¹ Now when I came to you, brothers, I did not come with any brilliance of oratory or wise argument to announce to you the mystery of God.

² I was resolved that the only knowledge I would have while I was with you was knowledge of Jesus, and of him as the crucified Christ.

³ I came among you in weakness, in fear and great trembling

⁴ and what I spoke and proclaimed was not meant to convince by philosophical argument, but to demonstrate the convincing power of the Spirit,

⁵ so that your faith should depend not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

⁶ But still, to those who have reached maturity, we do talk of a wisdom, not, it is true, a philosophy of this age or of the rulers of this age, who will not last long now.

⁷ It is of the mysterious wisdom of God that we talk, the wisdom that was hidden, which God predestined to be for our glory before the ages began.

⁸ None of the rulers of the age recognised it; for if they had recognised it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;

⁹ but it is as scripture says: What no eye has seen and no ear has heard, what the mind of man cannot visualise; all that God has prepared for those who love him;

¹⁰ to us, though, God has given revelation through the Spirit, for the Spirit explores the depths of everything, even the depths of God.

¹¹ After all, is there anyone who knows the qualities of anyone except his own spirit, within him; and in the same way, nobody knows the qualities of God except the Spirit of God.

¹² Now, the Spirit we have received is not the spirit of the world but God's own Spirit, so that we may understand the lavish gifts God has given us.

¹³ And these are what we speak of, not in the terms learnt from human philosophy, but in terms learnt from the Spirit, fitting spiritual language to spiritual things.

¹⁴ The natural person has no room for the gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognise them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit.

¹⁵ The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the value of everything, and that person's value cannot be assessed by anybody else.

¹⁶ For: who has ever known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his adviser? But we are those who have the mind of Christ.