The Crucified Person

I also came to you in weakness and with great fear and trembling. (1 Corinthians 2:3)

The message that Paul proclaimed was the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. What he proclaimed was not in vain because he was a living channel of the divine life. With the gospel of the cross, he brought many to birth. Yet in proclaiming the word of the cross, what about himself? He said this: “I also came to you in weakness and with great fear and trembling.” He himself was a crucified person! Let us see that it takes a crucified person to proclaim the word of the cross. Here Paul had absolutely no confidence in himself. Weakness, fear and trembling were upon him, and that he regarded himself as truly useless, without reliance on himself, is the true sign that he had been crucified. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul once declared (Gal. 2:20). He further said this: “I die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31). It takes a dying Paul to proclaim the crucifixion. Without genuine dying on the self, the life of Christ cannot flow out.