Christ Crucified

1And I, brothers, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

2For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

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

4And my message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

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

Spiritual Wisdom

6However, we speak wisdom among those that are mature, but not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed.

7But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the wisdom having been hidden, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory,

8which none of the rulers of this age understood (for had they understood, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory).

9But as it is written:
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
nor have entered into the heart of man,
that which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

10But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

11For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

12Now we did not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, in order that we might know the things freely given to us by God;

13which things we also speak, not in words taught in human wisdom, but in words taught by the Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

14But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

15But he that is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned by no man.

16For “Who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.