1 Corinthians 1-4

The Voice

1 Paul, called out by God’s will to be an emissary^[a] for Jesus the Anointed, along with brother Sosthenes, ² to God’s church gathering in the city of Corinth. As people who are united with Jesus, the Anointed One, you have been set apart for service. You are all called into community to live as saints with all who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed

³ I pray that God our Father and the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, will shower you with grace and peace.

⁴ I am continuously thanking my God for you when I think about the grace God has offered you in Jesus the Anointed. ⁵ In this grace, God is enriching every aspect of your lives by gifting you with the right words to say and everything you need to know. ⁶ In this way, your life story confirms the life story of the Anointed One, ⁷ so you are not ill-equipped or slighted on any necessary gifts as you patiently anticipate the day when our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, is revealed. ⁸ Until that final day, He will preserve you; and on that day, He will consider you faultless. ⁹ Count on this: God is faithful and in His faithfulness called you out into an intimate relationship with His Son, our Lord Jesus the Anointed.

¹⁰ My brothers and sisters, I urge you by the name of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed, to come together in agreement. Do not allow anything or anyone to create division among you. Instead, be restored, completely fastened together with one mind and shared judgment. ¹¹ I have heard troubling reports from Chloe’s people that you, my siblings, are consumed by fighting and petty disagreements. ¹² What I have heard is that each of you is taking sides, saying, “I am with Paul,” or “I am with Apollos,” or “I am with Cephas,” or “I am with the Anointed One.” ¹³ Has the Anointed One been split up into many small pieces? Do you think Paul was crucified for you? Were you ceremonially washed through baptism^[b] into the name of Paul? Absolutely not!

¹⁴ Now I am thankful that I baptized^[c] only Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵ so none of you can falsely declare you were baptized in my name. ¹⁶ Now wait, as I think about it, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; if there are others in your community whom I baptized, I cannot recall at this moment. ¹⁷ The mission given to me by the Anointed One is not about baptism, but about preaching good news. The point is not to impress others by spinning an eloquent, intellectual argument; that type of rhetorical showboating would only nullify the cross of the Anointed.

¹⁸ For people who are stumbling toward ruin, the message of the cross is nothing but a tall tale for fools by a fool. But for those of us who are already experiencing the reality of being rescued and made right, it is nothing short of God’s power. ¹⁹ This is why the Scripture says:

²⁰ So now, where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the skilled debater, the best of your time? Step up, if you dare. Hasn’t God made fools out of those who count on the wisdom of this rebellious, broken world? ²¹ For in God’s deep wisdom, He made it so that the world could not even begin to comprehend Him through its own style of wisdom; in fact, God took immense pleasure in rescuing people of faith through the foolishness of the message we preach. ²² It seems the Jews are always asking for signs and the Greeks are always on the prowl for wisdom. ²³ But we tell a different story. We proclaim a crucified Jesus, God’s Anointed. For Jews this is scandalous, for outsiders^[e] this is moronic, ²⁴ but for those of us living out God’s call—regardless of our Jewish or Greek heritage—we know the Anointed embodies God’s dynamic power and God’s deep wisdom. ²⁵ You can count on this: God’s foolishness will always be wiser than mere human wisdom, and God’s weakness will always be stronger than mere human strength.

²⁶ Look carefully at your call, brothers and sisters. By human standards, not many of you are deemed to be wise. Not many are considered powerful. Not many of you come from royalty, right? ²⁷ But celebrate this: God selected the world’s foolish to bring shame upon those who think they are wise; likewise, He selected the world’s weak to bring disgrace upon those who think they are strong. ²⁸ God selected the common and the castoff, whatever lacks status, so He could invalidate the claims of those who think those things are significant. ²⁹ So it makes no sense for any person to boast in God’s presence. ³⁰ Instead, credit God with your new situation: you are united with Jesus the Anointed. He is God’s wisdom for us and more. He is our righteousness and holiness and redemption. ³¹ As the Scripture says: “If someone wants to boast, he should boast in the Lord.”^[f]

2 My brothers and sisters, I did not pose as an expert with all the answers. I did not pretend to explain the mystery of God with eloquent speech and human wisdom. ² I claimed to know nothing with certainty other than the reality that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Liberating King, who was crucified on our behalf. ³ I was moved to utter despair during my time with you. I would find myself trembling in dread and fear. ⁴ The sermons I preached were not delivered with the kind of persuasive elegance some have come to expect, but they were effective because I relied on God’s Spirit to demonstrate God’s power. ⁵ If this were not so, your faith would be based on human wisdom and not the power of God.

⁶ However, in the presence of mature believers, we do impart true wisdom—not the phony wisdom typical of this rebellious age or of the hostile powers who rule this age. Despite what you may think, these ruling spirits are losing their grip on this world. ⁷ But we do impart God’s mysterious and hidden wisdom. Before the ages began, God graciously decided to use His wisdom for our glory. ⁸ This wisdom has not been grasped by the ruling powers of this age; if they had understood, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. ⁹ But as the Scriptures say,

¹⁰ God has shown us these profound and startling realities through His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep mysteries of God. ¹¹ Who can see into a man’s heart and know his thoughts? Only the spirit that dwells within the man. In the same way, the thoughts of God are known only by His Spirit. ¹² You must know that we have not received the spirit of this rebellious and broken world but the Spirit that comes from God, so that we may experience and comprehend the gifts that come from God. ¹³ We do not speak of these gifts of God in words shaped by human wisdom; we speak in words crafted by the Spirit because our collective judgment on spiritual matters is accessible to those who have the Spirit. ¹⁴ But a person who denies spiritual realities will not accept the things that come through the Spirit of God; they all sound like foolishness to him. He is incapable of grasping them because they are disseminated, discerned, and valued by the Spirit. ¹⁵ A person who walks by the Spirit examines everything, sizing it up and seeking out truth. But no one is able to examine or size up that kind of spiritual person, ¹⁶ for the Scripture asks, “Does anyone know the mind of the Lord well enough to become His advisor?”^[h] But we do possess the mind of the Anointed One.

3 My brothers and sisters, I cannot address you as people who walk by the Spirit; I have to speak to you as people who tend to think in merely human terms, as spiritual infants in the Anointed One. ² I nursed you with milk, as a mother would feed her baby, because you were not, and still are not, developed enough to digest complex spiritual food. ³ And here’s why: you are still living in the flesh, not in the Spirit. How do I know? Are you fighting with one another? Are you comparing yourselves to others and becoming consumed with jealousy? Then it sounds like you are living in the flesh, no different from the rest who live by the standards of this rebellious and broken world. ⁴ If one of you is saying, “I am with Paul,” and the other says, “I am with Apollos,” aren’t you like everybody else? ⁵ So who is Apollos really? Or Paul for that matter? We are only servants, agents who led you to faith, and the Lord commissioned each of us to do a particular job.

⁶ My job was to plant the seed, and Apollos was called to water it. Any growth comes from God, ⁷ so the ones who water and plant have nothing to brag about. God, who causes the growth, is the only One who matters. ⁸ The one who plants is no greater than the one who waters; both will be rewarded based on their work. ⁹ We are gardeners and field workers laboring with God. You are the vineyard, the garden, the house where God dwells. ¹⁰ Like a skilled architect and master builder, I laid a foundation based upon God’s grace given to me. Now others will come along to build on the foundation. Each serves in a different way and is to build upon it with great care. ¹¹ There is, in fact, only one foundation, and no one can lay any foundation other than Jesus the Anointed. ¹² As others build on the foundation (whether with gold, silver, gemstones, wood, hay, or straw), ¹³ the quality of each person’s work will be revealed in time as it is tested by fire. ¹⁴ If a man’s work stands the test of fire, he will be rewarded. ¹⁵ If a man’s work is consumed by the fire, his reward will be lost but he will be spared, rescued from the fire. ¹⁶ Don’t you understand that together you form a temple to the living God and His Spirit lives among you? ¹⁷ If someone comes along to corrupt, vandalize, and destroy the temple of God, you can be sure that God will see to it that he meets destruction because the temple of God is sacred. You, together, are His temple.

¹⁸ Don’t let anyone deceive himself. If any one of you thinks he is wise in matters pertaining to this world, he is going to be really disappointed. In fact, one must be deemed a fool by worldly standards in order to become truly wise ¹⁹ because the wisdom of this rebellious and broken world looks like foolishness when put next to God. So it stands in Scripture, “He catches the wise in their deceitful plotting.”^{[i] 20} And the Scriptures add, “The Lord knows the highest thoughts of the wise, and they are worthless.”^{[j] 21} So there is no reason for anyone to boast in human leaders. You already have it all. ²² So whether it is Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life or death, the present or the future—it all belongs to you. ²³ You belong to the Anointed One, and the Anointed One belongs to God.

4 Rather than power brokers, think of us as servants of the Anointed One, the Liberating King, caretakers of the mysteries of God. ² Because we are in this particular role, it is especially important that we are people of fidelity and integrity. ³ It makes little difference to me how you or any human court passes judgment on me. I even resist the temptation to compare myself to the ever-changing human standard. ⁴ Although I am not aware of any flaw that might exclude me from this divine service, that’s not the reason I stand acquitted—the only supreme judge, our Lord, will examine me in the proper time. ⁵ So resist the temptation to act as judges before all the evidence is in. When the Lord comes, He will draw our buried motives, thoughts, and deeds (even things we don’t know or admit to ourselves) out of the dark shadows of our hearts into His light. When this happens, the voice of God will speak to each of us the only praise that will ever matter.

⁶ Right now, brothers and sisters, the best thing I can do for you is to apply these principles to the situation with Apollos and me. Maybe we can show you the meaning of the saying, “not beyond the things written.” If you learn that, perhaps none of you will swell with pride because you fall into the seductive trap of pitting one against the other. ⁷ Is there any reason to consider yourselves better than others? What do you have that you didn’t receive? If you received it as a gift, why do you boast like it is something you achieved on your own?

⁸ Now let’s see if I have it straight. You suppose that you already have all you need. You already are rich and prosperous. And without us you’ve already begun to reign like kings. To be honest, I wish you did reign so that we could reign with you ⁹ because it seems to me that God has put His emissaries^[k] at the end of the line, like convicts in their final walk to certain death. We have become a spectacle to the rest of the world—to all people and heaven’s messengers. ¹⁰ We are nothing but fools for the cause of the Anointed One while you are wise in Him. Am I right? We are feeble and tired while you are mighty and full of life. You are well respected by others while we’re treated as contemptuous creatures by pretty much everyone everywhere. ¹¹ Up to this very minute, we are famished, we are thirsty, and our clothes are shabby, practically rotted to pieces. We are homeless, hapless wanderers. ¹² But still we labor, working with our hands to meet our needs because, despite all of this, when a fist is raised against us, we respond with a blessing; when we face violence and persecution, we stay on mission; and ¹³ when others choose taunts and slander against us, we speak words of encouragement and reconciliation. We’re treated as the scum of the earth—and I am not talking in the past tense; I mean today! We’re the scraps of society, nothing more than the foulest human rubbish.

¹⁴ I am not telling you all this so that you’ll feel guilty or be ashamed of how you have acted. I am only trying to warn you, just as a father would warn his children. ¹⁵ You may have 10,000 instructors in the faith of the Anointed One, but you have only one father. In Jesus the Anointed I have become your father through my efforts in spreading the good news. ¹⁶ So as your father in the faith, I want to encourage you to live as I have lived. Imitate my life. ¹⁷ This is one of the reasons I sent Timothy to be with you. He is my dearly loved and faithful child in the Lord. His mission is to remind you of the way I experience life in the Anointed. In all the churches everywhere I go, I teach the same lessons the same way, and I live out those lessons. ¹⁸ But the reality is, some of you have put yourselves on pedestals and live like you are high above the rest—it’s as if you assumed I would not return to confront your misguided pride. ¹⁹ But I am coming. Lord willing, I will be with you soon. Then I will know what power is backing those arrogant folks and their words. ²⁰ The kingdom of God is not a realm of grandiose talk; it is a realm of power. ²¹ So tell me what you want. Should I visit you, rod in hand ready to discipline a crew of self-important people; or should I embrace you, love you, and gently teach you as we celebrate the blessings of God together?