Book of Common Prayer

The powerful message of the cross

2 This is how it was for me, too, my dear family. When I came to you, I didn’t come and proclaim God’s mystery to you by means of a superior style of speaking or wisdom. ² No: I decided to know nothing in my dealings with you except Jesus the Messiah, especially his crucifixion. ³ I came to you in weakness, in great fear and trembling. ⁴ My speech and my proclamation were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in transparent proof brought home powerfully by the spirit, ⁵ so that your faith might not be in human wisdom but in God’s power.

God’s strange wisdom

⁶ We do, however, speak wisdom among the mature. But this isn’t a wisdom of this present world, or of the rulers of this present world—those same rulers who are being done away with. ⁷ No: we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery. This is the wisdom God prepared ahead of time, before the world began, for our glory.

⁸ None of the rulers of this present age knew about this wisdom. If they had, you see, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ But, as the Bible says,

¹⁰ —and that’s what God has revealed to us through the spirit! The spirit, you see, searches everything, yes, even the depths of God. ¹¹ Think of it this way: who knows what is really going on inside a person, except the spirit of the person which is inside them? Well, it’s like that with God. Nobody knows what is going on inside God except God’s spirit. ¹² And we haven’t received the spirit of the world, but the spirit that comes from God, so that we can know the things that have been given to us by God.

¹³ That, then, is what we speak. We don’t use words we’ve been taught by human wisdom, but words we’ve been taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.

²¹ “Anyone who has my commandments and keeps them—that’s the person who loves me. Anyone who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love them and show myself to them.”

My peace I give to you

²² Judas spoke up. (This was the other Judas, not Iscariot.)

“Master,” he said, “how will it be that you will show yourself to us and not to the world?”

²³ “If anyone loves me,” Jesus replied, “they will keep my word. My father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ Anyone who doesn’t love me won’t keep my word. And the word which you hear isn’t mine. It comes from the father, who sent me.

²⁵ “I’ve said all this to you while I’m here with you. ²⁶ But the helper, the holy spirit, the one the father will send in my name, he will teach you everything. He will bring back to your mind everything I’ve said to you.

²⁷ “I’m leaving you peace. I’m giving you my own peace. I don’t give gifts in the way the world does. Don’t let your hearts be troubled; don’t be fearful. ²⁸ You heard that I said to you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be happy that I’m going to the father—because the father is greater than me. ²⁹ And now I’ve told you before it happens, so that when it does happen, you may believe.