Paul’s Message by the Spirit’s Power

1And I, having come to you⁺, brothers, did not come according to excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you⁺ the testimony† of God. 2For I decided not to know anything among you⁺ except Jesus Christ and Him having been crucified. 3And I was with you⁺ in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom,† but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5so that your⁺ faith may not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Spiritual Wisdom
(Ephesians 1:15–23)

6But we speak wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery having been hidden away, which God predestined before the ages for our glory, 8which none of the rulers of this age has known. For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9But as it has been written:

“What no eye has seen,

and no ear has heard,

and has not gone up upon the heart of man—

as much as God prepared for those loving Him.Ӡ

10For God revealed it to us through the Spirit.†

For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11For who of men knows the things of the man except the spirit of the man that is in him? So also, no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12Now we did not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things having been graciously given to us by God, 13which also we speak, not in words taught of human wisdom, but in those taught of the Spirit,† expressing spiritual things by spiritual means.†

14But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15But the spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. 16For “who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him?”† But we have the mind of Christ.

Footnotes:

1 NA and WH the mystery
4 BYZ and TR of human wisdom
9 Isaiah 64:4
10 BYZ and TR His Spirit
13 BYZ and TR the Holy Spirit
13 Or to spiritual people
16 Isaiah 40:13 (see also LXX)