Beginning
1 I am Paul. God called me to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. He did this because he wanted to.
2 Our Christian brother Sosthenes and I send greetings to the people who are the church of God in the city of Corinth. You are people whom Christ Jesus has made holy. You, too, are chosen to be God's people. And we send greetings to all the people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is their Lord, just as he is our Lord.
3 May God show you his kindness and peace which come from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I am always thanking God for the blessings he has given you through Jesus Christ.
5 He has made you rich in all ways, in all that you say and in all you know.
6 Christ has done for you just what he promised to do.
7 You have every blessing you need while you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to come again.
8 And right to the end Jesus Christ will surely keep you safe. Then no one will find anything wrong about you on the day our Lord Jesus Christ comes.
9 God never fails anyone. It is he who called you to belong to his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
10 My Christian brothers, I beg you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, agree in what you say. Do not divide into groups. You should all think in the same way and decide to do the same things.
11 My brothers, I say this because I have been told by some of Chloe's family that you are quarrelling.
12 This is what I mean. Some of you say, `I belong to Paul.' Others say, `I belong to Apollos.' And others say, `I belong to Cephas'. And yet others say, `I belong to Christ.'
13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul nailed to the cross for you? No! Were you baptized in Paul's name? No!
14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you but Crispus and Gaius.
15 So no one can say you were baptized in my name.
16 (However, I also baptized the people of the house of Stephanas. I do not know of any one else that I baptized.)
17 Christ did not send me to baptize people, but he sent me to tell the good news. I must not tell it with the clever words of this world. That would not show what the death of Christ on a cross truly means.
18 When people who are turning away from God hear about the cross, they say, `That is foolish!' But for us who are being saved, the cross is the power God uses to save us.
19 God says in the holy writings, `I will fool the wise people. I will bring to nothing the understanding of the clever people.'
20 Where are your wise people, the men who know books, the men who like to talk about the things of this world? God has shown that the clever things of this world are nothing.
21 God is wise. But the people of the world were not wise enough to know God. So he chose to save people who believe the good news that we tell them, even though the good news may seem to be foolish.
22 The Jews say, `We must see a sign.' Those who are not Jews say, `We want something we can understand.'
23 But we tell people about Christ who died on a cross. The leaders of the Jews do not like this, and those who are not Jews laugh at it.
24 But some have been called by God. They are chosen, both Jews and other people. Christ is God's power to save them. This shows how wise he is.
25 When God seems foolish, he is more wise than men. When God seems weak, he is stronger than men.
26 My brothers, remember what you were when God chose you. Not many of you were wise by the way people look at it. Not many of you had power. Not many of you came from a family with a big name.
27 But God chose things that look foolish to the people of the world. He has used those foolish things to put the wise people to shame. God chose the weak things to put to shame the strong people.
28 And God chose the small things, things that people despise. Yes, he chose even the things which seem to be nothing. He did this to destroy the big things.
29 He did this so that people would not be proud before God.
30 You are God's children through Christ Jesus. Christ came from God and made us wise. He put us right with God. He made us holy. He set us free from our wrong ways.
31 Just as the holy writings say, `No one should be proud of anything but of the Lord.'
2 So, my brothers, when I came to you, I did not come to tell you God's message in big or wise words.
2 I made up my mind that I would talk about only one thing while I was with you. That one thing was Jesus Christ and his death on a cross.
3 I was weak, afraid, and trembling when I visited you.
4 My words and my message were not in wise words to win you. But the power of the Spirit of God proved my words to be true.
5 I did this so that you would not believe because of man's wise words, but you would believe because of God's power.
6 However, our words are wise words to those who really believe. But they are not the kind of wise words that the people of this world speak. They are not the kind of wise words that the rulers of this world speak. Those rulers will die.
7 Our wise words are God's wise words about things people do not understand. Before God made the world he planned those things for our glory and blessing.
8 None of the rulers of this world knew about these things. If they had, they would not have killed on a cross the Lord who was full of God's glory.
9 The holy writings say, `No eye has seen the things God has made ready for those who love him. No ear has heard about them. No person's heart has ever thought of them.'
10 God has shown these things to us by his Spirit. The Spirit understands everything, even the things that God has kept secret.
11 The only one who really knows what a person is thinking is the spirit of the person himself. So also, no one knows what God is thinking, only the Spirit of God.
12 We have not received the spirit of the world. But we have received the Spirit of God. In this way we may understand the blessings which God has freely given to us.
13 We do not tell you these things in wise words which men taught us. But the Holy Spirit taught us. We teach things about the Spirit which we know about through the Spirit.
14 The person who does not have the Spirit does not receive the blessings of the Spirit of God. He thinks they are foolish. He cannot understand them because only people who have the Spirit of God can test them.
15 He who has the Spirit of God tests all things. But others cannot test him.
16 The holy writings say: `Who knows the mind of the Lord so that he may teach him?' As for us, we really do have the mind of Christ.
3 My brothers, I could not talk to you at first as to people who have the Spirit of God. But I talked to you as people who have the spirit of this world. I talked to you as people who are very new-born, baby Christians.
2 I gave you milk to drink, not food to eat. You were not ready for food. And even now you are not ready for it.
3 You still have the spirit of this world in you. You are jealous of each other and you are quarrelling. The spirit of this world is still in you and you live like people of this world.
4 One says, `I belong to Paul.' Another says, `I belong to Apollos.' Does not that show that you have the spirit of this world?
5 After all, who is Apollos? And who is Paul? We both work for God. You believed because of the work we did. The Lord gave each of us our work to do.
6 I planted the seed. Apollos put water on the seed. But God made the seed grow.
7 So then the man who plants is nothing and the man who waters is nothing. God alone makes the seed grow.
8 The man who plants and the man who waters are equal. Each one will be paid for his own work.
9 We work together for God. You are God's farm. You are God's house.
10 I built the lower walls of the house because God showed me the best way to do it. Now another man builds on top of this foundation. Each man must take care how he builds on it.
11 Jesus Christ himself is the foundation. No one can make another one.
12 People build with gold, silver, very fine stones, wood, grass, or straw on top of the foundation.
13 But the day will come when everyone's work can be seen. Their work will be tested by fire and the fire will show what kind of work each one did.
14 If the work a man did is not burned up in the fire, he will be paid for his work.
15 But if a man's work is burned up, he will lose everything. He himself will be saved, like a man pulled out of the fire.
16 You know that you are God's house. The spirit of God lives in you.
17 God will punish anyone who spoils his house. His house is holy, and you are the house.
18 Do not be fooled. If any one of you thinks that he is wise in the things of this world, he should count himself as not being wise. Then he would really be wise.
19 The things that look wise to the people of this world look foolish to God. The holy writings say, `He catches the wise people in their own tricks.'
20 It also says, `The Lord knows that the wise men's thoughts are good for nothing.'
21 So do not be proud of men. Everything belongs to you.
22 Paul, Apollos, Peter, the world, life, death, the things which are now, and the things which are to come, everything is yours!
23 And you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God!
4 People should look at us as men who are servants of Christ. We take care of the secret things of God.
2 A man who takes care of things must be a person his master can trust.
3 As for me, I care very little what you think about me or how any man judges me. I do not even judge myself.
4 I do not know of anything wrong in me, but that does not say I am right. The Lord is my judge.
5 So do not judge me before it is time. Wait until the Lord comes. The things which have been kept hidden in the dark he will bring out into the light. He will show what is in people's hearts. At that time God will tell each man how good his work is.
6 My brothers, I have said these things about Apollos and myself so that you will learn from us to live the way the holy writings say. Then you will not be proud and say, `This teacher is better than that one.'
7 If you are better, who made you that way? Everything you have was given to you. So then, why are you proud of it? Was it not given to you?
8 So you think you now have everything you need and are rich! You think you are kings and do not need us! I wish that you really were kings. Then we would be kings along with you.
9 It seems to me that God has put us apostles at the end of the line. We are like men who are to be put to death. The whole world, angels and men, look at us.
10 We are fools for Christ's sake! But you think Christ has made you wise. We are weak, but you are strong! You have glory, we have shame!
11 Even now we are hungry and thirsty. We need clothes. We are beaten and we have no home.
12 We work hard with our hands. People curse us, but we bless them. They trouble us much, but we must take it.
13 They talk behind our backs, but we still try to win them. People treat us as a dirt pile, the rubbish of the world. And they still do these things.
14 I do not write these things to make you ashamed. But you are my dear children and I want to teach you.
15 Even if you have ten thousand people to take care of you as Christians, yet you do not have many fathers. I am your Christian father because I brought you the good news.
16 So I beg you, do as I do.
17 That is why I am sending Timothy to you. I love Timothy very much. He is my Christian son. I can trust him. He will tell you again my Christian ways of living. I teach these same ways in every church meeting everywhere.
18 Some of you are proud of yourselves. You think I am not coming to visit you.
19 But I will come soon if it is the Lord's will. Then I will find, not the talk of those proud people, but their power.
20 The place where God rules is not a matter of talk, but of power.
21 Which do you want? Shall I come to you with a stick to beat you, or shall I come with love and a kind spirit?
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