If They Had Known
There is a sentence Paul wrote that can easily be read over without realizing just how much is packed inside it. He said, “None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had, they would not havecrucified the Lord of glory,” 1 Corinthians 2:8. That is an astonishing statement. Paul was not saying that nobody had ever heard the Scriptures. He was not saying that nobody had ever spoken about the coming Messiah. He was saying that the people who were involved in what happened to Jesus did not truly understand or even know who He actually was. They had the Scriptures, yes. They had the Law. They had the Prophets. They had the promises. They had generations of people who had been waiting for the One God would send. They had all that. Yet when He stood in front of them, they just did not recognize Him. Paul's actual Greek words make this even clearer. He wrote ἔγνωκεν, egnōken, has known or recognized , and then ἔγνωσαν, egnōsan, they knew or recognized . He then used ἐσταύρωσ...