1 Corinthians

Williams^{(i) 1} Paul, by the will of God called as an apostle of Jesus Christ, and our brother Sosthenes, ² to the church of God at Corinth, to those who are consecrated by union with Christ Jesus, and called to be God's people, in fellowship with those who anywhere call upon the name of Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: ³ spiritual blessing and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ I am always thanking God for you, for the spiritual blessing given you by God through union with Christ Jesus; ⁵ because you have in everything been richly blessed through union with Him, with perfect expression and fullness of knowledge. ⁶ In this way my testimony to Christ has been confirmed in your experience, ⁷ so that there is no spiritual gift in which you consciously come short, while you are waiting for the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁸ and to the very end He will guarantee that you are vindicated at the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ God is entirely trustworthy, and it is He through whom you have been called into this fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. ¹⁰ Now I beg you all, brothers, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be harmonious in what you say and not to have factions among you, but to be perfectly harmonious in your minds and judgments. ¹¹ For I have been informed about you, my brothers, by Chloe's people, that there are wranglings among you. ¹² I mean this, that one of you says, "I belong to Paul's party," another, "And I belong to Apollos' party," another, "And I belong to Cephas' party," another, "And I belong to Christ's party." ¹³ Christ has been parceled out by you! It was not Paul who was crucified for you, was it? You were not baptized in Paul's name, were you? ¹⁴ I am thankful that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵ so as to keep anyone from saying that you were baptized in my name. ¹⁶ Yes, I did baptize the family of Stephanas, too; I do not now recall that I baptized anyone else. ¹⁷ For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the good news -- but not by means of wisdom and rhetoric, so that the cross of Christ may not be emptied of its power. ¹⁸ For the message of the cross is nonsense to those who are in the process of being destroyed, but it is the power of God to those who are in the process of being saved. ¹⁹ For the Scripture says: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the learning of the learned." ²⁰ So where is your philosopher? Where is your man of letters? Where is your logician of this age? Has not God shown up the nonsense of the world's wisdom? ²¹ For since in accordance with the wisdom of God the world had never in reality, by means of its wisdom, come to know God, God chose through the nonsense of the message proclaimed, to save the people who put their faith in Him. ²² While Jews are demanding spectacular signs and Greeks are searching for philosophy, ²³ we are preaching the Christ who was crucified -- a message that is a trap-stick to the Jews and nonsense to the Greeks, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks alike, the Christ who is God's power and God's wisdom. ²⁵ It is so, because God's nonsense is wiser than men's wisdom, and God's weakness is mightier than men's might. ²⁶ For consider, brothers, the way God called you; that not many of you, in accordance with human standards, were wise, not many influential, not many of high birth. ²⁷ Just the opposite: God chose what the world calls foolish to put the wise to shame, what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame, ²⁸ what the world calls of low degree, yea, what it counts as nothing and what it thinks does not exist, God chose to put a stop to what it thinks exists, ²⁹ so that no mortal man might ever boast in the presence of God. ³⁰ So you owe it all to Him through union with Christ Jesus, whom God has made our wisdom, our means of right standing, our consecration, and our redemption, ³¹ so that, as the Scripture says, "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."