Proclaiming Christ Crucified

2 When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the testimony^[a] of God to you with superior speech or wisdom.^{(A) 2} For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³ And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. ⁴ My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom^[b] but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,^{(B) 5} so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

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.^{(C) 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,

¹⁰ God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.^{(E) 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.^{(F) 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.^[c](G)

¹⁴ Those who are unspiritual^[d] 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.^{(H) 15} Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.

But we have the mind of Christ.^(I)