“Focus on Christ crucified. That is what Paul did: ‘For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2:2). This does not mean that this was a new departure for Paul, still less that Paul was devoted to blissful ignorance of anything and everything other than the cross.
No, what he means is that all he does and teaches is tied to the cross. He cannot long talk about Christian joy, or Christian ethics, or Christian fellowship, or the Christian doctrine of God, or anything else, without finally tying it to the cross.
Paul is gospel-centered; he is cross centered. That is more than a creedal commitment; it sets out Paul’s priorities, his lifestyle, and in this context, his style of ministry.
If he really holds that God has supremely disclosed Himself in the cross and that to follow the crucified and risen Savior means dying daily, then it is preposterous to adopt a style of ministry that is triumphalistic, designed to impress, calculated to win applause…
What then does it mean today to resolve ‘to know nothing… except Jesus Christ and Him crucified’? More narrowly, what elements in our ministries need overhauling when judged by this standard? For this commitment must not only shape our message but our style.”
–D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 37-38.
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