1 Corinthians 1.18-31

²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,

The community in Corinth consisted of a mixture of backgrounds, Gentile and Jewish. In order to understand the difficulty these groups had trusting and understanding the cross of Jesus Christ, Paul's other epistles provide some clue.

For the Jews, dying on a tree was an abomination. As Paul quotes Deuteronomy 21.22-23 in his epistle to Galatia, "for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”" Crucifixion, according to modern historians, usually involved nailing the victim to a standing tree (our modern imagination of the event ordinarily contains a post driven into the ground - still a tree), putting him under this curse (Deuteronomy also explains why Jesus followers were so insistent that his body come down right away). Paul offers a theological explanation for this manner of death. In Galatians 3.13, Paul he says that Jesus became a curse for us in order to remove the curse of the law. The legal source of the stumbling is understandable, albeit surmountable.

The Gentiles were under the sway of gnosticism, the philosophical schools of the day, and many other worldviews. Paul lumps them together in Colossians. The key to understanding Paul's problem with this "wisdom" is that it is constructed by humans. Wisdom is not bad according to Paul; any wisdom which elevates itself above Christ is.

How do we understand the cross today? What are our stumbling blocks? What wisdom competes with the cross?

²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.