1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4
Common English Bible
Definition of wisdom
6 What we say is wisdom to people who are mature. It isn’t a wisdom that comes from the present day or from today’s leaders who are being reduced to nothing. 7 We talk about God’s wisdom, which has been hidden as a secret. God determined this wisdom in advance, before time began, for our glory. 8 It is a wisdom that none of the present-day rulers have understood, because if they did understand it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory! 9 But this is precisely what is written: God has prepared things for those who love him that no eye has seen, or ear has heard, or that haven’t crossed the mind of any human being.[a] 10 God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God. 11 Who knows a person’s depths except their own spirit that lives in them? In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit. 12 We haven’t received the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit so that we can know the things given to us by God. 13 These are the things we are talking about—not with words taught by human wisdom but with words taught by the Spirit—we are interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. 14 But people who are unspiritual don’t accept the things from God’s Spirit. They are foolishness to them and can’t be understood, because they can only be comprehended in a spiritual way. 15 Spiritual people comprehend everything, but they themselves aren’t understood by anyone. 16 Who has known the mind of the Lord, who will advise him?[b] But we have the mind of Christ.
Wisdom applied to divisions in the church
3 Brothers and sisters, I couldn’t talk to you like spiritual people but like unspiritual people, like babies in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink instead of solid food, because you weren’t up to it yet. 3 Now you are still not up to it because you are still unspiritual. When jealousy and fighting exist between you, aren’t you unspiritual and living by human standards? 4 When someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and someone else says, “I belong to Apollos,” aren’t you acting like people without the Spirit?
1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
The True Wisdom of God
6 Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed.(A) 7 But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory 8 and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—(B)
10 God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.(C) 11 For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.(D) 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. 13 And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.[a](E)
14 Those who are unspiritual[b] do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.(F) 15 Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.(G)
On Divisions in the Corinthian Church
3 And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people but rather as fleshly, as infants in Christ.(H) 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready,(I) 3 for you are still fleshly. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling[c] among you, are you not fleshly and behaving according to human inclinations?(J) 4 For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not all too human?(K)
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New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.