so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Divisions in the Church

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,

so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.

(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Christ the Wisdom and Power of God

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,

so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

Proclaiming Christ Crucified

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Wisdom from the Spirit

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

Divisions in the Church

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.