1FROM PAUL,
APOSTLE of Jesus Christ at God's call and by God's will,
together with our colleague Sosthenes,
2to the congregation of God's people at Corinth, dedicated to him in Christ Jesus, claimed by him as his own, along with all men everywhere who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord as well as ours.
3Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4I am always thanking God for you. I thank him for his grace given to you in Christ Jesus. 5I thank him for all the enrichment that has come to you in Christ. You possess full knowledge and you can give full expression to it, 6because in you the evidence for the truth of Christ has found confirmation. 7There is indeed no single gift you lack, while you wait expectantly for our Lord Jesus Christ to reveal himself. 8He will keep you firm to the end, without reproach on the Day of our Lord Jesus. 9It is God himself who called you to share in the life of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and God keeps faith.
10I appeal to you, my brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: agree among yourselves, and avoid divisions; be firmly joined in unity of mind and thought. 11I have been told, my brothers, by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you. 12What I mean is this: each of you is saying, 'I am Paul's man', or 'I am for Apollos'; 'I follow Cephas', or 'I am Christ's.' 13Surely Christ has not been divided among you! Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Was it in the name of Paul that you were baptized? 14Thank God, I never baptized one of you-except Crispus and Gaius. 15So no one can say you were baptized in my name.— 16Yes, I did baptize the household of Stephanas; I cannot think of anyone else. 17Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the Gospel; and to do it without relying on the language of worldly wisdom, so that the fact of Christ on his cross might have its full weight.
18This doctrine of the cross is sheer folly to those on their way to ruin, but to us who are on the way to 19 [ Is.29.14. ] salvation it is the power of God. Scripture says, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the cleverness of the clever.' 20Where is your wise man now, your man of learning, or your subtle debater-limited, all of them, to this passing age? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. 21As God in his wisdom ordained, the world failed to find him by its wisdom, and he chose to save those who have faith by the folly of the Gospel. 22Jews call for miracles, Greeks look for wisdom; 23but we proclaim Christ—yes, Christ nailed to the cross; and though this is a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Greeks, 24yet to those who have heard his call, Jews and Greeks alike, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25Divine folly is wiser than the wisdom of man, and divine weakness stronger than man's strength. 26My brothers, think what sort of people you are, whom God has called. Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard; few are powerful or highly born. 27Yet, to shame the wise. God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness. 28He has chosen things low and contemptible, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order. 29And so there is no place for human pride in the presence of God. 30You are in Christ Jesus by God's act, for God has made him our wisdom; he is our righteousness; in him we are consecrated and set free. 31 [ Jr.9.24. ] And so (in the words of Scripture), 'must boast, let him boast of the Lord.'
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