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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© 2021, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. All rights reserved.
1 Corinthians 2
2
1And that’s how it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I didn’t use fancy words or human wisdom to preach the truth to you about God’s love. 2My goal while I was with you was to talk about only one thing: Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. 3When I came to you, I was weak and afraid and shaking all over. 4I didn’t preach my message with clever and compelling words. Instead, my preaching showed the Holy Spirit’s power. 5This was so that your faith would be based on God’s power and not on human wisdom.
God’s Wisdom Through the Holy Spirit
6However, when we speak to those who are mature in the faith, we do share our wisdom. But it’s not the wisdom of this world or its rulers, who are fading away. 7No, we share God’s wisdom, which is a mystery that has been hidden until now. But before time began, God planned that this wisdom would bring us heavenly glory. 8None of the rulers of this world understood God’s wisdom. If they had, they wouldn’t have nailed the Lord of glory to the cross. 9It is written that
“no eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
and no human mind has imagined”
the things God has prepared for those who love him.
10But God has shown these things to us through his Spirit.
The Spirit understands all things, even the deep things of God. 11Who can know the thoughts of another person? Only that person’s own spirit. In the same way, only the Spirit of God knows God’s thoughts. 12What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we can understand what God has freely given us. 13That’s what we speak about, and we don’t use words that we’ve learned from human wisdom. We use words that the Holy Spirit has taught us, and we use them to explain spiritual truths. 14The person who doesn’t have the Spirit doesn’t accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. Those things seem foolish to them, and they can’t understand them, because they can’t be understood without the Spirit’s help. 15But the person who does have the Spirit can make judgments about everything, though no human being can judge them. It is written,
16“Who can ever know the Lord’s mind?
Can anyone teach him anything?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
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