Only as our contemporary hearers are confronted with these Biblical realities will the grace and mercy of the gospel shine out in all its light and life-changing power. But this requires hard work and hard work requires time, and I fear that many preachers today have little of either. Yet until we change our priorities and act upon our renewed Biblical convictions, the gap between the culture and the gospel, the world and the church will remain largely unbridged.

We need to work hard at understanding the Biblical text, making sure that we are really listening to God ourselves, and not just handling material for others. Then we need to work hard at explaining its message in accessible, contemporary language and thought-forms, so that the divine power inherent in God’s living and enduring Word is unhindered and on target. This must be so every time we seek to proclaim its penetrating analysis of our world, along with its life-giving imperatives.

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Just as Paul exposed the spiritual igno¬rance of the sophisticated Areopagites, so we must seek to direct the message of Scripture straight into our contemporary culture, exposing its false presuppositions and confronting its arrogant rebellion. There is only one message that can truly change the world, and that is the good news of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

I think this is what Paul had in mind when he reminded the Corinthian church, “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17). The verse highlights a striking, almost shockking, alternative. Paul is saying that the preacher can choose between “eloquent wisdom” or the power of the cross, but he cannot have confidence in both.

The former term is probably best under¬stood as a summary of the skills of the contemporary rhetoricians, the star speak¬ers and performers of Paul’s day, equivalent to the pundits and media personalities and the glitzy presentations of our own culture. Some of the Corinthians seem to have become increasingly unhappy about their apostle’s lack of sparkle and cutting-edge trendiness in his preaching. After all, what else would impress sophisticated media-savvy Corinth?

Paul’s answer is the power of the cross of Christ. That is the only reason why a church exists in Corinth at all. “It pleased God through the folly of what we preach [the cross] to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21). Nothing else can save men and women, in time and for eternity. That is why the word of the cross is the power of God (v. 18).

It is also why Paul will not sacrifice one iota of its divine power for popular cultural methodologies, however beguiling and apparently “successful” they at first seem to be. He knows that they cannot bridge the gap. He knows that the real power lies elsewhere and he will not be diverted. “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Do we stand in that apostolic succession?