1 Corinthians 1
1
Greeting
1Paul,#Ac 13:9 called as an apostle#Rm 1:1 of Christ Jesus by God’s will,#2Co 1:1; Eph 1:1; Col 1:1; 2Tm 1:1 and Sosthenes our brother:#Ac 18:17
2To the church of God at Corinth,#Ac 18:1; 19:1; 2Co 1:1,23; 2Tm 4:20 to those sanctified#Ac 20:32; 26:18; 1Co 6:11; Heb 10:10 in Christ Jesus, called#Rm 1:6–7 as saints, with all those in every place who call on the name#Gn 4:26; Ps 79:6; Jn 10:25; Ac 9:14; 15:14; Rv 14:1 of Jesus Christ our Lord — both their Lord and ours.
3Grace to you and peace from God our Father#Rm 1:7; 2Co 1:2; Gl 1:3; Eph 1:2; Php 1:2; 2Th 1:2; Ti 1:4 and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving
4I always thank#Rm 1:8; Php 1:3; Col 1:3; 1Th 1:2; 2Th 1:3; 2Tm 1:3; Phm 4 my God for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus, 5that you were enriched in him#2Co 8:9; 9:11 in every way, in all speech and all knowledge.#Rm 15:14; 1Co 12:8; 2Co 8:7; 1Jn 2:20 6In this way, the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you,#2Th 1:10; 1Tm 2:6; 2Tm 1:8; Rv 1:2 7so that you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait#Lk 17:30; Rm 8:19; Php 3:20; Heb 9:28; 2Pt 3:12 for the revelation#1Pt 4:13 of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8He will also strengthen you to the end,#Php 1:6; 1Th 3:13 so that you will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.#Lk 17:24; 1Co 5:5; 2Co 1:14; Php 2:16; Col 1:22 9God is faithful;#Dt 7:9; Is 49:7; 1Co 10:13; 2Co 1:18 you were called by him#Rm 8:28 into fellowship with his Son,#Jn 5:19; Heb 1:2; 1Jn 1:3 Jesus Christ our Lord.
Divisions at Corinth
10Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree in what you say, that there be no divisions among you, and that you be united with the same understanding and the same conviction. 11For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters, by members of Chloe’s people, that there is rivalry#Ti 3:9 among you. 12What I am saying is this: One of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,”#Ti 3:13 or “I belong to Cephas,”#Jn 1:42 or “I belong to Christ.”#Mt 23:9–10 13Is Christ divided?#1Co 12:5; 2Co 11:4; Eph 4:5 Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in Paul’s name? 14I thank God#1:14 Other mss omit God#1:14 Or I am thankful that I baptized none of you except Crispus#Ac 18:8 and Gaius,#Rm 16:23 15so that no one can say you were baptized in my name. 16I did, in fact, baptize the household#Rm 16:5 of Stephanas;#1Co 16:15,17 beyond that, I don’t recall if I baptized anyone else. 17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel — not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross#Lk 23:26; Php 3:18 of Christ will not be emptied of its effect.
Christ the Power and Wisdom of God
18For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved.#Ac 19:11; Rm 1:16; 2Co 13:4 19For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent. # 1:19 Is 29:14 #
Is 29:14
20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law?#1:20 Or scholar Where is the debater of this age?#Lk 16:8 Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? 21For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached. 22For the Jews ask for signs#Mt 12:38 and the Greeks seek wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified,#Lk 23:26; 1Co 2:2; Gl 3:1; 5:11 a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.#1:23 Other mss read Greeks 24Yet to those who are called,#Rm 1:6 both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, 25because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Boasting Only in the Lord
26Brothers and sisters, consider your calling: Not many were wise from a human perspective,#1:26 Lit wise according to the flesh not many powerful,#Ac 25:5 not many of noble birth. 27Instead, God has chosen#Mt 24:22; Eph 1:4 what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. 28God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world#Lk 18:9 — what is viewed as nothing — to bring to nothing what is viewed as something, 29so that no one#1:29 Lit that not all flesh may boast in his presence.#Ac 7:46 30It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us — our righteousness,#Mt 6:33; Rm 1:17; 2Pt 1:1 sanctification,#1Th 4:3 and redemption#Eph 1:7 — 31in order that, as it is written:#Mk 1:2 Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.#1:31Jr 9:24#Jr 9:23–24
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© 2017 Holman Bible Publishers
1 Corinthians 1
1
1-2I, Paul, have been called and sent by Jesus, the Messiah, according to God’s plan, along with my friend Sosthenes. I send this letter to you in God’s church at Corinth, believers cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life. I include in my greeting all who call out to Jesus, wherever they live. He’s their Master as well as ours!
3May all the gifts and benefits that come from God our Father, and the Master, Jesus Christ, be yours.
4-6Every time I think of you—and I think of you often!—I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by Jesus. There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge. The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.
7-9Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.
The Cross: The Irony of God’s Wisdom
10I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
11-12I bring this up because some from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, “I’m on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” or “Peter is my man,” or “I’m in the Messiah group.”
13-16I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul’s name?” I was not involved with any of your baptisms—except for Crispus and Gaius—and on getting this report, I’m sure glad I wasn’t. At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in my name. (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas’s family, but as far as I can recall, that’s it.)
17God didn’t send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn’t send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.
18-21The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,
I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as shams.
So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered stupid—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.
22-25While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so cheap, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
26-31Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.