1 Corinthians 2
2
1Brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I didn’t speak about God’s mystery #2:1 Some manuscripts and translations read “testimony.” as if it were some kind of brilliant message or wisdom. 2While I was with you, I decided to deal with only one subject—Jesus Christ, who was crucified. 3When I came to you, I was weak. I was afraid and very nervous. 4I didn’t speak my message with persuasive intellectual arguments. I spoke my message with a show of spiritual power 5so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.
6However, we do use wisdom to speak to those who are mature. It is a wisdom that doesn’t belong to this world or to the rulers of this world who are in power today and gone tomorrow. 7We speak about the mystery of God’s wisdom. It is a wisdom that has been hidden, which God had planned for our glory before the world began. 8Not one of the rulers of this world has known it. If they had, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. 9But as Scripture says:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
the things that God has prepared
for those who love him.”
10God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, especially the deep things of God. 11After all, who knows everything about a person except that person’s own spirit? In the same way, no one has known everything about God except God’s Spirit. 12Now, we didn’t receive the spirit that belongs to the world. Instead, we received the Spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things which God has freely given us. 13We don’t speak about these things using teachings that are based on intellectual arguments like people do. Instead, we use the Spirit’s teachings. We explain spiritual things to those who have the Spirit.#2:13 Or “We explain spiritual things in spiritual words.”
14A person who isn’t spiritual doesn’t accept the teachings of God’s Spirit. He thinks they’re nonsense. He can’t understand them because a person must be spiritual to evaluate them. 15Spiritual people evaluate everything but are subject to no one’s evaluation.
16“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so that he can teach him?”
However, we have the mind of Christ.
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GOD'S WORD® Translation ©1995, 2003, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020 by God's Word to the Nations Mission Society. All rights reserved.
1 Corinthians 2
2
1And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.#2:1 Some manuscripts proclaimed to you God’s mystery 2For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
God’s Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit
6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”#2:9 Isaiah 64:4—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.#2:13 Or Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual 14The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”#2:16 Isaiah 40:13
But we have the mind of Christ.
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