1 Corinthians 1

Worldwide English (New Testament)

1 I am Paul. God called me to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. He did this because he wanted to.

² Our Christian brother Sosthenes and I send greetings to the people who are the church of God in the city of Corinth. You are people whom Christ Jesus has made holy. You, too, are chosen to be God's people. And we send greetings to all the people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is their Lord, just as he is our Lord.

³ May God show you his kindness and peace which come from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

⁴ I am always thanking God for the blessings he has given you through Jesus Christ.

⁵ He has made you rich in all ways, in all that you say and in all you know.

⁶ Christ has done for you just what he promised to do.

⁷ You have every blessing you need while you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to come again.

⁸ And right to the end Jesus Christ will surely keep you safe. Then no one will find anything wrong about you on the day our Lord Jesus Christ comes.

⁹ God never fails anyone. It is he who called you to belong to his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

¹⁰ My Christian brothers, I beg you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, agree in what you say. Do not divide into groups. You should all think in the same way and decide to do the same things.

¹¹ My brothers, I say this because I have been told by some of Chloe's family that you are quarrelling.

¹² This is what I mean. Some of you say, `I belong to Paul.' Others say, `I belong to Apollos.' And others say, `I belong to Cephas'. And yet others say, `I belong to Christ.'

¹³ Is Christ divided? Was Paul nailed to the cross for you? No! Were you baptized in Paul's name? No!

¹⁴ I thank God that I did not baptize any of you but Crispus and Gaius.

¹⁵ So no one can say you were baptized in my name.

¹⁶ (However, I also baptized the people of the house of Stephanas. I do not know of any one else that I baptized.)

¹⁷ Christ did not send me to baptize people, but he sent me to tell the good news. I must not tell it with the clever words of this world. That would not show what the death of Christ on a cross truly means.

¹⁸ When people who are turning away from God hear about the cross, they say, `That is foolish!' But for us who are being saved, the cross is the power God uses to save us.

¹⁹ God says in the holy writings, `I will fool the wise people. I will bring to nothing the understanding of the clever people.'

²⁰ Where are your wise people, the men who know books, the men who like to talk about the things of this world? God has shown that the clever things of this world are nothing.

²¹ God is wise. But the people of the world were not wise enough to know God. So he chose to save people who believe the good news that we tell them, even though the good news may seem to be foolish.

²² The Jews say, `We must see a sign.' Those who are not Jews say, `We want something we can understand.'

²³ But we tell people about Christ who died on a cross. The leaders of the Jews do not like this, and those who are not Jews laugh at it.

²⁴ But some have been called by God. They are chosen, both Jews and other people. Christ is God's power to save them. This shows how wise he is.

²⁵ When God seems foolish, he is more wise than men. When God seems weak, he is stronger than men.

²⁶ My brothers, remember what you were when God chose you. Not many of you were wise by the way people look at it. Not many of you had power. Not many of you came from a family with a big name.

²⁷ But God chose things that look foolish to the people of the world. He has used those foolish things to put the wise people to shame. God chose the weak things to put to shame the strong people.

²⁸ And God chose the small things, things that people despise. Yes, he chose even the things which seem to be nothing. He did this to destroy the big things.

²⁹ He did this so that people would not be proud before God.

³⁰ You are God's children through Christ Jesus. Christ came from God and made us wise. He put us right with God. He made us holy. He set us free from our wrong ways.

³¹ Just as the holy writings say, `No one should be proud of anything but of the Lord.'