Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Corinthians 2:2

"For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." — 1 Corinthians 2:2 (ASV)

I determined not to know.—It is better understood as, I did not determine to know. The only subject of teaching about which the Apostle had firmly resolved in his mind when coming to Corinth was preaching Christ, and Him as crucified. Here we have a statement of what was always the subject matter of apostolic teaching.

St. Paul did not dwell on the miraculous in the life of Christ, which would have pandered to the Jewish longing for a “sign”; nor did he put forward elaborate “theories” of the gospel, which would have been a concession to the Greek’s longing for “wisdom”: but he preached a personal Christ, and especially dwelt on the fact that He had been crucified (1 Corinthians 1:17; 1 Corinthians 1:23; Galatians 6:14; Philippians 2:8).

We can scarcely realize now what a stumbling block the preaching of a crucified Christ must have been to Jews and Greeks. It is equally difficult to grasp the enormous temptation that early teachers would naturally have felt to keep the cross in the background, or the sublime and confident faith that must have strengthened St. Paul to make it the central fact of all his teaching.

For us, the cross is illuminated with the glories of eighteen centuries of civilization and consecrated with the memory of all that is best and noblest in the history of Christendom. In that era, however, to every Jew and to every Gentile, it conveyed only one idea: that of the most revolting and degrading punishment.

Remembering this fact enables us to realize how uncompromising the Apostles’ teaching was—how it never “accommodated itself” to any existing desire or prejudice. This surely is significant evidence of the divine origin of the religion whose heralds the Apostles were!