Preaching in the Power of God

1When I came to you, brothers, I didn’t come and tell you about God’s secreta with rhetorical language or wisdom. 2For while I was with you I resolved to know nothing except Jesus the Messiah,b and him crucified. 3It was in weakness, fear, and great trembling that I came to you. 4My message and my preaching were not accompanied by clever, wise words, but by a display of the Spirit’s power, 5so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.

God’s Spirit Reveals Everything

6However, when we are among mature people, we do speak a message ofc wisdom, but not the wisdom of this world or of the rulers of this world, who are passing off the scene. 7Instead, we speak about God’s wisdom in a hidden secret, which God destined before the world begand for our glory. 8None of the rulers of this world understood it, because if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9But 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.”e

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

11Is there anyone who can understand his own thoughts except his own inner spirit? In the same way, no one can know the thoughts of God except God’s Spirit. 12Now, 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. 13We don’t speak about these things with words taught us by human wisdom, but with wordsg taught by the Spirit, as we explain spiritual things to spiritual people.h 14A 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. 15The spiritual person evaluates everything but is subject to no one else’s evaluation. 16For

“Who has known the mind of the Lordi

so that he can advise him?”j

However, we have the mind of the Messiah.k