1 Corinthians: Chapter 2
1. When I came to you, brothers, I didn't come with
excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
2. For I determined not to know anything among you,
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
3. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much
trembling.
4. My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive
words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5. that your faith wouldn't stand in the wisdom of
men, but in the power of God.
6. We speak wisdom, however, among those who are
full grown; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who
are coming to nothing.
7. But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the
wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our
glory,
8. which none of the rulers of this world has
known. For had they known it, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory.
9. But as it is written, "Things which an eye
didn't see, and an ear didn't hear, which didn't enter into the heart of man, these
God has prepared for those who love him." {Isaiah
64:4}
10. But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For
the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
11. For 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 God's Spirit.
12. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but
the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely
given to us by God.
13. Which things also we speak, not in words which
man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things
with spiritual things.
14. Now the natural man doesn't receive the things of
God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can't know them, because
they are spiritually discerned.
15. But he who is spiritual discerns all things, and
he himself is judged by no one.
16. "For who has known the mind of the Lord, that
he should instruct him?" {Isaiah 40:13} But
we have Christ's mind.