1 Corinthians 2
2
The new wisdom
1So I never thought in coming amongst you to be able by my own persuasiveness, logic or rhetoric to make a message of God, a revelation of the mystery of His being, understood by you. It could never have come to you through such human means as that. 2And so I judged that to know nought but Jesus Christ and him crucified was the way, the only way of this Gospel, which is demonstrated divinely by the Spirit and by power, not by persuasive preaching. 3I was as nothing in myself, only conscious of my weakness, and full of deep reverence and fear, 4yes, even of what I had to say, which could not express itself in clever words; 5and so your faith was built not on any man’s personal influence and wisdom, but on divine power and its demonstration. 6Yet it is a wisdom that I speak, a deep and holy wisdom known to the perfect, unknown to the passing world of the flesh, and unknown to the powers that control that world, powers and influences which even now, are breaking up and vanishing. 7This wisdom of God is spoken by me in a mystery. Unknown to the former generations of the world, it was to be our glory, our light, and God’s fore-ordination of it preceded all other things. 8Unknown too to all powers of the mortal state, for they crucified its Lord. Had they known this hidden delectable wisdom, would they have crucified him? 9They knew it not, “for eye,” says the scripture, “hath not seen it, ear hath not heard it, the heart of mankind has not received the things that God makes ready for those that love Him.” (Isa. 44:4.)
Deep things can only be apprehended spiritually
10So it was through the Spirit, through revelation that we learned them. The very depths of God are searched by the Spirit, which also sheds light on all things; and the Spirit alone can know and reveal them, nought else; 11no more than one can tell any man’s thoughts that he thinks in himself [none can tell them save the thinker himself], so none knoweth God’s thoughts, but God Himself, the Spirit. 12And in our hearts and minds there now doth work not that spirit, which is the influence and animal intelligence of the world, but the divine Spirit, and this it is which reveals to us those things that are bestowed on man by God. 13It is that legacy which passes from God to man, those messages and bestowals which man receives from God which I teach you of, and how can I make it known by an utterance invented in the schools of learning, how can I teach it except as the Spirit teaches it, representing spiritual things in a spiritual method, to be spiritually discerned? Only thus can it be taught, for the materially minded man, who thinks through the senses, is totally and utterly ignorant of God’s spiritual messages. They are to him absolute foolishness, and he cannot reach them, for they are only made known to the spiritual character. 14Now the true spiritual man has all experience at his feet to dispose of, to reject or accept according to the dictates of the Spirit, he himself being beyond the reach of the things wherein this judgment operates. 15For it is as spiritual beings, and not carnal, that we possess the mind of Christ. None teacheth us or judgeth us. 16“Who has known the mind of the Lord or being His counsellor hath taught Him?”
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Translated in 1916, published in 1937.
1 Corinthians 2
2
Paul only said the words that the Holy Spirit gave him
1My Christian friends, remember when I first came to you and told you God’s message. I didn’t use smart words, like a man that thinks he knows everything. 2No. I only told you about Jesus Christ, and that he died on the cross for us. I didn’t talk about other things. 3I felt weak and frightened while I was with you. I was so frightened I was shaking.#Acts 18:9 4I didn’t think up smart ideas or use smart words to get you to believe my message. No. I trusted God’s spirit to use his power to show everyone that my message is true. 5I did that so that you will not trust in a smart person, but you will trust in the power of God.
6You see, whenever I am with people that trust in Jesus, and are strong for him, that’s when I can talk about things that are wise and good. I don’t mean smart ideas that people in this world think up, like how the bosses in this world plan things. Those bosses will finish up anyway. 7No, the wise and good things that we talk about are the things that belong to God. He planned those things a long time ago, before he made the world, but he didn’t tell anybody about them until now. 8None of the bosses in this world understood those things. So they killed Jesus. They nailed our very great and good leader to a cross. 9But, you know, God says this in his book,
“God got good things ready for the people that love him.
Those things are better than anything anybody else can ever think up.
Nobody ever saw or heard anything as good as the things that God got ready for us.”#Isaiah 64:4
10But God’s spirit shows these things to us. His spirit understands everything, even those things that God has not yet told anybody. 11You see, nobody knows what another person is thinking. Only that person’s own spirit knows, nobody else. Well, it is like that with God too. Only God’s spirit knows what God is thinking. 12And remember this, God didn’t get us to think the way the people of this world think. No. God gave us his spirit, and his spirit helps us, so we can understand all the good things God gave us. 13Those are the things that we tell you about. We don’t use words that smart people taught us, but we use the words that God’s spirit teaches us. And we tell God’s message to people that have God’s spirit living inside them, and we help them understand it.
14You see, if God’s spirit is not living inside people, they can’t believe any message from God. They can’t understand what God wants to teach them. They think it is all stupid. You see, the Holy Spirit is the only one that can help people understand the things of God. 15People that have God’s spirit can think about all these things and understand them. But people that haven’t got God’s spirit can never understand the people that have got his spirit. 16God says this in his book,
“Nobody can know what God is thinking.
Nobody can try to tell him the right way to think.”#Isaiah 40:13
But the Holy Spirit is in us, so we can think the same way that Jesus Christ thinks.
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