1 Corinthians 2:2 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

I determined not to know. — Better, I did not determine to know. The only subject of teaching concerning which the Apostle had formed a determined resolve in his mind when coming to Corinth was the preaching Christ and Him as being crucified. We have here a statement of what was ever the subject-matter of apostolic teaching. St. Paul did not dwell on the miraculous in the life of Christ, which would have pandered to the Jewish longing for a “sign”; nor did he put forward elaborate “theories” of the gospel, which would have been a concession to the Greek’s longing after “wisdom”: but he preached a personal Christ, and especially dwelt on the fact that He had been crucified (1 Corinthians 1:17; 1 Corinthians 1:23; Galatians 6:14; Philippians 2:8). We can scarcely realise now the stumbling-block which the preaching of a crucified Christ must have been to Jews and Greeks, the enormous temptation to keep the cross in the background which the early teachers would naturally have felt, and the sublime and confident faith which must have nerved St. Paul to make it the central fact of all his teaching. For us the cross is illumined with the glories of eighteen centuries of civilisation, and consecrated with the memory of all that is best and noblest in the history of Christendom. To every Jew and to every Gentile it conveyed but one idea, that of the most revolting and most degrading punishment. The remembrance of this fact will enable us to realise how uncompromising was the Apostles’ teaching — how it never “accommodated itself” to any existing desire or prejudice. This surely is no small evidence of the divine origin of the religion of which the Apostles were the heralds!