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1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence of speech or wisdom as I proclaimed to you the mystery of God.
2 For I decided not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
3 I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
4 My message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5 so that your faith might not be in human wisdom, but in God’ s power.
6 Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, but not wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are passing away.
7 Instead, we speak God’ s wisdom in a hidden mystery, that God predestined before the ages for our glory.
8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 But as it is written, “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and has not arisen in man’ s heart, these things God has prepared for those who love him.”
10 For God has revealed them to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.
11 For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is within him? So also, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
12 But we did not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we might know the things freely given to us by God.
13 And we speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things for spiritual people.
14 But the natural person does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But the one who is spiritual discerns all things, but he himself is discerned by no one.
16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord— who will instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians