2 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[Some manuscripts proclaimed to you God’s mystery ] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
God’s Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[Isaiah 64:4]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except for their own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.[Or Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual ] 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”[Isaiah 40:13]
But we have the mind of Christ.
NOTES:
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2:1 The mystery of God: God’s secret, known only to himself,
is his plan for the salvation of his people; it is clear from 1 Cor 1:18–25;
2:2, 8–10 that this secret involves Jesus and the cross. In place of mystery,
other good manuscripts read “testimony” (cf. 1 Cor 1:6).
2:3 The weakness of the crucified Jesus is reflected in
Paul’s own bearing (cf. 2 Cor 10–13). Fear and much trembling: reverential fear
based on a sense of God’s transcendence permeates Paul’s existence and
preaching. Compare his advice to the Philippians to work out their salvation
with “fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), because God is at work in them just as
his exalting power was paradoxically at work in the emptying, humiliation, and
obedience of Jesus to death on the cross (Phil 2:6–11).
2:4 Among many manuscript readings here the best is either
“not with the persuasion of wisdom” or “not with persuasive words of wisdom,”
which differ only by a nuance. Whichever reading is accepted, the inefficacy of
human wisdom for salvation is contrasted with the power of the cross.
2:6–3:4 Paul now asserts paradoxically what he has
previously been denying. To the Greeks who “are looking for wisdom” (1 Cor
1:22), he does indeed bring a wisdom, but of a higher order and an entirely
different quality, the only wisdom really worthy of the name. The Corinthians
would be able to grasp Paul’s preaching as wisdom and enter into a
wisdom-conversation with him if they were more open to the Spirit and receptive
to the new insight and language that the Spirit teaches.
2:7–10a God’s wisdom: his plan for our salvation. This was
his own eternal secret that no one else could fathom, but in this new age of
salvation he has graciously revealed it to us. For the pattern of God’s secret,
hidden to others and now revealed to the Church, cf. also Rom 11:25–36;
16:25–27; Eph 1:3–10; 3:3–11; Col 1:25–28.
2:8 The rulers of this age: this suggests not only the
political leaders of the Jews and Romans under whom Jesus was crucified (cf.
Acts 4:25–28) but also the cosmic powers behind them (cf. Eph 1:20–23; 3:10).
They would not have crucified the Lord of glory: they became the unwitting
executors of God’s plan, which will paradoxically bring about their own
conquest and submission (1 Cor 15:24–28).
2:13 In spiritual terms: the Spirit teaches spiritual people
a new mode of perception (1 Cor 2:12) and an appropriate language by which they
can share their self-understanding, their knowledge about what God has done in
them. The final phrase in 1 Cor 2:13 can also be translated “describing
spiritual realities to spiritual people,” in which case it prepares for 1 Cor
2:14–16.
2:14 The natural person: see note on 1 Cor 3:1.
2:15 The spiritual person…is not subject to judgment: since
spiritual persons have been given knowledge of what pertains to God (1 Cor
2:11–12), they share in God’s own capacity to judge. One to whom the mind of
the Lord (and of Christ) is revealed (1 Cor 2:16) can be said to share in some
sense in God’s exemption from counseling and criticism.
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Letter to the 1 Corinthians
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