1 Corinthians 2

1Brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I did not come with fancy words or great wisdom as I told you about God.

2For I decided to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and Him nailed to the cross.

3I came to you weak, afraid, and trembling.

4My message and my preaching did not depend on clever, persuasive words. Instead, they came with the proof of the Spirit's power,

5so that your faith would not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.

6We do teach wisdom to mature believers. But this is not the world's wisdom. It does not come from powerful world leaders. Those leaders will soon lose all their power.

7Instead, we speak God's hidden wisdom, a wisdom that was a secret. God planned it before time began, for our glory.

8None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had, they would not have nailed the Lord of glory to the cross.

9The Scripture says: No eye has ever seen it. No ear has ever heard it. No human mind has ever imagined it! That is how wonderful God's plan is for those who love Him.

10But God has shown these things to us through His Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.

11For who knows a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

12We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

13We do not teach with words made up by human wisdom. The Holy Spirit teaches us the words to speak. We explain spiritual truths to people who have the Spirit.

14A person without the Spirit rejects God's truths. They think God's message is total foolishness! They cannot understand it. These truths can only be understood through the Holy Spirit.

15The person who has the Spirit can judge all things, but they themselves are not subject to anyone's judgment.

16For: Who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.