cry to souls hopeless of victory, Liberty! a man has conquered, a man has lived free from sin; a man whose spirit can so chain your spirit by its living attraction as to ensure to you the victory too? The public justice of the universe is satisfied, its law illustrated and magnified, and the sinner, conscience-stricken, but beginning to cherish the hope of restoration, is satisfied that a God of holiness, of justice, will still be honoured, while he, the guilty, is saved! Men laughed, and called it folly; but hell trembled, Satan cowered, for they understood the attraction of the Cross. Satans Conqueror cried out, It is finished, and committed to such hands as Pauls the standard of the Cross, who cried, I preach Christ crucified, &c.

3. The glory won by the suffering and Cross of Jesus, which is to illumine heaven eternally (Php_2:6-11). The sun is the centre of the world of nature; the Cross, of the world of spirit. But here is a strange contradiction. The sun is the most glorious object in creation, it fills all heaven with its splendour; but the Cross is to all men naturally an object of dread and aversion, and is associated with shame, agony, and death. But just as the sun has for ages proved itself the centre of our world of nature, the Cross has proved itself the centre of the world of spirit, has chained the most mighty and onward spirits to its orbit (Rev_5:6-10). Here, mark you, is the most splendid picture of heaven which is anywhere painted; yet this must mean that the Cross, far from fading from sight when the veil falls over earths sad history, remains the object of interest, the centre of attraction through eternity. That this must be so will appear to us if we consider--

1. The Cross must remain for ever the manifestation of the depth, the tenderness, the mightiness of the love of God.

2. While the Cross shall be to the saints for ever the bond of fellowship with their risen and glorified Lord, the Lord Himself, while He remembers the Cross as the instrument of His agony, beholds it as the fountain of glory and of bliss. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)

Christ crucified

I. The doctrine. Christ crucified.

1. The light.

2. The hope.

3. The law of the world.

II. Its offensiveness.

1. A stumbling block.

2. Foolishness.

III. Its triumphs--in them that believe.

1. The power of God.

2. The wisdom of God. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Christ crucified

It is a very strange conjunction of words--the Anointed of God crucified. Yet for this very purpose He was anointed, and our preaching is the preaching of Christ, that is the glory of His Person; but it is Christ crucified that is in the ignominy and shame of His suffering. In dividing the text we will take each word.

I. A word of position--But.

1. It is not everybody that does this; others have other things to do.

2. The but seems to suggest opposition, viz., the contentions which prevailed at Corinth. What are we to do when we find people quarrelling? If we are wise we shall let them alone, and say through it all, But we preach Christ crucified. I have known a Church divided into as many divisions as there were members, and there has come a warm-hearted Christian man who has just preached Christ crucified, and somehow before they knew it the members melted into one.

3. The but seems to me, however, to have reference to the very wise people to whom the Cross was foolishness. They were abreast of the times, they kept pace with progress, so they preached Christ so improved that it was no longer the gospel, but another gospel. I like Pauls grand way of teaching the Gnostics, or the knowers; he joined the know-nothings, for he says, I determined not to know anything among you save Christ and Him crucified. Let these Gnostics preach what they like, but we preach Christ crucified.

4. We know some brethren whose religion consists always in mending the religion of others. You may be preaching niceties of doctrine, of theories, of prophecy, &c., while what is wanted is the cure for the souls of men who are perishing for lack of knowledge, and the knowledge that they want is wrapped up in these two words, Christ crucified.

5. And had Paul been here he would have made some remark about the superstitions of this age, for there be some that seem to think God is best honoured by buildings of gorgeous architecture, and by sumptuous services. Our friend has built a reredos, has decorated a holy table, has prepared the chancel, and thinks he has brought back mediaeval Christianity; but we preach Christ crucified.

II. A word of personality--We. Why do we do it? Because--

1. He saved us. We cannot help preaching this, because every day it is the rest and refuge, the joy and the delight of our souls.

2. He inspires us. We preach Christ crucified, because years ago He laid His hand upon us, and said, Go, preach My gospel.

3. It seems the masterpiece of God. Heaven and earth are full of His majesty, and both in nature and providence we learn to adore the ever-present and eternal One. But in Immanuel, God with us, there is most of God.

4. We are fools, as the enemy says.

(1) Any fool can say that which is uppermost; and truly, brethren, I am myself a great fool in that respect, for uppermost with me is Christ crucified.

(2) Fools can always say what they are told. They are not great at invention. There are some that carry with them a touchstone, by which they judge inspiration itself--their inner consciousness, and the general tone of public opinion. Paul, of course, did not know much about that, because he was crucified to the world, and the world to him, and he did not care much about public opinion.

(3) Fools generally talk when they are wonder-struck, and we confess that we have been astounded at the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(4) Fools can generally speak if they are forced, and we do confess that that is exactly one point that accounts for our folly. Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. We cannot take any credit when we preach Christ crucified, because it lies within us like fire, and we cannot help but speak of it.

(5) And surely men may speak when there is a great danger. If there were a house on fire, and a poor soul needed to be delivered, I do not suppose that before a man wheeled the fire-escape up to a window you would stop him to see whether he could pass an examination at Oxford. And so we must be permitted while men are perishing to preach to them that alone which will save them--namely, Christ crucified.

(6) We are determined, as any other sensible fools would do, to stop by what we know till we learn something better. In the State of Massachusetts there was a resolution passed that the State should be guided and governed by the laws of God till they had time to make some better; and we have determined that we will preach Christ crucified till we find something better.

III. A word of action We preach, or proclaim as heralds. We are trumpeters for Christ, we go before Him to prepare His way. Hence, some have said the preacher ought to preach principally the second Advent. Undoubtedly; but first he should be able to say, we preach Christ crucified, not we preach Christ glorified. Because to preach means to proclaim, therefore we proclaim Christ as King. Submit yourselves unto Him. It is not a matter of choice with you. It is not Will you elect some king? but He is King; submit to Him. Neither are we called upon to adorn Christ crucified. I think we are getting into great mistakes about sermons sometimes. Gild gold, and lay your colours on the lily, but let Christ alone, and if you cannot do anything but just tell simply the story of the love of God in providing an atonement, do tell it and leave those fine words at home.

IV. The two last words--Christ crucified.

1. Preach all of Christ. When Paul says, We preach Christ crucified, he seems to me to say, We preach the most objectionable part of Christ. I like a Christian man that preaches all he believes. Now, Paul, this is very unwise of you. There is a Jewish gentleman, a man of large means; if we could get him into the Church he might very likely build a chapel, and you preached Christ. And then there was a Greek gentleman. Now, why did you not preach Christ in His glory, or say little about Him? We cannot expect to get these Jewish and Greek friends converted to us, if we will stiffly remain by the old orthodoxy. The whole current of thought leads you to believe that there is a great deal in Mahomedanism and Brahminism, and it is a great pity to push these distinctive points so very far. I fancy I hear anybody saying that to Paul! Did we come here to please men? I charge you never needlessly offend anybody; but if the truth offend anybody, let them be offended; for it is much better to offend all the world than to offend your Master.

2. As we preach all of Christ, so this is all. But we have some other doctrines. Yes; but they are all relating to this. When you have said that, you have said everything.

3. We preach Him as all. That is all. If you are converted, all your salvation lies in Christ crucified. Oh, but I want a new heart. Go to Him for it. Oh, but I want to feel my need. He gives you this, as well as all the rest.

4. We will all preach Christ. But we are not all ministers, saith one. I hope you all preach Christ, you that are not ministers. A minister once said, Now all of you must teach Jesus, and try to bring others to Christ; you must all tell what you know. There was a black man in the gallery called out, Dat will I do. But his minister stopped, for Sam was the most ignorant member of the Church, and he said, Sam, I do not mean you; because you do not know more than your A B C. Dats right, sar, said he; dere be some niggers dont know A B C--Sam teach them dat. You young converts that do not know much about Christ, you know something other sinners do not know. Go and tell that, and each bit you get go and tell them. You will learn it all the better by teaching it yourself.

5. We preach Christ crucified to all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ crucified

I. We preach, i.e., proclaim, herald. Commonly, however, in the N.T., voice, in contradistinction to other agencies, is usually intended. Faith cometh by hearing. There are additional instrumentalities which have been greatly honoured. For instance, the gospel is printed. The press is a mighty power for good. Again, the gospel may be painted. Sermons have proceeded from studios as well as from studies, and the picture-gallery has illustrated impressively the glorious work of grace. Zinzendorf traced back his deepest convictions to the effect produced upon him by a representation of the crucified Saviour. And this is not marvellous. Look at the Last Supper of Leonardo; the Transfiguration of Raphael; or, the Light of the World by Holman Hunt. Are you unmoved by them? Nevertheless, it is chiefly by speech that the mind is reached and the heart touched. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. An experienced missionary has remarked, I have never seen a Chinaman weep over a book; but I have seen a Chinaman weep under a sermon. We have the sermons of George Whitfield and the orations of Edward Irving, and the reason why you are not affected as others were is because they heard, whereas you only read.

II. We preach christ--Paul habitually called the attention of his hearers to a Person. We preach Christ: Christ as He was, the one perfect and finished offering for human sin: Christ as He is, the Mediator between God and man; Christ as He will be, the Judge of every creature. In adopting such a course the apostles followed the Master Himself. Christ preached Christ. I say, I am, I do, I will: how often did these words fall from His lips! No prophet dared to speak as He spoke. The power of this Christian ministry is in the presentation, not simply of great truths, but of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.

III. We preach Christ crucified. Because--

1. Christ crucified reveals God. Hereby perceive we the love of God. Write the biography of Columbus and say nothing of America, speak of Caxton and be silent about printing, allude to Wyckliffe and ignore the Reformation, then may we preach Christ and forget Christ crucified.

2. Christ crucified restores man. So Paul found. He spoke from experience. A North-American Indian was asked the means by which he and his brethren became Christians. The answer was: A preacher came once, and desiring to instruct us, began by proving that there was a God. On which we said to him, Well! and dost thou think that we are ignorant of that? Now go again whence thou earnest. Another preacher appeared and said, Ye must not steal, ye must not lie, &c. We answered him, Dost thou think that we do not know that? Go and learn it first thyself, and teach the people that thou belongest to not to do these things. Some time after this, Christian Henry, one of the brethren, came to me in my hut, and sat down by me and said: I come to thee in the name of the Lord of heaven and earth. He acquaints thee that He would gladly save thee, and rescue thee from the miserable state in which thou liest. To this end He became Man, hath given His life for mankind, and shed His blood for them! Upon this he lay down on a board in my hut, and fell asleep, being fatigued with his journey. I thought what manner of man is this? There he lies and sleeps so sweetly. I might kill him immediately, and throw him out into the forest, and who would care for it? But he is unconcerned. However, I could not get rid of his words; and though I went to sleep I dreamed of the blood which Christ had shed for us. Thus, through the grace of God, the awakening among us took place. What a lesson to all Christian workers! Behold the secret of power. Christ crucified is the worlds hope. (T. R. Stevenson.)

The crucifixion of Christ

I. Was most bitter and painful.

II. Was most vile and shameful. Never by the Romans legally inflicted upon freemen, but only upon slaves. There is in mans nature an abhorrency of disgraceful abuse no less strong than are the little antipathies to pain. Whence it is not marvellous that as a transcendently good man, Christ was affected by those occurrences so mightily, according to that ejaculation in the Greek liturgies--By Thy unknown sufferings, O Christ, have mercy on us.

III. Had in it some particular advantages conducing to the accomplishment of our Lords principal design.

1. Its being very notorious and lasting a competent time. For if He had been privately made away, or suddenly despatched, no such great notice would have been taken of it, nor would it have been so fully proved to the confirmation of our faith and conviction of infidelity; nor would His excellent deportment under such affliction have so illustriously shone forth; wherefore Divine providence did so manage, that as the course of His life, so also the manner of His death should be most conspicuous and remarkable.

2. By this kind of suffering the nature of that kingdom which He intended to erect was evidently signified--a kingdom purely spiritual, consisting in she government of mens hearts. No other kingdom could He be presumed to design, who submitted to this way of suffering.

3. By such a death Gods special providence was discovered, and His glory illustrated in the propagation of the gospel. Thereby the excellency of Divine power and wisdom was much glorified: by so impotent and improbable means, accomplishing so great effects.

4. This kind of suffering to the devout fathers did seem in many ways significant, or full of instructive and admonitive emblems.

(1) His posture on the Cross might represent unto us that large and comprehensive charity which He bare in His heart toward us, stretching forth His arms of kindness, pity, and mercy, with them, as it were, to embrace the world.

(2) His ascent to the Cross might set forth His discharging that high office of universal High Priest for all ages and all people, the Cross being an altar.

IV. Corresponded to the prophecies and types foreshadowing it.

V. As applicable to our practice. No contemplation is more efficacious towards the sanctification of our hearts and lives than this; for what good affection may not the meditation on it kindle? what virtue may it not breed and cherish in us?

(1) Love.

(2) Gratitude.

(3) Hope.

(4) Obedience.

(5) Penitence.

(6) Fear.

(7) Deterrence from wilful commission of sin.

(8) Joy in contemplation.

(9) Charity toward our neighbour.

(10) Disregard of this world.

(11) The willing inspection and the cheerful sustenance of the Cross.

Since there he such excellent uses and fruits of the Cross borne by our blessed Saviour, we can have no reason to be offended at it or ashamed of it. (I. Barrow, D. D.)

The Cross of Christ

Note--

I. Its simplicity.

1. It was characteristic of the Jews to demand signs or portents. The especial sign which they sought was that of some manifestation of the Shekinah to encompass the Messiah. But the tendency was more general: it was the craving for the marvellous which still characterises Oriental nations, which appears in the licence of Arabian invention and credulity, and which among the Jews reached its highest pitch in the extravagant fictions of Rabbinical writers. The proverb Credat Judaeus shows the character which they had obtained amongst the Romans for readiness to accept the wildest absurdities; and this disposition to seek for signs is expressly commended in the Mishna. To a certain extent this tendency is met by the gospel miracles (Joh_2:11; Act_2:22). Yet on the whole it was discouraged (Mat_16:4; Joh_4:48). And what is thus intimated in the Gospels is here followed out by the apostle. In answer to the demand for signs, he produced the least dazzling, the least miraculous part of Christs career. The more ample we suppose the evidence for the Gospel miracles, or the more portentous their nature, so much more striking is the testimony of Christ and His apostles to the truth that it is not on them that the main structure is to be built.

2. This simplicity was also a rebuke to the intellectual demands of the Greek. The subtlety of discussion which had appeared in the numerous schools of Greek speculation, and which appeared afterwards in the theological divisions of the fourth and fifth centuries, needed not now, as in the time of Socrates, to be put down by a truer philosophy, but by something which should give men fact instead of speculation, flesh and blood instead of words and theories. Such a new starting point was provided by the apostles constant representation of the crucifixion. Its outward form was familiar to them; it was for them now to discover its inward application to themselves.

II. Its humiliation. In order to enter into the force of this, we must picture a state of feeling which, in part from the effect produced on the world by this very passage and the spirit which it describes, is entirely removed from our present experience. Not only is the outward symbol of the Cross glorified in our eyes by the truth of the religion which it represents, but the very fact of the connection between Christianity and humiliation is one of the proofs of its Divine excellence. But at its first propagation, as now in parts of the world external to Christendom, it was far otherwise. The crucifixion was and is a scandal to the Jews as a dishonour to the Messiah. Christ has been called by them in derision Toldi, the man who was hanged; and Christians, the servants of him who was hanged. And in the Koran, the supposed ignominy of the crucifixion is evaded by the story that the Jews, in a judicial blindness, crucified Judas instead of Christ, who ascended from their hands into heaven. The same objection was felt by the educated Greeks and Romans; encumbered as Christianity then was in their eyes with associations so low. Nothing shows the confidence of the apostle more strongly than the prominence he gives to a teaching so unpopular. Php_2:5-8 contains the prophecy of the triumph of Christianity not only in spite, but by means of this great obstacle. And now the Cross is enshrined in our most famous works of art, in our greatest historical recollections, in our deepest feelings of devotion. The society which consisted almost exclusively in the first instance of the lower orders, has now embraced within it all the civilisation of the world. (Dean Stanley.)

The Atonement adapted to all

There is a want in the human mind which nothing but the Atonement can satisfy, though it may he a stumbling block to the Jew, and foolishness to the Greek. In the words of Henry Rogers: It is adapted to human nature, as a hitter medicine may be to a patient. Those who have taken it, tried its efficacy, and recovered spiritual health, gladly proclaim its value. But to those who have not, and will not try it, it is an unpalatable potion still. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

En touto nika

The foolishness of God? The weakness of God? Can God be weak? Can God be foolish? No, says St. Paul. For so strong is God that His very weakness, if He seems weak, is stronger than all mankind. So wise is God, that His very foolishness, if He seems foolish, is wiser than all mankind. Why, then, talk of the weakness of God, of the foolishness of God, if He be neither weak nor foolish? St. Paul did not say these ugly words for himself. The Jews, who sought after a sign, the Greeks, who sought after wisdom, said them. There are men who say them now. Now, how is this?

I. The jews required a sign; a sign from heaven; a sign of Gods power. Thunder and earthquakes, armies of angels, taking vengeance on the heathen; these were the signs of Christ which they expected. And all that St. Paul gave them was a sign of Christs weakness. Then said the Jews--This is no Christ for us. Then answered St. Paul--Weak? I tell you that what seems to you weakness is the very power of God. Weak, shamed, despised, dying, He is still Conqueror; and He will at last draw all men to Himself. What seems to you weakness is the very power of God; the power of suffering all things, that He may do good: and that that will conquer the world, when riches and glory, and armies, aye, the very thunder and the earthquake, have failed utterly.

II. The greeks sought after wisdom. They expected Paul to argue with them on cunning points of philosophy; and all he gave them seemed mere foolishness. He could have argued with these Greeks, for he was a great scholar and a true philosopher, but he would not. What you need, and what they need, is not philosophy, but a new heart and a right spirit. Then know this, that God so loved you that He condescended to become man, and to give Himself up to death, even the death of the Cross, that He might save you from your sins. And to that, those proud Greeks answered--The cross? Tell your tale to slaves, not to us. To give Himself up to the death of the cross is foolishness, and not the wisdom which we want. Then answered St. Paul, True, the cross is a slaves and a wretchs death; and therefore slaves and wretches will hear me, though you will not (verses 26-31). You Greeks, with all your philosophy, have been trying for hundreds of years to find out the laws of heaven and earth, and to set the world right by them; and you have not done it. You have not even set your own hearts and lives right. But what your seeming wisdom cannot do, the seeming foolishness of Christ on His Cross will do. That what seems to you foolishness is the very wisdom of God. Know, that when all your arguments and philosophies have failed to teach men what they ought to do, one earnest, penitent look at Christ upon His Cross will teach them. And out of them shall spring that Church of Christ, which shall reign over all the world, when you and your philosophies have crumbled into dust. Conclusion:

1. Let us learn--

(1) That self-sacrificing love which Christ showed on His Cross is stronger than all pomp and might, all armies, riches, governments; aye, that it is the very power of God, by which all things consist, which holds together heaven and earth and all there is therein.

(2) That that love is wiser than all arguments, doctrines, philosophies, whether they be true or false.

2. Do you wish to be powerful? Then look at Christ upon His Cross; at what seems to men His weakness; and learn from Him how to be strong. Do you wish to be wise? Then look at Christ upon the Cross; and at what seemed to men His folly; and learn from Him how to be wise. For sooner or later, I hope and trust, you will find that true which St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say, That all the learning in the world had never taught.him so much as the sight of Christ upon the Cross. (G. Kingsley, M. A.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 1:22-25. For the Jews require a sign — Demand of the apostles, as they did of their Lord, more signs still, after all they have seen already. And the Greeks — Or Gentiles; seek after wisdom — The depths of philosophy, and the charms of eloquence. But we preach Christ crucified — We proceed to bear our testimony in a plain and historical, not rhetorical or philosophical manner, to the sufferings and death of Christ, endured to expiate the guilt of mankind, and procure for them pardon, holiness, and eternal life: unto the Jews a stumbling-block — An occasion of offence, by reason of his mean appearance, his sufferings, and death; they having looked for a glorious and victorious Messiah, who should rescue them from all their enemies, and exalt them to wealth, dignity, and power; and because the profession of Christianity was attended with reproach, and various other sufferings. This doctrine therefore was in direct opposition to the signs which they demanded, and to all their secular expectations; and unto the Greeks foolishness — A silly tale, just opposite to the wisdom they seek. But unto them which are called — And who obey the call; both Jews and Greeks — For the effect is the same on both; Christ — With his doctrine, his miracles, his life, his death, his resurrection, &c.; the power of God — Creating men anew by his word and Spirit, enabling them to withstand and conquer all their spiritual enemies, and to do with cheerfulness, and suffer with patience, the whole will of God: and the wisdom of God — The person by whom God also manifests his infinite wisdom in the contrivance and execution of his plan of redemption and salvation, and the preaching of whom in the gospel, is not such folly as the Greeks count it; but the declaration of that great mystery of godliness, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Because the foolishness of God — That preaching of Christ crucified which men account foolishness; is wiser than men — Contains more true wisdom than any or all of the apparently wise contrivances of men: or, the lowest expressions of God’s wisdom in those actions and dispensations, which are most contrary to the judgment, wisdom, and experience of carnal persons, are incomparably wiser than all the projects which the wit of men can devise; and the weakness of God — Those weak means by which God is wont to accomplish his purposes, or the smallest effects of his power; are stronger than men — More available than any human power to bring about their designs. In other words, the weakness of Christian teachers which God makes use of will be found to be stronger than all the efforts which men can make, either to reform the world any other way, or to obstruct the prevalence and success of this.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1:22-24 Paul uses the words Greeks and Gentiles interchangeably to refer to non-Jews.

1:22 Unbelieving Jews wanted to see miraculous signs to validate the message (cp. Matt 12:38-39; 16:1-4; John 2:18, 23; 4:48). Greeks, renowned for their schools of philosophy, were only interested in human wisdom—i.e., philosophical reasoning.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Co 1:22. [9]ΑἰΤΟῦΣΙ, require) from the apostles, as formerly from Christ.—σοφίαν, wisdom) [The Greeks require in] Christ the sublime philosopher, proceeding by demonstrative proofs.[10]

[9] Σημεῖα, signs) powerful acts. We do not find any sign given by Paul at Corinth, Acts 18.—V. g.

[10] They are not satisfied because Christ, instead of giving philosophic and demonstrative proofs, demands man’s belief, on the ground of His word, and a reasonable amount of evidence.—ED.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_1:22 f.[244] Protasis (ἘΠΕΙΔΉ) and apodosis (ἩΜΕῖς ΔΈ) parallel to the protasis and apodosis in 1Co_1:21 : since as well Jews desire a sign as Hellenes seek after wisdom, we, on the other hand, preach, etc. It is to be observed how exactly the several members of the sentence correspond to what was said in 1Co_1:21; for Ἰουδαῖοι κ. Ἕλληνες is just the notion of the ΚΌΣΜΟς broken up; ΣΗΜΕῖΑ ΑἸΤΟῦΣΙ and ΣΟΦΊΑΝ ΖΗΤ. is the practical manifestation of the ΟὐΚ ἜΓΝΩ … ΤῸΝ ΘΕΌΝ; and lastly, ἩΜΕῖς ΔῈ ΚΗΡΎΣΣΟΜΕΥ Κ.Τ.Λ[245] contains the actual way in which the εὐδόκησεν ὁ Θεός κ.τ.λ[246] was carried into effect. And to this carrying into effect belongs in substance ἸΟΥΔΑΊΟΙς ΜῈΝ ΣΚΆΝΔΑΛΟΝ Κ.Τ.Λ[247] down to σοφίαν, 1Co_1:24,a consideration which disposes of the logical difficulty raised by Hofmann as to the causal relation of protasis and apodosis.

The correlation καὶ … καί includes not only the two subjects Ἰουδαῖοι and Ἕλληνες, but the two whole affirmations; as well the one thing, that the Jews demand a sign, as the other, that the Gentiles desire philosophy, takes place.

ἡμεῖς δέ] This δέ, on the contrary, on the other hand, is the common classical δέ of the apodosis (Act_11:17), which sets it in an antithetic relation corresponding to the protasis. See Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 184 f.; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 92 f.; Bornem. Act. ap. I. p. 77. Examples of this usage after ἐπεί and ἐπειδή may be seen in Klotz, a[248] Devar. p. 371 f. The parallel relation, which the eye at once detects, between 1Co_1:21 and 1Co_1:22 (and in which a rhetorical emphasis is given by the repetition of the ἐπειδή used by Paul only in 1Co_14:16, 1Co_15:21; Php_2:26, besides this passage), is opposed not merely to Billroth and Maiers interpretation, which makes ἐπειδὴ … ζητοῦσιν introduce a second protasis after εὐδόκ. ὁ Θεός, but also to Hofmanns, that 1Co_1:22-24 are meant to explain the emphasis laid on τοὺς πιστεύοντας; as likewise to the view of Rückert and de Wette, that there is here added an explanation of the διὰ τῆς μωρίας κ.τ.λ[249], in connection with which Rückert arbitrarily imagines a ΜΈΝ supplied after ἸΟΥΔΑῖΟΙ.

ἸΟΥΔΑῖΟΙ and ἝΛΛΗΝΕς without the article, since the statement is regarding what such as are Jews, etc., are wont, as a rule, to desire.

σημεῖα] Their desire is, that He on whom they are to believe should manifest Himself by miraculous signs, which would demonstrate His Messiahship (Mat_16:4). They demand these, therefore, as a ground of faith; comp Joh_4:48. That we are not to understand here miracles of the apostles (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Bengel, and others) is clear, both from the nature of the antithesis, and from the consideration that, in point of fact, the apostles did actually perform σημεῖα (Rom_15:18 f.; 2Co_12:12). What the Jews desired in place of these were miraculous signs by which the crucified, but, according to the apostles teaching, risen and exalted, Jesus, should evince His being the Messiah, seeing that the miracles of His earthly life had for them lost all probative power through His crucifixion (Mat_27:41 f., 63 f.). Comp Reiche, Comment. crit. I. p. 123 f. To take, with Hofmann, the σημεῖα αἰτ. generally, as a universal Jewish characteristic, of the tendency to crave acts of power that should strike the senses and exclude the possibility of doubt, is less suitable to the definite reference of the context to Christ, in whom they were refusing to believe. Were the reading σημεῖον (see the critical remarks) to be adopted, we should have to understand it of some miracle specifically accrediting the Messiahship; not, with Schulz, Valckenaer, Eichhorn, and Pott, of the illustrious person of an earthly ruler. Any such personal reference would need to be suggested by the connection, as in Luk_2:34; but this is not at all the case in view of the parallel σοφίαν, nor is it so even by Χ. ἘΣΤΑΥΡ. in 1Co_1:23. See on the latter verse.

ΑἸΤΟῦΣΙ] is the demand actually uttered (that there be given); ζητοῦσι the seeking after and desiring, anquirere (correlative: εὑρίσκειν).

ΧΡΙΣΤῸΝ ἘΣΤΑΥΡ.] Christ as crucified (1Co_2:2; Gal_3:1), and therefore neither as one who exhibits miraculous signs, nor as the originator of a new philosophy, such, possibly, as Socrates or Pythagoras.

σκάνδαλον] in apposition to Χ. ἘΣΤΑΥΡ. As crucified, He is to them an occasion for unbelief and rejection. Gal_5:11. For His being put to a shameful death conflicts with the demand to have a Messiah glorified by miracles.

μωρίαν] because philosophy is what they desire as a guide to salvation; therefore to believe in Christ (not as one of the wise of this world, but) as crucified, is to them a folly, an absurdity; whereby, indeed, their own σοφία becomes ΜΩΡΊΑ ΠΑΡᾺ Τ. ΘΕῷ, 1Co_3:19.

[244] Ver. 22 f. is the programme of the history of the development of Christianity in its conflict with the perverse fundamental tendencies of the worlds sensualism and spiritualism; ver. 24, the programme of its triumph over both.

[245] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[246] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[247] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[248] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[249] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co 1:22-25 open out the thought of 1Co 1:21 : “the world” is parted into “Jews” and “Greeks”; μωρία becomes σκάνδαλον and μωρία ; the κήρυγμα is defined as that of Χριστὸς ἐσταυρωμένος ; and the πιστεύοντες reappear as the κλητοί . Both Mr [229] and Al [230] make this a new sentence, detached from 1Co 1:20 f., and complete in itself, with ἐπειδὴ καί κ . τ . λ . for protasis, and ἡμεῖς δέ κ . τ . λ . for apodosis, as though the mistaken aims of the world supplied Paul’s motive for preaching Christ; the point is rather (in accordance with 20) that his “foolish” message, in contrast with ( δέ , 1Co 1:23 ) the desiderated “signs” and “wisdom,” convicts the world of folly (1Co 1:20 ); thus the whole of 1Co 1:22-24 falls under the regimen of the 2nd ἐπειδή , which with its καί , emphatically resumes the first ἐπειδή (1Co 1:21 ) “since indeed”. God turned the world’s wise men into fools (1Co 1:20 ) by bestowing salvation through faith on a ground that they deem folly (1Co 1:21 ) in other words, by revealing His power and wisdom in the person of a crucified Messiah, whom Jews and Greeks unite to despise (1Co 1:22-24 ).

[229] Meyer’s Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).

[230] Alford’s Greek Testament .

1Co 1:22 . Ἰουδαῖοι … Ἕλληνες anarthrous; “Jews” qua Jews, etc.: in this “asking” and “seeking” the characteristics of each race are “hit off to perfection” (Ed [231] : see his interesting note); αἰτεῖν expresses “the importunity of the Jews,” ζητεῖν “the curious, speculative turn of the Greeks” (Lt [232] ). For the Jewish requirement, cf. parls. in the case of Jesus; the app., doubtless, were challenged in the same way P. perhaps publicly at Cor [233] : “non reperias Corinthi signum editum esse per Paulum, Act 18 .” (Bg [234] ). Respecting this demand, see Lt [235] , Biblical Essays , pp. 150 ff. Such dictation Christ never allowed; His miracles were expressions of pity, not concessions to unbelief, a part of the Gospel and not external buttresses to it. Of the Hellenic σοφίαν ζητεῖν Philosophy is itself a monument; cf. , amongst many cl [236] parls., Herod., iv., 77, Ἔλληνες πάντας ἀσχόλους εἶναι πρὸς πᾶσαν σοφίην ; also Ælian, Var. Hist. , xii., 25; Juvenal, Sat. , I., ii., 58 f.

[231] T. C. Edwards’ Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians . 2

[232] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).

[233] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[234] Bengel’s Gnomon Novi Testamenti.

[235] J. B. Lightfoot’s (posthumous) Notes on Epp. of St. Paul (1895).

[236] classical.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 22 and 23. “For indeed the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; 23. but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness.”

This second ἐπειδή, for indeed, should, according to Meyer and Kling, begin a new sentence, the main proposition of which is found in 1Co 1:23: But as for us, we preach. The δέ, but, would not be irreconcilable with this construction. The δέ is often found in the classics as the sign of the apodosis when this expresses a strong contrast to the preceding proposition (see Meyer); comp. in the New Testament, Col 1:22. But two reasons are opposed to this construction: first, the absence of a proper particle to connect this new sentence with the preceding; then the simple logic; for the idea of 1Co 1:22, that Greeks and Jews ask for wisdom and miracles, cannot form a ground for that of 1Co 1:23: that preaching presents a Christ who is to them an offence and folly. The object of God, in this mode of preaching, could not have been to scandalize the hearers; in 1Co 1:24 the apostle even expressly adds the opposite thought: to wit, that Christ is to the believers of both peoples power and wisdom. The ἐπειδή of 1Co 1:22 does not therefore begin a new sentence, like that which began 1Co 1:21, and which related to εὐδόκησεν, it pleased God. Yet it is not on this account a repetition and amplification of that sentence. The first ἐπειδή (1Co 1:21) served to explain the rejection visited by God on human wisdom; the second (1Co 1:22) simply affirms the reality of this judgment: “for in reality, as experience may convince you, while men demand wisdom and miracles, we preach to them a Saviour who is quite the contrary, but who nevertheless is to them who receive Him miracle and wisdom.” We have not to see, then, in these three verses the development of the words, them that believe...(Hofmann), nor that of the term, “foolishness of preaching” (Rückert, de Wette); they give the proof of the fact of the decree expressed in 1Co 1:21 : “It pleased God to save...” (Billroth, Osiander, Beet, Edwards). What a strange dispensation! The world presents itself with its various demands: prodigies, wisdom! The cross answers, and the apparent meaning of the answer is: weakness, foolishness! But to faith its real meaning is: power, wisdom! Thus in the gospel God rejects the demands of the world so far as they are false, but only to satisfy them fully so far as they are legitimate.

The apostle divides the ancient world into two classes of men; those whom God has taken under His direction and enlightened by a special revelation, the Jews; the others whom He “has left to walk in their own ways” (Act 14:16), the Gentiles, designated here by the name of their most distinguished representatives, the Greeks. The two subjects are named without an article: Jews, Greeks; it is the category which the apostle would designate.

The particle καί...καί, both...and, indicates that each of those groups has its demand, but that the demands are different. For the Jew it is miracles, the Divine materialized in external prodigies, in sensible manifestations of omnipotence. The plural σημεῖα, miracles, ought certainly to be read with almost all the Mjj.; the received text reads the singular σημεῖον, a sign, with L only. This last reading is undoubtedly a correction occasioned by Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1, where the Jews ask from Jesus a sign in heaven. Paul’s object is not to refer to a particular fact, but to characterize a tendency; this is indicated by the plural, signs, and yet more signs! For it is of the nature of this desire to rise higher and higher in proportion as it is satisfied. “On the morrow after the multiplication of the loaves,” says Riggenbach, “the multitudes ask: What signs doest thou then?” Every stroke of power must be surpassed by a following one yet more marvellous.

The Greek ideal is quite different; it is a masterpiece of wisdom: the Divine intellectualized in a system eloquently giving account of the nature of the gods, the origin, course, and end of the universe. This people, with their inquisitive and subtle mind, would get at the essence of things. The man who will satisfy Greek expectation will be, not a thaumaturge, making the Divine appear grossly in matter, but a Pythagoras or a Socrates of double power.

Thus we have the two great figures of the ancient world ineffaceably engraved. Let us remark, finally, with what delicacy the apostle chooses the two verbs used to characterize the two tendencies: for the Jew, αἰτεῖν, ask; the miracle comes from God—it is received; for the Greek, ζητεῖν, seek; system is the result of labour—it is discovered. It is obvious that in this description of the ancient world, from the religious standpoint, the figure of the Jew is placed only for the sake of contrast; the Greeks are and remain, according to the context, the principal figure. It is always wisdom contrasted with the fact of salvation.

Vv. 23. As 1Co 1:22 went back on the first proposition of 1Co 1:21, “The world by wisdom knew not God in His wisdom,” so 1Co 1:23 (with 1Co 1:24) goes back on the second, “It pleased God to save by...” The δέ is strongly adversative. By the ἡμεῖς, we, the subject of these verses is also contrasted with that of the previous verse. I mean the preachers of the crucified Christ with the unbelieving Jews and Greeks. Instead of a series of acts of omnipotence transforming the world, or of a perfect light cast on the universe of being, what does the apostolic preaching offer to the world? A Crucified One, a compact mass of weakness, suffering, ignominy, and incomprehensible absurdity! There is enough there absolutely to bewilder Jewish expectation; in the first place, it is a stone against which it is broken. Σκάνδαλον: what arrests the foot suddenly in walking and causes a fall. And the Greek? The term Christ seems at first sight not to apply to the expectation of this people. But all humanity, as is seen in Greek mythology, aspired after a celestial appearance similar to that which the Jew designated by the name of Christ, after a communication from above capable of binding man to God. So Schelling did not hesitate to say, when paraphrasing 1Co 1:5 of the prologue of John: “Christ was the light, Christ was the consolation of the Gentiles.” The apostle can therefore speak also of the Christ in relation to the Greeks. But here again, what a contrast between the desired manifestation and the reality! Must not salvation by the Crucified One be to the Greek, instead of the solution of all enigmas, the most sombre of mysteries?

The participle ἐσταυρωμένον is an attribute, as crucified, otherwise it would be preceded by the article; the two substantives, σκάνδαλον and μωρίαν, are appositions.

It might be asked, no doubt, in connection with this verse, whether Jesus, by His numerous miracles, did not satisfy the Jewish demand? But His acts of miraculous power had been annulled, so to speak, in the eyes of the Jews by the final catastrophe of the cross, which seemed to have fully justified His adversaries, and did not suffer them to see in Him any other than an impostor or an agent of diabolical power.

And yet as to this preaching which so deeply shocks the aspirations of men, Jews and Gentiles, so far as these are false, it turns out—and daily experience demonstrates the fact—that received with faith, it contains both for the one and the other the full satisfaction of those same aspirations so far as they are true:

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Co_1:22, 1Co_1:23

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.

This passage is parallel to the preceding. Since the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe and since the Jews ask a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom, we preach, etc. That is, since human reason in all its developments, Jewish or Grecian, had failed, we preach Christ.

The Jews require, or, ask (αἰτοῦσι) a sign.‹2› This was characteristic of the Jews. They required external supernatural evidence as the ground of their faith. Their constant demand was, What sign showest thou? Mat_12:39. Mar_8:11. Joh_6:30. To this disposition our Savior referred when he said, A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas, Mat_16:4. The Greeks, on the other hand, seek after wisdom. They required rational evidence. They would receive nothing as true which they could not understand, and see the rational grounds of. These are types of permanent classes of men.

But we preach Christ crucified. This doctrine met the demands of neither class. It satisfied neither the expectations of the Jews, nor the requirements of the Greeks. On the contrary, it was to the Jews a stumbling-block. They had anticipated in the Messiah a glorious temporal prince, who should deliver and exalt their nation. To present to them one crucified as a malefactor as their Messiah, was the greatest possible insult. He was to them, therefore, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, Rom_9:33; 1Pe_2:8. To the Greeks this doctrine was foolishness. Nothing in the apprehension of rationalists can be more absurd than that the blood of the cross can remove sin, promote virtue, and secure salvation; or that the preaching of that doctrine is to convert the world.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

A declaration of that which he said that the preaching of the Gospel, is foolish. It is foolish, saith he, to them whom God had not endued with new light, that is to say, to all men, being considered in themselves: for the Jews require miracles, and the Greeks arguments, which they may comprehend by their wit and wisdom: and therefore they do not only not believe the Gospel, but also they mock at it. Notwithstanding in this foolish preaching, there is the great virtue and wisdom of God, but such as those only which are called, do perceive. God showing most plainly, that even then when mad men think him most foolish, he is far wiser than they are: and that he surmounteth all their might and power, when he useth most vile and abject things, as it hath appeared in the fruit of the preaching of the Gospel.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

For--literally, "Since," seeing that. This verse illustrates how the "preaching" of Christ crucified came to be deemed "foolishness" (Co1 1:21).

a sign--The oldest manuscripts read "signs." The singular was a later correction from Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Joh 2:18. The signs the Jews craved for were not mere miracles, but direct tokens from heaven that Jesus was Messiah (Luk 11:16).

Greeks seek . . . wisdom--namely, a philosophic demonstration of Christianity. Whereas Christ, instead of demonstrative proof, demands faith on the ground of His word, and of a reasonable amount of evidence that the alleged revelation is His word. Christianity begins not with solving intellectual difficulties, but with satisfying the heart that longs for forgiveness. Hence not the refined Greeks, but the theocratic Jews were the chosen organ for propagating revelation. Again, intellectual Athens (Act 17:18-21, &c.) received the Gospel less readily than commercial Corinth.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 22. For the Jews require a sign] Instead of σημειον, a sign, ABCDEFG, several others, both the Syriac, Coptic, Vulgate, and Itala, with many of the fathers, have σημεια, signs; which reading, as undoubtedly genuine, Griesbach has admitted into the text. There never was a people in the universe more difficult to be persuaded of the truth than the Jews: and had not their religion been incontestably proved by the most striking and indubitable miracles, they never would have received it. This slowness of heart to believe, added to their fear of being deceived, induced them to require miracles to attest every thing that professed to come from God. They were a wicked and adulterous generation, continually seeking signs, and never saying, It is enough. But the sign which seems particularly referred to here is the assumption of secular power, which they expected in the Messiah; and because this sign did not appear in Christ, therefore they rejected him.

And the Greeks seek after wisdom.] Such wisdom, or philosophy, as they found in the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Plato, &c., which was called philosophy, and which came recommended to them in all the beauties and graces of the Latin and Greek languages.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

22. For the Jews require a sign This is explanatory of the preceding statement — showing in what respects the preaching of the gospel is accounted foolishness At the same time he does not simply explain, but even goes a step farther, by saying that the Jews do not merely despise the gospel, but even abhor it. “The Jews,” says he, “desire through means of miracles to have before their eyes an evidence of divine power: the Greeks are fond of what tends to gratify human intellect by the applause of acuteness. We, on the other hand, preach Christ crucified, wherein there appears at first view nothing but weakness and folly. He is, therefore, a stumblingblock to the Jews, when they see him as it were forsaken by God. To the Greeks it appears like a fable, to be told of such a method of redemption.” By the term Greeks here, in my opinion, he does not mean simply Gentiles, but has in view those who had the polish of the liberal sciences, or were distinguished by superior intelligence. At the same time by synecdoche, all the others come in like manner to be included. Between Jews and Greeks, however, he draws this distinction, that the former, striking against Christ by an unreasonable zeal for the law, raged against the gospel with unbounded fury, as hypocrites are wont to do, when contending for their superstitions; while the Greeks, on the other hand, puffed up with pride, regarded him with contempt as insipid.

When he ascribes it to the Jews as a fault, that they are eagerly desirous of signs, it is not on the ground of its being wrong in itself to demand signs, but he exposes their baseness in the following respects: — that by an incessant demand for miracles, they in a manner sought to bind God to their laws — that, in accordance with the dullness of their apprehension, they sought as it were to feel him out in manifest miracles — that they were taken up with the miracles themselves, and looked upon them with amazement — and, in fine, that no miracles satisfied them, but instead of this, they every day gaped incessantly for new ones. Hezekiah is not reproved for having of his own accord allowed himself to be confirmed by a sign, (2 Kings 19:29, and 2 Kings 20:8,) nor even Gideon for asking a two-fold sign, (Judges 6:37, 39.) Nay, instead of this, Ahaz is condemned for refusing a sign that the Prophet had offered him, (Isaiah 7:12.) What fault, then, was there on the part of the Jews in asking miracles? It lay in this, that they did not ask them for a good end, set no bounds to their desire, and did not make a right use of them. For while faith ought to be helped by miracles, their only concern was, how long they might persevere in their unbelief. While it is unlawful to prescribe laws to God, they wantoned with inordinate desire. While miracles should conduct us to an acquaintance with Christ, and the spiritual grace of God, they served as a hindrance in their way. On this account, too, Christ upbraids them, (Mark 8:12.)

A perverse generation seeketh after a sign.

For there were no bounds to their curiosity and inordinate desire, and for all that they had so often obtained miracles, no advantage appeared to arise from them.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(22) For.—This is a further unfolding of the fact of the simplicity of the preaching of the Cross. It pandered neither to Jewish-minded persons (not in the Greek “the Jews,” “the Gentiles,” but simply “Jews,” “Gentiles”) who desired visible portents to support the teaching, nor to those of Greek taste who desired an actual and clear philosophic proof of it. (See Mat_12:38; Mar_8:11; Luk_11:16; Joh_4:48.)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

22. the Jews require a sign] The plural, ‘signs’ ‘miracles,’ is the better supported reading here. The Jews (Mat_12:38; Mat_16:1; Mar_8:11; Luk_11:16; Joh_2:18; Joh_6:30) required external attestations of the power of Christ, and especially that of the subjugation of the world to His kingly authority. The Greeks sought dialectic skill from one who aspired to be their teacher.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For the Jews require a sign,.... The Jews had always been used to miracles, in confirmation of the mission of the prophets sent unto them, and therefore insisted on a sign proving Jesus to be the true Messiah; except signs and wonders were wrought, they would not believe; and though miracles were wrought in great numbers, and such as never man did, they remained incredulous, and persisted in demanding a sign from heaven, and in their own way; and it was told them that no other sign should be given them, but that of the prophet Jonah, by which was signified the resurrection of Christ from the dead; this was given them, and yet they believed not, but went on to require a sign still; nothing but miracles would do with them, and they must be such as they themselves pleased: the Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Vulgate Latin version, read "signs", in the plural number:

and the Greeks seek after wisdom; the wisdom of the world, natural wisdom, philosophy, the reason of things, the flowers of rhetoric, the ornaments of speech, the beauties of oratory, the justness of style and diction; as for doctrines they regarded none, but such as they could comprehend with, and account for by their carnal reason, everything else they despised and exploded. Hence we often read (l) of , "the Grecian wisdom", or wisdom of the Greeks; which, the Jews say (m), lay in metaphors and dark sayings, which were not understood but by them that were used to it; the study of it was forbidden by them, though some of their Rabbins were conversant with it (n),

(l) T. Bab Menachot, fol 99. 2. Bava Kama, fol. 82. 2. (m) Maimon & Bartenora in Misn. Sota, c. 9. sect. 14. (n) Shalshelet Hakabala, fol. 25. 1. Ganz. Tzemach David, par. 3. fol. 31. 2.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

Ver. 22. For the Jews require, &c.] The reason of their rejecting the gospel is, they are prepossessed against it; they look for that which it affordeth not. A prejudicate opinion bars up the understanding. Intus existens prohibet alienum, like muddy water in a vessel, that causeth the most precious liquor to run over.

And the Greeks seek after wisdom] Which yet they attained not. For Sapiens est cui res sapiunt prout sunt, saith Bernard, he is a wise man who conceiveth of things as they are; and all the wisdom of man is only in this, that he rightly know and worship God, saith Lactantius. But this these Greeks could never skill of; no, not these Corinthians (till called and sanctified), who yet were famous for their wisdom (Periander, one of the seven wise men, was a Corinthian), and their city be called by the orator (Cicero) lumen Graeciae, the light of Greece. But whereto tended their light but to light them into utter darkness? And what was all their wisdom without Christ, but earthly, sensual, devilish? Jas 3:15. Earthly, managing the lusts of the eyes unto the ends of gain; sensual, managing the lusts of the flesh unto ends of pleasure; and devilish, managing the pride of life unto ends of power.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For the Jews require a sign - A miracle, a prodigy, an evidence of divine interposition. This was the characteristic of the Jewish people. God had manifested himself to them by miracles and wonders in a remarkable manner in past times, and they greatly prided themselves on that fact, and always demanded it when any new messenger came to them, professing to be sent from God. This propensity they often evinced in their contact with the Lord Jesus; Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Mar 8:11; Luk 11:16; Luk 12:54-56. Many mss., instead of “sign” here in the singular, read “signs” in the plural; and Griesbach has introduced that reading into the text. The sense is nearly the same, and it means that it was a characteristic of the Jews to demand the constant exhibition of miracles and wonders; and it is also implied here, I think, by the reasoning of the apostle, that they believed that the communication of such signs to them as a people, would secure their salvation, and they therefore despised the simple preaching of a crucified Messiah. They expected a Messiah that should come with the exhibition of some stupendous signs and wonders from heaven (Mat 12:38, etc., as above); they looked for the displays of amazing power in his coming, and they anticipated that he would deliver them from their enemies by mere power; and they, therefore, were greatly offended 1Co 1:23, by the simple doctrine of a crucified Messiah.

And the Greeks ... - Perhaps this means the pagan in general, in opposition to the Jews; see the note at Rom 1:16. It was, however, especially the characteristic of the Greek philosophers. They seek for schemes of philosophy and religion that shall depend on human wisdom, and they therefore despise the gospel.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Jews, in the mean time, ask for miracles, such as God formerly wrought in their favour, and the Greeks, or the Gentiles, to be converted, expect from us, what they would look upon as the highest points of human wisdom and knowledge; for that which appeareth the foolishness of God, is wiser than men, and able to confound the highest human wisdom; and that which appeareth weakness of God, is stronger than men, who cannot hinder God from converting the world, by means and methods, that seem so disproportioned to this his design. (Witham) --- Foolishness. That is to say, what appears foolish to the world in the ways of God, is indeed more wise: and what appears weakness, is indeed above all the strength and comprehension of man. (Challoner)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The Jews were not without some true Divine revelation, and owned the true God, and only desired some miraculous operation from Christ, Mat 12:38; Joh 4:48, to confirm them that Christ was sent from God: without signs and wonders they would not believe; giving no credit at all to the words of Christ. And the Greeks, (by whom the apostle understands the Gentiles), especially the more learned part of them, (for Greece was at this time very famous for human literature), they sought after the demonstration of all things from natural causes and rational arguments, and despised every thing which could not so be made out unto them.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

22. A sign—Accustomed, under their dispensation, to miracles, the Jews prescribed signs. Christ, indeed, worked miracles—was himself a miracle; but they demanded that he should come in Messianic glory, renew the earth, and give to them its supremacy. That is, they required at his first coming the manifestations of his second coming. See note, Mat_12:38. But as instead of the throne he received the cross, this became to them a stumbling-block.

Wisdom—As to the Jew miracle was the route to truth and God, so to the Greek philosophy, demonstration, starting from intuition and winding through logic, was the sole guide and test. But though Christ is thus a stumbling-block instead of a sign, and a foolishness instead of a philosophy, yet Paul will soon prove that Christ is, after all, truly and transcendently a sign and a philosophy.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jews ask for signs; rather, Jews demand signs. This had been their incessant demand during our Lord"s ministry; nor would they be content with any sign short of a sign from heaven (Mat_12:38; Joh_2:18 Joh_4:48, etc.) This had been steadily refused them by Christ, who wished them rather to see spiritual signs. (Luk_17:20, Luk_17:21) Greeks seek after wisdom. St. Paul at Athens had found himself surrounded with Stoics and Epicureans, and the same new thing which every one was looking for mainly took the shape of philosophic novelties. (Act_17:21)

Vers. 22-25.

Christianity viewed in three aspects.

the Jews require a sign," etc. Our subject is Christianity; and here we see it in three aspects.

I As associated with a GREAT FACT. "Christ crucified." This fact may be looked at:

1. Historically. As a historical fact, it is the most famous, influential, and best authenticated in the annals of time.

2. Theologically. It unfolds the Divine, it rends the veil in the great temple of theological truth, and exposes the inmost and holiest sanctuary; it is a mighty expression of God"s idea, government, and heart.

3. Morally. It is fraught with the most quickening, elevating, and sanctifying suggestions.

II As associated with POPULAR OPINION. It was a "stumbling block" to the Jew; it was "foolishness" to the Greek. It had not sufficient of the gorgeous philosophical ritualism for the speculative and pedantic Greek, nor sufficient of the gorgeous religious ritualism for the sensuous and bigoted Jew. What is it in popular sentiment now? To the millions it is nothing. They have formed no idea of it; they do not think about it. To the sceptic it is a fable; to the formalist it is a creed to be repeated, and a ceremony to be attended to on certain occasions, and nothing more.

III As associated with CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS. "But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God." The Christian sees the highest wisdom in a system which, in saving the sinner, does four things.

1. Manifests the righteousness of the insulted Sovereign.

2. Augments the influence of moral government.

3. Maintains intact all the principles of moral freedom.

4. Develops, strengthens, and perfects all the original powers of the individual soul.

He sees, too, the highest power in the difficulties it surmounts, the revolutions it effects, the deeds to which it stimulates, the hopes it inspires, and the deep fountains of pleasure which it opens up. He feels it is both wise and powerful. What is Christianity to us? As a fact, there it is in the archives of humanity, for ever independent of us; nothing will ever blot it out from the page of history. As a fact, though centuries old, it is more influential than ever. It will be a fact eternally. What is it to us? Is it folly and weakness; or is it wisdom and power? This is the question.

Vers. 22-24.

Christ crucified.

It is difficult for us to realize the deep rooted strength of the prejudices the truth of Christ encountered on its first proclamation. One thing, however, is clear while the apostles accommodated the mode of their teaching to those prejudices, they never so accommodated the teaching itself. Their doctrine was the same for all. They never thought of modifying it or softening down its essential peculiarities, to suit the taste of any. With reference to the form of his teaching, St. Paul says, "To the weak I became weak," etc.; (1Co_9:22) with reference to the substance. "Though we or an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel," etc. (Gal_1:8) Jews and Greeks are the two broad classes under which these varieties of prejudice might be grouped; and here are their prominent characteristics. "Jews ask for signs." It was so in the days of Christ. "An evil and adulterous generation," etc.; (Mat_12:39) "Except ye see signs and wonders," etc.. (Joh_4:48) And in the apostolic age the race everywhere manifested the same mental tendency. They were sign seeking Jews. "Greeks seek after wisdom such wisdom as found a home for itself in their own philosophic schools. They knew no other. Thus each of these classes illustrated a particular aspect of the vanity of human nature; the one craving after that which would minister to the pride of sense, the other to the pride of intellect. For both Paul had but one message: "Christ and him crucified." Note

I THE THEME OF THE APOSTOLIC TEACHING. "We preach Christ crucified" (see also 1Co_2:2; Gal_3:1) This is the sum and substance of evangelical doctrine, the idea that filled the foremost place in the apostle"s thought and supplied the chief inspiration of his heroic life. Not a little of the emphasis falls on the word "crucified." He preached Christ as the personal Redeemer of men, and that not merely as the great miracle working Prophet of God, the moral Reformer, the Revealer of new truth, the Lawgiver of a new spiritual kingdom, the Example of a divinely perfect life, but as the Victim of death. It was in the death of Christ that the whole force and virtue of the apostolic testimony about him lay. What meaning did Paul attach to this death? The mere reiteration of the fact itself would be powerless apart from its doctrinal significance. If he had represented it simply as the crowning act of a life of devotion and self sacrifice in the cause of God and of humanity, he would have placed the Name of Christ on the level of many another name, and his death on a level with the death of many another witness for truth and righteousness; instead of which a virtue and a moral efficacy are everywhere imputed to it, which cannot be conceived of as belonging to any other death, and which alone explain the position it occupies in apostolic teaching (see 1Co_5:7; Eph_1:7 Eph_2:14, Eph_2:16; Col_1:21; 1Jn_1:7 1Jn_2:2) Forgiveness of sins, spiritual cleansing, moral freedom, practical righteousness, fellowship with God, the hope of eternal glory, all are set forth here as fruits of the death of Christ and our faith in it. St. Paul made it the one grand theme of his ministry, because he knew that it would meet the deep and universal needs of humanity. No other word would bring rest to the troubled conscience and satisfaction to the longing, weary, distracted heart of man; no other voice could awaken the world to newness of life out of the dread shadow of despair and death in which it lay.

II THE RECEPTION IT MET WITH, from "Jews," "Gentiles" and "them that are called.

1. Unto Jews a stumbling block an offence, something "scandalous." O, several special grounds Christ was such an offence to them.

(1) The lowliness of his origin.

(2) The unostentatious character of his life.

(3) The unworldliness of his aims and methods.

(4) The expansive spirit of his doctrine; its freedom from class and national exclusiveness.

(5) The universality of the grace he offered.

(6) Above all, the fact of his crucifixion.

How could they recognize as their Messiah One who had died as the vilest of malefactors; died by the judgment of their rulers and amid the derision of the people; died by a death that above all others they abhorred? The cross, which Paul made the basis of human hope and the central glory of the universe, was to them "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.

2. Unto Gentiles foolishness. The Gentile world was pervaded by Greek sentiment. "Greece had now for more than a century been but a province of Rome; but the mind of Greece had mastered that of Rome." "The world in name and government was Roman, but in feeling and civilization Greek." Such a world scorned the "preaching of the cross" because:

(1) It lowered the pride of the human intellect, both by its simplicity and by its profundity so plain that "the wayfaring man though a fool" could understand it, too deep for the utmost stretch of thought to fathom.

(2) It revealed the rottenness of the human heart beneath the fairest garment of civilization and culture. It made man dependent for all his light upon supernatural revelations, and for all his hopes of redemption on the spontaneous impulse of sovereign mercy. No wonder it was "foolishness" to proud Romans and polished, philosophic Greeks. And have we not around us now similar phases of aversion to the doctrine of "Christ crucified"? The spirit of the world is not the spirit of the cross. The one is carnal, vain, selfish, revengeful, self indulgent; the other is spiritual, lowly, benevolent, forgiving, self abandoning. The cross to every one of us means submission, humiliation, self sacrifice, it may be reproach and shame; and these are hard to bear. It is hard to say, with Paul, "God forbid that I should glory," etc. The cross may occupy a prominent place in our creed, our worship, our sermons and songs, may decorate our churches, may be made a favourite instrument of personal adornment; but to have its spirit filling our hearts, moulding and governing our whole being and life, is another thing.

3. "Unto them that are called, etc. The "called" are they who "are being saved" (ver. 18). In the case of all such the Divine purpose in the gospel is answered. They are called, and they obey the call. The heavenly voice falls on their ears, penetrates the secrecy of their souls, and there is life for them in the sound, because, like the still, small voice that breathed in the hearing of Elijah at the mouth of the cave, "the Lord is in the voice." The proof they have that the gospel is the embodiment of the power and wisdom of God is the infallible seal of the Spirit, the unanswerable witness of a Divine and heavenly life. Is it a "sign" that you ask for? Believe in Christ, and you shall have within you that mightiest of all wonders, the miracle of grace by which a soul is translated from darkness into light, and from the death of sin to the life of holiness. Is it "wisdom" you seek after? Believe in Christ, and he will unlock for you the unsearchable riches of the mind and heart of God. W.

Vers. 22-24

Apostolic preaching.

St. Paul magnified the function of preaching. He could leave the baptism of converts and the details of Church business to others, but devoted himself to the proclamation and defence of the truth, No encounter of resistance or neglect could turn him away from preaching Christ, or make him ashamed of the gospel. His occupation gave him a deep and solemn joy.

I THE SUBJECT OF PREACHING. "We preach Christ crucified;" not Christianity, but Christ; not even the Crucifixion, but the Christ crucified. There are many topics on which we may discourse, many questions we may discuss; but we ought to preach Christ. Indeed, our discourses and discussions have spiritual freshness and force only as they start from or lead up to this central object and inexhaustible theme. And "Christ crucified not his life and character and example only, but his dying "for our sins according to the Scriptures; it is this that brings peace to troubled consciences of men, and the strongest and most persuasive appeal to their hearts. Little does he know the calling of a New Testament preacher, or the secret of success in proclaiming the Word of truth, who contents himself with occasional and distant allusions to the great Sacrifice. The preacher"s place is over against the cross.

II THE PREJUDICE WHICH THIS PREACHING PROVOKED AND ENCOUNTERED. The Jews required signs. Addicted as they were to much boasting over the signs and wonders wrought for their forefathers by the hand of Moses and other prophets, they demanded signs or prodigies in attestation of the gospel. It was a demand which our Lord always refused when it was urged on him, and one which the apostles did well to discourage. They were not thaumaturgists, but preachers of righteousness. Therefore the Jews believed not. To them Christ crucified was a stumbling block. A Man whom their council had condemned for blasphemy, and whom the Roman authorities had put to death, how could he be a Saviour? how could he be the Messiah? Why did not God save him from a miserable death if he delighted in him? Why did he himself not come down from the cross? So the Jews stumbled and fell through unbelief. And to this day they blaspheme the Nazarene as the Man who was hanged upon a tree. A similar prejudice shows itself among Gentile hearers of the gospel also.

Men who have little sense of sin dislike any distinct doctrine of Christ suffering for our sins. And men who think chiefly of power as the sign of Deity stumble at the statement that One who died with nails through his hands and feet was the Son of God and is the Lord of all.

2. The Greeks sought after wisdom. And to them the preaching of the cross seemed to be mere folly. It appealed to the consciousness of sin, which did not much trouble them; and it said nothing to the speculative understanding, hardly noticed those problems over which the philosophical schools of Greece had tallied and disputed for generations. The same prejudice hinders many educated men at the present day from receiving the gospel. Is it high thought? What light can the fate of One who was unjustly crucified among the Jews long ago cast on the intellectual problems of today? The gospel seems to them unworthy of the serious attention of cultured persons. It may have its uses for the common people; but it has no philosophy, and so it is foolishness! But blessed are they who are not offended in Jesus. When the gospel is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, it finds some receptive hearts. There are always some on whom the preaching is not wasted or lost.

III THE GAIN WHICH ACCRUES TO BELIEVERS. They are described as "the called a phrase evidently not tantamount to "invited," for all are invited. By "them that arc called" are meant those in whom the gospel finds reverence and faith. These are the called according to God"s purpose. And see what Christ crucified is to them.

1. Are they Jews, or do they resemble the Jews in looking for signs of heavenly power? Lo! they have in Christ a power far greater than ever dwelt in Moses or Elias. He is the Power of God; and that not merely in the outward sphere in which the Jews desired to see signs and wonders, but also in the inward or moral sphere, where he has strewn himself able to loose men from their sins, and to despoil evil principalities and powers, triumphing over them on the cross. Just because "crucified in weakness," he is mighty to save. And all believers of the gospel may know in themselves his sin vanquishing and burden bearing power. They need no further sign.

2. Are they disposed by nature, or education, or both, to seek after wisdom like the Greeks? Have they a restless, hungry mind? Here is the best provision for their want, if not for their curiosity. Christ is the Wisdom of God. The highest problems receive light from Christ crucified. Reconciliation of the claims of justice with the yearnings of mercy; justification of the transgressors of moral Law without detriment or dishonour to the Law itself; and the introduction of a new and better life through death, as wheat grows from seed that has died in the earth; these are not small or easy problems, and they have no solution till we receive the gospel of Christ crucified. He who would make his own calling sure should seek the evidence in his own attitude of mind and heart towards Christ crucified. Is he in your eyes weakness or power? foolishness or wisdom? As the Power of God, has he subdued you to himself? As the Wisdom of God, is he the Light of life to you the Wonderful, the Counsellor? F.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For whereas the Jews demand of the apostles, as they did of their Lord, more signs still, after all they have seen already; and the Greeks, or gentiles, seek wisdom - The depths of philosophy, and the charms of eloquence.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Observe here, 1. How both Jews and Gentiles conspired together in their contempt and rejection of the gospel; the Jews require a sign; that is, besides all the miracles and the resurrection of Christ, the Jews require some sign from heaven to prove that Christ was sent from God: so unreasonable and obstinate was their infidelity, that all the miracles of our Saviour’s life, death, and resurrection, could not remove it. And the Greeks seek after wisdom, that is, they look for profound wisdom, eminent learning and deep philosophy, in the gospel; and scorn it, because they find not there what they expected: The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

Observe, 2. The apostle’s peremptory resolution to preach Christ crucified, though he were to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness.

But how was Christ a stumbling-block to the Jews?

Answer, In regard of his poverty and sufferings, the meanness and misery of his condition in the world. They expected that their Messias should be a victorious prince, one that should rescue them from their enemies; instead of which they find this Jesus to be overcome by his enemies; that he had no power to defend himself, much less to deliver them; that was deserted by God, whom he called his father, forsaken by his followers, whom he styled disciples, scourged with rods, crowned with thorns, ignominiously treated, shamefully crucified; this was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and continues so to be.

But how was Christ to the Greeks foolishness?

Answer, The Gentiles despised the gospel of Christ, as an absurd, ridiculous, and ill-contrived fable; for what appearance could be more unbecoming God, and injurious to his perfections, than to take the frail garment of flesh, to be torn and trampled upon? They concluded the incarnation impossible, that a being infinitely perfect should unite with a nature so inferior to itself; and rejected the doctrine of our Saviour’s death, as an impiety contumelious to God: they could not reconcile servitude with sovereignty, punishment with innocence, the lowest of human miseries with the highest of divine honours; and accordingly they esteemed it foolishness to expect eternal life from him that was put to death, and that he should bring them to the highest glory, who suffered himself in the lowest weakness. Thus was the preaching of Christ crucified to the generality of the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.

But observe, 3. It was not thus unto all; there was a number of both converted and saved by the doctrine of the cross, unto whom Christ was the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Here note, 1. That Christ was the power of God: Isaiah styles him the mighty God, Isa 9:6.

Works of mighty power were performed by him; as the work of creation, By him were all things created in heaven and in earth. Col 1:16.

The work of providence, He upholdeth all things by the word of his power. Heb 1:3.

The work of redemption, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. Gal 3:13.

The curse and wrath of God was a burden that would have broke the back of angels; none could stand under it but Christ, and not he neither as mere man, but as supported by the infinite power of his Godhead.

2. Christ is the wisdom of God: his divine nature had a fullness of infinite and uncreated wisdom found with it; also his human nature had a fullness of infused and created wisdom found in it; and the redemption of man by Jesus Christ was a design of admirable wisdom.

3. He that turns his back upon Christ, rejects the wisdom of God, and renders his ruin both dreadful and certain; they must perish eternally by the hand of strict justice, who will not be saved according to the methods of divine wisdom, which are to save us from hell by saving us from our sins.

Observe, 4. The reason assigned, why the preaching of Christ crucified became the power of God unto salvation: because the weakness of God is stronger than men; that is, the ordinances and institutions of God, though they seem weak and foolish in the eye of the world, yet are more efficacious and powerful than all the wisdom of worldly men.

Learn hence, that the ordinances and institutions of God, and particularly the preaching of the gospel, though despised by the men of the world, yet by the power of God have glorious operations, and produce wonderful effects. The weakness of God is stronger than men, that is, the weakest instruments which God uses, are stronger in their effects than the strongest which men can use: and the foolishness of God is wiser than men; not that there is either foolishness or weakness in God, but that which men account foolishness and weakness, and deride as such, doth yet overcome all their admired wisdom and strength: and if the wisdom of man cannot match the foolishness and weakness, much less before the wisdom and power, of God: The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

22. “Since the Jews ask for miracles.” No wonder, for they were born and cradled amid the supernatural — the Mosaic history of creation, the flood, the plagues of Egypt, the cleaving of the Red Sea, the burning bush, the brazen serpent, the dividing Jordan, and the shouting down of Jericho, the sun and moon standing still until Joshua ended his battle. So the Jews always demanded miracles. “And the Greeks seek wisdom.” The Greeks had no patience with miracles, but discarded them all as superstition, while they boasted of their intellectual power, and inflated themselves with the chimera of studying out everything, vainly believing they were so wonderfully smart that they could reach everything by the power of their intellect and education

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom:

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

22–25. For the Jews require a sign. Not merely miracles, such as the apostles worked, but a sign from heaven (Matt. 12:38). They said, “Let Christ come down from heaven, if he be risen.” And the Greeks seek after wisdom. While the Jews asked for a sign from heaven, the Greeks demanded a well-argued system of philosophy (Acts 17:18).

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

General Information:

Here the word "we" refers to Paul and other Bible teachers. (See: Exclusive and Inclusive "We")

Christ crucified

"about Christ, who died on a cross" (See: Active or Passive)

a stumbling block

Just as a person can stumble over a block on a road, so the message of salvation through the crucifixion of the Christ keeps Jews from believing in Jesus. AT: "not acceptable" or "very offensive" (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

Jew

miracle

Greek

wise

preach

Christ

crucify

stumbling block

fool

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

22. ἐπειδὴ καί. Since also. Another proof of how little human wisdom availed to penetrate the counsels of the Most High.

σημεῖα. The Jews (Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1; Mar 8:11; Luk 11:16; Joh 2:18; Joh 6:30) required external attestations of the power of Christ, and especially that of the subjugation of the world to His kingly authority. The Greeks sought dialectic skill from one who aspired to be their teacher.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

22.] ἐπειδή, not as in ver. 21, but = ‘siquidem,’ and explains τ. μωρίας τ. κηρ.

καὶ—καί] see Mar 9:13, unite (De W.) things resembling each other in this particular, but else unlike. Jews and Gentiles both made false requirements, but of different kinds.

σημεῖα αἰτ.] see Mat 12:38, Mat 12:16:1; Luk 11:16; Joh 2:18, Joh 6:30. The correction σημεῖον has probably been made from remembering the σημεῖον of these passages. The sign required was not, as I have observed on Mat 12:38, a mere miracle, but some token from Heaven, substantiating the word preached.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

22. ἐπειδή. This looks forward to v. 23, to which v. 22 is a kind of protasis : ‘Since—while Jews and Gentiles alike demand something which suits their unsympathetic limitations—we, on the other hand, preach,’ etc. The two verses explain, with reference to the psychology of the religious world at that time, what has been said generally in vv. 18, 21. The repeated καί brackets (Rom 3:9) the typical Greek with the typical Jew, as the leading examples, in the world in which St Paul’s readers lived, of the ἀπολλύμενοι, the κόσμος and its wisdom. In a similar way the opposed sects of Epicureans and Stoics are bracketed by St Luke (Act_17.) as belonging, for his purpose, to one category. By the absence of the article (not ‘the Jews,’ ‘the Greeks,’ as in AV.) the terms connote characteristic attributes rather than denote the individuals. There were many exceptions, as the N.T. shows.

σημεῖα αἰτοῦσιν. Mat 12:38, Mat 12:16:4; Joh 4:48. The Jewish mind was matter-of-fact and crudely concrete. “Hebrew idiom makes everything as concrete as possible” (R. H. Kennett). There were certain wonders specified as to be worked by the Messiah when He came, and these they ‘asked for’ importunately and precisely. The Greek restlessly felt after something which could dazzle his ingenious speculative turn, and he passed by anything which failed to satisfy intellectual curiosity (Act 17:18, Act 17:21, Act 17:32).* Lightfoot points to the difference between the arguments used by Justin in his Apologies addressed to Gentiles, and those used by him in his controversy with Trypho the Jew.† See Deissmann, Light from the Anc. East, p. 393.

The AV. has ‘require a sign.’ L, Arm. have σημεῖον. Beyond question σημεῖα (א A B C D, etc.) must be read: ‘ask for signs’ is right. B. Weiss prefers σημεῖον‡

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Jews. Omit the article. Among the Jews many had become Christians.

Require (aijtousin). Rev., ask. But it is questionable whether the A. V. is not preferable. The word sometimes takes the sense of demand, as Luk 12:48; 1Pe 3:15; and this sense accords well with the haughty attitude of the Jews, demanding of all apostolic religions their proofs and credentials. See Mt 12:38; Mt 16:1; Joh 6:30.

Greeks. See on Act 6:1.

Seek after (zhtousin). Appropriate to the Greeks in contrast with the Jews. The Jews claimed to possess the truth : the Greeks were seekers, speculators (compare Act 17:23) after what they called by the general name of wisdom.

Christ crucified [χριστον εσταυρωμενον] . Not the crucified Christ, but Christ as crucified, not a sign - shower nor a philosopher; and consequently a scandal to the Jew and folly to the Gentile.

Unto the Greeks (%Ellhsi). The correct reading is eqnesin to the Gentiles. So Rev. Though %Ellhnev Greeks, is equivalent to Gentiles in the New Testament when used in antithesis to Jews, yet in this passage Paul seems to have in mind the Greeks as representing gentile wisdom and culture.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.