26 Why, lock at your calling, brothers : 27 28 There are not many wise after the flesh, not many principal men, not many of high birth; Nay, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put the wise men to shame, And God has chosen the weak things of the world to put the strong things to shame, And God has chosen the low-born things of the world and the despised things-the things which are not, to put down the things which are, 29 That no flesh should exult before God. 30 31 21 From him you have your being in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our "wisdom," that is, uprightness and sanctification and redemption; So that, even as it is written, Let him who exults, exult in the Lord. And so, brothers, when I came to you, I did not come proclaiming 2 the testimony of God to you by way of elaborate speech or wisdom. I decided not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ-and him 3 crucified. And when I was with you I was in weakness and fear and 4 great trembling; nor did my speech and preaching rest on persuasive words of wisdom, but on a "demonstration" of the Spirit and of power; 5 that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. 6 Wisdom however we do speak among the mature, But not a wisdom which belongs to this age Or to the leaders of this age (who are being put down); 7 It is God's wisdom as a secret that we speak, The hidden wisdom which God fore-appointed before the ages in our honour. 8 None of the leaders of this age knows it 9 (For had they known it, they had not crucified the Lord of majesty); Nay it means, as has been written, Things no eye has seen, no ear has heard, That have not entered the mind of man, Even all that God has prepared for those who love him. 10 To us God has revealed them through the Spirit, For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 Among men, who knows the things of a man Save the spirit of the man that is within him? So is it also with the things of God, None has knowledge of them save the Spirit of God. 12 Now we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, That we might know the things bestowed on us by God; 13 And these are what we speak in words taught by no human wisdom, but by the Spirit, Interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men. 14 The natural man rejects the things of the Spirit of God, to him they are foolishness: Indeed he cannot understand them, for they are estimated spiritually. ✓ 15 Whereas the spiritual man has an estimate for everything, Yet no man has an estimate for him. 16 For who has known the Lord's mind, so as to instruct him? No man and our mind is the mind of Christ. 31 And so, brothers, I could not speak to you as spiritual men, but as 2 creatures of flesh, as mere children in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with solid food; you were not able for solid food. No, and you are not 3 able yet. You are fleshly still. For in so far as jealousy and quarrelling exist among you, are you not fleshly? are you not walking after the 4 manner of men? When one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not merely human? 5 What is Apollos, then? What is Paul? 6 7 8 Ministers through whom you believed—each indeed in the measure granted him by the Lord. I planted, Apollos watered, But God made the growth. So then neither planter nor waterer is anything, But God who makes the growth. Planter and waterer alike are one, Yet each shall receive his individual reward according to his individual labour. 9 For we are God's fellow-workers; You are God's field, God's building. 10 By virtue of God's grace granted me I laid the foundation like an expert master-builder; But another man is building on it. Let each man take care how he builds on it. 11 (For no man can lay any other foundation than the foundation laid, namely, Jesus Christ.) 12 13 14 15 If any man is building on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble Each man's work shall be disclosed: The Day will make it plain, for the Day is revealed with fire, And the fire itself will test each man's sort of work. If the work built up by any man survives, He shall receive a reward: If any man's work be burned up, He shall be a loser; He shall be saved himself, yet saved as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God's sanctuary, and that God's Spirit dwells in you? 17 If any man is destroying God's sanctuary, him shall God destroy. 18 Let no man beguile himself: 19 If anyone among you imagines he is wise in this age, Let him become a fool to become wise For with God the wisdom of this world is foolishness. For it is written, He who seizes the wise in their craftiness, 20 and again The Lord knows that the designs of the wise are futile. 21 So let no man exult in men ; For all things are yours, Be it Paul or Apollos or Kephas, Or the world or life or death, Or the present or the future, All are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. 6 4 1 Let a man look on us as servants of Christ and stewards of the secrets 2 of God. Well, then, in this matter of stewardship, it is required that 3 a man be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be cross-questioned by you or by any human court. I do 4 not even cross-question myself. For though I am conscious of nothing against myself, that does not clear me; he who cross-questions me is the 5 Lord. So judge not at all before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of the darkness and also disclose the counsels of the hearts: then shall each man get his praise from God. Now, brothers, I have transferred these things by a fiction to myself and Apollos for your sake, so that from our case you might learn the maxim: "Up to what is written, and no further," not to be puffed up one 7 against another in favour of this one or the other. Who singles thee out? What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Why exult as if thou hadst 8 not received, when thou didst receive? Have you been sated already? Grown rich already? Come to reign, apart from us? Ah, would that had come indeed to reign, for us to share your reign as well! For God, I think, has exhibited us apostles last and lowest, as men doomed to death; we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ's sake, you are sensible in Christ; we are weak, 11 you are strong; you are illustrious, we unhonoured. Even to this hour 12 we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad, buffeted, waifs, and toilers, working with our own hands. Reviled, we bless: persecuted, we bear patiently: 13 defamed, we strive to appease: to this hour we are made like offscourings 14 of the world, the refuse of all things. I am not writing this 9 you 15 to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you should have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet you have not more 16 than one father: in Christ Jesus through the gospel I begot you. I 17 appeal to you then, become imitators of me. For this reason I have sent you Timotheus, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord; he will remind you of those methods in Christ Jesus, which I teach everywhere 18 in every Community. Certain people have got puffed up, however, as 19 though I were not coming to you? But I shall come to you soon, if the Lord will, and learn not what is the word of those who are puffed up, 20 but what is their power; for God's reign is not a matter of words but of 21 power. What is your choice? Must I come to you with a rod, or with love and the spirit of gentleness? 5 1 It is actually reported that there is fornication among you, and fornication such as does not even exist among the Gentiles, namely, that a 2 man has his father's wife. And yet you are puffed up! You ought rather to have mourned, so that the perpetrator of this deed might be removed 3 from your midst. For my part, absent in body but present in spirit, I have already—as though really present-passed judgment upon him 4 who has practised this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus (you being gathered together and my spirit also, with the power of our Lord Jesus), 5 to have the man in question delivered to Satan for the destruction of the 6 flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.1 Your exulting is discreditable. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the 7 whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump; even as you are free from leaven, for indeed Christ, our paschal lamb, has been 8 sacrificed. So then let us keep festival not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity 9 and integrity. I wrote you in my letter to keep no company 1 Omitting ['In›û]. 10 with fornicators—not that I meant you absolutely to shun the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and extortionate, or idolaters, since in that 11 case you would be obliged to withdraw from the world. What I did write to you was this: if anyone who bears the name of "brother" be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or extortionate, keep no company with him, with such a man do not even 12 eat. As for those outside, what have I to do with judging them? Is it 13 not those inside that you judge? Those outside are judged by God. Banish the wicked one from your midst. 6 1 Dare any of you, with some dispute against another, go to law before the unjust instead of before the saints? 2 3 4 What do you not know the saints shall rule the world? And if the world is to be ruled by you, are you unfit to adjudicate upon mere trifles? Do you not know we shall rule angels, let alone secular affairs? So then, if you have to adjudicate on secular affairs, do you set up as judges people who in the Community are of no account whatever? 5 I say this to rouse your shame. Has it come to this, that there is not a single wise man forthcoming among you, who can decide a dispute 6 between his brothers ? Must brother go to law with brother, and that 7 before unbelievers? Nay, so far as that goes, it is altogether a defect in you that you have law-suits with one another. Why not rather be 8 wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? Instead of which you yourselves inflict wrong and practice fraud, and that upon your brothers. 9 What! do you not know that unjust men shall not inherit the reign of God? Be not misled neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers 10 nor voluptuaries nor sodomites nor thieves nor covetous people nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the reign of God. 11 And such creatures some of you were; but you washed yourselves, but Vou were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. 12 13 14 "All things are lawful for me"? Yes, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me : Yes, but I will not be brought under the power of anything. "Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods": Yet God shall do away with it and them alike. But the body is not for fornication, it is for the Lord and the Lord for the body: God raised up the Lord, and by his power he will also raise up us. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Am I to take Christ's members then, and make them members of a harlot? God forbid ! 16 What do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot Is one body with her (For the two, it is said, shall become one flesh) ? 17 But he who joins himself to the Lord Is one spirit with him. 18 Flee from fornication: Every sin a man does is outside the body, But the fornicator sins against his own body. 19 What! do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the holy Spirit which is in you, Which you have from God? 20 And you are not your own, you were bought with a price; Then honour God in your body. 7 1 2 3 4 Now in regard to the matters of which you wrote to me. It is an excellent thing for a man not to touch a woman. Still, on account of fornications, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to the wife her due, And likewise the wife to the husband. The wife has not authority over her own body, but the husband: 5 Defraud not one another, unless for a time perhaps by agreement, that you may have leisure for prayer, and then come together again—so 6 that Satan tempt you not on account of your incontinence. But I say 7 this by way of permission, not by way of command. On the contrary, I would that all men were what I am. Yet each is endowed by God in his own way, one for this and another for that. 8 To unmarried men and to widows I say: it is an excellent thing for 9 them if they remain as I am. Still, if they have no self-control, let 10 them marry. Better marry than be afire with lust! Married people I charge (not I, but the Lord) that the wife should not be 11 separated from her husband-should anyone have actually separated, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband-also,_ that 12 the husband should not dismiss his wife. To the rest I say 13 14 (I, not the Lord) :— If any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she consents to dwell with him, Let him not dismiss her. And if a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to dwell with her, Let her not dismiss her husband. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, And the unbelieving wife in the brother. Else, of course, your children are unclean; While as it is they are holy. 15 (However, if the unbeliever is bent on separating, separation let it be in such cases the brother or the sister is under no constraint.) It is for a life of peace that God has called us.1 Why, how dost thou know, O wife, whether thou shalt not save thy husband? Or how dost thou know, O husband, whether thou shalt not save thy wife? Only, let each walk as the Lord has assigned him his lot, As God has called him. (And such are my instructions in all the Communities.) Let him not become uncircumcised. Has any man been called in uncircumcision? Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, 1 Reading ἡμᾶς. |