before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as
crucified?
But He was crucified in Jerusalem. How then does it say “before your
eyes” and “among you”? Because they, with the eyes of faith, saw the Cross more
clearly than those who were bodily present at the time. For while many of those
who saw physically derived no benefit, they, though not having seen with the
eyes, beheld with great clarity through faith. Thus Christ was “portrayed”—that
is, vividly depicted through preaching- but you, having believed the preaching,
saw Him as though present. This is both praise and reproof: praise because they
received it with such certainty, and reproof because they abandoned Him whom
they saw stripped, crucified, and dying, and turned to the Law. Note how he
speaks only of the Cross of Christ, leaving all else aside. (The New
Testament Commentaries of Saint Theophylact of Ohrid, 3 vols. [trans. Dean
Marais; Based Books, 2025], 3:21)
