1 From: Sha’ul, called by God’s will to be an emissary of the Messiah Yeshua; and from brother Sosthenes

² To: God’s Messianic community in Corinth, consisting of those who have been set apart by Yeshua the Messiah and called to be God’s holy people — along with everyone everywhere who calls on the name of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, their Lord as well as ours:

³ Grace to you and shalom from God our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.

⁴ I thank my God always for you because of God’s love and kindness given to you through the Messiah Yeshua, ⁵ in that you have been enriched by him in so many ways, particularly in power of speech and depth of knowledge. ⁶ Indeed, the testimony about the Messiah has become firmly established in you; ⁷ so that you are not lacking any spiritual gift and are eagerly awaiting the revealing of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah. ⁸ He will enable you to hold out until the end and thus be blameless on the Day of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah — ⁹ God is trustworthy: it was he who called you into fellowship with his Son, Yeshua the Messiah, our Lord.

¹⁰ Nevertheless, brothers, I call on you in the name of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah to agree, all of you, in what you say, and not to let yourselves remain split into factions but be restored to having a common mind and a common purpose. ¹¹ For some of Chloe’s people have made it known to me, my brothers, that there are quarrels among you. ¹² I say this because one of you says, “I follow Sha’ul”; another says, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Kefa”; while still another says, “I follow the Messiah!” ¹³ Has the Messiah been split in pieces? Was it Sha’ul who was put to death on a stake for you? Were you immersed into the name of Sha’ul? ¹⁴ I thank God that I didn’t immerse any of you except Crispus and Gaius — ¹⁵ otherwise someone might say that you were indeed immersed into my name. ¹⁶ (Oh yes, I did also immerse Stephanas and his household; beyond that, I can’t remember whether I immersed anyone else.)

¹⁷ For the Messiah did not send me to immerse but to proclaim the Good News — and to do it without relying on “wisdom” that consists of mere rhetoric, so as not to rob the Messiah’s execution-stake of its power. ¹⁸ For the message about the execution-stake is nonsense to those in the process of being destroyed, but to us in the process of being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ Indeed, the Tanakh says,

²⁰ Where does that leave the philosopher, the Torah-teacher, or any of today’s thinkers? Hasn’t God made this world’s wisdom look pretty foolish? ²¹ For God’s wisdom ordained that the world, using its own wisdom, would not come to know him. Therefore God decided to use the “nonsense” of what we proclaim as his means of saving those who come to trust in it. ²² Precisely because Jews ask for signs and Greeks try to find wisdom, ²³ we go on proclaiming a Messiah executed on a stake as a criminal! To Jews this is an obstacle, and to Greeks it is nonsense; ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, this same Messiah is God’s power and God’s wisdom! ²⁵ For God’s “nonsense” is wiser than humanity’s “wisdom.”

And God’s “weakness” is stronger than humanity’s “strength.” ²⁶ Just look at yourselves, brothers — look at those whom God has called! Not many of you are wise by the world’s standards, not many wield power or boast noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise; God chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the strong; ²⁸ and God chose what the world looks down on as common or regards as nothing in order to bring to nothing what the world considers important; ²⁹ so that no one should boast before God. ³⁰ It is his doing that you are united with the Messiah Yeshua. He has become wisdom for us from God, and righteousness and holiness and redemption as well! ³¹ Therefore — as the Tanakh says — “Let anyone who wants to boast, boast about Adonai.”^[b]

2 As for me, brothers, when I arrived among you, it was not with surpassing eloquence or wisdom that I came announcing to you the previously concealed truth about God; ² for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Yeshua the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal. ³ Also I myself was with you as somebody weak, nervous and shaking all over from fear; ⁴ and neither the delivery nor the content of my message relied on compelling words of “wisdom” but on a demonstration of the power of the Spirit, ⁵ so that your trust might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power.

⁶ Yet there is a wisdom that we are speaking to those who are mature enough for it. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of this world’s leaders, who are in the process of passing away. ⁷ On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory. ⁸ Not one of this world’s leaders has understood it; because if they had, they would not have executed the Lord from whom this glory flows. ⁹ But, as the Tanakh says,

¹⁰ It is to us, however, that God has revealed these things. How? Through the Spirit. For the Spirit probes all things, even the profoundest depths of God. ¹¹ For who knows the inner workings of a person except the person’s own spirit inside him? So too no one knows the inner workings of God except God’s Spirit. ¹² Now we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God, so that we might understand the things God has so freely given us. ¹³ These are the things we are talking about when we avoid the manner of speaking that human wisdom would dictate and instead use a manner of speaking taught by the Spirit, by which we explain things of the Spirit to people who have the Spirit. ¹⁴ Now the natural man does not receive the things from the Spirit of God — to him they are nonsense! Moreover, he is unable to grasp them, because they are evaluated through the Spirit. ¹⁵ But the person who has the Spirit can evaluate everything, while no one is in a position to evaluate him.

But we have the mind of the Messiah!

3 As for me, brothers, I couldn’t talk to you as spiritual people but as worldly people, as babies, so far as experience with the Messiah is concerned. ² I gave you milk, not solid food, because you were not yet ready for it. But you aren’t ready for it now either! ³ For you are still worldly! Isn’t it obvious from all the jealousy and quarrelling among you that you are worldly and living by merely human standards? ⁴ For when one says, “I follow Sha’ul” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you being merely human? ⁵ After all, what is Apollos? What is Sha’ul? Only servants through whom you came to trust. Indeed, it was the Lord who brought you to trust through one of us or through another. ⁶ I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. ⁷ So neither the planter nor the waterer is anything, only God who makes things grow — ⁸ planter and waterer are the same.

However, each will be rewarded according to his work. ⁹ For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. ¹⁰ Using the grace God gave me, I laid a foundation, like a skilled master-builder; and another man is building on it. But let each one be careful how he builds. ¹¹ For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Yeshua the Messiah. ¹² Some will use gold, silver or precious stones in building on this foundation; while others will use wood, grass or straw. ¹³ But each one’s work will be shown for what it is; the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire — the fire will test the quality of each one’s work. ¹⁴ If the work someone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward; ¹⁵ if it is burned up, he will have to bear the loss: he will still escape with his life, but it will be like escaping through a fire.

¹⁶ Don’t you know that you people are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? ¹⁷ So if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you yourselves are that temple.

¹⁸ Let no one fool himself. If someone among you thinks he is wise (by this world’s standards), let him become “foolish,” so that he may become really wise. ¹⁹ For the wisdom of this world is nonsense, as far as God is concerned; inasmuch as the Tanakh says, “He traps the wise in their own cleverness,”^{[e] 20} and again, “Adonai knows that the thoughts of the wise are worthless.”^{[f] 21} So let no one boast about human beings, for all things are yours — ²² whether Sha’ul or Apollos or Kefa or the world or life or death or the present or the future: they all belong to you, ²³ and you belong to the Messiah, and the Messiah belongs to God.