In 1 Corinthians 2:2 Paul said, “For I did not determine to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified.” Then in 2 Corinthians 4:7-11, he said, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us. We are pressed on every side but not constricted; unable to find a way out but not utterly without a way out; persecuted but not abandoned; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
From Paul’s word we see that a Christian’s center is Christ, the One who was crucified. Christ is the life, and the cross is the way. We have received not only Christ but also His cross; we have received not merely a life but also a way. We have received Christ as our life, and we have also received the cross as our way.
These two items, however, are often neglected in the church today. Christians preach Christ, telling people that Christ is the Savior and life of man, yet in their daily lives very few of them really experience Christ as life. Today many people in the church know and speak the truth of Christ being our life, but the experience of having Christ as life in their daily living is rare.
We really have to look to God that we may definitely know in our experience what it is to have Christ as our life and to know what is the cross of Christ. Today there are innumerable Christians all over the world, yet among them we can hardly find one whose living and work testify that he is living in the cross and that he is walking on the path of the cross.
Christ as the One who was crucified is the center of God’s salvation. Hence, Paul told the Corinthians, “I did not...know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Yet what was the condition of the Corinthians? We see from the book of 1 Corinthians that they paid attention to many so-called spiritual matters, such as spiritual gifts, spiritual eloquence, and spiritual power. They also paid attention to faith. Paul even said to them, “You do not lack in any gift” (1:7). In other words, the Corinthians had gifts, eloquence, faith, and various other so-called spiritual things. However, Paul wanted them to see that all these things that they paid attention to were not God’s focus. They had not touched or received God’s focus. What is God’s focus? Paul said, “I did not...know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified.”
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