[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.
