1 And as for myself, brethren, when I came to you, it was not with surpassing power of eloquence or earthly wisdom that I came, announcing to you that which God had commanded me to bear witness to. 2 For I determined to be utterly ignorant, when among you, of everything except of Jesus Christ, and of Him as having been crucified. 3 And so far as I myself was concerned, I came to you in conscious feebleness and in fear and in deep anxiety. 4 And my language and the Message that I proclaimed were not adorned with persuasive words of earthly wisdom, but depended upon truths which the Spirit taught and mightily carried home; 5 so that your trust might rest not on the wisdom of man but on the power of God. 6 Yet when we are among mature believers we do speak words of wisdom; a wisdom not belonging, however, to the present age nor to the leaders of the present age who are soon to pass away. 7 But in dealing with truths hitherto kept secret we speak of God's wisdom--that hidden wisdom which, before the world began, God pre-destined, so that it should result in glory to us; 8 a wisdom which not one of the leaders of the present age possesses, for if they had possessed it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But--to use the words of Scripture--we speak of things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, and which have never entered the heart of man: all that God has in readiness for them that love Him. 10 For us, however, God has drawn aside the veil through the teaching of the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, including the depths of the divine nature. 11 For, among human beings, who knows a man's inner thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? In the same way, also, only God's Spirit is acquainted with God's inner thoughts. 12 But we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which comes forth from God, that we may know the blessings that have been so freely given to us by God. 13 Of these we speak--not in language which man's wisdom teaches us, but in that which the Spirit teaches--adapting, as we do, spiritual words to spiritual truths. 14 The unspiritual man rejects the things of the Spirit of God, and cannot attain to the knowledge of them, because they are spiritually judged. 15 But the spiritual man judges of everything, although he is himself judged by no one. 16 For who has penetrated the mind of the Lord, and will instruct Him? But *we* have the mind of Christ. | |