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. |