The Primacy of Preaching

When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

When Paul came to Corinth, he came in weakness with great fear and trembling. He saw the degradation of Corinth and it looked incurable. Sexual depravity, centered in the temple of Aphrodite overlooking the city, was so widespread and so popular it seemed impossible to oppose. Paul knew the superstitious fears of the masses in Corinth; he was aware of the devious dishonesty of its politicians and the shameless injustice of the city courts.

He had often himself felt the tyranny of Rome in its iron-fisted control of the whole known world, especially evident in Corinth because of its past history of rebellion. He saw daily the hopeless despair of the citizenry: one half slave to the other half and living in misery. Yet, in contrast, he felt the pride of Corinth in its beautiful location; the arrogance of its philosophers as heirs of the great thinkers of Greece; the wealth which the city's commerce brought; the acclaim it enjoyed as one of the chief cities of the Empire. How could he reach it? How could he change it? It looked impenetrable, unassailable!

But then he remembered his message — and his resource! He began to preach, not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power. Paul declares plainly his message: Jesus Christ and him crucified. This declares that until people are changed by a gracious act of God, their highest efforts and most clever schemes for self-improvement will prove ineffective. When Paul began to preach this message in Corinth, in dependence on the power of the Spirit, people began to change. There sprang up in that pagan city a group of changed people. They lost their fears and despair. Under the impact of new life from within, they were gradually changed into loving, caring, wholesome people. Some still struggled with the residues of their past, but the city was never the same again.

This demonstrates the enormous consequences of true preaching, and the terrible blight that falls upon a congregation or community which is deprived of these unsearchable riches of Christ. Let us say once more, with Jeremiah, Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your Word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart (Jeremiah 15:16).

Almighty God, we live in a day and age which desperately needs your Word. May you raise up an army of changed people, armed with your Word, dependent on your Spirit, to bring genuine change.