1 Corinthians 1:18-25
We Preach Christ Crucified
March 21, 2004
 
	For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are 
being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; 
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
	Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has 
not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world 
through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was 
preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for 
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to 
Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God 
and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the 
weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. (NIV)
 
	Take a moment and consider how you would answer this question: “What is the 
most important characteristic of a pastor?” Or answer this similar question: “What is the 
most important characteristic of a congregation?” Do you have your answer? What did 
you come up with? Interesting preacher? Friendly people? Takes the lead? Sits back and 
lets others take the lead? Is a place where “things are happening”? In our reading Paul 
speaks of people who would have given similar answers, and then he responds to them by 
saying, “We preach Christ crucified!”
	“We preach Christ crucified”—It’s the sort of thing that a congregation might 
adopt as its motto—perhaps even something that a congregation would want to post in a 
prominent place as a constant reminder. There is even a story of church that did just that. 
It was a beautiful church with stone walls with ivy growing along the walls. The church 
had a beautiful stone arch, and on the arch they engraved the words “We preach Christ 
crucified.” And for years and years they did just that—preached Christ crucified. Other 
things changed, of course. Some pastors preached from a pulpit, others preached from 
outside of the pulpit, some years the congregation grew in numbers, other years it 
declined in numbers. But always, the congregation focused on preaching Christ crucified. 
No matter what Sunday you went to that church, no matter who was preaching, no matter 
what Sunday school class your children attended, you would see that stone arch as you 
walked in, and you would hear exactly what it said: “Christ crucified.”
	But time being what it is and ivy being what it is, the ivy eventually grew up the 
wall and covered a portion of the stone arch so that now it just said, “We preach Christ.” 
And that was symbolic of what was going on inside the church too. Preaching Christ 
crucified, preaching the same old thing was—well, the same old thing. Other churches 
were preaching and focusing on other things that Christ’s crucifixion, and the 
congregation and its pastors felt an increasing demand for a different message—not 
necessarily a message that failed to preach Christ. No, just as the arch now read “We 
preach Christ”, the congregation and its pastors still preached Christ. But they preached 
and focused on Christ…the Humanitarian. That is, they made Christ and his life to be 
primarily an encouragement to work among the poor, the widowed, the orphans. As for 
preaching Christ crucified—well, not so much. 
	Sometimes they preached Christ…the Example. Instead of preaching that Christ’s 
perfect life was lived in our place as our Substitute, instead of preaching that Christ’s 
perfect obedience to God’s laws replaced our sinful disobedience of God’s laws, they 
preached Christ’s life merely as an example for us to follow, and they appeared to 
suggest that perhaps we could even do so in a manner that would be more or less 
satisfactory to God. As for preaching Christ crucified—well, that’s not a particularly 
cheery story. 
	Sometimes they preached Christ…the model of tolerance. They took the parts of 
his teaching that they wanted to take and they left behind the parts that they wanted to 
leave behind. They zeroed in on what he had to say about love and they ignored what he 
had to say about sin. And eventually their preaching which supposedly was about Christ 
took what he had to say about sin and discarded it, leaving only one thing as sin—
intolerance. As for preaching Christ crucified, if it was ever referred to, it was only used 
as an example of the sorts of injustices that result from intolerance. 
	Sermon themes began to be filled with questions rather than answers—doubting 
questions like “Was Jesus really born of a virgin?” or “Did Jesus really claim to be the 
Son of God?” or “Did Jesus bodily rise from the dead?” And the answers that were given 
were along the lines of “No” or “We can’t really say—but it doesn’t really matter, 
either.”
	More time passed, more ivy grew—both outside and inside the church. The ivy on 
the outside of the arch continued to grow so that passers by were just able to read “We 
preach.” And that was in fact what was going on inside the church. They still had 
something called a sermon each week—but the preaching now resembled a self-help talk 
or a motivational speech. There were funny jokes, interesting stories, much that was 
entertaining. There were encouragements to do even better at becoming the good people 
we know we are. There were occasional references to God and assurances that God was a 
lot like us, and that he just wanted us to be happy. There were properly somber warnings 
against social injustice, and there were calls to political action to correct such injustices.
	And depending on the passion of the preacher, or the wittiness of the preacher, or 
whether or not the congregation was promoting a cause in which the individual was 
interested, people were often quite happy with the preaching—both the preaching from 
the pulpit and both the preaching found in the congregation’s emphases and plans. After 
all, there was usually something for everyone. But since you wouldn’t want to exclude 
anyone, you had to exercise some discretion in your preaching. Sin could not be 
mentioned, God had to be generic, and answers to any question of doctrine had to be 
wavering, quivering, vacillating, and accommodating.
	More time passed, more ivy grew—both outside and inside the church. The ivy 
now covered all but one word. When someone came to that church and looked up at the 
stone arch, it said, “We,” and nothing more. Inside, that’s pretty much what it was all 
about. The basic goal was to stay together—perhaps even grow—as a group. The group 
had no real basis for existing other than…to exist. A good year was one in which they 
grew in numbers, while a bad year was one in which they declined in numbers—it was 
just that simple.  
	They still had a pretty large group, and their focus on “we” meant that they did a 
number of things quite well. The music was very good, the group for single moms was 
thriving, the group’s food bank doled out hundreds of pounds of food each year, they had 
social activities for every age group and interest you can imagine, and the group’s 
softball team took first place every year.
	But there was no real basis for it, no overriding, deep purpose that motivated all 
this. There was no one goal towards which all this was focused—unless that goal was to 
have a bigger group that could be increasingly proud of what a professional organization 
it was.
	More time passed, and the ivy continued to grow. The old stone arch which had 
once said “We preach Christ crucified” now said nothing at all. The church was pretty 
much obscured now by the ivy. The same thing had happened inside the church. Less and 
less people were coming. People were deciding that it was easier and required less 
commitment to just attend other forms of entertainment and join other social groups than 
the one that was meeting in the ivy-covered stone building. People realized that the plays, 
the talks, the music—all those sorts of things were being done even better and even more 
entertainingly elsewhere. There really wasn’t much reason for this group to exist. The 
discussion looked back on the glory days. After all, there appeared to be no future. In 
fact, they were deciding whether to disband.
	The congregation and the stone arch that I just described is not historical, but 
similar things are happening to many Christian congregations in our country. The ivy has 
really grown.
	This isn’t anything new, of course. In the time of the Apostle Paul, people were 
clamoring for “something better.” They had heard the Law and the Gospel—they had 
heard the reason that Christ needed to be crucified, and they had heard about Christ being 
crucified, and they had heard it enough. It didn’t appear to be a particularly complicated 
message, it didn’t appear to be a particularly wise message—something that really made 
you sit back and think, “Wow, that Paul is really wise—he really made me think.” And it 
certainly didn’t appear to be  particularly powerful message. Anyone who had ever seen a 
crucifixion realized that to make someone’s crucifixion the heart and the focus of your 
preaching wasn’t something that was particularly attractive. The Greeks to whom Paul 
preached were looking for wisdom. They were looking for something a bit more 
challenging—not to mention a bit less foolish-sounding--than “For all have sinned and 
fall short of the glory of  God, and are justified freely by his grace through the 
redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). They wanted Paul to preach, 
yes—but to preach wisdom to interest their intellect. And the Jews to whom Paul 
preached were looking for something a bit more powerful than what followed those 
verses—“God presented him as a sacrifice” (Romans 3:25). They were looking for some 
miracles. They wanted Paul to preach, yes—but they wanted him to preach about a God, 
about a Savior who went from one visible, awesomely powerful triumph to the next—and 
took them with him. There was pressure on Paul to change his preaching in order to 
become more successful.  
	Do you feel that pressure? Do we feel that pressure as a congregation? Are we 
tempted to simply “preach Christ” rather than to preach Christ crucified? That is, do we 
wish that we would hear less about our sins and about Christ’s payment for those sins on 
the cross and more about how Christ’s example can help us to improve our relationships 
with others so we can be even better people than we already are? Instead of preaching 
Christ crucified, are we simply tempted to preach—generically? That is, do we talk about 
how to “grow the church” without talking about how to “preach Christ crucified”? Or 
instead of saying “We preach Christ crucified” are we more inclined to focus simply on 
“we”? That is, are we tempted to judge our congregation more by what social 
opportunities it provides us and our children than by whether it preaches Christ crucified? 
	I believe that you are tempted by these things—because I know that I am. And I 
am pretty sure that Paul was too. I am pretty sure that Paul felt those temptations and he 
felt those pressures, temptations and pressures to change his preaching in order to become 
more successful. And Paul wasn’t having any of it. He said powerfully, “We preach 
Christ crucified.” And he said it unapologetically, for he wrote elsewhere, “I am not 
ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who 
believes.” (Romans 1:16)
	Not only was Paul not ashamed of it, but he was wholly committed to and entirely 
focused on it. Paul wrote a few verses after our text, “I resolved to know nothing while I 
was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (2 Corinthians 2:2). That’s what we 
need to do with a laser-like focus—preach Christ crucified.
	We need pastors and teachers who preach God’s law, who accuse us of our sins, 
who properly proclaim the Bible’s message of condemnation for those sins. And then we 
need pastors and teachers who never fail to preach, “[Christ Jesus] is the atoning 
sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world!” (1 
John 2:2) And we need members who insist that every Sunday they hear the preaching of 
Christ crucified as a payment for their sins. We need members who pray, ask, even 
demand to hear Christ crucified. 
	Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with having a food bank—but it must 
happen in grateful response to the preaching of Christ crucified. There’s nothing wrong 
with interesting sermons—but the focus of those sermons must be Christ crucified. 
There’s nothing wrong with using Jesus as an example to follow—but we must not lose 
focus on Jesus as crucified Savior. There’s nothing wrong with doing things well as a 
congregation—but only for the purpose of helping us to better preach Christ crucified. 
There’s nothing wrong with encouragements to live Christian lives—but only in response 
to the message of Christ crucified. There’s nothing wrong with growing in numbers—but 
only if that growth comes about through the preaching of Christ crucified.
	Let’s go back now to the questions asked at the beginning of the sermon: What is 
the most important characteristic of a pastor? What is the most important characteristic of 
a congregation? Or to put them another way, what do you most want from your pastor, 
what do we most want from our congregation, and what do we most want to be doing as a 
congregation? Preaching Christ crucified. May God grant that it may always be said of us 
that we preach Christ crucified. Amen.