Lighting God’s Way

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

¹ When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I didn’t come preaching God’s secrets to you like I was an expert in speech or wisdom. ² I had made up my mind not to think about anything while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and to preach him as crucified. ³ I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. ⁴ My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. ⁵ I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God. ⁶ What we say is wisdom to people who are mature. It isn’t a wisdom that comes from the present day or from today’s leaders who are being reduced to nothing. ⁷ We talk about God’s wisdom, which has been hidden as a secret. God determined this wisdom in advance, before time began, for our glory. ⁸ It is a wisdom that none of the present-day rulers have understood, because if they did understand it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory! ⁹ But this is precisely what is written: God has prepared things for those who love him that no eye has seen, or ear has heard, or that haven’t crossed the mind of any human being. ¹⁰ God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God. ¹¹ Who knows a person’s depths except their own spirit that lives in them? In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit. ¹² We haven’t received the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit so that we can know the things given to us by God. ¹³ These are the things we are talking about—not with words taught by human wisdom but with words taught by the Spirit—we are interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. ¹⁴ But people who are unspiritual don’t accept the things from God’s Spirit. They are foolishness to them and can’t be understood, because they can only be comprehended in a spiritual way. ¹⁵ Spiritual people comprehend everything, but they themselves aren’t understood by anyone. ¹⁶ Who has known the mind of the Lord, who will advise him? But we have the mind of Christ.