- 1
- When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence
- or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.
- 2
- For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
- except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
- 3
- I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.
- 4
- My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words,
- but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power,
- 5
- so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
- Wisdom From the Spirit
- 6
- We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature,
- but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age,
- who are coming to nothing.
- 7
- No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom
- that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
- 8
- None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had,
- they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
- 9
- However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
- no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"
- 10
- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
- The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
- 11
- For who among men knows the thoughts of a man
- except the man's spirit within him? In the same way
- no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
- 12
- We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God,
- that we may understand what God has freely given us.
- 13
- This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom
- but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
- 14
- The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from
- the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them,
- because they are spiritually discerned.
- 15
- The spiritual man makes judgments about all things,
- but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
- 16
- "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"
- But we have the mind of Christ.