“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
– 1 Corinthians 2:1–5 (ESV)
To be like Paul in this very context, should be EVERY preacher’s aim EVERY time they step behind a pulpit. If a preacher falls short of achieving the goal that every listening ear hears “Jesus Christ and him crucified”, let the church demand that he either step out from behind the pulpit to be replaced by someone else who will fulfill the Pauline duty or require that he preach the Gospel in its entirety! There are no compromises here, for if there were, Paul would have listed them. However, Paul says to the Corinthian church, “I have decided to know NOTHING among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The God-inspired Paul could not have been any clearer… to preach the Gospel…is to preach the Gospel! Nothing more and nothing less. Because Christ in His blessed life, cursed death, and glorious resurrection are the only sufficiencies that depraved and dead sinners like you and I can cling to in hope for life and life eternal!
Some may read this and say “Well that was a direct start.” Indeed it was. Yet, it is necessary for the utmost truth to be proclaimed above any other. Because if any of my sermons or articles were to begin with anything but truth, it should be an indicator of the problems which would issue from falsehood. Paul provides us with similar lines of logic. “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.” In other words, a preacher wooing the masses with appealing stories about loud trucks or carnal comedy is NOT preaching at all. A preacher telling the masses about something they did years previous is NOT getting deep in “theology” because it is not the study of God, but the study of self! If you want theology from the preacher, demand that he preach the Word and nothing apart from the Word! To spend time focusing on the grandeur of the preacher is wasting precious time meant for worshiping a precious Savior. And for the preacher to gain likability and relevance at the cost of that precious time with the saints is as useless as it is to gain the world and lose the soul!
So, what should a preacher do then if he is to know nothing among the masses but Christ and Christ crucified? Well, let’s examine Paul’s words a little further. “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.” Paul is displaying strength, boldness, and firmness through the admission of his weakness, fear, and trembling. However, his strength, boldness, and firmness are not his own. Instead, Paul’s confidence is a demonstration of God’s choice to work through the vessel that is the weak, fearful, and trembling Paul. It is important to note that Paul had good reason to approach the Corinthian church with weak legs, a fearful spirit, and trembling lips. I do not believe that it was because of great threats of persecution, because nowhere throughout his writings bears proof of a fear of man in Paul. Yet, one does find in Paul’s writings acknowledgement of two great burdens– one is God’s glory; the other, man’s sin. Those are the kinds of fear that Paul is displaying. Paul preaches the Gospel with full awareness of the weight that is the Gospel–the glory of God– and his inability to carry it on his own–because of his sin. And in turn, his flesh reacts appropriately, with trembling! It is through that fearful trembling that God is forging a preacher. Embedded in every true sermon is the sharpest sword that cuts through the very souls of the hardest hearts. It is the very power of God unto salvation. It is a sword so sharp and so powerful that if mishandled, it will eternally wound both the wielder and the victim.
Therefore, preaching the full counsel of God should NEVER be something that a man does casually. It should never be something that is first prepared on Saturday night. If it is a preacher’s habit to begin work on a sermon Saturday night before preaching it on Sunday morning, the result will often resemble a rerun of last night’s Saturday Night Live. Instead, a faithful preacher will use the fear in knowing the nature of the Gospel as well as the nature of himself and his people as motivation to study longer and harder, so that when he stands in front of his congregation, he has something worthwhile to say. The way God makes the preacher in the first place is that He purchases the man at the price of His blood, forges the man through the fiery conviction of His Cross, and refines the man to a mouthpiece that is a preacher.
There is no room for the preacher to shine light upon himself or anything else of man when he is behind the pulpit or on the street because the light of Christ consumes all and the glory of Christ outweighs all. To know this and practice it is Paul’s ultimate motivation. As we read in verse 5, Paul preaches Christ and Christ crucified with fear and trembling “so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” THAT is what the heartcry of the preacher should be: that those who hear may count all around and within them as loss and count Christ as their sole ever superior gain. If a preacher has helped an individual to look at the world and see nothing, but look at Christ and see EVERYTHING, he’s accomplished the task at hand.
Therefore, dear reader, hold your pastor who stands behind the pulpit every Sunday morning at your church to that very same standard that Paul had set for himself and for every man who would surrender to the call to preach. Pray that your pastor be Cross Forged and Blood Bought, that he desires above all things to preach Jesus Christ from whose cross we are forged and by Whose blood we are bought!