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.
1 Corinthians 1
1
1Paul, a called apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God, and Sosthenes the brother,
2to the assembly of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all those calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place — both theirs and ours:
3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
4I give thanks to my God always concerning you for the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus,
5that in every thing ye were enriched in him, in all discourse and all knowledge,
6according as the testimony of the Christ was confirmed in you,
7so that ye are not behind in any gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
8who also shall confirm you unto the end — unblamable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ;
9faithful [is] God, through whom ye were called to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
10And I call upon you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that the same thing ye may all say, and there may not be divisions among you, and ye may be perfected in the same mind, and in the same judgment,
11for it was signified to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe, that contentions are among you;
12and I say this, that each one of you saith, ‘I, indeed, am of Paul’ — ‘and I of Apollos,’ — ‘and I of Cephas,’ — ‘and I of Christ.’
13Hath the Christ been divided? was Paul crucified for you? or to the name of Paul were ye baptized;
14I give thanks to God that no one of you did I baptize, except Crispus and Gaius —
15that no one may say that to my own name I did baptize;
16and I did baptize also Stephanas' household — further, I have not known if I did baptize any other.
17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but — to proclaim good news; not in wisdom of discourse, that the cross of the Christ may not be made of none effect;
18for the word of the cross to those indeed perishing is foolishness, and to us — those being saved — it is the power of God,
19for it hath been written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will bring to nought;’
20where [is] the wise? where the scribe? where a disputer of this age? did not God make foolish the wisdom of this world?
21for, seeing in the wisdom of God the world through the wisdom knew not God, it did please God through the foolishness of the preaching to save those believing.
22Since also Jews ask a sign, and Greeks seek wisdom,
23also we — we preach Christ crucified, to Jews, indeed, a stumbling-block, and to Greeks foolishness,
24and to those called — both Jews and Greeks — Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God,
25because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men;
26for see your calling, brethren, that not many [are] wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;
27but the foolish things of the world did God choose, that the wise He may put to shame; and the weak things of the world did God choose that He may put to shame the strong;
28and the base things of the world, and the things despised did God choose, and the things that are not, that the things that are He may make useless —
29that no flesh may glory before Him;
30and of Him ye — ye are in Christ Jesus, who became to us from God wisdom, righteousness also, and sanctification, and redemption,
31that, according as it hath been written, ‘He who is glorying — in the Lord let him glory.’
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