2:1   When I came to you, brothers, I didn't come and tell you about God's secret with rhetorical language or wisdom.

2:2   For while I was with you I resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

2:3   It was in weakness, fear, and great trembling that I came to you.

2:4   My message and my preaching were not accompanied by clever words of wisdom, but by a display of the Spirit's power,

2:5   so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God's power.

2:6   However, when we are among mature people, we do speak a message of wisdom, but not the wisdom of this world or of the rulers of this world, who are passing off the scene.

2:7   Instead, we speak about God's secret wisdom that has been hidden, which God destined for our glory before the world began.

2:8   None of the rulers of this world understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.

2:9   But as it is written, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him."

2:10   But God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.

2:11   Is there anyone who can understand his own thoughts except by his own inner spirit? In the same way, no one can know the thoughts of God except God's Spirit.

2:12   Now, we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we can understand the things that were freely given to us by God.

2:13   We don't speak about these things in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, as we explain spiritual things to spiritual people.

2:14   A person who isn't spiritual doesn't accept the things of God's Spirit, for they are nonsense to him. He can't understand them because they are spiritually evaluated.

2:15   The spiritual person evaluates everything but is subject to no one else's evaluation.

2:16   For "Who has known the mind of the Lord so that he can advise him?" However, we have the mind of Christ.