1 Corinthians 1:22

Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling block, and unto Greeks foolishness.

Dummelow paraphrased this thus, "The Jews will not believe unless a miracle is wrought before their eyes; the Greeks will accept no truth that is not commended by philosophical speculation."[21]

Of course, the Jews had witnessed many miracles, not only by the Lord of life, but also by the holy apostles; but what they demanded was the performance, at their bidding, of some spectacular wonder of their own choosing, which, even if it had been wrought, would have had no moral value and would have proved just as ineffective as the true miracles they had already seen (Matthew 16:1).

We preach Christ crucified ... The cross is central to the Christian religion; no person may be a true follower of the Lord who is unwilling to take up his cross and follow the Master (Matthew 16:24).

Despite the Jewish law which declared, "He that is hanged on a tree is accursed of God" (Deuteronomy 21:23), and the hierarchy of Israel having accomplished such a death for the Lord of glory, the cross was the instrument of Jesus' atonement for the sins of the whole world. It was the place where God, having entered our earthly life as a man, paid the penalty of human transgression, bruised the head of Satan, and purchased the church with his own precious blood. The glory of the cross is seen in what it denied, what it declared, what it accomplished, whom it defeated, and whom it saved. All the human wisdom of all the ages is powerless to achieve the most infinitesimal fraction of the redemption that was achieved to the uttermost on Calvary.