in that you have been enriched by him in so many ways, particularly in power of speech and depth of knowledge.

For God’s wisdom ordained that the world, using its own wisdom, would not come to know him. Therefore God decided to use the “nonsense” of what we proclaim as his means of saving those who come to trust in it.

Just look at yourselves, brothers — look at those whom God has called! Not many of you are wise by the world’s standards, not many wield power or boast noble birth.

for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Yeshua the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal.

But, as the Tanakh says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard and no one’s heart has imagined all the things that God has prepared for those who love him.”

For who knows the inner workings of a person except the person’s own spirit inside him? So too no one knows the inner workings of God except God’s Spirit.

Now the natural man does not receive the things from the Spirit of God — to him they are nonsense! Moreover, he is unable to grasp them, because they are evaluated through the Spirit.

But the person who has the Spirit can evaluate everything, while no one is in a position to evaluate him.

For who has known the mind of Adonai? Who will counsel him? But we have the mind of the Messiah!

For you are still worldly! Isn’t it obvious from all the jealousy and quarrelling among you that you are worldly and living by merely human standards?

So neither the planter nor the waterer is anything, only God who makes things grow —

So if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you yourselves are that temple.

Let no one fool himself. If someone among you thinks he is wise (by this world’s standards), let him become “foolish,” so that he may become really wise.

I am not aware of anything against me, but this does not make me innocent. The one who is evaluating me is the Lord.

After all, what makes you so special? What do you have that you didn’t receive as a gift? And if in fact it was a gift, why do you boast as if it weren’t?

I am not writing you this to make you feel ashamed, but, as my dear children, to confront you and get you to change.

So if you require judgments about matters of everyday life, why do you put them in front of men who have no standing in the Messianic Community?

Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of the Messiah? So, am I to take parts of the Messiah and make them parts of a prostitute? Heaven forbid!

Don’t you know that a man who joins himself to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? For the Tanakh says, “The two will become one flesh”;

To the rest I say — I, not the Lord: if any brother has a wife who is not a believer, and she is satisfied to go on living with him, he should not leave her.

Also, if any woman has an unbelieving husband who is satisfied to go on living with her, she is not to leave him.

But if the unbelieving spouse separates himself, let him be separated. In circumstances like these, the brother or sister is not enslaved — God has called you to a life of peace.

Only let each person live the life the Lord has assigned him and live it in the condition he was in when God called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the congregations.

What I want is for you to be free of concern. An unmarried man concerns himself with the Lord’s affairs,

with how to please the Lord; but the married man concerns himself with the world’s affairs, with how to please his wife;