When
I came to you, brothers and sisters,a
I did not come proclaiming the mysterybof
God to you in lofty words or wisdom. 2
For I decided to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3
And I came to you in weakness and in fear
and in much trembling. 4
My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible
words of wisdom,c
but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5 so that your faith
might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
The True Wisdom of God
6 Yet among the
mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the
rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish.
7 But we speak God’s
wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our
glory. 8
None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they
would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 But, as it is
written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
10 these things God has revealed to us
through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of
God. 11
For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit
that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the
Spirit of God. 12
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but
the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed
on us by God. 13
And we speak of these things in words not taught by
human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to
those who are spiritual.d
14 Those who are
unspirituale
do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to
them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually
discerned. 15
Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they
are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
16 “For who has known the mind of the
Lord
so as to instruct him?”
But
we have the mind of Christ.