Despair Leads Us Into the Arms of God

8 February 2026  1 Corinthians 2:1-5

“For I decided to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2) 

Paul was not successful in Athens (cf. Acts 17:22-34).

He had undertaken there to make a philosophical argument, exposing the incoherence of Greek and Roman paganism, and proclaiming the holy sufficiency of Jesus. He even quoted a Greek poet – probably Epimenides – to strengthen his case, but it didn’t work. He was basically laughed out of town (Acts 17:32).

The Greek world was simply not ready for a philosophical argument about Jesus.

So, Paul decided to go from the premier university town of the Roman world to Corinth, the Vegas of the Roman world. Some, no doubt, thought this was sheer lunacy – Corinth was a moral cesspool.

His mission was to unite the presence of the Living God with the most painful realities of human sin and despair, such that precisely when people were fleeing from God the Father, they were running straight into the arms of God the Son: “If I ascend into heaven you are there; if I make my bed in hell you are there” (Psalm 139:8).

What Obi-Wan Kenobi said of Mos Eisley spaceport surely applied to Corinth: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” And there Paul decided to “know nothing except Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

Paul understood what the Church has been explaining ever since, viz., that in the Passion of Jesus God entered into the midst of our God-forsakenness. His mission was to unite the presence of the Living God with the most painful realities of human sin and despair, such that precisely when people were fleeing from God the Father, they were running straight into the arms of God the Son: “If I ascend into heaven you are there; if I make my bed in hell you are there” (Psalm 139:8). The Corinthians would never have understood “lofty words of wisdom,” but God-forsakenness they understood, and so they got it when Paul talked to them about the Living God in a crucified man.

Paul stayed there a year and a half (cf. Acts 18:11).

A century after this there were two grim experiences of epidemic disease – the Antonine Plague of the 170s, and the Cyprian Plague of the 250s. Many fewer died in Christian neighborhoods in those days because Christians took care of the sick – sick people, not just sick Christians. That was an eye-opener for many Romans, and it cleared the way for people like Justin Martyr, Apollinaris, Athenagoras, and later the great Augustine to make the kind of philosophical arguments that would lead Romans out of paganism into what is now the civilization of the west. The Roman Empire was not able to survive this transition, and it is entirely possible that the civilization of the United States will not be able to survive the strains that are currently upon us. History is not very sentimental – if you make enough mistakes of enough gravity, your culture simply will not survive. We have ample reason to believe, however, that whatever is on the coast we are approaching, driven by the storms of the moment, they will be fertile places for the proclamation of Christ and Him crucified. The people there will know despair, and will recognize the Living God in a crucified man.

It is always Good News to know that even when we are fleeing God the Father, we are running toward God the Son. He already knows the depths of our sin and despair, and we already know the people who will point Him out to us.

We have been here before.