1When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence of speech or wisdom as I proclaimed hidden truths about God. ⁰

2For I decided to know nothing when I was among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

3And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

4And my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom. Instead, they were with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

5so that your faith might not be in the wisdom of humans, but in the power of God.

6Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this world, or of the rulers of this age, who are passing away.

7Instead, we speak God's wisdom in hidden truth, the hidden wisdom that God predestined before the ages for our glory.

8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9But as it is written, “Things that no eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has imagined,
the things that God has prepared for those who love him.”

10These are the things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.

11For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of the person in him? So also, no one knows the deep things of God except the Spirit of God.

12But we did not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we might know the things freely given to us by God.

13We speak about these things in words that man's wisdom cannot teach, but which the Spirit teaches us. The Spirit interprets spiritual words with spiritual wisdom.

14The unspiritual person does not receive the things that belong to the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. He cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned.

15The one who is spiritual judges all things, but he is not subject to the judgment of others.

16“For who can know the mind of the Lord, that he can instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.