Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

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.

Spiritual or merely human?

¹⁴ Someone living at the merely human level doesn’t accept the things of God’s spirit. They are foolishness to such people, you see, and they can’t understand them because they need to be discerned spiritually. ¹⁵ But spiritual people discern everything, while nobody else can discern the truth about them! ¹⁶ For “Who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of the Messiah.

Fulfilling the law

¹³ “You’re the salt of the earth! But if the salt becomes tasteless, how is it going to get salty again? It’s no good for anything. You might as well throw it out and walk all over it.

¹⁴ “You’re the light of the world! A city can’t be hidden if it’s on top of a hill. ¹⁵ People don’t light a lamp and put it under a bucket; they put it on a lampstand. Then it gives light to everybody in the house. ¹⁶ That’s how you must shine your light in front of people! Then they will see what wonderful things you do, and they’ll give glory to your father in heaven.

¹⁷ “Don’t suppose that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy them; I came to fulfill them! ¹⁸ I’m telling you the truth: until heaven and earth disappear, not one stroke, not one dot, is going to disappear from the law, until it’s all come true. ¹⁹ So anyone who relaxes a single one of these commandments, even the little ones, and teaches that to people, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But anyone who does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

²⁰ “Yes, let me tell you: unless your covenant behavior is far superior to that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get in to the kingdom of heaven.”