For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.1 Cor 2:2
Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.Galatians 3:1
Paul said I preach Christ and Christ crucified.
Somebody wrote yesterday that he didn't get all this what he called New Age talk about I Am, and things like that...he just believed in the simplicity of Christ. All sorts of people liked this and probably I would like this in one way.
This is what came to me this morning while driving.....
Paul said he would build on no other foundation than the foundation laid, who is Christ. He wasn't in a hurry to build on another man's work.
I was reminded of people who try to help clear the homes of hoarders. Now hoarders are the actual problem...not the inanimate objects they hoard. But there is only usually one hoarder. In pre established churches you have loads of "hoarders" all interacting and all connected to all sorts of wrong spirits over years and years.
Every wrong doctrine or "wrong seeing" has a spirit attached. So if you look in the Spirit you have loads of hoarders of traditions of men, of wrong perceptions of an angry distant God, of works to appease this God, of reluctance to be really really real with men and with God.....you can understand Paul.
The Holy Spirit drew my attention to the two phrases...I preach Christ and Christ crucified. People who talk of the simplicity of Christ usually mean they preach the forgiveness of Christ through His Blood. In their heads they are thinking or presuming, as I was, that this also covered the phrase Christ crucified. But no. Paul is being specific. He means the whole raft of his teaching that is summed up in Galatians 2:20, and Romans 6 to 8, and was initially quite particular to him and the spirit the other Apostles had come into....and that is what they all referred to as laying a foundation of Christ.
I am not sure that the one who was extolling the simplicity of Christ wasn't wanting the second message particularly...the FULL EXTENT OF THE CHRIST CRUCIFIED MESSAGE.
