1 Corinthians 1:1-3

As your apostle, I greet you Corinthian believers, and I desire that God bless you.

1I, Paul, am writing this letter. Sosthenes, our fellow believer, is with me as I write it. God appointed me to be an apostle of Christ Jesus because that is what God desired.

2I am sending this letter to all you who are God’s believers in Corinth city. You have been set apart by God {God has set you apart} for himself because ◄of your close relationship with/you belong to► Christ Jesus. God has appointed you to be his people and to live in a morally pure way, just like he has appointed all the people everywhere who belong to him to live in a morally pure way. You and they have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ [MTY]. He is their sovereign Lord as well as the sovereign Lord of all of us (inc) who have trusted in him.

3We (exc) desire that God, who is our heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ, who is our sovereign Lord, will continue to act kindly toward you and cause you to experience inner peace.

I thank God for you and for all the spiritual abilities that he has given you.

4I very often [HYP] thank God for you because he has acted toward you kindly, acting in ways that you do not deserve. He has done this because of your ◄having a close relationship with/being united to► Christ Jesus.

5That is, God has [HYP] helped you spiritually very much because of your ◄having a close relationship with/being united to► Christ. Specifically, God has very much [HYP] enabled you to speak messages that his Spirit revealed to you, and he has very much enabled you to know many things [HYP] that his Spirit revealed to you.

6In that way, he confirmed to you that what we (exc) proclaimed about Christ is true.

7As a result, while you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to return, within your group you truly have [LIT] every ability that God’s Spirit gives to believers.

8God will also cause you to steadfastly trust Christ to the very end of your lives [EUP]. The result will be that God will not consider you guilty of any sin when our Lord Jesus Christ returns to earth [MTY].

9You can depend on God to do that. He is the one who chose you to become intimately associated with his Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Lord.

Stop dividing into groups in your congregations on the basis of which Christian leader you favor.

10My fellow believers, by the authority of [MTY] our Lord Jesus Christ, I urgently appeal to all of you to agree with one another. What I mean is, stop dividing into groups. Instead, be united [MET] concerning what you understand about spiritual matters,, and be united in what you decide.

11My fellow believers, I urge this because some members of Chloe’s household have told me that you are quarreling among yourselves.

12That is, some of you say, “Paul is the one to whom we are loyal,” and others say, “Peter is the one to whom we are loyal,” and still others say, “Christ is the one to whom we are loyal.”

13It is ridiculous that [RHQ] you are quarreling and dividing up into groups instead of being loyal to Christ alone. Christ certainly has not divided himself into parts and distributed those parts out to groups of people who oppose each other! [MET, RHQ] I, Paul, certainly did not die on the cross for you! [RHQ] When you were baptized {When someone baptized you}, you certainly did not promise that you were submitting to me! [RHQ]

14I thank God that Crispus and Gaius were the only ones from among you whom I baptized.

15As a result, no one there in Corinth except those two can say, “Paul baptized me so that I would become ◄his disciple/submissive to him►.”

16Now I remember that I also baptized the household of Stephanas, but I do not remember baptizing anyone else there.

17Christ sent me not primarily to baptize people but to preach the good message about him. When I do that, he does not want me to use words that human philosophers consider wise [IRO]. I do not want the message about what he accomplished when he was nailed to the cross [MTY] to lose its power.

The message about Christ dying on the cross is the means of saving us who believe it.

18Those who are perishing spiritually because they do not believe that message consider that the message about what Christ accomplished when he was nailed to the cross [MTY] is foolish. But to us who are being saved {whom God is saving} spiritually because we believe that message, it demonstrates that God acts powerfully in order to save us.

19It is like what God said that a prophet wrote long ago, By the things that I will do, I will show that the ideas of those who think [IRO] they are wise are completely useless. I will ignore the ideas that they think are [IRO] so smart.

Some people think that the message about Christ is foolish, but to us whom God has chosen, it shows God’s power.

20So, do you know what God thinks about what [RHQ] people who [IRO] consider themselves to be wise and scholars and philosophers say? He does not pay attention to what they say, because [RHQ] he has shown clearly that what unbelievers think is [IRO] wise is not wise at all, but is really foolish.

21God, acting very wisely, made it impossible for unbelievers to know God by doing what they thought was [IRO] wise. Instead, he was happy to save those who trust in Christ as the result of their hearing the message that was proclaimed to them, a message that others consider to be foolish.

22The Jews want people to prove, by performing miracles, that their message is true. The non-Jews want to hear only messages consisting of talk that they consider to be very wise.

23As for us, we proclaim the message about what Christ accomplished for us when he was nailed {when they nailed him} to the cross. That message offends Jews because they do not think that the Messiah will die, and non-Jews think it is [IRO] a foolish message.

24But to us whom God has chosen to belong to himself, both Jews and non-Jews, that message shows that God acted powerfully and wisely by sending Christ to die for us.

25Unbelievers may think [IRO] that God was acting foolishly by doing that, but the truth is that he was acting more wisely than unbelievers who just think that [IRO] they are wise. And unbelievers may think that God was acting weakly by sending his son to die, but he was acting more powerfully than unbelievers who just think [IRO] that they act powerfully.

God chose mostly despised, not important, people to belong to Christ; so you should boast only about him.

26My fellow believers, remember what kind of people you were when God chose you. Not many of you whom he chose are people whom unbelievers considered to be wise. Very few of you were considered to be important. Very few of you came from families with a high social standing.

27Instead, it was usually those whom unbelievers considered to be foolish whom God chose. He did that in order to shame/discredit those whom unbelievers consider [IRO] wise. It was usually those whom unbelievers considered [IRO] unimportant whom God chose, in order to shame/discredit those whom unbelievers consider important.

28It was usually those who are despised and considered {whom unbelievers despise and consider} worthless whom God chose, in order to make completely ineffective what unbelievers consider to be important.

29He did that in order that no one could boast to God about being wise or important.

30It is because of what God has done that you ◄have a close relationship with/belong to► Christ Jesus. God put into effect his wise plan to save us by what Christ did for us. As a result of what Christ did, God erases the record of our sins, sets us apart for himself, and frees us from our being guilty for our sins.

31So, it is the Lord whom we should boast about, not about one spiritual leader being better than another. We should do as ◄a prophet/Jeremiah► wrote in the Scriptures that we should do: Those who boast should boast only about what the Lord has done.