1When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come with fancy words or superior wisdom when I told you God's message.
2For I decided that while I was with you, I would focus on nothing except Jesus Christ and his crucifixion.
3I came to you in weakness, fear, and with much trembling.
4My speaking and my preaching were not with clever and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power,
5so that your faith would not depend on human wisdom, but on God's power.
6Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of its rulers, who are losing their power.
7Instead, we speak God's mysterious and hidden wisdom, which God planned before time began for our glory.
8None of the rulers of this world understood this wisdom. If they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9But as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him."
10But God has revealed these things to us through his Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.
11Who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows God's thoughts except the Spirit of God.
12We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
13We speak about these things not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Holy Spirit, explaining spiritual truths with spiritual words.
14People who rely only on their natural abilities do not understand what God’s Spirit is telling them, because to them it sounds like nonsense. They cannot understand it, because it takes God’s Spirit to make sense of it.
15But the person who is spiritual understands everything, and no one judges him.
16It is written: “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to advise him?” But we have the mind of Christ.