The cross had to do its own work.

The following is some of the comments of Tom (N.T.) Wright on 1 Corinthians 1 from his book, "Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians".

"[Paul] is contrasting 'the wisdom of the world' with 'the wisdom of God'. His basic claim is that the message about the Messiah and his cross carries a power of quite a different sort to the power of human rhetoric, with its showy style designed to entertain the ear and so gain an undeserved hearing for a merely human message."

"The point is that when Paul came into a pagan city that prided itself on its intellectual and cultural life, and stood up to speak about Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified by the Romans but raised from the dead by God, and who was now the Lord of the world, summoning people to faithful obedience, he knew what people would think. This was, and is, the craziest message anybody could imagine. This wasn't a smart new philosophy; it was madness. It wasn't an appeal to high culture. It was news of an executed criminal from a despised race."

"Simply to make the announcement, to tell the story of Jesus and his cross, was to invite people to mock."

"The cross had to do its own work. Simply telling the story released a power of quite a different sort from any power that human speech could have: God's power, beside which all human power looks weak; God's wisdom, beside which all human learning looks like folly."

"When this announcement is made, people discover to their astonishment that things change. Lives change. Human hearts change. Situations change. New communities come into being, consisting of people grasped by the message, believing it's true despite everything, falling in love with the God they find to be alive in this Jesus, giving Jesus their supreme loyalty. That is the evidence Paul has in mind."