What Paul Decided to Know
When the Apostle Paul arrived in Corinth, he made a deliberate decision about what he would preach. Not a tactical decision based on the audience. Not a temporary simplification he planned to build beyond later. A settled, permanent determination about what the Christian message actually is at its core.
For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2)
That decision did not come from a man who lacked theological depth. Paul had more education, more religious pedigree, and more doctrinal training than most of the people he was writing to. He chose Christ and Him crucified not because it was simple but because it was everything. Everything else either builds on that foundation or eventually collapses without it.
That conviction is the foundation this site stands on as well.
Why the Cross and Not Just the Resurrection
It is possible to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus while underestimating what the Cross actually accomplished. The resurrection matters — it is the proof that death could not hold Him and that everything He secured at the Cross was accepted by the Father. But the resurrection is the validation of what the Cross did. The Cross is where the work happened.
Jesus came to earth as fully God. But He laid aside the independent use of His divine attributes to live as a man — fully dependent on the Father, led by the Holy Spirit, walking out a perfectly sinless life in human flesh. That is the part that gets passed over too quickly.
He did not accomplish redemption by leveraging His divinity. He accomplished it as the last Adam, the second man, doing in human flesh what the first Adam failed to do. He lived without sin. He went to the Cross without sin. He became the one sacrifice that satisfied the requirements of a holy God completely and finally.
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
That exchange is the entire Gospel in one verse. His sinlessness for your sin. His righteousness credited to your account. Not because you earned it — but because you are in Him.
What Happened Between the Cross and the Resurrection
There is a moment the church does not talk about enough. After Jesus died on the Cross and before He rose from the dead, something was happening that Scripture points to but rarely gets preached in full.
Peter describes it in his first letter — that Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison. Paul tells the Ephesians that He descended into the lower parts of the earth before He ascended. The Apostles Creed preserves it in the phrase: He descended into hell.
Whatever the full scope of that time between death and resurrection, what is certain is this — it was not passive. The one who went into that space went as the sinless Son of Man who had just paid the full price for sin at the Cross. And He came out of it in resurrection power, having conquered death, hell, and the grave completely.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law: But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)
The victory is through Jesus Christ. Specifically through what He did — the entire arc from sinless life to Cross to descent to resurrection. That full work is what makes Him the source of everything the believer now has access to.
The Cross as the Ongoing Basis for Daily Victory
Here is where the message of the Cross goes beyond what most believers understand. The Cross is not only the entry point of salvation. It is the ongoing basis for sanctification — for daily victory over sin, over the flesh, over the patterns that keep pulling a believer back into defeat.
Paul makes this plain in Romans 6:
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6)
The believer was crucified with Christ. That is past tense — it happened at the Cross. But the application of it is present tense and ongoing. The way a believer walks in victory is not by trying harder, implementing better habits, or finding the right spiritual program. It is by keeping faith placed in what Christ accomplished at the Cross, which is what gives the Holy Spirit the latitude to work in daily life.
Any other object of faith — self-effort, religious discipline, programs, willpower — bypasses the Cross and produces what Paul calls works of the flesh. Not because those things are evil in themselves, but because they are the wrong foundation. The only foundation that holds is Christ and Him crucified.
For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:11)
What In Christ Actually Means
The phrase in Christ appears over 80 times in Paul’s letters. It is not decorative language. It is the precise description of where the believer stands before God.
Because Jesus lived sinlessly as a man, went to the Cross as a man, and rose from the dead as a man, every believer who is placed in Him stands before God in that same righteousness. Not their own. His. The holiness of God is not a barrier the believer has to somehow get past. In Christ, it has already been satisfied.
This is what makes Jesus the source of everything the believer has access to. Not just forgiveness. Not just eternal life as a future event. But righteousness, peace, access to the Father, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and every spiritual blessing — all of it flowing through what He accomplished at the Cross.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)
All spiritual blessings. Already given. Already secured. The location is in Christ — which means they were secured at the Cross and are accessed by faith in what He did there.
Why Paul Gloried in the Cross
Paul was not a man who gloried in weakness or failure. He was by his own description a man who had reason to boast by any human standard — education, lineage, zeal, accomplishment. Yet this is what he wrote:
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Galatians 6:14)
The Cross was not an embarrassment to Paul. It was not a difficult starting point he moved beyond into more sophisticated theology. It was the one thing he returned to constantly because it was the one thing everything else depended on.
That is still true. The Cross of Christ is not the beginning of the Christian life that you graduate from. It is the ground you stand on every single day. The believer who understands this does not strive for victory — they stand in the victory already won, keeping their faith anchored to Christ and Him crucified, and trusting the Holy Spirit to produce what only He can produce in a life surrendered to that foundation.
That is what this site is built on. And it is what every post here is trying to point back to — not as a theological position to defend, but as a living reality to walk in, moment by moment, through Jesus Christ.
