I Corinthians 1
1
Greeting
1Paul, #Rom. 1:1called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ #2 Cor. 1:1through the will of God, and #Acts 18:17Sosthenes our brother,
2To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who #(Acts 15:9)are sanctified in Christ Jesus, #Rom. 1:7; Eph. 4:1; 1 Thess. 2:12called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ #(1 Cor. 8:6)our Lord, #(Rom. 3:22)both theirs and ours:
3#Rom. 1:7Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Spiritual Gifts at Corinth
4#Rom. 1:8I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, 5that you were enriched in everything by Him #(1 Cor. 12:8)in all utterance and all knowledge, 6even as #2 Thess. 1:10; 1 Tim. 2:6; 2 Tim. 1:8; Rev. 1:2the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, 7so that you come short in no gift, eagerly #Luke 17:30; Rom. 8:19, 23; Phil. 3:20; Titus 2:13; (2 Pet. 3:12)waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8#1 Thess. 3:13; 5:23who will also confirm you to the end, #Phil. 1:6; Col. 1:22; 2:7that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9#Deut. 7:9; Is. 49:7; 1 Cor. 10:13; 2 Cor. 1:18; 1 Thess. 5:24; 2 Thess. 3:3God is faithful, by whom you were called into #(John 15:4)the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Sectarianism Is Sin
10Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, #2 Cor. 13:11; 1 Pet. 3:8that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. 11For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you. 12Now I say this, that #Matt. 3:8–10; 1 Cor. 3:4each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of #Acts 18:24; 1 Cor. 3:22Apollos,” or “I am of #John 1:42; 1 Cor. 3:22; 9:5; 15:5Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” 13#2 Cor. 11:4Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14I thank God that I baptized #John 4:2none of you except #Acts 18:8Crispus and #Rom. 16:23Gaius, 15lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name. 16Yes, I also baptized the household of #1 Cor. 16:15, 17Stephanas. Besides, I do not know whether I baptized any other. 17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, #(1 Cor. 2:1, 4, 13)not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
Christ the Power and Wisdom of God
18For the message of the cross is #1 Cor. 2:14foolishness to #2 Cor. 2:15those who are perishing, but to us #(1 Cor. 15:2)who are being saved it is the #Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:24power of God. 19For it is written:
#Is. 29:14“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
20#Is. 19:12; 33:18Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? #Job 12:17; Matt. 13:22; 1 Cor. 2:6, 8; 3:18, 19Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21For since, in the #Dan. 2:20; (Rom. 11:33)wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22For #Matt. 12:38; Mark 8:11; John 2:18; 4:48Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23but we preach Christ crucified, #Is. 8:14; Luke 2:34; John 6:60; Gal. 5:11; (1 Pet. 2:8)to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks #(1 Cor. 2:14)foolishness, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ #(Rom. 1:4)the power of God and #Col. 2:3the wisdom of God. 25Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Glory Only in the Lord
26For you see your calling, brethren, #John 7:48that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27But #Ps. 8:2; Matt. 11:25God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29that no flesh should glory in His presence. 30But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and #Jer. 23:5; 33:16; (2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9)righteousness and sanctification and redemption— 31that, as it is written, #Jer. 9:23, 24; 2 Cor. 10:17“He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”
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I Corinthians 1: NKJV
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The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Copyright © 1982 Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.
1 Corinthians 1
1
1-2I, Paul, have been called and sent by Jesus, the Messiah, according to God’s plan, along with my friend Sosthenes. I send this letter to you in God’s church at Corinth, believers cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life. I include in my greeting all who call out to Jesus, wherever they live. He’s their Master as well as ours!
3May all the gifts and benefits that come from God our Father, and the Master, Jesus Christ, be yours.
4-6Every time I think of you—and I think of you often!—I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by Jesus. There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge. The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.
7-9Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.
The Cross: The Irony of God’s Wisdom
10I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
11-12I bring this up because some from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, “I’m on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” or “Peter is my man,” or “I’m in the Messiah group.”
13-16I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul’s name?” I was not involved with any of your baptisms—except for Crispus and Gaius—and on getting this report, I’m sure glad I wasn’t. At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in my name. (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas’s family, but as far as I can recall, that’s it.)
17God didn’t send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn’t send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.
18-21The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,
I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as shams.
So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered stupid—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.
22-25While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so cheap, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
26-31Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.