1When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with superiority of speech or wisdom, proclaiming to you the mystery of God. 2For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3When I was with you, I was weak and afraid and I shook. 4My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith would not rest on human wisdom, but on the power of God.

6We speak wisdom, however, among those who are mature, but a wisdom not of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are passing away. 7But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God determined in advance before the ages for our glory, 8which none of the rulers of this age has understood. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9But as it is written, No eye has seen, and no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things which God has prepared for those who love him.

10But to us God revealed it through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11For what person knows the things of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him? So also, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God. 13And we speak of these things, not with words taught by human wisdom, but with those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.

14Now the natural person does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15But he who is spiritual discerns all things, and he himself is judged by no one. 16For "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who will instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.