Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 Corinthians 1:23

"but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness;" — 1 Corinthians 1:23 (ASV)

Paul’s task is to preach Christ crucified. He uses the form of the verb “crucified” that implies that Christ’s death has a continuous vicarious effect (cf. Galatians 2:20). To the unsaved Jews, however, this message of a crucified Christ was a “stumbling block” (GK 4998), an offense, for they expected a political deliverer. To the nonjewish world the cross was “foolishness” (GK 3702)— criminals died on crosses, so how could the cross provide any moral philosophical standard to help them toward salvation? Furthermore, the Greeks and Romans looked on one crucified as the lowest of criminals, so how could such a one be considered a savior? The sophisticated Greeks would also have had difficulty in conceiving of how a god, being spirit, could become incarnate and thus provide a god-man atonement for sin.