Chapter 1

Paul, whom the will of God has called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, and Sosthenes, who is their brother,

send greeting to the church of God at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be holy; with all those who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in every dependency of theirs, and so of ours.

Grace and peace be yours from God, who is our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God continually in your name for that grace of God which has been bestowed upon you in Jesus Christ;

that you have become rich, through him, in every way, in eloquence and in knowledge of every sort;

so fully has the message of Christ established itself among you.

And now there is no gift in which you are still lacking; you have only to look forward to the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He will strengthen your resolution to the last, so that no charge will lie against you on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ comes.

The God, who has called you into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful to his promise.

Only I entreat you, brethren, as you love the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, use, all of you, the same language. There must be no divisions among you; you must be restored to unity of mind and purpose.

The account I have of you, my brethren, from Chloe’s household, is that there are dissensions among you;

each of you, I mean, has a cry of his own, I am for Paul, I am for Apollo, I am for Cephas, I am for Christ.

What, has Christ been divided up? Was it Paul that was crucified for you? Was it in Paul’s name that you were baptized?

Thank God I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius;

so that no one can say it was in my name you were baptized.

(Yes, and I did baptize the household of Stephanas; I do not know that I baptized anyone else.)

Christ did not send me to baptize; he sent me to preach the gospel; not with an orator’s cleverness, for so the cross of Christ might be robbed of its force.

To those who court their own ruin, the message of the cross is but folly; to us, who are on the way to salvation, it is the evidence of God’s power.

So we read in scripture, I will confound the wisdom of wise men, disappoint the calculations of the prudent.

What has become of the wise men, the scribes, the philosophers of this age we live in? Must we not say that God has turned our worldly wisdom to folly?

When God shewed us his wisdom, the world, with all its wisdom, could not find its way to God;4 and now God would use a foolish thing, our preaching, to save those who will believe in it.

Here are the Jews asking for signs and wonders, here are the Greeks intent on their philosophy;

but what we preach is Christ crucified; to the Jews, a discouragement, to the Gentiles, mere folly;

but to us who have been called, Jew and Gentile alike, Christ the power of God, Christ the wisdom of God.

So much wiser than men is God’s foolishness; so much stronger than men is God’s weakness.

Consider, brethren, the circumstances of your own calling; not many of you are wise, in the world’s fashion, not many powerful, not many well born.

No, God has chosen what the world holds foolish, so as to abash the wise, God has chosen what the world holds weak, so as to abash the strong.

God has chosen what the world holds base and contemptible, nay, has chosen what is nothing, so as to bring to nothing what is now in being;

no human creature was to have any ground for boasting, in the presence of God.

It is from him that you take your origin, through Christ Jesus, whom God gave us to be all our wisdom, our justification, our sanctification, and our atonement;

so that the scripture might be fulfilled, If anyone boasts, let him make his boast in the Lord.