The following is an excerpt from my Master’s thesis on first Corinthians 1: 17-25. This will be a quick discussion on the phrase “Christ crucified” found in verse 23. I will follow with a closing word.
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This phrase serves as the content of the proclamation of foolishness, back in verse 21. The term Christ crucified is a perfect passive participle, and it is functioning as an adjectival- substantive participle, meaning the one who was crucified. The perfect participle carries the force of,” … describing an event that, completed in the past …,” and “… has results existing in the present time” (Wallace, “Greek Grammar beyond the Basics,” 573). Thus, Christ crucified carries with it the notion that Christ’s crucifixion stands as a past reality with its effects coming into the present. Lenski succinctly summarizes this phraseology:
The perfect participle Christ crucified states that, one crucified, Christ now stands before us continuously as such. The fact of his crucifixion has become something permanent and enduring from the very moment when that fact occurred. This crucified Christ is both the sum of the Gospel and the Center from which every part of the Gospel radiates, and in which all of its parts meet.[1]
The proclamation of Christ crucified is what serves as a stumbling block to the Jews and as folly to the Greeks.
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The above represents our blessed hope as Christians! The power of God, not in abstraction, but in the concreto reality of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ demonstrated for all who will see. Its power preceded it in the inner-life of God who freely chose this way for Himself; that is, to not be God without us. It crescendoed as He actualized it in that particular time on that particular day when He cried out “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me.” In this cry the Son of Man evinced what is at the heart of every fallen heart (even though His heart was not fallen, although He was dying for ours); a sense of utter loss and despair; anxiety and heaviness that is indescribable. But that cry does not compare to the shout of victory that the Son yelled out as He broke the graves doors, resurrected and ascended to the Right Hand of the Father. This victory has perfect force. Once started it never ends. It is a force a power that death cannot hold down, that anxiety cannot broach; it is a force that steamrolls the fears and angsts of all of humanity. This is the ‘perfect’ power of the living God. When tempted to shrink back just remember that God’s life is an indestructible life, and that His life literally stands as your life as a Christian. Press into that, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit. Ask the Lord to let you realize what this power can do in your daily life as a Christian, that He might be magnified in all the blessings He pours into your life, from His life for you, as you live in this obedient way.
[1] Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 66.