-
To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:
-
God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
-
What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
-
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?
-
Christ Crucified Is God’s Power and Wisdom
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
-
For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
-
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
-
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
-
but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
-
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
-
It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
-
Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
-
God’s Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit
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.
-
However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him—
-
For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
-
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
-
This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
-
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
-
The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,
-
for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
-
The Church and Its Leaders
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ.
-
You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?
-
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
-
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
-
The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.
